We took a bus to the Cameron Highlands. The bus engine was not that bad when it was moving, but in neutral the engine got pretty loud. And we were almost crashing into the roof when the bus hit the many bumps on the road 😄The jungle was very different from what we’d seen in the last years 🌿And the jungle trails were pretty cool and interesting. It was never boring to walk there. More like an agility walk 🥳And they were actively maintained and some parts had even ladders and, or ropes 🪜The plants were amazing 😍So much green and besides the trails there was the impenetrable jungle 💚We made it up to a view point. The viewpoints were mostly not so impressive because there was mostly not much to see. More covered by trees 🔭All these patterns, …… colors …… alien shapes, …… crazy ones, …… mushy ones, …… more mushrooms, …… and psychedelic ones 🌺So many 🥳And reptile friends 🦎Another hike brought Racki and me …… to a peak at 1840 meters 😁Meanwhile Tom got lost a bit because I accidentally put the wrong location in his navigation app. But we made it and reunited 🤗But still I was very sorry for my mistake because the path to the wrong location was very slippery and we had to walk a lot longer to avoid taking that path again 🙃But in the end, we made it and on the way we met a lot of jungle-assimilated old cars 🌿The weather was awesome. Not one rainy day in the rainy season in the jungle. Our apartment was in one of the big living houses in the Cameron Highlands and we had a lot of good food in the small restaurants 🥳And we pitched up our new tent in our apartment. Tom brought it from Germany and we applied sealing to it ✨
Racki’s brother came from Germany and joined us for two and a half weeks 🥳Together we moved into a very nice apartment on the 18th floor of one of the many high buildings in Kuala Lumpur 🌆Because of the off-season it was only 15€ a night for two bedrooms, a kitchen, and we had free access to a pool and the rooftop which had an awesome view 🥳The skyscrapers, and of course especially the Petronas Towers and the Maybank Tower, were beautiful in the night as well. And sometimes the reflections looked astonishing 🪞We were mostly taking the buses and trains and mostly they were not overcrowded. Only once we had to wait in a queue. And that queue was pretty British: perfect line, no pushing 😀Even though it was the rainy season, we had not too much rain. But sometimes the clouds were swallowing the towers 🌫️We did a lot of sight seeing and showed Tom (Racki’s brother) the biggest mall we have ever seen: the Pavillon. This thing was crazy! The shops had house numbers. There was an app just to find your way and they had the craziest Christmas decorations 🤶🏼Instead of the typical German Kaufmannsladen, there were miniature versions of street shops and …… street kitchens 😁And interesting services like this ear cleaning service. They had a couple of treatment chairs and above every chair there was a monitor showing live what got removed from the ear of the patient 👂🏼I liked the graffiti street a lot. Two or three streets with big paintings in the walls and …… the streets 🎊There we went to one of my favorite restaurants and paid only 3,5€ for two dishes and a coke which was very cheap, even for Kuala Lumpur prices 🏷️The contrast between the old and mouldy buildings and the new shiny one was very interesting. One of the locals (a taxi driver) told us, he paid about 40.000€ for an apartment in one of the older two story houses and was paying it off for 30 years 💵There were the restaurant streets all over the place 🥣And markets for everything 🌺And Little India looked very colorful. Especially at night 🏮And the towers were the most illuminated 🌆One day, we went to the Batu Caves 🏯And met a lot of monkeys hanging around, stealing food 😄The temples were beautiful and colorful 🎊Some 372 steps up to the main cave 🚀We got some blessings …… and walked through …… this magnificent cave 😍The other day we went to another colorful temple 🎊This one had the most lanterns 🏮And …… crazy figures, …… mosaics, …… dragons, …… and some love ♥️ Of course we went to a bar as well and had a great night with a funny local band 🎸
We made it to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Rosinante was safely parked. It was a whole different world than central asia. From the airplane everything looked green, full of jungle, but not the city 🏙️But instead of jungle Kuala Lumpur had these very impressive towers 🌆Beautiful in their own way 🥳Some even blended a bit into nature which was not so easy in that concrete city 🌱The roads and rails got built in multiple levels and we had to get used to finding our walking pathes through these labyrinths. It felt like KL was made for driving by car than by bicycle or even walking 🧭But it was fun 😁The culture was very different in so many ways. One example are stores with plenty of action, manga, and cute figures 😀And of course the small markets were very vivid and colorful 🎊As was the street art 🎨And the bars of China Town were we moved into our first hostel 🏮This one reminded us of Uzbekistan with all the small Damas Deluxe micro vans 😁Proper asian street restaurants 🥳Sticky rice with mango and coconut sauce 🥰And proper ice cream 🍨But we did not expect to find the Christmas craziness in Malaysia 🎁One day, we went to a small art and science festival. It was very interesting. We painted and talked to the super friendly locals 🥳We met one of these awesome robots of which I had seen so many videos on YouTube before 🤖And we painted motorcycles which then got digitalized and were racing a digital race 🏁It was a nice and fun experience 🎊We knew that it would be the rainy season in the beginning of our stay in Malaysia, but still the rainfalls were impressive! And it was obvious that the city was used to it. We were joking that in ten minutes of these rains, all the rain of one year in the stan countries came down. But apart from the impressive rainfalls it was not that rainy. And on our third day, we went climbing near the Batu Caves 🥳It was very different than in the stans! There were a lot of plants on top and sometimes in the routes. More insects. But very nice! The easy routes had very comfortable steps and handles. And the rock was very interesting. Especially the tufa: rock formations that formed from calcium carbonate. Sometimes it was even possible to climb on or through these tufa 🚀