Shipping from Indonesia to Malaysia went fairly smooth. GS went on a wooden vegetable cargo ship and we ourselves went with fast ferry over the strait of Malacca:
And in just some 4 hours we could see Malaysia with its 13.5 kilometer long bridge to Penang island:
With airplanes flying over it (click to enlarge)
Georgetown skyline.
Loads of ships in the straits.
We had to wait for our GS in Georgetown. It was expected to arrive the next day. So we took our time to chill around Georgetown which is known for its colonial architecture and superb culinary treasures thanks to it's very mixed ethnic mix of locals (malays, chinese, indians, indonesians etc etc). Click to enlarge the pics:
They burned money in that oven in the front of Chinese temple.
And what a relief it was to see gardening in the city after Indonesia, where everything was left "as is, wild!":
Transport.
People.
Fort Cornwallis, erected by the founder of Georgetown, Francis Light:
We went to get our GS the next day. In order to do that we had to cross over to mainland, to a town called Butterworth. These two cities, Gorgetown and Butterworth, are often considered as one, but the latter doesn't have much similarities with Georgetown. Butterworth is more of a industrial town, with a cargo port and modern highway intersections:
The ship was just being unloaded when we arrived at the port so we had to wait till our bike was loaded off and took some pictures from the process and folk involved:
The vegetable boat that our GS arrived with:
(Click to enlarge)
We decided to stay in Georgetown for a couple of more days, since the food was superb there and while discovering different local dishes we took more pics from the city (click to enlarge pics if you want to). It is a wonderful place to wander around and to see how different cultures and religions are well and alive, without any apparent tensions between them.
Backstreets in Georgetown.
Chinese temple.
Mosque.
And the money was still burning in that thing in the night!
You see a lot of those shrines in front of houses with smoking incenses that create a very good and spiritual atmosphere in the city.
People in Georgetown.
Eating with hands.
A very Chinese feature in Georgetown are the so called clan jetties which consist of old wooden houses built on stilts on the sea and thus nice views. The clan jetties and other things such as clan houses that have been and are still being used as a gathering and worship places for immigrants from different regions of China, seem to show that sense of community is very strong in Chinese.
"A street on the sea"
Chinese seem to LOVE this dog.
Fishing nets drying.
Just outside of Georgetown was a tourist resort Batu Ferringhi, that also had a floating mosque, built on the sea:
Loudspeakers on the towers - to spread Allah's blessing to the city.
But mosque was surrounded with relatively tasteless resort apartments-houses that Malays love to build big as hell:
And a panorama of Batu Ferringhi (click to enlarge)
Circling the Penang island we hopped into a butterfly farm where you can see loads of butterflies, bugs and other creatures:
A video from butterflies having lunch:
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<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/f_Ij_TngcpQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></object>
And different bugs put on display:
Fortunately most were alive, like glowing scorpions:
And snakes...
But a couple of words about the food in Penang - variety is just endless... From fish to pork, from rice to noodles, really superbly made food we found everywhere.
Hot pots isolated with newspaper.
Making sweets.
Yummy, sweet rice sweets - a speciality of local Chinese called Nyonya, so the sweets are called Nyonya Kuih.
This one was mad with rice wine - so don't eat too much of them! :freaky
This Indian man made us Apom Telur in one morning. Superb stuff together with curry sauce and sweet tea with milk - a proper oriental breakfast.
And also roti - a decent banana pancake also served with curry sauce, a strange combination, but tasted good!
Ais kacang - basically ice dessert, while tasted good it made Kariina to go living into toilet for 2 days:
Coconut juice.
And 100% natural juices on the streets are sold in plastic bags.
And pigeons love to eat too...
Fresh fruits are well distributed in Malaysia.
From Penang island we headed to Cameron Highlands that have interesting green patterns of tea plantations layed on hills:
Lot of interesting patterns.
Click to enlarge pics and panoramas:
And Kuala Lumpur is where we needed to stop to perform a badly needed maintenance and some minor repairs on our GS. Even workshops have ritual stuff in front of their garage doors:
Fruits for the Gods to bring better luck.
I replaced oils'n'stuff.
Judging from the wear debris, looks like in near-future I have to replace the crown wheel bearing in FD bevel box. So looks like I'm getting around constant 100,000 km out of a bearing on a 2-up fully loaded bike.
Rear subframe had one few millimeter crack in that needed welding. Guys here weld wearing sunglasses! :huh
For the first time in this trip tyres are wearing out quicker from the corners than the center - a curvy gift from Indonesian roads.
Oh yes, almost forgot to add pics of the symbol of Kuala Lumpur - the Petronas twin towers, the highest twin towers in the world (click to enlarge):
City itself very much "wakes up" in the night-time.
