After a hassle free Thai/Malaysian border crossing we arrived in Penang for the purpose of getting chest x-rays- a requirement for our Australian work visas. We stayed in Georgetown, a city- with great Indian food, but not a great deal to do (as far as we saw!) It was so built up, that you almost forgot you were on an island- except the ten minute ferry crossing to get there.

After a successful x-raying and sorting of visas, we heading to the Perhentian Islands on the east coast of Malaysia. We had really wanted to visit the islands, but had previously been told they were still closed for monsoon season. Luckily this wasn't the case, although they hadn't been open long and shops, restaurants and guesthouses were still setting up for the new season. This did mean huge discounts on rooms and food which was great for us!! The islands were beautiful, we'd never seen water like it (although I'm sure we probably keep saying this!) We spent lots of time snorkeling, seeing huge fish in knee deep water. There's not much to do on the island except chill, eat and chill some more!! We read quite a lot!! We did go on one dive, but were disappointed by the weather, visibility on the wreck and the group was too big meaning people kept swimming into each other!! We've already talked about going back in better weather for more diving- it's supposed to be amazing! Our last two days on the island were completely rained out! Our snorkeling trip was cancelled and we decided to make a very wet escape on a taxi boat having seen the forecast for rain and storms for the next week.

We travelled to Tamen Negara a 130 million year old rainforest, and found a really cute bungalow set up to stay in. The village was tiny, with nothing really to do, but the national park entry was just across the river. The river had lots of (literally) floating restaurants on it. In the morning we bought our park permits and headed to the canopy walkway- the longest in the world, about 45m high. The walkway was made of ladders lying flat with planks of wood on top to walk along, held up by support cables and rope with netting around the sides- didn't look very safe but was apparently checked each day. The walkways connected big trees and went 500m in a circle. Looking down in the middle of the walkways was pretty scary! In the evening we went on a night safari on the back of a 4x4. It absolutely tipped it down, we were drenched, but we did see two leopard cats (only slightly bigger than domestic cats) and various bugs.

We were surprised by how modern Kuala Lumpur is, an impressive skyline, a really good subway system, and a huge variety of people. There's a really nice sense of tolerance between people with so many different ethnicities and religions represented. Everyone seems to accept everyone else for who they are. We spent a couple of days here, mainly shopping, and a visit to an aquarium, before almost managing to miss our flight by arriving at the wrong airport. We didn't realise there were two terminals, and so had to catch a hugely inflated priced taxi.