Together with Anja and Miri, we went to Kuala Lumpur where we picked up Ufuk, another of Racki’s best friends, at the airport. From the airport, we went straight to our next accommodation. A pretty fancy one but Racki and I were fine with the wish of the others to have an apartment from which we could see the Petronas Towers. I mean, this is one of the most famous attractions of Malaysia and …

… the pool had a really magnificent view on the towers.

Our apartment had an very interesting location. On one side the new modern city with all the skyscrapers etc. and on the other was the rest of the village-style Kuala Lumpur.

This second part really looked like the villages and little towns which Racki and I had visited before in Malaysia. Small shops, small roads, small houses. It was nice.

But the view on the towers never got old as well. No matter what weather.

Once, we had a crazy thunderstorm with a whole lot of lightnings hitting the skyscrapers going on. It was very nice and impressive!

The others went to the bridge of the towers, the observation deck and the observation deck of the KL tower but Racki and I felt pretty fed up with sightseeing and did not want to spend the money.

But of course we had a look at a whole lot of places. Some we had seen before with other friends.

Flamed marshmallow covered ice cream!

Coincidentally the opening show for the upcoming MotoGP season took place in Kuala Lumpur and we spend some time watching and hearing these crazy machines and their riders. And that motivated me a bit more to follow what’s going on in the MotoGP on YouTube again.

We had a great time together and experienced a whole lot and I loved to get to know some of Racki’s friends.

But then it was time for Anja and Miri to leave for Germany. But Ufuk, Racki and I continued our trip to the west coast.

We got an accommodation at the sea. Pretty run down with a cockroach friend, but ok. The cockroach was actually one of the biggest we had ever seen.

We had a good and relaxed time.

Beautiful sunsets on the sunset side of Malaysia.

But honestly I think Port Dickson is a pretty uninteresting town on it’s own: a couple of coffee shops, other shops and no nice beaches.

But there are beautiful beaches to discover if you leave the town.

This one was our favorite.

Nice swinging.

Interesting hiking.

And even some nice climbing. Ufuk did really good!

Here is our tour on komoot.

My shoe sticker collection grew more and more.

And more sticky rice with mango and coconut sauce! It can never be enough!

One of the signature dishes of Malaysia: Steamboat grill menu which you are cooking and grilling by your own on your table.

A last sunset together with Ufuk and the end of a very good time with her. Next stop for us: T-Hailand.

After some climbing, we met Racki’s friends Anja and Miri who had arrived on Penang a few days ago, relaxed a bit in a pretty fancy hotel, and were now ready to go on a road trip through Malaysia with us. And of course they brought some Baileys 😁

First stop: A mangrove forest park with lots of green, …

… monitor lizards, …

… mud slippers, who were seem to like fighting with each other, … …

… or settle conflicts of other species, …

… and a new kind of friend we had not seen so far in Malaysia.

Anja and Miri booked a very nice accommodation in Ipoh for all of us and especially the view for the sunsets was awesome.

Racki found a promising waterfall tour of the main tourist attractions on Google Maps and so we went for a nice jungle hike.

No tourists, only locals working and living.

Nice bamboo!

Huge, palm-sized …

… and beautiful butterflies and after some challenging terrain, a fall on slippery stones …

… we arrived one of the most beautiful waterfalls we’ve ever seen!

Happy waterfall hikers! Here is our tour on komoot.

Next stop at one of the most disturbing places I’ve ever visited in my life! From the outside it looked mostly like a chocolate museum. Nice chocolate dinosaur head at the entrance. Inside there were some more chocolate dinosaurs and all kinds of chocolate to buy. So far, so good. There was a lot of crappy plastic toys to buy as well and you could watch some guys making special chocolate pralines. In another room, there were all kinds of fancy teas, fancy ice cream and all kinds of souvenirs. But everything with kind of an ecological branding. Then there was a restaurant as well and then the crazy stuff started: they had all kinds of animals in cages or in very unhealthy types of enclosures. There were lots of goats, rabbits, European hedgehogs, different birds etc. And all of them looked very sweet and cute. Ready to get cuddled and die in a few weeks because of their living conditions. To me it was disturbing and pretty much fucked up.

After the sadness of the last stop, we went to our new accommodation. We shared the outside with a lot of monkeys! One clever monkey mother managed to steal a whole bag of chips from Anja 😁

These monkeys looked like the Grinch and the ai bot made them look like him even more.

We did a boat trip to see some bioluminescent plankton and that looked pretty awesome.

Some more graffiti art.

And a trip into the largest population of fireflies. There were millions of them!

And after that, we did a small trip to some local springs.