In Summary - Malaysia

After each country, I'll write an overview of our time there. Here's the one for Malaysia:

Length of stay - 21st December - 5th January (16 days)

Places stayed - Kota Kinabalu, Mount Kinabalu, Kuching, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Langkawi

Currency - Ringgit, at time of writing £1 equals roughly 5RM

Plug type - British

Driving side - Left

Some Malaysian words:

Selamat datang - welcome

Jalan - road

Jalan Sehala - one way street (it took us a while to realise the arrows weren’t pointing to a particular street!)

Tandas - toilets

Kampong - village

Awas - careful/beware

Masjid - mosque

Ayam - chicken

Daging - beef

Kopi - coffee

Shamelessly stealing from Kat and Leo, I’ll be choosing three good, bad and odd things to summarise each country we visit.

Three good

1. The people - particularly on Borneo, the people are extremely friendly, chatty and helpful. They have a lovely ethos, with many races all rubbing along together in harmony.
2. The food - George Town in particular was a big highlight, but the majority of our meals here were delicious (see food blog for more details!)
3. The wildlife - from the top of Mount Kinabalu down to the mangroves of Langkawi we’ve seen some colourful and curious creatures, as well as a wide variety of plant life.

Three bad

1. The pollution - catalytic converters don’t really seem to be a thing in Malaysia and there is a ton of rubbish, particularly plastic in the sea. Everything comes in a plastic bag, most notably the four pastries we bought which had a plastic bag each and then one for all of them together! There does seem to be some effort to clean things up though.
2. Aching legs - while climbing Mount Kinabalu was an incredible experience, the five days of aching legs afterwards did put a slight downer on our time in Kuching and KL. We didn’t let it stop us doing things though!
3. The humidity - particularly when carrying a rucksack, the humidity is a real killer!

Three odd

1. Squeaky kids shoes - on four separate occasions, we encountered a toddler with shoes that sounded like a dog’s squeaky toy. Super annoying as they squeak every step the child takes. I guess it’s so parents don’t lose their kids? I prefer reigns!
2. Green screens - literally at every attraction we visited. Needless to say, we didn’t buy any!
3. Hearing the call to prayer five times a day - this was my first time in a Muslim country and it was amazing to hear the loudspeakers from the various mosques blasting out prayers. Each of our hostel rooms also had a sticker on the ceiling indicating the direction of Mecca and lots of places required shoes to be left outside.

Finally a word about travelling.

Travelling is hard. While our blogs have focused on the great bits about travelling, there have been times when things have been pretty stressful.

Before we left the UK, we booked all our accommodation and flights up until our stay in KL but from there we’ve had to plan most days where we’re going to be the following few days. There are a lot of places to go and even more places to stay or eat at so it can sometimes feel like a lot of pressure to choose the right place. Adjusting to the traveller way of life instead of the holiday way of life is taking a bit of getting used to as well, but hopefully I’m getting there!

There’s also the heat and humidity, lack of easily available drinking water, horrendous public toilets, and general tiredness and hunger to contend with, as well as lugging around 14kgs of luggage everytime we move on to somewhere new. All of which can make life tricky!

That said, we’re looking forward to exploring Thailand and I’m sure things will get easier as we get more used to our new way of life! Stay tuned to see what we get up to in Thailand.