I always remember Kuala Lumpur International Airport as being less an airport and more a shopping centre where the customers arrive and leave by 747 or A330 rather than 209's or A4's and that is exactly how I found it to be on arrival last week. This time I even got to use the monorail from arrivals to baggage reclaim!

After a whirlwind weekend we left Norwich late on Easter Sunday, taking the National Express to London. Our tickets were for Victoria (three times cheaper than the NE Airlink) but as our bus was going to Heathrow and we were blessed with an extremely friendly driver we managed to avoid our over-complicated journey. It was not exactly a smooth ride however, as just out of Norwich the electrics on the coach failed, the driver took a roundabout at 70mph and he realised his limiter had failed, big fines for him, brown pants for us. In addition, the Airlink coaches are hardly the most direct services and we managed to stop all over East Anglia, including a long wait in Cambridge. We eventually made it to Terminal 3 and managed to catch some sleep on the comfy floor before being treated to the luxuries of Qatar Airways.

In Kuala Lumpur our bus debacle continued as we took a local bus from the airport to the centre of KL, roughly 70km. After two hours we were transferred into a minibus, the scourge of Southeast Asia, to Putamaya bus station. During this time the heavens had opened, most of the roads had quickly become rivers and the bus platforms were under a foot and a half of water. We had to wait for our driver to finish watching Tomb Raider before our bus to Penang could leave, an hour late. Still, Malaysian buses are some of the most comfortable in the world, where else is it standard to have only three seats across, fully reclining seats and shiver-inducing AC?

Penang was much the same, Coral Hostel has had a make-over but when I came out of the shower and I saw a rat as big as a cat run across the tiles I knew it was still the same. We only stayed in Georgetown long enough to drink a can of Sarsi, eat some roti and apply for Indonesian visas before decamping out to the quite fishing village of Teluk Bahang. After wandering for a while and finding many restaurants but no guesthouses we stumbled upon Ramas. We thought it was the most isolated guesthouse we had seen but once inside we realised it was quite famous and even in the guidebooks, which unfortunately we don't have as we are heading direct for Indonesia. There was an Australian couple staying there and they could not believe we had found it by chance. It is deservedly famous as Rama and his wife must be two of the most honest, sincere and friendly guesthouse owners in the world.

Teluk Bahang is situated next to a national park and we spent one day trekking around it. After just five minutes we spotted a 4-5 feet long monitor lizard careening through the jungle and later smaller lizards and other animals. We stopped at Monkey beach, which was as idyllic as it sounds but did require walking through a platoon of hungry monkeys expecting to be fed in order to get back onto the trail.

Back in Georgetown to collect our visas we also visited the Kek Lok Si temple, which was disappointing as I never remembered it being quite so kitch and tacky, and now there are shops inside each building, even the ten-thousand Buddhas temple and admission charges for the best bits. The Thai-style Buddhist temple Wat Chaiya Mangkalaram and the Dharmikara Burmese Buddhist Temple were much more impressive, although not necessarily less tacky, somehow Malaysia seems to reduce any serious project into kitch and colours.

Awaking early on the Saturday we attempted to get a bus back to Georgetown for the ferry to Sumatra. After an hour or so waiting the bus still had not arrived and everybody at the bus stop was discussing why this was. The most
popular theory was that the driver had had two cups of coffee before setting out...