But please Moo, please don’t forget those tough bits.
The ride to the start
Smashing team!
"Fuck you, Rinjani!"
Day 1 - made it to base camp
View from the summit
I think that's Moo dying in the corner
The gruelling 3 hour ascent to the summit - don't slip
We made it! Every single one of us!
Following our epic expedition, we decided we’d earned a few days of pure relaxation. We checked into a lovely brand new hotel on Lombok and indulged in the pleasures of doing absolutely nothing. This included chocolate, pizza, pasta, tv, movies, monopoly deal, room service, GIN, and a farewell-Lombok Mexican dinner on our last night. It was total tourist cliché, and we loved every minute of it. Oh, Moo wants me to mention that we did leave the hotel on one of the days - okay, so we rented scooters and explored. And where did we end up? Eating noodles on the beach. Hardly a strenuous day, but I think Moo thinks its important that we aren’t seen to have been totally idle during our time on Lombok.
The victory meal
Making friends
The dream
So we’d recovered successfully, (thank you very much, Origins Lombok) and hopped on our flight to Kuala Lumpur for the next adventure. What awaited us there was indoor rollercoasters, the Batu Caves, the Petronas towers and foooooood glorious food. Naturally the highlight for Moo was the food. The rest was okay… a pretty cool city to spend a few days in but that’s all we really have to say about KL. Think Bangkok, but much less crowded.
My kinda place
Food glorious food
Durian
Taking the plunge... with gloves for precaution
As we’d arrived at the start of the rainy season, there were a few rumours circulating at our hostel that the whole of the Malaysian east coast was now closed. Moo and I were gutted as we’d originally planned to head up to Palau Kapas and the Perhentian Islands and then work our way back around, but at the last minute we had to change our plans. Just like that, the group had dropped from 4 members to just 1! Ollie made plans to head up the west coast, while Naja (our beloved adopted Danish daughter) was on a shorter timescale than us so headed straight for the Cameron Highlands. Moo and I had a whole month to kill, so decided to first visit Taman Negara, a national park which encompasses a sprawling tropical rainforest that’s said to be 130 million years old. Having made these plans a mere few hours before leaving, Moo and I weren’t really sure what to expect, or how to even get there. We simply trusted our faith in the public bus as we were so familiar with doing in Indonesia, and sat back to let the rest unfold.
After initially missing the first boat to Kuala Tahan, Moo and I (and a French friend that we’d met on the bus) were a little stuck. We trawled the harbour desperately asking if anyone had a boat and was willing to take 2 passengers and a cow for a small sum, but it seemed it was a trip that noone wanted to take. After all, it was 3 hours up river. With us.
We decided to admit defeat and wandered towards the town to make a plan for reaching the island by another means, when suddenly someone called out to us from the harbour and claimed he would do our best to squeeze us on the next boat that was leaving.
We pottered about for half an hour until a coach load of tourists arrived, boat tickets in hand. The boat was narrow and packed, and as Moo and Bastien glanced at each other nervously, we all held our breath that there would be space for us after everything was loaded on board. Et voila! They managed to clear two seats for us. I have come to learn that in SE Asia, anything is possible for the right price.
Upon arrival it was clear that we were in the low season. Bastien, Moo and I were the only ones in our hostel and the whole island had a rather barren feeling about it. We joined another pair of travellers (Nadia and Zach) on a 2 day 1 night jungle trek and had an unforgettable experience. The benefit of arriving during the low season was that we were the only group doing the trek, meaning our accommodation for the night - a rather large cave full of bats, frogs are other creepy crawlies - was totally empty! Our guide told us that during the high season there can be as many as 200 people staying there at a time. A different experience entirely.
Our home for the night
Local tribesman making fire
Shooting arrows through a blow pipe!
Cave dinner with the family
Moo's face when she is finally fed
Cave life
Dream team!
Naturally the 5 of us bonded during our survival in the wild experience and decided to travel on together to the Cameron Highlands. We were greeted by rolling hills of tea plantations and lovely, cool fresh air! We spent our time here visiting the plantations, hitch hiking for the first time, playing cards, drinking tea and eating peanut butter on toast under blankets in our cosy hostel living room. Perfect!
Roti for breakfast - one of our favourite things in Malaysia
Teeeaaaa
Green tea cake
Hitch hiking
From the Cameron Highlands we all moved on to Georgetown, Penang, which was one of the highlights of our trip. The town is known for its street art and we enjoyed a day hiring our own tuk tuk and riding to see all the famous spots, with the occasional emergency stop for orange juice and street food. We uncovered Penang’s secret backpacker bar where you could buy 3 beers for 11 ringgit - an amazing price compared to the rest of Malaysia, where finding a cheap drink is quite a feat. Naturally we spent every evening here, drinking and playing Hanouf until the early hours - which we found ourselves in trouble for on a couple of occasions, given that our hostel locked its doors at 3am.
We are bonded for life since sharing a nose together
Interesting street food
Street art
3D Trick-eye art museum
Is it obvious they were hungover?
Two friends wandering the streets of Georgetown.
Amazing Penang streetfood
From Penang we took the infamous ‘vomit boat’ to the island of Langkawi - a fun trip on a hangover indeed. Upon arrival it seemed the whole of France was there to greet us (ie a group of about 8 other French travellers) so we hopped in a minibus with them to find a hostel on the beach. Our last few days here were characterised by more drinking, learning the French way to play Uno (more complicated but much more fun) and one rather eventful island hopping trip. We wont go into it too much, but it involved a few near-capsize moments and a lost toenail (poor Florien).
On the skybridge - but you wouldn't know it with all that fog!
By this point, Moo felt like she had exhausted peninsular Malaysia. We still however had 10 days until our flight home from Kuala Lumpur. We had to weigh up the options - spend the entire time relaxing and drinking on Langkawi, move north into Thailand and do near enough the same thing on Koh Lipe, or take a flight somewhere last minute and get a little bit more travelling in before returning to cold old England. Given that we’d spent a lot of our time in Malaysia drinking and relaxing, we decided on the third, and without further ado, booked ourselves a flight to Kuching, Malaysian Borneo.
Here we saw Proboscis monkeys, wild boars, snakes, flying lemurs, macaques and of course ORANGUTANS! Our lovely ginger cousins. We took a trip to Bako national park to spend the day trekking in the jungle, and liked it so much that we decided to spend the night there too. What a smelly 30 hours that was! Living out of our bumbag for 2 days was an experience but surprisingly do-able, and allowed us to see more wildlife in two days than we had seen for the entire year.
Kuching itself was an interesting city with plenty to do, there were lots of interesting museums (I know - those words don’t normally sit next to each other comfortably but believe me on this one!). We had no idea Sarawak had such an interesting history involving a family of fair and generous Brits that ruled for 3 generations, independent of the Empire.
Proboscis monkey
Our accomodation
Pancakes filled with butter and crushed nuts
Rojak
LAKSAAAAA <3
Navigating treacherous long house staircases
And then just like that, it was all over! (Well, it wasn’t quite ‘just like that’ - it was a rather long 30 hour schlep back to the UK, but comfortable nonetheless). South East Asia 2016 has come to a close and what an amazing experience it has been. Not only for the culture, food (it really was cracking), craziness and scenery, but for the people that we met along the way. They say that the friends you make travelling are more likely to become close friends because firstly you spend pretty much every waking moment with them, you eat sleep and breathe together for days or weeks on end. But secondly because you are made of the same stuff. You have a deep understanding and respect for each other because although we are lone travellers, we are all together in that too.
Thank you for an amazing year, without a doubt we will be back on the road for more adventures in 2017!
From One Nutty Moo to Another
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