Cameron Highlands and Kuala Lumpur

It’s been almost 3 months since our Winter trip began and we still haven’t posted everything about it.  If you’ve poked around the site you’ve probably already seen these photos but hopefully this will give them a little more context.  Our posts have been a bit out of order from our trip – starting near the end (Penang) back to the beginning (Bangkok) then the middle (Koh Tao).  In that tradition I present to you the last leg of our Journey.  The only place left is Langkawi (somewhere in the middle ).   So here we go… The Cameron Highlands to Kuala Lumpur.

While on Penang we rented a car (from Hertz) and drove our way through the heart of Malaysia.  It added a lot to our travel costs but it made for an exciting few days of travel.

A map of mainland Malaysia.

Penang and Langkawi are on the north west side and Kuala Lumpur is on the west side about half way down.  Between the two you can see Ipoh and the Cameron Highlands.  (the route of our journey).

We left Penang on a ferry and quickly got turned around and stuck going to the wrong direction.  Thanks to some quick navigating of the spotty map we had and some blasting of bad travel music we found our way out of Butterworth and on to the highway.   Our first stop was a Tree Top forest walk.  More on that in another post… We got lost on the way to it and on the way from it but finally made it to Ipoh in a terrible rain storm and found our hotel for the evening.

The Sunset before the storms…

The menu at a restaurant in the middle of Malaysia… No one there spoke english so all we had to go on were these pictures. 

Didn’t really work out that well… (we went to the 7/11 down the road afterward and got some other snacks.)  (That curry had lots of slimy 8 legged friends in it.. I’ll spare you the pictures.)

The next day we traveled on from Ipoh to the Cameron Highlands.  Originally our plan was to stay in the Cameron Highlands the night before and do some hiking in the area, but we found out a bit too late that EVERYONE in Malaysia goes to the Cameron Highlands during the Chinese New Year – (which started that day ).  So we stayed in Ipoh and made a quick trip to the Highlands the next day.  Turned out to be a lot quicker than we thought.  We arrived to rain and fog (pretty in the rolling hills but not to practical for hiking or touring around the strawberry farms and tea plantations – it’s a very colonial region).   We also arrived to bumper to bumper traffic.  So we stopped a tea plantation had a scone and some tea, drove through the rest of the Highlands and decided to head on South for the evening.

Tribes of the Orang Asli still live around this area and remnants of their nomadic lifestyle were everywhere along side the road.  Or this is just a place where people sell vegetables… who knows

Dave taking a picture of the view.

After a few hours of driving we arrived in Kuala Lumpur!!    Excited to get there and not sure exactly where we were going, we got lost a lot and ended up downtown in the heart of the city. We found a hotel for the night (the condo we had rented wasn’t available until the next night) and headed out for a nice relaxing dinner.  Kuala Lumpur was a pretty cool city – surrounded by mountains and jungle it had an interesting feel.  It was the Chinese New Year so everything was closed and most of the people had gone to visit family elsewhere – so it felt like we had the city to ourselves… like a ghost town almost.   But it made driving a lot less scary in the rental car and taxi’s really easy to catch. :)  We used the time in Kuala Lumpur to decompress from the traveling – relaxing in the pool at the condo, eating lots of western food, watching a movie, looking out the view from our 30th floor, and visiting the major tourist spots.

Here is a view of the Petronas Twin Towers (formerly the worlds tallest buildings) from the KL Tower.  The KL Tower is a space needle type structure that is a lot easier to go up in than the petronas towers (and they have a revolving restaurant!).  We went up for Eve’s Birthday!

Views from the revolving restaurant

This kid was climbing up on the windows… !  So Scary!

What a lovely lady

That’s our trip to Kuala Lumpur in a nutshell.  We also visited Chinatown (a busy streetmarket with cheap fake stuff) and the Hard Rock Cafe.  Somehow we only ended up with a handful of photos from this leg of the trip, but hopefully I’ll get some more from Dave and Eve soon and post them.  For now check out this gallery for more pictures and enjoy!

-Chad