Malaysia so far has been a mix of rain and sun and it was no different on the beaches. We haven't explored much of the real Malaysia as we started in Kuala Lumpur which was a mixture of a lot of different cultures especially around he Petronas towers which was where we spent a lot of our time. Then straight to Pulau Pangkor which is a bit touristy and a bit traveller.

For those of you still sticking with us on the mega journey thank you! We read all the messages and love hearing from you. We realise it's quite self indulgent talking about ourselves all the time... But that probably won't stop us.

We met some other travellers in our reggae guesthouse so at least for a while we weren't only talking about ourselves. We met a couple of girls travelling together, one from France and one from Switzerland. We spent a couple of evenings playing cards with them. They taught us 'The President' and some new rules for Uno (if anyone wants a twist on the game play the 8 as swap cards with any player and the 0 everyone swaps cards clockwise) We were also joined by a guy from Holland who may or may not have been a couple of sandwiches short... And one of the Malaysian guesthouse guys who was the most hilarious man on earth; "What your name man...Sean? Sean you are a very bad man" "You are a very bad man Sean I don't like you man" "Ohhhhh NO!" Picture a Malaysian with long hair, Fishermans hat and high on life. Or high on something. The reggae guesthouse was run by a guy with dreadlocks and a Rasta hat. He was nicknamed Rasta Man. We always seemed to bump into a guy from New Zealand who had been travelling everywhere and had traveller dreadlocks. We named him dreadlock kiwi. There was a large Frenchman and his Yoko Ono like wife. They may or may not have owned the place but for some reason over half the guests were French. We called them the French Foreign Legion. We think this along with Frenchies hangout in Pondicherry must be in the French Lonely Planet in neon lights. There was also the cutest little kitten which had been rescued near death on the side of the road only a few days before. After the first night when Laura held her all night she came back every day to us to have a sleep. We fed her Whiskas and chicken. She also liked to sleep in handbags so when we left I left her mine as it had broken the day before.

We spent every day on the beach. As Sean was reading 'The Beach' he got the idea of swimming to an island not far away. A girl we saw in our guesthouse on crutches told us she had been bitten by a barracuda swimming to an island and had stayed there for six weeks in a cast after an operation. Sean didn't go for a swim.

On our last full day in Pangkor Laura made friends with some Malaysian teenagers on a jolly for the day. There was about twenty of them on the beach and they had rented a house nearby for the night. We spent the morning chatting and (a massive error in an Asian country) I told them I was a swimming teacher. The majority of people we have met in Asia can't swim. Cue an impromptu swimming lesson in the sea (which was as calm as a swimming pool) though I think most of the boys just wanted the novelty of holding hands with the white girl in the bikini as all the local girls were clad in shorts and t-shirts. Sean was oblivious to this as after a bit of sunburn he was in the shade, despite their eager shouts of 'Soon Soon!' They kindly invited us to their house for the BBQ that evening and after a bit of confusion about how to get to their place they decided to pick us up. And that is how just a few hours later we ended up on a white knuckle ride on the back of their mopeds. They are a LOT more confident than we ever were and we were racing round very tight blind corners with pretty much no protection at all. To be fair we arrived in one piece and were so glad we did as the BBQ was amazing.
I have never seen a BBQ that has whole fish, tiger prawns. So much meat and tofu. It wasn't even strange that most of them didn't speak English. It was strange to be at a house full of 18 year olds and they just wanted to drink chrysanthemum tea and play rummy though. They then took us to the beach to look for 'Blue Tears' a little dubious and clueless as to what we were looking for. We're still not sure what they were but it was tiny little sea creatures with no legs but glowed a brilliant blue colour. So we spent some time chasing them in the waves before, slightly reluctantly, we were back on the mopeds. Again we arrived safely, and it was goodbye to the kids who had fed and entertained us for the night.
A nice break from our travels of late. Hammocks a plenty and a little bit of rain but only at night leaving the days free for bronzing. As it has been a while since Goa we were concerned our tans were fading but worry no longer! We are still browner than all of you haha.