For a country that was not initially on our itinerary, Malaysia definitely exceeded our expectations in a lot of different ways.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Our first stop in Malaysia was the dynamic city of Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital. We arrived with absolutely no knowledge of what to do in this city, and only a slight idea of how long we’d stay. Despite having planned our trip itinerary for weeks on end before arriving in SE Asia, we decided to ditch the plans and see where the wind took us. After Kuala Lumpur, we didn’t have a clue where we’d be.
Neither Sloan or I are very fond of cities. Ironically we find that there is little to do, since we prefer natural beauties like waterfalls and beaches. However, KL surprised us.
Our first day started out pretty slow. We visited the clock tower, Merdeka Square, and the Masjid Jamek (one of the oldest mosques in KL), all of which were within a 5-minute walk from our hostel.
We continued walking aimlessly throughout the city until we literally stumbled upon Central Market. We ended up spending a while looking through all the shops in the market and grabbing some delicious pineapple fried rice for lunch. Added perk: we each bought a pair of knockoff RayBans for $3 here.
Another huge plus about being in a major city is that you can typically find any type of food you’re craving. If you know Sloan and his choices in food at all, you know that he chose a Mexican restaurant for dinner (likely because there was no Zaxbys) so we enjoyed some red-wine queso and burritos. Gotta take advantage of it when you can, I suppose.
Afterwards, we walked to KLCC park and saw the Petronas Twin Towers begin to light up as the sun set. Pictures do not do it justice, and honestly neither do words, but it was spectacular. We decided to change our viewpoint and got drinks from the SkyBar at the top of Trader’s Hotel to watch the city illuminate as the sun set.
The following day we decided to go to the Batu Caves just north of the city, but not before we searched the entire city high and low for açai bowls (and successfully found them!) The caves were clearly touristy, but still awesome to see. Imagine huge limestone caves on the outskirts of a massive city… not something you see every day. We climbed the 272 stairs to get to the entrance and explored alongside all the other tourists.. and probably an equal amount of monkeys.
Unfortunately we didn’t have enough cash on us to check out the Dark Cave, but if anyone is visiting these caves in the future, make sure you do! It has over 200 species living inside it, including the world’s rarest spider, which can only be found in this one single cave. It honestly pains me to type that because of my irrational fear of spiders, but it still is a pretty cool fact.
Between the food, the skyline, and the caves, there wasn’t much more we could’ve asked for from this place, but we’d love to come back someday, KL!
Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia
While in Kuala Lumpur, we decided that our next stop needed to be somewhere slower. We settled on the island of Penang, Malaysia. Another place we had zero prior knowledge of, but decided to check out anyways. It’s already becoming a trend of the trip. After a literal 20 minute (and $10, might I add) flight, we were there. We checked into The Frame Guesthouse, which was a very trendy, minimalist-styled hostel. But the beds… wow, the beds were unreal comfy. Our first day consisted entirely of aimless wandering. There is an abundance of street art throughout the town, along with plenty of bars, cafes, and cute shops. Our favorite finds were a little gem called Wheeler’s Coffee, an Upside Down Museum, and the Chew Jetty which was perfect for people-watching.
We chose to check out the famous Yeap Noodles for dinner. It was a hole-in-the-wall restaurant with only about six 2-person tables, and there was absolutely nothing special about the ambiance here. The restaurant was famous for making its own noodles, though, and for having good food and great prices. We didn’t expect to love it this much, but if it tells you anything, we ended up coming back here for a meal every single day that we spent in Georgetown.
We both agreed that the best one we tried was the black pepper chicken noodles. Each dish costs less than $2, you just can’t argue with that. On our first night, Sloan went with the spicy chicken noodles and discovered what it really meant for something to be spicy. They warned him…
Our second day was much more adventurous and planned out. We headed to the Penang National Park on the other side of the island and hiked through the jungle paths to get to Monkey Beach. It took us just over an hour to walk through, and along the way we saw some crazy 6-ft long lizards and a few Dusky Leaf monkeys, which are endemic to Peninsular Malaysia (pictured below).
Once we actually reached Monkey Beach, we noticed that it was filled with a different type of monkeys – the crab-eating macaques. We got a few pictures of them but not before one almost attacked Sloan for putting his GoPro too close.
