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Yup, I made it back in one piece from my trip to Malaysia. Horray for me! I met up with my best friend since junior highschool, Ameer, who currently works and studies in Australia. It had been around three years since the last time we met, so we figured why not during the first week of December, in Malaysia?  Here are some of the things we did:

Day 1:

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur a day before Ameer did, and I hadn’t made arrangements for where I was going to stay during that first night. I ended up staying in some three-star hotel in the China Town/Central Market district. I walked around a little, but spent most of the day resting and continued reading another Haruki Murakami novel I began recently.

Day 2:

Went to the Rennaissance Hotel to meet up with Ameer. He arranged for a couple of nights there and a couple of nights in Taman Negara Resort (where we did a lot of hiking through the jungle). We had a huge BREAKFAST at 10.30am at a small cantene; RICE and different kinds of CURRIES and some fresh juice served in PLASTIC BAGS (yes, that’s a straw sticking out of a plastic bag).

Day 3:

We got up early, and headed over to Crown Plaza Hotel, where there was a bus waiting to take us to the Taman Negara Resort. A two-hour bus ride, followed by a three-hour boat ride on the river to get to the resort, where we had a challete to ourselves, and  a schedule filled with activities. As soon as we settled in, we went for a hike on a trail to a swimming spot; the path was VERY muddy because of the frequent rains for this time of year in Malaysia; which made walking down that path a little challenging. I got bitten by a leech on the way back, and I had to burn it off with a matchstick - Indiana Jones style. Cool, huh? Ameer and I joked about me “almost” dying because that tiny leech was going to drink all my blood. Later that evening, we went for a night walk to look at some of the animals living in the jungle, that are active at night. We saw some spiders, scorpions and tracks left by wild boar and things like that.

Day 4:

Ameer and I joked around a lot by calling it the day “Ameer Died Twice”, which means he beats my “one death” with the leech the day before. We started the day by being startled at around 3.00am with what sounded like someone knocking on our door. We wondered if it was some of the highschool girls from Australia who were on the same tour with us,  just teasing us. Scary, huh? By  9.45am, we were all ready for one of the biggest challenges yet; THE CANOPY WALK. We hiked around 2 hours into the Jungle, to where there was a canopy suspended between the trees there, 200 meters above ground, with no nails holding it in place. We had to walk across the canopy, and Ameer wasn’t very comfortable with heights, and there were a  few times in which the canopy’s swinging motion scared Ameer “to death”, but he managed. Well done, Ameer After lunch, we jumped on a  boat and headed down the river to a spot near a small waterfall for a swim. Our guide warned us that it might not be a great idea to swim in the river, just because the tide was higher than usual, due to the rains that have been falling lately. However, a high-tide is not something that will stop two hot-headed young Bahraini guys from jumping into the water. The water was cold, and the current was stronger than it first seemed, but it was okay. Ameer and I decided to race one another across the river, at a spot near where the water coming down from the waterfall met the river. Once we were off, we both got a little winded, just because the tide was against us, but I pushed myself to the otherside using a little more force, while Ameer suddenly DISAPPEARED. This is where I was worried about Ameer’s “second death” for the day, as we joked about it later. He couldn’t swim against the current like me, so, instead he drifted with the water and hung onto a felled tree on the other side of the bank. As he drifted away, I called out to him, but he didn’t hear. Luckily, he knew what he was doing, so things ended up okay.

Day 5:

Our last day in Taman Negara, and we get a wake up call from a MONKEY on top of our roof and a WILD BOAR walking underneath the stilts of the challete. It seemed like the MONKEY and the BOAR were in league, just to drive those two innocent Bahrainis insane. I guess the MONKEY and the BOAR were successful in doing that. Oh well, at least we were up early enough to pack all our things. After everything was packed, and after a fast breakfast, we climbed into the boat that would take us back to the jetty where the bus dropped us off a few days earlier. But, on this day, we had someone from the travel agency Ameer had dealt with pick us up in a van and drive us to an elephant conservation park, where we rode an elephant INTO a river and thrown off of it TWICE afterwards. I don’t know how many Bahrainis have done that before, but I guess what we did must have counted for SOME world record? Who knows. Before going to the Elephant Conservation Park, we went to another park run by a local called Abdullah; and he had snakes (that Ameer and I carried around for a while), a couple of monkeys that eat sunflower seeds from visitor’s hands (one of them climbed up my shoulder and exposed its rear-end to my face, YIKES!), some ostrich, some Mouse Deer, a 4-month old black honey bear, conveniently called BLACKIE, who drank condensed milk out of a bottle, and BLACKIE’s father, who doesn’t have a name, spends most of his day on top of a HIGH tree and licking condensed milk off visitors’ palms. (Yucky).

After that, we went back to Kuala Lumpur - we decided to go to BB PLAZA, which is located on a street with a lot of Middle Eastern Restaurants and Massage Parlors, and you guessed it, we did both. First, we walked around looking for a “proper” massage parlor, that looked clean and well worth the money. We found one called “Old Asia”, and it looked promising from the outside, so we decided to enter. We ended up getting massaged for an hour. This was the first time either of us had had a massage done, but afterwards, we both felt relaxed after a few tough days of hiking through the jungles of Taman Negara, and the concrete jungles of Kuala Lumpur. We topped off the evening with some Arabic food from a restaurant that served food from the Gulf. It was great.

Day 6:

This was Ameer’s last day in Kuala Lumpur, and he had to head over to the airport by 6pm. We got up early and did some last minute shopping and had a few last laughs before he flew on to Bahrain to visit family and friends. After seeing him off, I went to a movie theatre and just watched “Aeon Flux”. It was an interesting action movie, although watching a movie alone in the cinema is just flat out weird. After the movie was over, I went over to the cheap hotel I had found earlier that day with Ameer, making a stop at an internet cafe to check my email on the way. This was a VERY strange hotel, just because it was… well.. I have included some pictures of this place in the photo album section.

Day 7:

This was the day I was to return to Tokyo. Being alone in Kuala Lumpur is quite boring, so, I had to make the best of it. I was up by 8am, went over to a Starbuck’s near the hotel with that novel in my hand. And unfortunately, I finished it in that one sitting in the Starbuck’s - which left me with no other forms of entertainment for the rest of the day and into the 7 hour plane ride back to Tokyo. I was so bored, I went to Kuala Lumpur International Airport 5 hours before take-off, and the batteries of my iPod died during the wait, so I didn’t even have any music to listen till I got back home. And above that, the card from my bank in Japan didn’t work over there, meaning I couldn’t buy much or do much, so I spent most of the 5 hours in the airport, just sitting, and watching people walk by. I made some small talk with some people from Iran and with some Japanese, which was quite interesting.

The plane ride was alright, save for the fact that my seat kept RECLINING even when I didn’t press the button that does the RECLINING, so, I felt that I was making a fool out of myself with people behind me, and I struggled to keep my back straight the entire flight. On the bright side, I watched the new “Wallace and Grommit” movie, which was hillarious.

Many hours and yucky airplane meals later, I find myself back in Tokyo. Still in a daze.