Malaysia Truly Asia

Kuala Lumpur: I parted ways with my family in Singapore to catch a six-hour bus to Kuala Lumpur. (Because of traffic in Jakarta, I actually made it to Kuala Lumpur before my Aunt and Uncle made it home!) I left myself really only a day for KL and I was mighty efficient with my time. I walked everywhere! Starting with Chinatown and Petaling Street, I continued to the Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square), the botanical gardens, the national monument, the orchid and hibiscus gardens, the national mosque, the Menara KL Tower, Suria KLCC, the Petronas Towers, and finally followed the malls on Bukit Bintang back to my hostel.

fancy mall in KL

United Buddy Bears - Surrounding the Pavilion Mall

They are meant to symbolize tolerance and unity;

every country had one. The US bear was painted as the

Statue of Liberty. Egypt's bear was painted like a pharaoh.

Afghanistan's bear had a weeping mother and son...

Long, exhausting day, but I saw everything I wanted to see in KL! I first visited KL in 2007 on a tour booked through Semester at Sea. I remembered going up the Petronas Towers (so I didn’t go up this time), but I had no recollection of the city tour we took. It was a really odd feeling to stumble upon the National Monument and realize that I had been before – I just never knew that what I saw in 2007 was, in fact, the National Monument.

Probably disappointing to read, but the two meals I had in KL were McDonald’s and KFC. That McDonald’s was Amazing though, and by far the cheapest one I’d ever been to!

Weirdest sand I've ever seen... (@ Tanjung Aru).

When I looked closely, I could see tiny crabs digging

up the sand to make these tiny balls

- the sand balls covered the entire beach!

Kota Kinabulu: This city annoyed me. It was hot all the time with tons of mosquitoes. I got started off on a sour note and things didn’t really improve all that much. I had read about an airport bus that comes (at no set schedule) approximately every hour. Because it was 1.50 Ringgit for the bus versus 30 Ringgit for a taxi, I decided to wait. After an hour, the bus literally blew by me without even slowing down. I ended up taking a taxi and feeling super unhappy about it. I think I was also generally annoyed in Kota Kinabulu because I had so many days in a city where there wasn’t much to do. I went to the rather unimpressive Sunday market on Gaya Street, visited the local Tanjung Aru beach where it started pouring rain, and spent time with other tourists at the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park.

I will admit that the marine park was definitely worth a visit. I went to just one of the seven islands – Sapi Island – and had a whole afternoon to relax in the sun and sneak a few glances at a creepy-looking monitor lizard scavenging for food.

Kota Kinabulu, btw, had decent food… One night, I played it safe with a delicious seafood noodle soup from 5 Star Hainanese Chicken Restaurant:

and then was a little more adventurous at Yee Fong’s with a claypot chicken and rice:

The Best Diving Ever (!!!): I flew from Kota Kinabulu to Tawau and met Jojo while we were still on the runway. Her flight had been delayed just long enough so that we landed at the same time. :) We took a taxi 50km away to Semporna, the base from which we would spend three days diving Sipadan and the surrounding islands.

We spent the first day diving Mataking and Timba Timba – Turtles galore!

I think in one dive I counted nine different turtle sightings. We also saw a massive 1.5m barracuda. The next day, we dove off Mabul Island…more turtles, eels, stingrays, and crocodile fish, schools of jackfish, and a jumping frog fish! Our last day diving was reserved for Sipadan!

I’d never seen a shark before so seeing about five of them on the first dive was exciting! Seeing 15-20 of them on the second dive was even better!!

But finding devil rays and hammerheads on the third dive was just unbelievable!

We were swimming out into the blue (away from the reef) and were already starting to surface when one of the dive leaders starts going crazy and, as she bangs on her tank, starts diving deeper and deeper. Hammerheads!!!

Two of them came swimming at me really fast before making an abrupt turn away… very scary… but So cool! I’d never felt so excited about diving before this day. It was just incredible! In 200 dives, one of the dive leaders had only seen hammerheads once so we were extremely lucky. The last dive was just icing on the cake with sightings of a school of about 1000 jackfish, a school of hundreds of barracuda, and a school of the bumphead parrotfish.

Barracudas!

Bumphead Parrotfish

Jojo and I would both definitely come back to dive Sipadan, but as we were talking about it, we realized that almost nothing could top this. *sigh*

To celebrate that night, we returned to a Malaysian seafood restaurant we had tried a few days ago. They allow you to bring in your own drinks so on impulse, we bought all the varieties of Es Cincau (grass jelly drink) on offer at the store and systematically taste-tested each one at the restaurant.

Other patrons and the wait staff thought we were nuts – you could see the looks on their faces but we didn’t care. It was the best diving trip I could have asked for and I’m so happy Jojo was there to share this amazing experience with me :)

So I've got five more months of traveling… who else is joining me?! :)

Happy Valentine's Day btw! <3