Malaysia here we come!

Our India trip temporarily on hold, we flew to Kuala Lumpar. KL is famous for the Petronus Towers, the Grand Prix, China Town and not much else! Sorry KL if we do you a dis-service, but we just wanted to head out of there as soon as! Our cousins Chris and Mair had advised that we go to Taman Negara, the Malyaisan Rainforest. We booked up and chucked in a visit to the elephant sanctuary at the same time. We couldn't help notice on the way how good the roads were, and how smoothly our truck would have driven over them. Hey-ho!

Taman Negara, like every other rain forest in the world, is being steadily cut down. A small area is protected as a national park, but most of it is making way for huge palm oil plantations. The elephants, who are used to living in the rain forest, have a steadily decreasing area to function in. Consequently local palm oil plantations are complaining that the elephants are 'raiding' their plantations. Picture the scene: a bunch of elephants sitting around a map of a plantation, planning how they'll raid it! Come on guys, be fair, they're only having breakfast!!

Anyhow, the elephant sanctuary is called in whenever a herd is 'raiding' and therefore in danger of being shot. They try hard to bring the herd to the national park and secure their future. It's not an easy job, and some of the elephants who become isolated or have been injured get taken to the sanctuary itself. These are the elephants we fed, washed and rode. It was magic! Mark has put some photos on his facebook page.

We left the hefalumps and headed up further into the rain forest. That evening we did a night walk and saw - wait for it- giant ants!! It was an experience, don't get me wrong, but when you're walking with 15 other heavy footed humans, the chances of seeing any rare wildlife are slim!

The next day we walked up to the highest part and did a canopy walkway. Again, it was really cool to be in the rain forest to see the plants, hear the sounds, sweat like you've never sweated before and be petrified 100 meters up, looking into some ancient trees. It was actually great, but we were also getting used to the experience of being a backpacker and having to follow everyone elses path!

A boat trip up the river and a visit to a local tribe completed our package tour and we headed off the next day to the Perhentian Islands on the East coast of northern Malaysia. We had managed to hook up with a couple of Irish, Chris and Caroline, who had fortunately done more research than us and had an idea of where to go!

We arrived after a long day on Long Beach, on the smaller of the Perhentian islands. They were pretty stunning; tropical green hills, beautiful white sands, light blue leading to turquoise waters and sunshine, sunshine, sunshine. We settled into Panorama beach resort - ok it was a bamboo hut - and relaxed some more. We did a days snorkelling which was great - we saw turtles, sharks, a trillion different fish, corals, clams the lot. Oh, and Mark decided to follow the leader of the trip off the top of a 10 meter high lighthouse. He's still suffering with a bruised coccyx now and cursing himslef!! You're not 20 anymore, love!

A week on the Perhentians and we decided to move on towards Thailand. We took the boat and bus to Khota Baru in the North of Malayisa and stayed there for a couple of days whilst we waited for our 60 day visa for Thailand. You can get it at the border, but only for 15 days now. Visa secured we headed to the border and in the very deep south of Thailand boarded our first ever sleeper to Bangkok!