Trip Report: Kuala Lampur and the Cameron Highlands

My first destination in Malaysia was the capital city, Kuala Lampur.  Kuala Lampur is a huge city with over 6.9 million people in the metro area.  It is a five hour bus ride from Singapore, costing around $30 USD.  A great deal... unless you get stuck on my bus.

The bus I took from Singapore left at 5PM... perfect timing to catch rush hour!  We spent two hours traveling through Singapore (20 miles) to get to the border of Singapore and Malaysia.  At the border everyone must jump off the bus with all of their luggage, go through customs, and hop back on.  We then spent an hour traveling across a two mile stretch of bridge moving less then a dozen feet a minute!  On the other side of the bridge we had to hop off again and check through the customs in Malaysia.  After all of the shuffling we were finally on the road to KL at 8PM.  An hour later we stopped for a 30 minute dinner break.  After the dinner break we fell into a routine of driving for an hour, stopping to drop a person off, and then driving another hour.  About three hours of that and the ride got very interesting....  

I woke up to the bus slamming to a stop on the side of the road and police lights everywhere.  From what I could see in the bus window the driver was in pretty big trouble for something.  We spent nearly an hour on the side of the road waiting for the cops to figure it out, after it was all done the driver received a ticket that must have been very large judging by his reaction and face when he got back in the bus... talk about road rage!  We arrived in KL at 2 AM, 4 hours after I was told.  I headed towards the ATM to withdraw the correct currency for a taxi ride to the hostel, only to find out that all of the ATM's go "offline" from 12-3 AM.  So my only option was to walk to the hostel.  I had printed off from the hostel's webpage and thought I was set... Turns out I ended up doing circles around the city center.  I tried the ATM as soon as the clock ticked 3 AM, only to find out that my bank card had been blocked by the bank... 

As I walked away from the ATM I was out of ideas and very tired, I started looking for a small corner to sleep in on the street and wait until the morning for the money exchange to open up... I couldn't even find a decent spot to sit down, but that was when I saw it, a shining beacon of light in the night, my savior: McDonald's.  A massive two story building housed the most amazing McDonald's ever. open 24-Hour, leather couches to lounge in, and free Wi-Fi.  I sat down, called my bank, got my card unblocked, enjoyed a Big Mac meal, and withdrew money for the taxi.  I finally made it to the hostel at 4AM.

Thankfully I got the rough part of the trip out of the way early!  The rest of my nine days in Malaysia were absolutely perfect.  

I meet up with Logan from California the next morning and a few other students who go to NTU.  We started our day off visiting the famous Batu caves just outside of downtown KL.  They were nice.  In all honestly it was extremely hot, crowded, smelly, and pretty average.  The photo's look cool though!

We then spent the afternoon in Chinatown  bargaining with street vendors for all sorts of random stuff.  I got a few fake but nice Polo Ralph Lauren shirts for $6 USD each, and a few nice "name brand" (fake) ties for $3 USD.

The next day we went to see the famous Petronas Towers which stand as the third tallest building in the world.  They we're very impressive, not only for their height but their design is incredible.

It was a rather short visit to Kuala Lampur.  Many people told me that two days was enough to see all that Kuala Lampur had to offer and I completely agree with them.  Kuala Lampur is a carbon copy of Singapore, just dirtier and smellier.  That afternoon Logan and I hopped on a bus north to the city of Ipoh in the middle of Malaysia.  Thankfully it was a smooth and short bus ride, no cops, and we arrived at a decent time.  

Ipoh is one of the largest limestone producers in south-east Asia.  It was easy to see why, on our drive, massive rocks of limestone were scattered throughout the landscape.

Our main reason to visit Ipoh was to see the Cameron Highlands.  The Cameron Highlands are located about two hours outside of Ipoh in the mountains of Malaysia.  We first planned to take a bus, but with it being Chinese New Year the buses were all sold out.  We asked the hotel receptionist if he could call to get us a taxi for the ride.  Normally a taxi ride to the Highlands and back is around $150 USD for two people.  When the hotel receptionist got off the phone he told us he found us a great deal; our own personal driver for the day, who would take us to all of the major attractions and show us all there was to see for only $80 USD!

The next morning we hopped in the car with a kid who looked to be our age.  It was a really nice drive through the mountains and we had a good time talking with our driver about school in Malaysia and his life there.  He was a little older then us, majoring in Mechanical Engineering at school.

I was awestruck when we reached the Highlands.  The temperate had dropped over thirty degrees to a balmy 60 F.  The hills were covered in farms of all kinds!   There were rows and rows of cabbages up and down the hills, millions of green houses with the most amazing flowers I have ever seen.

 Our first stop was to the strawberry farm.  Because of the climate and location they have fresh strawberries year round and because we were in Malaysia the prices were incredible.  We demolished the entire menu.  An hour of pure strawberry bliss!

After the strawberry farm we headed up the mountain even further to see the tea plantation.  The tea plantation is what the Cameron Highlands are known for.  It is massive, there are tea plants covering the hills for miles in every direction.  The way they lay out the plants makes for an incredible view.  We enjoyed one of the freshest and finest teas in the world!  It was definitely a once in a life time experience.

 

 We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying different fresh vegetables and then headed back down the mountain.  We were so lucky to have our own tour guide and driver.  The roads were backed up for miles in every direction due to the influx of visitors for holiday.  The bus would have been miserable and we wouldn't have been able to see half the stuff we got to see.  Our driver did a great job at avoiding the traffic, we hardly had to sit in it.  It was backed up for nearly 20 km in every direction!

When we arrived back at the hotel the same receptionist greeted us with a big smile and asked how our trip was.  We told him how amazing the place was and thanked him so much for setting us up with such a great driver.  He smiled again and said "Well I'm glad he did a good job, I thought you guys would get along well with my son".  It turns out he called his son on his day off from school and asked him if he would spend his entire day driving us around.... we were speechless.... He couldn't have made more then $40 USD after gas and other expenses, what a great guy!

What I loved most about Malaysia, more then the food, sights, and prices; was the people.  The people were incredible.  Most of them spoke English better then people in Singapore, everyone did a great job at pointing us in the right directions when we got lost, and they were always giving us big smiles.  A stunning fact I read about Malaysia was the unemployment rate is only at 3%, which allows the majority of people to live in the middle class.  Because of that there are less beggars, less people selling random junk, less people try to make every dollar they can off of tourists  and more people who are happy and willing to open up their minds and home to travelers   The generosity and kindness of the people continued throughout the trip which made for a very pleasurable time.

This post is though day three of my ten day trip.  I will try to write up the posts for the rest of the trip as soon as I can!