Sorry for the late post! I have been pretty busy these past two weeks and haven't had much time to do anything else other than work and traveling.
As you can see from the pictures I recently posted, I've been doing a little bit of traveling and sight-seeing in Malaysia. Kiat has been visiting me here in KL, which has been nice since I have a travel buddy! I took a few days off work and went to see (finally) the infamous twin (petronas) towers and the KL tower. We went up the KL tower, which is pretty much the same height as the twin towers. We couldn't go up the Petronas towers because the tours were full. But I would say the KL tower was just as good, so it was okay.
We were contemplating where we should go (we couldn't decide between Langkawi Island and Sabah/Sarawak,) when my landlady recommended that we go to Pangkor Island since it was less touristy and closer to KL. So we took a 3-4 hour bus ride to Lumut, a coastal city on Malaysia's west coast and then took a half hour ferry to Pankor Island. Pankor Island has historically been (and still is today actually) mainly a fishing community. Supposedly it was named after a Chinese Pirate and it had a lot of Chinese graveyards. However, there is also a pretty big Malay community there as well.
We took a bright pink (yes, pink) van, which was the local taxi, to the other side of the island where the nice beaches were located. We stayed at the Seagull Bay Resort which was not a bad price (60 ringgit per night). The other people who stayed there (mostly from Europe) were really nice. We rented a motorbike and toured around some of the island and ate the local food, etc. Then, the day after we got there, Kiat got a bad toothache and we had to go on ferry to see a dentist in Lumut. A toothless (literally) taxi driver took us to the dentist and Kiat had to have one of his back teeth removed. Obviously a painful process...so that day we didn't do much. But he recovered really quickly and did not get an infection, so that was good!
Mostly we just stayed on the beach, went on a jet ski (which I proudly drove and it was really nice because there weren't any people to accidently run over, like in Patong...) and it was really relaxing. I kind of wish we had gone to Langkawi, just because it probably would have been more fun....more things to do...but it's alright. We still had a good time. The bus ride back took forever since it stopped a lot. There were also bugs crawlinga all over my seat for some reason...so yeah, it wasn't a very nice bus ride the second time around.
Yesterday (I will post pictures of this later) we took a day trip to Genting Highlands. We got to the busy bus station in KL, but the next available bus didn't leave until 3 pm, so we decided to take a taxi there. It took us about 45 minutes to get to Genting Highlands and it consisted of windy roads up mountains. The higher we got, the colder it became. I read that it would get down to 65 degrees in Genting, which is really low for Malaysia....
It was really nice up there and it kind of made me feel like I was in Oregon again...except it wasn't quite as cold as Oregon. There was a lot of fog and it was chilly enough to wear a jacket and long pants. We took a ride on the cable car, which I would say is a must-do if you go there. It is the longest cable car in SE Asia and the fastest one in the world (supposedly). It was really beautiful. However, the rest of the day wasn't as great because we had a problem with the security guard at the Casino (Genting is also home to Malaysia's only legal casino, which the Chinese use to go and gamble).
We went inside and there were two security guards. The second one asked Kiat really harshly, "HEY WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" He kept on repeating this and finally I said, "He's from Thailand." We had no idea why he was asking this and he started to try and speak to him in Malay, but we obviously couldn't understand him, so we tried talking to him in English. Then he walked over to Kiat and pushed his hat off his head, causing it to fall on the ground. Kiat picked it up and the guard continued ranting to us in Malay. So we just walked off into the casino and Kiat was pretty upset. We decided to leave the casino and go find the main security office to complain. That took forever because everyone was giving us different directions. Finally, we found it and the chief of security came with us and sat us down in this office. He brought in the two security guards and he asked Kiat, "Okay, which one did it?" And then he asked this one guard, "Did YOU do it?" The guy, obviously scared as heck, quickly pointed to the other guard. Kiat said, "Yes, that was the guy who did it."
Essentially, they all apologized (well the guy who did it didn't apologize very well though) and they said he wanted Kiat to take his hat off, but he couldn't speak good English. Of course, I told them before we left that even though he didn't speak English very well, they could have found some other way to tell him besides knocking his hat to the ground and speaking roughly with us. I think they also asked him where he was from because they though he was Malay (a Muslim) and muslims are strictly prohibited from gambling. Still, it did not give them any reason to be rude to us. After THAT unfortunate incident we ate dinner and then took a bus back to Kuala Lumpur. This week should be fun since I will be going to an Indian wedding on Thursday and going to Hat Yai on friday ( I will come back the next week). Anyway, hope everything is well back in Oregon!