Over our 6 months in Asia, Malaysia is the country where we would have stayed the most, spending one month and a half in the peninsula. When we were planning our stops in the country, I wondered if we would not be bored at some point. A month later, I can hardly qualify our time in Malaysia as boring – even in the most random cities, we managed to enjoy ourselves. Like Dimitri, I now hold this peculiar country dear in my heart.

On this thought, let’s go for the last episode of our Malaysian series, from the East Coast to the jungle and Kuala Lumpur:

• Mersing, the traditional town and Tioman, the jewel island
• Kuantan, the car city and Taman Negara, the jungle park
• Kuala Terengganu, the coastal city and Redang, the paradise island
• Kuala Lumpur, the lively capital

Mersing, the traditional town and Tioman, the jewel island

When you search for travel itineraries in Malaysia, it is highly likely that you will not find anything on the Peninsula East coast at first.

Even finding the right key words for it requires a bit of mental work: as a reminder, the Peninsula is considered as West Malaysia, as opposed to the Borneo Islands which are referred to as East Malaysia. I searched then for recommendations on the East coast of West Malaysia.

We build our itinerary of the East coast mostly based on the advice given by Norbert, our host in the Cameron Highlands. Mersing is our first stop, coming from Singapore. Our accommodation is an old fashioned resort, likely from the 1970s. 30 minutes away from the city center and don’t count on Uber or the likes here. We discover the town for the first time after walking in the dirt along the main road and we are surprised by the oddly cheap looking city – is the east coast of Peninsula Malaysia really only visited for the islands?

It turns out that there are two very different atmospheres in Mersing: it is crowded during the day, when the tourists are waiting for the ferries to the nearby island, and it comes back to being calm and with locals only in the evening and in the early morning. Mersing is our first glimpse into traditional Malaysia, with its full Malay population.  Exit the diversity of the West cities, here it is Muslim clothing only and delicious food is sold for a small price. It only takes us a day to enjoy it as we should. Dimitri finds a beach-front way to reach the city, walking along the morning market. We eat all our meals at the same Indian restaurant where the price of our meal is unpredictable, as the owner makes us pay a different price for the exact same dishes each time.

We arrived a bit at random to Mersing. It turns out that the town is the gateway to Tioman, one of the Malaysian paradise islands. Luckily for us, Tioman is less known by foreigners so we book our trip at the last minute. We arrive fully sweaty for the ferry after our 30-minute walk with our backpack in the tropical heat, but it is fully worth it. Tioman is a paradise on earth. Contrary to the Cambodian islands, it has not been uglified by tourism (yet?) and after a great ride across the jungle still covering the center of the island, we reach the adorable beach wooden cabin we have rented. Coincidence: our friend Noëlie slept exactly at the same place 6 years ago!

We jump on the opportunity to join a snorkeling trip to the nearby Coral Island, where we swim with rainbow fishes, sea tortles and small sharks. I find Nemo, while Dimitri spots an octopus during a solo adventure.  Let’s not focus too much on the state of the coral and on the mispractice of the industry (stream of boats and feeding chocolate bun to attract the fishes…) for once…

We only stay one day and a half on Tioman because of our early ferry back – if we had known about this jewel before!… Let’s continue our route to Kuantan.

Dimitri took maaany videos on the GoPro, that we might see one day… 🙃

Kuantan, the car city and Taman Negara, the jungle park

We stop at Kuantan, waiting to go to the national park Taman Negara. Three teenage girls hold the shop at the bus station, so busy talking and giggling that they almost burn our homemade waffles – I love the cheerfulness of the Malay so much. After months of booking accommodation between Booking.com, Agoda and Google (for availability), I have come to mastering it and we enjoy a great hotel with a beautiful view over the river and with local breakfast. Homemade Nasi Lemak and noodles are the best way to start the day, you won’t convince me otherwise! We look like fools (for a change) when we ask what are the teapots for… when they are here for people to clean their hands.

Kuantan is a city built for cars and every walk becomes a challenge, between the absence of pedestrian crossings and the cars not stopping when the traffic lights finally turn red. We keep on going bravely for a cinema date (Deadpool vs. Wolferine, of which I understand a good third of the references). Once again, noise control proves not to be a thing in Asia and our eardrums would have died without ear plugs. What’s more in Kuantan? Well, there is also a trompe-l’oeil alley, that we discover on the last day. We also try limonade coffee – spoiler, it tastes quite odd.

Due to poor management of our travel, we just have one complete day to spend in the Taman Negara national park. We cross the river to reach the national park (like in Nepal!) and we spend a few hours following the board walks, spotting gibbons, monkeys and other scarier creatures along the way. Useful reminder whenever you are planning an itinerary in South-East Asia: don’t trust the indicative completion time… In this tropical weather, distances feel twice as long. Another note: despite the park featuring in every tourist guide, there are urprisingly not that many people outside of the morning hours, when all the groups meet.

Kuala Tahan is not famous for its restaurants. We stop at a floating restaurant, unlucky choice for Dimitri as he gets there the first food poisoning of his life (shoutout to him for resisting that long!). This is the start of a very long day for Dimitri, as we need to move on to another city. We bump into Leane (the French woman met in Malacca) again when waiting for our second bus and the two of us share parathas while Dimitri is sleeping / dying at a nearby table. As the brave trooper he is, he makes it alive to Kuala Terengganu, our next city.

Kuala Terengganu, the coastal city and Redang, the paradise island

Kuala Terengganu is a big city, where people only stop to go the islands,  Perenthian islands and Redang. It would have been us too, except that we still have some time before going to Redang so we choose to spend 5 days there. It was a good choice, given Dimitri’s need to recover. Too bad that we do not get a glimpse of sleep at our low-budget hotel.