The beach was a lot bigger than either of us expected for a so-called “hidden” beach, so we spent a while exploring and hanging out. We opted for a boat ride on the way home to save us from the hour long walk back in the heat, but it turned out that we practically got the Titanic as our boat. Every time the driver tried to accelerate, the engine would give out and stall. Not exactly what you want in the middle of an ocean, but it did eventually get us to shore I guess.
That night we got dinner and drinks before going to check out another hostel that was well-known for being the ‘party’ hostel in that area. Well, the Tipsy Tiger did not disappoint. Within five minutes of being there we decided to play a game. There were 53 cards facedown, tacked to a wall behind the bar (a full deck plus a joker) and if you guessed the joker card correctly, you won 5 free beers. I jokingly pointed one out to Sloan and said “that’s the joker” before I even knew we were going to play. He laughed it off, clearly doubting me, and picked his own card. Wrong. So I confidently pointed to the card I had chosen…
Guess who won us five free beers?
I felt psychic after that so naturally we enjoyed the night, starting off by drinking our prizes. We met a big group of other travelers and had ourselves a night.
The next day was more of a struggle, one could say. We couldn’t really beat the day we’d just had, so we didn’t even bother trying. This was our first day of pure relaxation and it was fantastic. We ventured out a little to see the Botanic Gardens, basically so we didn’t feel like complete bums, but we were content doing very little. We DID get another meal at Yeap Noodles though, of course.
Langkawi, Malaysia
Way back when we were still planning this trip, we came across the tiny island of Langkawi and decided we HAD to put it on our itinerary. Upon more research, we saw that we’d be there during its peak rainy season, so we decided against it. Well, when we changed up our plans again in Kuala Lumpur, we decided that while we were here, we might as well give Langkawi a shot. Technically everywhere we’d been up until this point had been in “high rainy season” and from what we could tell so far, this meant it would rain really hard for about 45 minutes in the afternoon and then stop completely. We’d dealt with it everywhere else, so we could deal with it here, too. So we thought.
We decided to spend three nights in Langkawi. The first night, we were staying in a hotel right on the water with this cool concept of “tube rooms” which are exactly what they sound like: tube-shaped rooms just big enough for a bed with an amazing view of the ocean. Again, so we thought.
We got to our hotel with beautiful blue skies and checked into our tube room. For about 20 minutes everything seemed great. But then it started to rain, and I mean really really rain. It was an absolute monsoon and it lasted almost the entire day. Worse than that, our room was so small that if we opened the doors at all, everything inside – including our bed – got soaked from the rain pouring in. Our room also didn’t face the ocean as advertised. But still, that isn’t the worst part. No, the worst part was that there was no WiFi, meaning we couldn’t call an Uber to leave (there were no taxis here), we couldn’t communicate with the outside world, and we couldn’t even watch a movie on this rainy day. We couldn’t even leave the common room, or else our room and all our belongings would get soaked. When the rain finally did slow down a little bit, we rushed to our room and decided to try and take a nap. Unfortunately for us when we pulled back the sheets of our bed, we noticed something moving…
There was a snail. A SNAIL in our bed. With a nice, lime green trail of slime following behind it.
At this point, there was no other option but to laugh. We sat there, confused, but laughing at our entire sh*t show of a situation. The day was far from ideal, but we knew it made for a good story, and certainly one that we wouldn’t forget. That said, we were VERY happy to have only booked one night at this hotel. The first thing we did the next morning was pack our bags and head to the downtown area of Langkawi to find somewhere, ANYWHERE else to stay.
The rest of our days in Langkawi got progressively better. Our new hostel was much nicer and cleaner, and after taking a few tips from the hostel owner we rented motorbikes, ate delicious meals, and explored waterfalls and viewpoints. The weather definitely hindered us from doing as much as we’d hoped, but we still are satisfied with our Langkawi visit.
We are now in Vietnam as I write this and we plan on being here for about three weeks! (Don’t worry, I’ll split this country into multiple blogs, otherwise I’d be writing a novel). Two fun surprises about our adventures are coming your way, so keep your eyes peeled!
A Journal For My Journeys 