Greetings from Malaysia!! The past few days have been overwhelming to say the least. I’ve gotten lost, talked to strangers, eaten foods with names I have no idea how to pronounce, and have slept in three different hostels in three different cities in the past three nights.

Jetsetters

On Tuesday morning, Kelsey and I boarded our eight-hour flight from the Gold Coast to Kuala Lumpur. I tasted my first Malaysian meal on the plane – Nasi Lemak – which involved rice, a boiled egg, some sort of meat in a curry sauce, with peanuts and dried anchovies on the side. It was a little intimidating to look at, but definitely tasted good going down. I think one of my goals these next few months is to not be afraid of food and to try everything that’s local. When we arrived at the airport, Kels and I immediately made a friend in line at customs. Tom is an Aussie who lives in Paddington (just a couple minutes drive from where I lived the past five months – small world!), on holiday from uni, and he was headed to Sandakan, Borneo, the next day – same as us! Customs was a breeze to get through and we were feeling pretty confident until we walked outside of the airport.

We had to find our way to Suzie’s Guesthouse in Kuala Lumpur – an hour and a half from the airport. We had to take a bus to the city’s Sentral Station and another train to a different part of the city, Pasar Seni. We had no idea where we were going and had to rely on strangers who spoke little to no English to help us get there. When we finally arrived in Pasar Seni, an old man saw us looking lost and made it his mission to get us to Suzie’s. He pointed us in the direction, and then proceeded to lead us almost all the way to the hostel, chatting the whole way. He has a son who is a space engineer in Houston, Texas, and he was so excited to help out some young Americans. Sometimes talking to strangers can be a really great thing.

We finally made it to Suzie’s. What an interesting hostel experience… we walked in and there was a shoe rack – apparently you can’t wear shoes at any hostels in Malaysia. We walked upstairs to reception and attempted to check in, but the girl sitting at the front desk didn’t speak any English. Actually, she didn’t really speak at all. I’ve never experienced a place of accommodation that was as silent as Suzie’s. The whole twelve hours we were there, we found ourselves whispering because we didn’t know if talking was a thing we could do. Anyway, Silent Girl handed us a phone with a man, Hassan, on the line and he told us where our room was. We got to our tiny room, exhausted, dirty, starving. We decided to drop our giant backpacks off and go explore the city a bit and grab some food.

Kuala Lumpur is a bit intimidating, if you ask me. It’s a typical big city. Hot, polluted air, smelly, dirty. I’ve never been a fan of big cities. What made it especially overwhelming was the fact that nothing was in English, we were very obviously the minority, and as we walked through Chinatown to find some street food that wouldn’t make us sick, there were old men street vendors grabbing at us, saying, “Hello, beauties!” just about every three feet. We ended up at a tiny restaurant on the outskirts of Chinatown that had tanks of eels and frogs sitting out front – sure enough, eels and frogs were on the menu. We settled for some Kung Pow chicken and stir fry noodles, ate until our bellies were full, and then settled into our bunk beds at Suzie’s.

Eels and frogs in Chinatown

After some rest, we set out yesterday to the Batu Caves before our next flight to Sandakan in the afternoon. We took a train about eight kilometers north of the city and found ourselves at the Caves, which house the most popular Hindu shrines outside of India… and hundreds of monkeys. As soon as we stepped off the train, we saw monkeys EVERYWHERE. They were running, jumping, leaping, playing, eating coconuts, doing each other from behind, nursing, and stealing things out of tourists’ backpacks.

Monkey trouble

Kelsey and I looked like classic tourists with our sarongs covering athletic shorts, runners, backpacks, and cameras around our necks, chasing monkeys everywhere. We took photos with monkeys, with the giant golden Murugan statue, climbed millions of steps to the top of the cave, and took off our shoes to go inside a Hindu temple, where we met an old Indian couple who insisted we be in their family photo, and were blessed by a Hindu priest with “good health, good job, good family, good fortune,” a red dot on our foreheads and a white flower behind our ear. We got back to Suzie’s drenched in sweat, and took ice cold showers before checking out, grabbing some Indian food across the street, and heading back to the airport.

Last night we arrived in Sandakan, at Harbourside Backpackers – where, again, we can’t wear shoes. Today, Kels and I will take a bus out into a jungle village to stay with a local family. Three days without wifi, air conditioning, and running water, but what a crazy adventure!