We crossed over the Malaysian border without too much of a hiccup. Actually it was the easiest crossing thus far. The bus drive was about 5 hours to get from Satun to Penang. Penang was hot, humid and wet. We had an interesting evening playing pool, eating pizzas and drinking beer. The next day some of us decided to take the vernacular railway to the top of the hill. We then walked back down to the botanical gardens that were a lot longer than we expected. It was a great group, so we had lots of laughs on the way down. We spent some time in the gardens playing Frisbee before we headed back to the hotel. That night we went to an Indian restaurant and got served our meal on a banana leaf. This is a traditional method of doing it and the food was awesome. I wonder if this will take off in London? We left Penang and headed towards the Cameron Highlands. This is where they grow all their tea. As far as I know none of it gets exported. It’s all for the local market. The temperature dropped a number of degrees and humidity became acceptable. Our group had a luxury flat to share, which was really great as it had a decent TV and surround sound system. We watched a few movies while it rained like a monsoon outside. This is one of the few occasions when I had rain on my world trip thus far. We did a tour of the plantations and the rain forests the next day. It was amazing when we did a walk in the thick rain forest as it took us about an hour to walk 400m, that’s how thick the undergrowth is. Our guide also spoke tom us about the growing of the tea and we went to the factory to see the tea making process ourselves. At least I now know the difference between green and black tea. We went to visit a butterfly & reptile park and saw numerous butterfly’s, scorpions, snakes, stick insects etc. We also did a walk to some of the nearby waterfalls and some of us took the plunge into the refreshingly cold waterfall water. A visit to some of the ethnic minority people where we fed the kids biscuits and had a chance to use an actual blowpipe rounded the day off really nicely. Our next stop was after a 7 hr bus drive to Kuala Lumpur (KL). KL is a modern vibrant city and it felt quite Western. I did a fair amount of shopping and managed to get my Mum a sea pearl necklace for her birthday. In the one shopping center there was a whole theme park and some of us made good use of the rides. It was great being a kid once again. We did a trip to the highest tower in KL, (Not the famous twin Petronis towers) but unfortunately it was a very misty night and we pretty much saw squat. At least I managed to get some good photos of the towers during the daytime. We then left for Melaka. The town of Melaka has a lot of European influence. It’s a lovely colonial town and we stayed in a nice hotel with spa on the roof and excellent restaurant out front. I spent some time browsing in the many shops but did not find anything to send home. Dave, Linda, Sean & myself hired bikes and did a long ride, stopping for a photo at the Melaka Straits. The evening we went to a nightclub / bar and had a festive evening with live music and plenty of beers. There was not a helluva lot more to do and so I was happy to move onto Singapore the next day.