It does not bring us down too much, though. We battle for our lives in an intense Uno game in the garden of a cafe, where Dimitri win by 10 victories. Little be said that I am ashamed of it. Our evenings are spent at the beach with the locals: families having picknicks, kids playing with kites, even seeing moving shapes in the water (sea lions? We will never know). I finally make a decision about when to head back to Europe: it will be on 11 December! It is heart-warming to see my mum so happy about the news when I call her. We bump into Samira, a French psy who is disappointed by her room too, and hit up the local night market with her.

“Elise, wake up! We have to leave NOW!” is the first thing I hear on the last day, Dimitri shaking me awake.

Did I mention that we had hardly slept during these days? For the first time of the trip, after waiting 5 days for our ferry, we end up missing our alarm and waking up at 7:30am… when our taxi is at 7:30am. As the professional packers that we are, we are ready in 15min, against all odds. Let’s go to Redang!…

The jetty is enveloped in a misty cloud, with the haze from the forest fires that were put down by the heavy rain that poured the night before. All should be fine now, tells us our taxi driver. Trust the process as always, so we get on-board our taxi boat and enjoy the cruise on an azur sea.

We will be camping for the next days. With our bags, we walk on the beach to reach the camp site. We live on our remote beach the following days, solely leaving our sunbeds (in the shade, tanning is overrated) to go snorkeling. This camp site is a micro society in itself and we have a lovely time chatting with talking with the French and the South African volunteers, and all the other.

Our last night on the island starts on a cozy note, walking to the nearby resort with Alonzo the Chilean and Céline the French. Alonzo is our guide for the night and we rejoice in eating pitas stuffed with roasted mango and chocolate, paired with coconut shake (yes, it is as yummy as it sounds). Little had I known that the night would turn out crazy… With me spitting fire (or at least trying) and everybody shouting my name, after repeatedly failing to aim right. Dimitri volunteered me without knowing that the team would try to make me breath fire (drinking a mix of oil with water – how healthy). Kudos to the least professional fire breather team ever, who manage to knock down a lady from the audience in the first 5 minutes of the show.

Kuala Lumpur, the lively capital

I had heard a lot about Kuala Lumpur from Dimitri. Dimitri lived there when he was in Malaysia and visiting the capital would also mean seeing old faces after 9 years. That is exactly what we do when we arrive for the first time in the capital, meeting his former internship colleague Rina. Rina brings us to a delicious dim sum restaurant and makes me discover one of my new favorite desserts, the golden bun. The obligatory before-after picture is posted on Instagram, myself acting as another (male) friend who did the internship with Dimitri 9 years ago… puzzling the minds of several of Rina’s friends who thought that Julien had transitioned into a woman.

We use our very short first stay in KL to visit the Batu Cave, several Hindu temples built into a massive cave. It is the first place that is featured in any visit program and it is for a reason: the gigantic cave creates the perfect background for the several colorful, picture-full Hindu temples. I need to find back the pictures, which have been hidden in the various transfers…

When we meet for the second time in KL, Rina makes herself available one more time to eat pork soup and make us taste durian ice cream. Unfortunately, we cannot stay for her DJ set – yes, because beside working on promoting women health, she mixes on weekends too. Incredible woman here, my friends!

We are slowly finishing up our preparation of Dimitri’s come back and of my following journey to Australia. In the search for a laundry, we are stopped in our track by the closure of a massive road. Why? Because an Indian woman fell through the road, which cracked under her weight. We hear this story from by-standers, who are strangely excited about showing us the video maaany times. Just a regular day in our trip!

We watch a game of sepak takraw (Perlis Vipers vs. Malaka Titans), the impressive Malaysian national sport that is a mix between volleyball and football. The players need to kick into a small ball to throw it above a net, in a surreal display of agility.

Our last day together is a perfect exploration day. We meet the cheekiest taxi driver so far, who happily chats along and scolds Dimitri when he learns that he did not make me try out a special Malaysian dish (“Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri… What have you shown to Elise?!”). Our program of the day: visit of the National Mosque, where we are asked to wear purple gowns that make us look like wizards; followed by the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, where I am told that I look like an Eastern European tennis player.

My dear friend Nina sent us a PayPal for us to get cocktails on her behalf in KL, so we went up to the Helipad, a fancy bar at the top of one of the central buildings. Beautiful sunset, with sophisticated drinks. The perfect end for these amazing 6 months.

Dimitri leaves the following day and it feels so weird to part ways at the airport. I keep myself busy and run errands the entire day, supported on that odd day by the care of strangers and the love of my family and friends. On his end, Dimitri is welcome by an adorable surprise when he reaches Hamburg: our friends are waiting for him. Welcome back, Dimdim!

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This articles marks the end of our Malaysian series and the end of our 6 months travelling Asia together with it. I wrote another article about my feelings after these 6 months here, in my flight to Sydney, Australia (article here!). I still cannot believe that time flies so fast, even more now that I “only” have less than 3 months ahead of me. You might have noticed that it is difficult for me to keep up with the blog. Every article takes me 5 hours to write on average, even more when I refine it. This is quite challenging for me to keep it as a travel diary for myself while trying to keep you entertained. I will do my best to catch up with my publishing delay, but you might expect shorter articles in the future. It would be fantastic if you could still keep up with me, though 🙏 Your views and comments get me super motivated, and you are crucial in my commitment to keeping this blog alive. See you soon, I hope! 😘