It was raining as we crossed the border. We ended up at the JB Sentral station where we got a bus to Melaka, or Malacca—it seems to have multiple spellings. Unfortunately, since that morning, I had gotten sick. Everything I ate or drink went right through me, and I also got quite the fever. I was hungry and thirsty, but I refrained from ingesting anything on the four-hour bus journey because I knew I would need to immediately use a bathroom

After arriving in the city and reaching our hotel, I spent a lot of time in bed wearing multiple blankets and just trying to sleep the sickness away.

After a day or two, I was able to hold down food a bit better, but I was still only regaining my strength. Puujee and I walked around a bit, but I had to stop every 5 or so minutes for a quick break as my breath would start to draw up short. I felt like the most out-of-shape person on the planet.

We saw A Famosa, which wasn’t far from our hotel. It is an old fort from back when Malacca was colonized by the Portuguese.

There were quite a few other sights in the city like the mosque, church, and night market, but I just didn’t possess the strength to walk around that much and spent more time in bed until we left for Kuala Lumpur after a few days in the city.

We met up with some of Puujee’s friends that were staying there, and we got to sleep in their nice hotel for one night before they flew back home.

Then we went to a hotel that was more within our budget. It was in Chinatown, and there was a nightclub next door that blasted the music until the late hours of the morning. Sometimes they played music nonstop for 24+ hours at a time. It would literally shake the walls sometimes. It was pretty ridiculous, but the hotel was hella cheap, sooo…

Additionally, I tried to find this club once. It was obviously to the left of our hotel, but I still just couldn’t find it. There was a bar entrance, but it was always closed. I tried going around back, but I still didn’t see anything. Both secret and not secret at the same time.

Of course, we had to check out the Petronas Towers.

I also tried, yet again, to fix the camera on my Sony Xperia. This was maybe the 5^th or 6^th Sony repair facility I have tried, and none of them can ever fix it. They either fix everything Sony but phones, or they need to order the part or send off the phone. I have pretty much given up trying to fix my phone at this point.

It was at this point that Puujee and I needed to part ways. Long story short, Puujee decided to go to South Korea for a month to visit her brother and attempt to apply for visas to some upcoming countries we wanted to travel to. I escorted her to the airport shuttle, and I stayed another couple of nights in a hostel that had a pretty sweet pool.

On my last full day in the capital, I visited the Batu Caves. While looking at the vending machine to buy a train ticket, some guy approached me and told me to buy a keycard and handed me 10 ringgit to do so. Too many scams and stuff lately, so I just backed up and bought a ticket from the ticket counter. I don’t know what his angle was, but it was really weird. Why would someone give me money to buy my ticket? He was up to something…

In any case, the caves were nice.

 

After bussing up to Penang, I walked around downtown, which is the main thing to do in that town. There are lots of nice colonial buildings as well as street art.

I also went hiking up Penang Hill. It was stifling and humid, but it offered a nice view. Since we were so sweaty, it was a bit chilly at the top with the breeze, and I wished I had actually brought my jacket.

My time in Malaysia had come to an end, and I took a shuttle bus to Thailand. I woke up early and got to the bus station. The bus was almost 45 minutes late, and since we were getting picked up at a very obscure location, I was worried that we were in the wrong spot, but it eventually came.

I barely managed to pass through Thai immigration, but I’ll talk about that in the next post.

I liked Malaysia more than I expected. I had read that it was a super-conservative country, but that wasn’t quite my experience. Maybe it’s because I had recently come from rural Sumatra in Indonesia, where people were definitely a bit more conservative, and I was in cities, which tend to be more liberal, in Malaysia. The cities were nice to visit, and the people were friendly. There were actually a lot of Indians and Chinese people who lived there, and I didn’t expect that. Lots of good food, and I had no problem eating vegetarian the entire time. I don’t feel the need to go back, but it was nice enough while we passed through.