Peninsular Malaysia

The wealth in Peninsular Malaysia pits the place is in stark contrast to Cambodia and other poor parts of South East Asia. Here street art replaces street children.

My first stop was Penang. It’s a middle-class cultural melting pot. An island where several cultures collide and combine. You’ll find mosques, churches and temples on the same street. And outside of the quaint capital George Town, you’ll find plenty of traffic and skyscrapers, too.

Penang is famed for its cuisine and on my arrival I was lucky to buddy up with a French dude whose food blog meant his prerogative was to eat, eat and eat.

Well, mange tout Rodney, let’s do it!

One day we took an interesting 50km bike ride which took us to a floating mosque, a colonial-era graveyard and a canopy walkway in the national park.

Another day, I visited a Buddhist temple that was packed with sleeping pit vipers. They are poisonous, but nocturnal.

 Penang’s War Museum is a strange old place. It’s a former British Army complex overlooking the coast. Its tropical jungle setting contains intact infrastructure of barracks, underground tunnels, bomb shelters and huge land-to-air and land-to-sea gun placements. The Japanese overtook the complex in World War 2 after the Brits scarpered to Singapore. As a genuine piece of history, it had a lot of potential, but sadly the information on display was mostly generic and poorly presented.

The Japanese used the place to torture and execute POWs.  Which is why I found myself questioning whether the venue’s alternative use as a paintball arena was tasteful or not.

After a bus trip into the Cameron Highlands, I took a hike to sniff out the world’s largest flower. The Rafflesia is also known as the ‘corpse flower’ for its pungent stink. I was hungover and can confirm the smell was unpleasant.

I also dropped by the ‘Boh’ tea plantation for a brew with a view.

Next was on to the Perhentian islands. Its national marine park status means fishing is banned and it is renowned for fantastic snorkeling and scuba diving. In a single day of snorkeling, I saw four sharks and four turtles (Splinter the rat was nowhere to be seen).

I also snorkeled above a giant bump-nosed parrotfish as he let out a shit for 4 metres. It was interesting and disgusting to see tons of smaller fish converge to gobble it up.

I splashed out on a few scuba dives. The visibility was stunning and the marine life exceptional, it was some of my favourite diving to date.

Pulau Perhentian is a sticky island. I couldn’t leave. Thanks to great company and Jack-Sparrow-quantities of rum, I overstayed by a week.

One night we camped out on a secluded beach. But it wasn’t as deserted as we’d have liked. Turtle poachers kept rolling in!

But the sky provided the entertainment with a sunset, moonset, incredible stars plus a lightning storm.

My only qualm with life on the Island was that the same annoying reggae covers band played every night. I don’t consider myself a music buff, but Radiohead and Oasis tracks do not lend themselves to a Marley makeover.

My last stop on the Peninsular was the capital, Kuala Lumpur, or ’KL’. It’s a very modern city. I took a Sunday stroll through its attractive commercial district. A collection of ultra modern glass skyscrapers and strategically placed palm trees. To me it felt like the result of a week-long Sim City session by Jonathan Ive. Perfect, but a bit soulless.

 KL’s most famous building is the Petronas Towers. It’s an impressive building, even more so at night.

 More impressively, there was a Nando’s inside – the first I’ve found in over 7 months!  After my second visit in two days, I took a bonus Imodium to keep the peri-peri goodness in my system for a little while longer.

My favourite experience in KL was a 3AM wander into the Little India district in search of a place to watch the Champions League Final. I found a packed café and washed down a Rojak (spicy peanut and egg salad) with several insanely strong cups of pulled tea.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t much like Kuala Lumpur. its residents seemed to take themselves seriously and I felt out of place in my flip flops and washed out vest.

As I sat on the sky train and watched the opposite row of people thumb their smartphones to avoid eye contact with me and each other, I realised that’s what I have been escaping from!

A cosmopolitan metropolis where beer is too expensive and nobody talks to each other?

KL had prescribed me a micro dose of the reality bite I’m anticipating back in London.