Month: February 2019

As we arrived in Kuching 3 days ago our Grabcar driver informed us that Kuching (which means „cat“ in Malay) is not worth a visit, quite boring actually, doesn’t have anything to attract tourists … what a welcome and what an enjoyable honesty 😀

So we didn’t expect very much and were happy to have a nice hotel room. But it turned out that Kuching is quite lovely with its Riverside Waterfront, especially at night when the colorful lights are turned on!

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And here the namesakes 😉

Riverside Majestic Hotel – Astana Wing
93100 Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
https://goo.gl/maps/keD1vdb3Q4G2

One of the reasons why I‘m traveling around the world (besides the fact that Faye convinced me to have a less stressful life) is exploring new cultures, meeting people and letting my mind calm down.

I believe if you have the time to be more mindfull in your daily being and if your mind is more quiet and peaceful you might find some secrets. So did I:

I already had a lot of experiences during our trip. The last ones in Malaysia where not that positive, neither the surrounding nor the people who crossed our way. So what my mind created was a picture of Malaysia. Often dirty, bad smelling, unfriendly people, no ecological mindset (especially for the ocean)… So not a country that I would recommend to visit. Now since 2 days we are at Kinabalu mountain, a place at 1600 meter height with pollution free air, lots of green and (mostly) no industrial noise. And guess what, the people here are so friendly and attentive.

So what is the lesson learned?

Most people (and also myself) are used to judge very quickly. Every experience it categorized in a box and we take this as overall and undisputed truth. I realised that this is bullshit. Life happens every second. If I like to have the truth I have to watch, listen, smell, touch every second.

Malaysia and their people are not bad, ugly or unsightly. It is as it is, a country with thousands of unique individuals and you can do millions of steps and each could be different. And every person and every step is worth to realize.

It was a real gift for me getting this eye opener and I‘m glad to share it or even keep it as reminder for myself 😉

After a 2 h drive we arrived at Kinabalu Park with it‘s astounding over 4000m high mountain. Strange to see jungle and then a gray freaky looking mountain top, knowing how high it is, but still we cannot believe it as everything surrounding it is so green and lush with big trees, but have a look for yourself:

Sutera Sanctuary Lodges at Kinabalu Park
Kinabalu National Park Kundasang, Kinabalu Park, 89300 Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia
https://goo.gl/maps/fCebZDtX19H2

Our next station in Malaysia is Borneo, home of the Orang-Utans. But before visiting them we took a relaxing timeout in Kota Kinabalu, a city with 1000 malls. Good for us, because Weird urgently needed new shoes (which he got today, the only ones in the whole shop in his size)

To get the best of relaxing we decided to shit on our budget and booked two nights in the Hilton hotel before going to the Kinabalu mountain. We enjoy it so much having a clean and not smelling environment and a shower which provides endless warm water.

Best, there is a roof top swimming pool which is colouring at night.

And we again enjoyed the pool in the morning (before the pack of Chinese kids overrun the pool).

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We come to the point that we are more snobby than we thought..

Hilton Kota Kinabalu
Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, Asia City, 88000 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
https://maps.app.goo.gl/58FC6

We really tried to give this „peaceful traditional fishing village“ (original statement on airbnb) a chance, but finally we just had to accept that we booked a house in the ugliest location we‘ve ever seen!

But have a look for yourself, if you dare … and thank God that we cannot bring the foul smell and the great heat that’s here (even at night) with the pictures 😉

If you look at the restaurant seats, you may guess why we never dined in this town. And we never stayed so much inside or drove great distances with the local bus for dinner as we have done this week. Now you can image how happy we are to leave Penang in two days and fly to Borneo 🙂

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Here some pictures from our Butterfly Farm visit today, it felt like magic sitting between so many of them and even have them on our hands 😀

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Today we visited the Spice Garden in Penang, so if you feel like missing some vitalizing green colour, here you are:

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Sometimes a picture says more than thousand words:

Indeed a good decision, wasn‘t it?

We are now in our 3rd Airbnb location in South Asia and we decided: this will be the last one. It is one thing to show detail photos of a location which looks nice but never show the whole picture which is in fact ugly. But offering fake reviews which guide people into wrong expectations is a really worse thing.

So here we are, 10 days in „the lovely village“ which is in fact a bad smelling, dirty old fashioned and poor infrastructured village. The locals are kind of strange and not foreigner friendly at all. If you come across a „restaurant“ (plastic chairs on a concrete floor and dirty tables) you are directly asked to take a seat. If you friendly refuse you earn bad wipes and not understandable murmuring. I realy can‘t understand how people can recommend such a place.

The accommodation itself is not that bad, nothing was really lied on the airbnb platform. But the way how it was proclaimed and reviewed guided us into much higher expectations which resulted in a deep frustration and dissapointment. Not worth to get into details…

Anyhow, we are traveling to make new experiences and THIS is for sure an experience we will never forget. So Faye decided to make the best of it and turned our temporarily home into an enjoyable place.

4, Lorong Hassan Abas Dua, Teluk Bahang, 11050 Tanjung Bungah, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia
https://goo.gl/maps/merhjjFGWe82

Today we took the train from the largest town in Malaysia to the 2nd largest town „Georgetown“ on Penang, an island in the North.

The most curious thing on this 5h trip was that the wagons were cooled down to approx 10 degrees (might be overstate, but we felt so).

So every 10 minutes we put another piece of cloth on and at the end we looked like this:

A really interesting experiance, especially because in Georgetown we needed to walk 1,2 km to our hostel. In 35 degrees. We were completely worn out and sweaty after the 20 min walk.

Chulia Mansion Hotel
413, Chulia St, Georgetown, 10200 George Town, Penang, Malaysia

https://goo.gl/maps/hMTPw8Lcxnr

After nearly 8 weeks we left Thailand this morning and went off to Kuala Lumpur. What a difference after such a long island chill-out!

And: Woohoo, what a great city and so many friendly people! Enjoyed it really much to get some completely new vibes and impressions again 🙂

And best of all: we had a hotel voucher and stayed at the luxury Le Meridien, felt soooo comfortable and nice that for two seconds we thought about shortening our trip from hopefully 1-2 years to just one or two months and all the time just keep staying at such georgeous hotels 😀 … yes, a certain kind of uncomplicated luxury is really something we can appreciate! But that thought lasted only for two seconds ^^

Le Méridien Kuala Lumpur
2, Jalan Stesen Sentral, Kuala Lumpur Sentral, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

https://goo.gl/maps/cNppeBMhaUo

Unfortunately Nelson doesn’t speek English…

If you like to have the outtakes (12 videos, 260 MB) just contact us 🙂

But we really needed a rest. Not kidding, one week in the jungle accomodation means one week – 24h over 30 degrees. We had only a fan which blowed the hot air around but gave no cooling. At night we needed to sleep under a mosquito net and this made it even worse (imagine what happens if you are under plastic without wind…)

35 degrees might be heaven for all winter driven readers but for us it was fully stress. We figured out that the human brain stopped working efficiently after a time. We took decisions which were fully nonsense (ask Maik and booking.com).

So now, after 3 days in an AC hotel room we feel “normal” again (sounds funny from somebody who call himself weird).

What I can tell for now, the next 2,5 months are 90% planned, scheduled, booked and confirmed. You think this is against drifting? For sure not. Lots of ideas drifted around us (especially Faye) and at the end we took the decisions. The teaser is still valid 🙂