Courtesy of cheap flights from Thai Air Asia, we spent 10 days in Malaysia, flying to Penang where we picked up a car and set off to tour the East coast. Our first stop was Taiping a small town known for its lakeside gardens. The gardens are lovely and the trees around are full of monkeys.
From here, it was on to the Cameron Highlands which are renowned for the cool air and tea plantations. There is also a large Indian community who were imported by the British to do the tea leaf plucking. There are now also a large quantity of strawberries grown in the area with many signs advertising "self plucking", that as intriguing though it sounded, we managed to resist!
Next day, we first headed north through the mountains in order to pick up a road that ran south to Kuala Lipis. This took rather longer than anticipated as much of the road was tortuous and winding. The road south was a new road that was impressive for the amount of engineering that it obviously took and the fact that it snaked through what appeared to be virgin jungle. The road was very quiet with no sign of life for miles and miles until we eventually arrived in Kuala Lipis a small town, like most in
Malaysia with the exception of Kula Lumpur, that features some British Colonial buildings, and a small Chinatown but not much else. It was here that we discovered that the standard of hotels on Malaysia away from the west coast leave much to be desired despite the fact that they are very cheap. We did however find Flash Jack's Bar 55 which is a fascinating place run by a very friendly and helpful Chinaman unsurprisingly called Jack Teh. The bar looks like to has been there forever but in fact it has only been there 3 years.
Kuantan the capital city of Pahang lying on the east coast was our next stop. We stayed in the s
trangely named Mega View Hotel which actually lived up to its name as we had a top floor room overlooking the river and the sea beyond where we watched sea eagles circling and swooping for their dinner. This hotel had a riverfront terrace were 2 very large tv screens were showing the World Cup games. I wanted to stay another night but Ann vetoed that idea so we moved on to Cherating but not before we had visited the very pleasant beach at Teluk Chempedak where we watched monkeys looting the rubbish bins and performing their usual acrobatics in the jungle areas adjacent to the beach and had dinner at Tjantek Art Bistro, an excellent rstaurant which would be more at home serving the rich and famous of KL than languishing in the backwater of Kuantan. It is housed in a 1928 shophouse and sells various art works which are hanging on the wall.
Cherating was very, very quiet and has the air of a resort in decline. There are a number of resort hotels with their own beaches but we stayed at the Tanjung Inn in the village. This has nice air conditioned bungalows set in gardens which we liked very much although you are left thinking that it is struggling to survive. Here, in the morning, we sat on the verandah and watched a monitor lizard amble round the garden. Cherating Beach is an enormously long wide curving bay which could be fantastic but unfortunately it is subjected to that Asian malaise of just dumping your rubbish anywhere. We were disappointed and curtailed our planned 2 night stay to just one.
On to Kuala Terengganu, capital city of Terengganu state where we once again stayed at a substandard Malaysian chain hotel overlooking the river which was however well located next to Chinatown where we found good food at some stalls.
Kota Bahru is in Kelantan and we
had the impression that this area was the most religious and traditional of all the places we visited especially as we even had great difficulty in finding a beer - even the so called "international standard" hotel we stayed in served no alcohol! It is not a pretty place with very few amenties to attract the tourist.
We were already one day ahead of schedule but decided that the next day we would take the East West highway back to Penang.
As it was to be a long drive, we set off at 7:30 and drove across Malaysia skirting the Thai border through some very impressive rain forest and mountain scenery arriving in Penang 5 hours later which is exactly how long Jack, the friendly landlord in Kuala Lipis had told us it would take.
We did enjoy staying in Georgetown
where the restaurants, bars and hotels provided a welcome change from the slightly depressing sobriety of the East coast. as far as hotels are concerned, we went from the ridiculous in terms of standard and cost to the sublime as we spent the last night at the Eastern and Oriental hotel. This place opened by the Sarkie brothers who, also ran Raffles in
Singapore, in the late 19th century is simply wonderful having all the elegance and grace you would expect of a hotel that was a favourite amongst such people as Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward. Our suite was simply opulent with a fabulous view acrsoo the sea to the mainland.
We (or should I say I) have wanted to do this trip for a long time but in truth Malaysia away from the west coast is very disappointing and I would not particularly recommend it. We found it to be not very tourist friendly and quite frankly dirty with a very poor standard in hotels. However without exception all the people we met
were very pleasant and friendly. On the other hand, since our last visit two and a half years ago, Georgetown has improved enormously. A lot of work has been done on the old buldings and many of the streets have been renewed. Little India has been formally established and there is a good variety of restaurants, bars nad hotels. Further improvements are also in progress and I would definitely recommend visiting and do spend a night in the Eastern and Oriental to experience what it would be like to be rich and famous.
