Kuala Lumpur :: Malaysia
Let's talk diving.
Places: Langkawi, Palau Perhentian Kecil & Kuala Lumpur (KL).
Coolest thing I did: Adopted a 1.5 metre monitor lizard who lived on my porch. I named him Mitch, as in Mitch, the Monitor Lizard.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: Kids are allowed to celebrate the end of day fasting by throwing fireworks around unsupervised. It makes walking around a night interesting.
So the rain continued to do it's best to frustrate my having a good time in Langkawi and I decided to go through a torturous series of boat, taxi and night bus rides to cross the peninsula in order to get to the dry side. I only really had time left to spend a few days at one of the islands on the east coast renowned for diving so I chose the Perhentians, as that seems to be the Lonely Planet approved island chain of choice for this year. Arriving just after sunrise was well worth it, with the speed boat skimming over flat water towards a pair of islands that look like tropical islands should do, with jungle and palm trees giving way to perfectly white sand beaches (you may have noticed that I'm really running out of beach metaphors this year. I'll have to go somewhere else soon...).
I chose to base myself on the smaller, less classy of the two, Kecil (which I think means, small, as opposed to the other island) and immediately found my self with no need for thongs anymore. There's one long beach (called Long Beach) and one bay overlooking coral (called Coral Bay) and that's it, so you can pretty much get around barefoot everywhere (well, that's until you're on the boat back and someone tells you about the snakes that get about in the dark. Wusses).
From the second I got to the jetty at 6am fresh from the night bus all the conversations around me revolved around diving. It's the same in snowboarding or surfing towns, but I'd say there's only so many times you can have the "have you been to perfect location X to dive?". "Yeah, it's amazing." "I'd love to go there". "You Should". Repeat. You also form little cliques, each based around which of the dive shops on the island you've completely randomly chosen to go out to the reef with. For some inexplicable reason you become mortal enemies with everyone else and won't hesitate to defend your own dive shop, even if they've got crap equipment and dive masters who don't speak English.
The diving is really very good, but I have to say that having already seen the Komodo Islands, and the fact that the rains are starting to churn up the water so making the visibility really poor it wasn't the best I've ever seen. Still, ticked off all the big stuff like turtles, sharks and moray eels and especially at shallow depths there are gardens of coral hiding massive schools of everything from little Nemos to Barracudas to make it all worth it. A couple of the sites had awesome underwater crevasses and swim throughs but due to the changeable currents and aforementioned visibility issues I don't think I got the full effect. I'd love to return at a better time of year, perhaps with an Advanced ticket so I could dive their crown jewels, two wrecks just off the coast.
The water temperature is worth mentioning, because dive computers show 28 degrees at about 12m there. That's bloody warm. When you go out into the shallows just off the shore towards the end of the day it feels like a bath up until your ankles. You don't mind everywhere has cold showers, you kind of need it to cool down.
The other thing worth mentioning is the food is uniformly shit. I hope I've stopped myself from whinging when I'm just having a bad day, but the ramdom mess of horrible "Western" food mixed with expensive but bland "Local" food was a big problem on the island. I'm wondering if they just think backpackers want to eat as cheaply and as badly as possible but I was hankering for Penang. There were people who came south from Thailand just to dive the Perhentians and I'd hate to think their entire knowledge of Malaysian food was this place. I just can't see why someone can't bring over some of those stall holders from the peninsula, pay them 10 times what they make at home and they can cook the same food? There, listen to me, problem solved.
So another boat and overnight bus has brought me back to the West of the country (I'm getting to avoid most of the place expect for islands I think) to KL, it's thriving heart. I've only had a short day to walk around, much interrupted by the same storms that I assume come south from Langkawi, but from what I've seen so far it's a lot less poor than either Bangkok or Jakarta. There's far less touting and hustling going on and there's not been a shanty in sight as yet. Thinking about Malaysia in general, it has seemed to be as prosperous when compared with it's neighbour as I first thought in Penang.
The food is great again, too. The islands seem to be a fluke.
Today I took in mostly the colonial buildings, that for whatever reason the English decided really should like they come from North Africa or Andalusia, all with Moorish arches and skinny minarets. Forget the fact that's only the other side of the world but I guess you have to give them points for attempting to be slightly culturally sensitive to the fact they aren't Christians here. Even the main train station looks like the Alhambra, only gone to pot a bit due to lack of care.
That's a noticeable thing here, everything appears to have been built in the last 60 years, and everything that hasn't has mostly been left to rot. They seem to want to be seen as modern and don't have our hang-ups about preserving buildings to somehow use it to entrap the culture that's being lost elsewhere. I did notice something similar in big city Indo too, that it's not just the young people that are embarrassed by their traditions, which they see as being entwined with poverty, people of all ages, once they have some money go out of their way to differentiate themselves, to make themselves look modern. I've said before how I think it's not for us to decide how other people should treat their own cultures, but it would be nice to keep some old buildings on occasion.
I've yet to go up the Petronas Towers, or even photograph them, so that's a priority for tomorrow. Due to my recent addiction to Megastructures on the Discovery Channel (which probably has a suspicious correlation with my recent unemployment...) I know all about them being built and I'm keen to see them in the flesh. Well, concrete and steel.