Back to Malaysia

Back to Malaysia We left Singapore again, heading for Kuala Lumpur, hitchhiking, buses etc. practically without stopping until Seremban, had to change there and continue, unfortunately the bus on the route was not of this opinion, it stopped in a hamlet, please get off, and at a sparsely lit stop we waited until 5 young men approached us and offered us a cigarette, but before that I had seen that one of them put a cigarette in his package in such a way that one would be forced to take it first, I assume that it was prepared with something, I said no thanks I don't smoke, I smoked then, Rolf also gave them a refusal, they didn't like it and threatened us with their fists, when two came too close to us we pushed them both backwards, flew on their backs, screamed and all 5 ran away, after a while another bus came and took us to Kuala Lumpur.

After arriving in Kuala Lumpur we found a hotel in Chinatown, usually these are interesting neighborhoods, with many sights, and cheap food, we also went to the Batu Caves with the big Buddha, the Central Market we also visited, colorful and loud, the special neighborhood Jalan Alor we also visited.

It was time to move on, we went to the train station and boarded a steam train to Ipoh, the train station in Kuala Lumpur is a unique building seen from afar, you don't know at first whether it is something religious or something else special.

When we arrived in Ipoh we got on the bus, we arrived too late and there were no night trains

So we took the bus from Ipoh to Butterworth, arrived quite late, caught the last ferry to get to Penang, in the harbor we were offered numerous hotels like the other passengers, we decided on a hotel in the old town, if possible always in the old town George Town, there you can find cheap hotels and we also had our good experiences with food. Most of the sights are there.

We also traveled around the island with a local bus. The beach of Batu Ferringhi is or was also beautiful, many Malays, from the colonial period it has many old beautiful buildings, but during the week we enjoyed it.

Changing money alone is a story that I will briefly mention here. We went to a bank, as luck would have it, it was an Indian bank. I still had one last 50 US dollar bill, I handed it to the counter, the clerk took it, looked at it, wrote a piece of paper, put both in a small basket, and gave it to the next clerk, who also looked at the bill, wrote something on the enclosed paper bill, and passed it on, this man put my dollar bill on the side, gave the next man the paper bill, he disappeared behind a screen, came back with many notes ringgit, the basket with the ringgit, also came back through some hands to the counter and I got my ringgit, I would say division of labor, no problem, if there are enough people who are allowed to have a job.