And Petronas towers really are tall:
A few pics from arabian-influenced architecture in Kuala Lumpur:
As you can see, islamic architecture favors lattice walls which create interesting light effects. As in many other religions, light is a divine symbol, so no wonder they are popular.
Once you turn into smaller streets, the picture changes:
British ex-pat and UKGSer Dean contacted us and we got together in KL. He sponsored us a decent meal & beer in some upper-class restaurants with his Javanese wife - oh god the proper food tasted so good for us poor budget travellers who normally eat food from street stalls in this part of the world and have long forgotten the taste of high quality food. And can't even remember when was the last time we drank so much beer :lol3 We were endlessly grateful.
With him we also headed to the East coast of Malaysia since he was on the way to work in the same direction where we headed. Dean rides a R1200GS.
Like locals say, while the West coast is ethnically very mixed, the East coast is the real Malaysia. Here, Islam is the predominant faith, and as you can see from the pictures below, it is pretty conservative indeed, with women well covered with headscarves and long dresses. But at the same time the people are very warm and welcoming - it felt as if we were back in Sumatra with people smiling and waving to us. This is something you do not meet so often in the cosmopolitan West.
It was also great to be close to nature once again - after the cities and the endless plantations (there are just too many of them in Malaysia!) we suddenly felt peace - watching the ocean waves come ashore and local flora and fauna doing their business. Also, the climate is very pleasant on the coast.
(Click to enlarge panoramas and pics)
One thing, however, that does not fit into the picture, is the rubbish on the beach. Maybe it is because there is no beach culture as such in Malaysia (they say that most of the locals do not even know how to swim), but generally it seems that the notion of environmental awareness is not well known here.
We rode a bit inland to pay a visit to Lake Kenyir, which was pretty picturesque, but the weather was damp and we decided to head back to the coastline.
For a long time now we have dreamt of pitching our tent somewhere amidst the nature. Our last opportunity to do that was in East Timor - Indonesia was mostly too densely populated or there were mountains or thick jungle aside the road, so we did not even attept. But we had heard from many that camping should be possible on Malaysia's east coast, so we looked for a spot, and indeed found one. There was lots of rubbish, of course, but it was great to pitch the tent and spend a night without a fan or air-con. Sticky from the sweat but happy, we collected a bagful of rubbish from the beach and took it to the nearest rubbish bin. To give at least something back.
(click to enlarge panorama)
And in just some 4 hours we could see Malaysia with its 13.5 kilometer long bridge to Penang island:
With airplanes flying over it (click to enlarge)
Georgetown skyline.
Loads of ships in the straits.
We had to wait for our GS in Georgetown. It was expected to arrive the next day. So we took our time to chill around Georgetown which is known for its colonial architecture and superb culinary treasures thanks to it's very mixed ethnic mix of locals (malays, chinese, indians, indonesians etc etc). Click to enlarge the pics:
They burned money in that oven in the front of Chinese temple.
And what a relief it was to see gardening in the city after Indonesia, where everything was left "as is, wild!":
Transport.
People.
Fort Cornwallis, erected by the founder of Georgetown, Francis Light:
We went to get our GS the next day. In order to do that we had to cross over to mainland, to a town called Butterworth. These two cities, Gorgetown and Butterworth, are often considered as one, but the latter doesn't have much similarities with Georgetown. Butterworth is more of a industrial town, with a cargo port and modern highway intersections:
The ship was just being unloaded when we arrived at the port so we had to wait till our bike was loaded off and took some pictures from the process and folk involved:
The vegetable boat that our GS arrived with:
(Click to enlarge)
We decided to stay in Georgetown for a couple of more days, since the food was superb there and while discovering different local dishes we took more pics from the city (click to enlarge pics if you want to). It is a wonderful place to wander around and to see how different cultures and religions are well and alive, without any apparent tensions between them.
Backstreets in Georgetown.
Chinese temple.
Mosque.
And the money was still burning in that thing in the night!
You see a lot of those shrines in front of houses with smoking incenses that create a very good and spiritual atmosphere in the city.
People in Georgetown.
Eating with hands.
A very Chinese feature in Georgetown are the so called clan jetties which consist of old wooden houses built on stilts on the sea and thus nice views. The clan jetties and other things such as clan houses that have been and are still being used as a gathering and worship places for immigrants from different regions of China, seem to show that sense of community is very strong in Chinese.
"A street on the sea"
Chinese seem to LOVE this dog.
Fishing nets drying.
Just outside of Georgetown was a tourist resort Batu Ferringhi, that also had a floating mosque, built on the sea:
Loudspeakers on the towers - to spread Allah's blessing to the city.
