We’d spent almost 3 months in Indochina and had loved it, so we travelled South towards Malaysia with trepidation. Leaving a place you like to go into the unknown is always unsettling, and we had really loved Thailand (though not so much our last stop of Tonsai… A surreal experience if you’d like to take a read).

We had a 10 hour minivan ride from Krabi in Southern Thailand, to Penang in Western Malaysia, crossing the border about 2/3 of the way through the trip. That border crossing was quite a striking experience.

We left the Thai Immigration building for the short hop across no-mans land to Malaysian immigration. We went from a tired old building with unashamed signs listing the bribes we had to pay, to a pristine complex with nice toilets, high tech scanners, and warnings that bribes will not be taken and are illegal. Smart officials greeted us professionally, and when we were back on the road everything suddenly seemed 20 years more developed. We stopped at a service station, a Shell garage identical to the one near us in Farnborough, coffee from the Costa express machine tasting just the same. It was surreal to travel such a short distance and see such a drastic change.

Malaysia had been a British colony, and had been one of the latter nations to become independent in a peaceful and uplifting process, so it held on to a lot of British influence in both infrastructure and culture.

On a side note, having not really prepared for this journey and having eaten the food given to us by the lovely people at Pyramid Cafe in Tonsai, we resorted to eating muesli dry out if the bag…. Not as bad as I’d expected!

We arrived in Georgetown, often considered Malaysia’s second city, late that night. We checked into our hotel, named Hotel Chennai as it was in the Indian quarter of the town. This introduces probably the most striking thing about Malaysia, and particularly the island of Penang… its diversity. Penang is a large island jutting out into the Melacca Straight, a crucial shipping lane. Through history, every major nation in the region had been sending trading vessels through this port, each leaving their influence on the rich tapestry of Georgetown.

The next day we went out to explore, following a self guided street art walking tour. It took us from our hotel in the Indian district, through streets of Malay food stalls, to the Armenian Street with it’s loud music and vibrant atmosphere. From there we walked to the waterfront lined with jetties, each allied to a Chinese clan who were once bitter rivals in trade, now providing beautiful and contrasting influences, from food to family temples. Further along the water we saw British colonial buildings that would have looked natural in Westminster, and then to the residential back streets which looked like an art-deco French village. The food, the architecture and the people were such a broad mix, showing such a rich history, and as far as we could tell they were a model of integration.

While there were distinct geographic areas to the different communities, people mixed to eat, work and socialise, there did not seem to be the bitter monocultural divides that are seen in many towns alleging to be multicultural.

This meant that wherever we went, we felt welcomed. While we were still unusual in being tall and white, we didn’t feel like we stood out for being different, nor did we feel outsiders. It helped as well that so many people spoke English very well, more so than in the French influenced Indochina.

The next day we went to the ‘3D art museum’… Simple childish fun. Rather than talking about it, I’ll let the pictures speak.

We decided to spend a few days relaxing in Penang before moving on, so enjoyed bumbling around this lovely place, and of course sampling every coffee shop we could.

Unfortunately we were in Malaysia during the annual period of ‘haze’. This is a routine where Indonesian farmers set fire to a large part of their country, creating huge quantities of smoke which drifts North into Malaysia, creating a horrible thin smog. This is clearly a point of tension amongst Malaysians whose health and comfort suffers for a month a year, through no apparent fault of their own. This year it was especially bad, and being outside could be quite unpleasant at times.

In no time we found ourselves on a bus to Kuala Lumpur, the capital. As the bus was entering this sky scraping city, the wind was changing and the monsoon was starting, meaning that the next day the air was beautifully clear for us to to really enjoy the area.

Kuala Lumpur is remarkable in how developed and international it feels. Having travelled through several SE Asian capitals, this was totally different. It was clean, smart, friendly and buzzing… A very easy place for us to to spend time!

On the first day we did a tour of Chinatown and the old colonial areas, getting a feel for historic KL, but then based ourselves in the modern centre of Bukit Bitang, a high rise cosmopolitan area with more shopping centres than I have ever seen. It was a pleasant contrast to the basic way of life we had experienced elsewhere….not necessarily better but certainly more comfortable and refreshing.

We had allowed ourselves a week in KL, and this was not to shop! Instead, this city is unusual in having a big climbing area within its bounds. We hopped on a train which for 40 minutes and little money should take us to the Batu Caves area.

Our first trip there did not go to plan. We had read that the trains were regular, so didn’t plan for a specific time. After a walk, a monorail ride and another walk, we got to the station to find that it was an hour until the next train. We waited and the hour passed, the train listing disappeared from the platform notice board, but no train. We became a bit disheartened, but the train did eventually arrive. Forty minutes later we pulled into the Batu Caves train station just as a monsoon downpour opened up on us, and continued for well over an hour. It felt like being in Snowdonia in Wales…. travelling for hours to just sit and stare at cliffs in the rain.

Just as we were about to board a train back to the city centre, the rain eased and we decided to venture out. I don’t fully understand why, but the popular attraction here isn’t the climbing, rather it is a huge set of caves filled with temples. As the rock was still soaking we decided to go and explore the tourist attraction. It was an impressively big set of caves, with a whole lot of monkeys, though we couldn’t help but think that these incredible rock formations would be better used for climbing than for looking at.

Once the sun came out we made the short trip to Damai wall, the biggest of the many climbing areas. This was a fantastic venue, with a group of climbing instructors working out of a facility at the bottom and therefore inspecting and maintaining the bolts in the rock…a sharp contrast to the dangerous conditions we had found in Tonsai. Also, it was within a public park so had benches and shelters, which proved necessary when the heavens opened again.

By the time we got there and sussed out the situation, we only had time to climb a handful of routes, but were ready to return the next day. We arrived much more smoothly and promptly, so had a great day of climbing. Beside us were a group of Singaporean students here for a climbing week, so we had a great time chatting to them, and hiding from the hour of torrential rain with them! We discovered that the rain is so heavy as to flood the shelter, so we would attach our bags to the rafters and perched on the benches.

Through our week of climbing in KL we also spent a couple of days at Camp5, the biggest indoor climbing wall in SE Asia. It was a cool place, not especially big by European standards, but great climbing and a friendly atmosphere.

Wonderful people, a buzzing city and great climbing, but if you were to ask Ness for her highligh of Malaysia, I think she’d tell you it was Nandos! Ness is a massive Nandos addict, and was able to enjoy her first one in 3 months.

We had spent just under 2 weeks in Malaysia, we had enjoyed beautiful diverse societies, amazing buildings, awesome climbing, and a lot of wandering around exploring, but on Sunday 29 September it was time for us to leave South East Asia. We had planned to spend a month in Indonesia first, but had decided to do Nepal in October and then Indonesia in November, so we would be returning to the area.

Our last day was spent at Camp5 again, where we could climb then have a shower before out flight at 2am the next morning. As we got a taxi to the airport, we left Malaysia with really warm feelings, a country where we had felt welcomed and excited, somewhere we would enthusiastically return one day.

For now though, we were going from a high tech capital to one of the poorest countries in the world, for a month of trekking and exploring in Nepal. As we publish this, we have just returned from a 2 week trek, and after a couple of days in a town we’re are aching to get back on the trails. We’ll write the story of this amazing experience shortly, but for now you can enjoy reading about our calamitous first day of trekking here… Ness described it as her worst day of our travels so far!