Ah the Pehrentians! After being blissfully cool and mellow in the Cameron Highlands we head up to the east coast for some sun, sea and sand. We met a really nice couple from England, George and Vicki, and because of how late we got onto the Little Island (the other of the island pair is surprisingly called the Big Island) we had to book into a "dorm", which also housed the hotel restaurant's toilets, a load of bed-bugs and quite a few mice. I, of course slept like a log (bar having something small and mouse shaped crawling on my foot at one point) but E was a bit frazzled from a sleepless night, so the next day we moved into a suite in the best hotel on the island!

The islands are really good for snorkelling and diving, so myself and George went on a snorkelling trip around the two islands. I got to swim with a 2m Blacktip reef shark, some amazingly beautiful fish and coral, but the best was when a huge turtle swam about a foot away from me. He'd been eating stuff on the sea floor, then as he came up for air he was right beside me and we swam together for about 100m until he'd had enough and went off into the blue. I'll never forget it and I'm actually kinda glad I didn't have have a camera with me, it's something only I get to remember, and you all have to be jealous!

The rest of the time we spent on the beach playing football or Frisbee, there really wasn;t much else to do. So I am now a deep mahogany colour, which is quite nice.

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After the heat and hustle of KL we decided to head for the Cameron Highlands, a region high up in mountains. The bus trip was interesting, a surprising amount of Westerners traveling with their kids (all with mad names like Everest and Calypso, damn hippies) and unsurprisingly one of the kids spewed chocolate ice-cream all over his dad due to the bus bouncing over the twisting mountain roads.

We stayed in a really nice place called Father's Guest House and our rrom had an amazing view out over the hills and valleys around the town. The air was blissfully cool after KL although we did have to put up with a lot of rain, but what are you going to do? When the rain did break we went on a tour of some of the tea plantations and flower and buterfly farms that are dotted through out the hills. The Boh Tea plantation was great as we got to see the tea pickers selecting the best tea leaves – the Boh Selectas! Ho ho… I also got to hold some Leaf frogs and geckos in the Butterfly farm, which were not as slimey as I thought they might be. It's amazing how a frog can evolve to look like a leaf, nature is weird!

We really loved the place and got to meet some nice people – I talked to a guy called Taj from Canada who had been coming to the Camerons for about 15 years, probably to smuggle drugs out (which he told me he'ld been caught doing before and subsequently barred from the US as an "undesirable alien"). Elaine wonders how I get to talk to these people…

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We finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur (or KL as the locals call it) and were a bit wrecked and let-lagged from our flight, so our first day was a bit of  a right-off. Yesterday though we headed around Little India and Chinatown, which weren't as intimidating as I thought they might be. I got a nice pair of polarized shades for about €12 after a bit of haggling. Nice. I also got my feet eaten by fish (doctor fish I think), which nibble off all the dead skin on your feet. You can put yourself in up to your neck but I don't think I'ld be up for that! It's a really odd feeling, like having dozens of ticklish kisses planted on your feet and I giggled my head off for a bout 5 minutes before I got used to it.

KL is a bit odd really, there's a mad mix of people wearing hijabs and full-on Islamic robes then you'll see some Chinese girl in a miniskirt and highheels and that's reflected in the amazing mosques and the swarm of markets and shopping centres around the town. The people are pretty friendly, although they tend to talk very quietly so it's hard to hear them.

Unfortunately the Petronas Towers are closed to the public on a Monday (boo-urns) but we headed out to the amazing Batu Caves, which are a karst cave system that holds various Hindu shrines. In the heat and humidity the 272 steps up to the temple entrance are hard work but definitely worth it. The temples are scattered amid vaulted arches in the rock, with water and light dripping from openings hundreds of feet overhead. The monkeys freaked E out a little but probably not as much as the doctor fish would have.

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