But mosque was surrounded with relatively tasteless resort apartments-houses that Malays love to build big as hell:
And a panorama of Batu Ferringhi (click to enlarge)
Circling the Penang island we hopped into a butterfly farm where you can see loads of butterflies, bugs and other creatures:
A video from butterflies having lunch:
<object width="480" height="385">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/f_Ij_TngcpQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></object>
And different bugs put on display:
Fortunately most were alive, like glowing scorpions:
And snakes...
But a couple of words about the food in Penang - variety is just endless... From fish to pork, from rice to noodles, really superbly made food we found everywhere.
Hot pots isolated with newspaper.
Making sweets.
Yummy, sweet rice sweets - a speciality of local Chinese called Nyonya, so the sweets are called Nyonya Kuih.
This one was mad with rice wine - so don't eat too much of them! :freaky
This Indian man made us Apom Telur in one morning. Superb stuff together with curry sauce and sweet tea with milk - a proper oriental breakfast.
And also roti - a decent banana pancake also served with curry sauce, a strange combination, but tasted good!
Ais kacang - basically ice dessert, while tasted good it made Kariina to go living into toilet for 2 days:
Coconut juice.
And 100% natural juices on the streets are sold in plastic bags.
And pigeons love to eat too...
Fresh fruits are well distributed in Malaysia.
From Penang island we headed to Cameron Highlands that have interesting green patterns of tea plantations layed on hills:
Lot of interesting patterns.
Click to enlarge pics and panoramas:
And Kuala Lumpur is where we needed to stop to perform a badly needed maintenance and some minor repairs on our GS. Even workshops have ritual stuff in front of their garage doors:
Fruits for the Gods to bring better luck.
I replaced oils'n'stuff.
Judging from the wear debris, looks like in near-future I have to replace the crown wheel bearing in FD bevel box. So looks like I'm getting around constant 100,000 km out of a bearing on a 2-up fully loaded bike.
Rear subframe had one few millimeter crack in that needed welding. Guys here weld wearing sunglasses! :huh
For the first time in this trip tyres are wearing out quicker from the corners than the center - a curvy gift from Indonesian roads.
Oh yes, almost forgot to add pics of the symbol of Kuala Lumpur - the Petronas twin towers, the highest twin towers in the world (click to enlarge):
City itself very much "wakes up" in the night-time.
And Petronas towers really are tall:
A few pics from arabian-influenced architecture in Kuala Lumpur:
As you can see, islamic architecture favors lattice walls which create interesting light effects. As in many other religions, light is a divine symbol, so no wonder they are popular.
Once you turn into smaller streets, the picture changes:
British ex-pat and UKGSer Dean contacted us and we got together in KL. He sponsored us a decent meal & beer in some upper-class restaurants with his Javanese wife - oh god the proper food tasted so good for us poor budget travellers who normally eat food from street stalls in this part of the world and have long forgotten the taste of high quality food. And can't even remember when was the last time we drank so much beer :lol3 We were endlessly grateful.
With him we also headed to the East coast of Malaysia since he was on the way to work in the same direction where we headed. Dean rides a R1200GS.
Like locals say, while the West coast is ethnically very mixed, the East coast is the real Malaysia. Here, Islam is the predominant faith, and as you can see from the pictures below, it is pretty conservative indeed, with women well covered with headscarves and long dresses. But at the same time the people are very warm and welcoming - it felt as if we were back in Sumatra with people smiling and waving to us. This is something you do not meet so often in the cosmopolitan West.
It was also great to be close to nature once again - after the cities and the endless plantations (there are just too many of them in Malaysia!) we suddenly felt peace - watching the ocean waves come ashore and local flora and fauna doing their business. Also, the climate is very pleasant on the coast.
(Click to enlarge panoramas and pics)
One thing, however, that does not fit into the picture, is the rubbish on the beach. Maybe it is because there is no beach culture as such in Malaysia (they say that most of the locals do not even know how to swim), but generally it seems that the notion of environmental awareness is not well known here.
We rode a bit inland to pay a visit to Lake Kenyir, which was pretty picturesque, but the weather was damp and we decided to head back to the coastline.
For a long time now we have dreamt of pitching our tent somewhere amidst the nature. Our last opportunity to do that was in East Timor - Indonesia was mostly too densely populated or there were mountains or thick jungle aside the road, so we did not even attept. But we had heard from many that camping should be possible on Malaysia's east coast, so we looked for a spot, and indeed found one. There was lots of rubbish, of course, but it was great to pitch the tent and spend a night without a fan or air-con. Sticky from the sweat but happy, we collected a bagful of rubbish from the beach and took it to the nearest rubbish bin. To give at least something back.
(click to enlarge panorama)
