Life was obviously going a little too well here and we were bought back down to earth on Tuesday when my wallet was stolen by a pick-pocket on the underground. It was a pretty low point in an otherwise fantastic time in Buenos Aires. Despite the annoyance of losing, money, cards and our traveller’s street cred we are both fine and determined not to be taken again.
On a more positive note however our last week in BA has been very full, cramming in all the final sights and restaurants we’d not managed before. The colourful buildings you can see below are in Caminito, an old dock where the workers used leftover paints from the shipyards to decorate their houses. Slightly less colourful was Recolata cemetery, the final resting place of Evita and a freaky place full of coffins and cats. There is a lot of one-upmanship going on between family mausoleums resulting in some incredible and grotesque tombs. The place is like a maze and we wouldn’t fancy being there after dark!
Back in San Telmo we fell in love with the antique soda Siphons sold at the flea markets and although possibly the most impractical thing to send home we just had to have one. Likewise with a painting we commissioned from the talented young artist Gustavo Ferrari. It says ‘My Beloved Buenos Aires’.
We leave our lovely apartment in the morning and head off to Uruguay for a brief visit before returning to Argentina to kick start our round-the-world adventure with a journey south to the very cold Patagonia. We’re going to miss a lot about this place; the amazing restaurants, Spanish lessons with Gustavo and his cat Benita, late night rubbish sifters, subte salesman, our favourite cafe with it’s perfect empanadas, submarinos, dinner at midnight and bottle after bottle of malbec. We won’t miss the national drink ‘Mate’ so much! The bar has been set high for the rest of South America and we can’t wait to start exploring.
After telling Helen throughout the trip that driving on Asian roads doesn’t look that tough, I finally got to put my money where my mouth was with a trip up to Taman Negara. After a short hop from Langkawi back to Kuala Lumpur and with a questionable degree of planning, we sat in McDonalds at the airport and took photos of Google Map’s calculated route on the laptop screen for later reference. Once we were handed the keys to our shiny 4×4 and received some proper directions we felt a bit more confident that we’d make it out of the city and 200 miles onto Malaysia’s largest national park.
Driving in Malaysia is quite simple for Brits since the road rules are pretty much the same, that is apart from the swarms of insane motorcyclists. With little regard for anything on the road, least their own lives, they dart between the lanes of traffic, often magically appearing in the space you need to move into. But as the saying goes, in S.E. Asia ‘might has right’, so forcing our way across 5 lanes of stationary traffic in our 4×4 was probably a bit easier than it could have been. With KL behind us the traffic thinned out and the roads swept through rolling hills lined with palm oil plantations until this gave out to the beginnings of jungle.
At 130 million years old and untouched by Ice Ages and natural disasters the jungle here is amongst the oldest primary rain forests in the world. We arrived at the start of the wet season and were expecting the place to be infested with leeches and pouring with rain. We were really lucky with the weather and the sun shone for our entire trip but the leeches did introduce themselves by trying to burrow their way into our feet through our socks. We thought the attractive look of tucking our trousers into our socks would solve this problem but they’re persistent little buggers.
The suspended walkways were the highlight at 50 meters above ground level it was an exhilarating experience being up in the jungle canopy. We trudged up another mountain with breathtaking views and spotted a bloody big wild-boar, frogs, spiders and monkeys.
We stayed in the Traveller’s Home a unique half-board hotel with chalet’s in the garden and a communal house where we relaxed in an Ikea clad interior and enjoyed their slightly ropey DVD collection and free range over the fridge.
After more exercise in 7 days than we’d experienced in the preceding 3 months it was time for a well deserved rest on the Malayasian island of Langkawi. To save a bit of cash and to try and reduce the massive number of flights we’ve been booking we opted to take the boat across from Georgetown. With the nightmare of the Koh Tao crossing still fresh in our minds we dosed ourselves up with travel sickness pills and reluctantly boarded. To our delight the sea was like a mill pond and the crossing was super chilled with only blue skys and sunshine on the horizon.
Being a tax free island it’s a popular spot for Malaysians to visit and stock up on dirt cheap booze and fags. Not wanting to be left out we filled up our room’s fridge and spent the next three days drinking and relaxing on the deserted beach. When we’d sobered up sufficiently we hired a motorbike for a quick tour of the island but soon realised there was more fun to be had back on our balcony working our way through the liqour mountain.
Georgetown, on the Malaysian island of Penang, was an old Straits settlement and so is crammed full of British colonial style buildings and character. Chilling out here was meant to be a welcome relief from our recent outdoor pursuits. Our flight was delayed so when we arrived on a Saturday night during the school holidays the town looked like Ibiza, packed with young holidaymakers out drinking booze sold at London prices. Consequently we struggled to find any decent accommodation and what we did settle for would have been great had it not been for the adjacent nightclub.
In the morning I woke to the realisation that something was not quite right with my face when I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise the person staring back at me. A trip to the doctor and £50 later I was told I had some sort of allergy and was given injections, creams and pills to be getting on with. I spent the rest of the day exploring behind my sunnies and thankfully it had cleared a lot by the time we took high-tea at the Eastern & Oriental hotel; an English tradition that we feel must be reintroduced into normal life. Seeing all the Christmas decorations there got us really excited about the forthcoming festivities so we listened to carols in our new and greatly improved hotel room at a grand old Chinese mansion. In the evening Mark re-lived a much missed treat from our last trip with a shave from a barber in Little India.
It was great to see Steven waiting for us when we arrived at the airport and together we headed off to the hotel in downtown KL. Our first night of culinary treats consisted of traditional Indonesian street food sitting on plastic chairs while rats ran around our feet and a severed cows head eyed us from a market stall across the road. We know how to show our guests a good time.
Walking tours of the city were in order the following day and we meandered through Malaysia’s rich cultural mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and colonial quarters. We experienced some highly inappropriate shop signs and the weirdest foot massage ever where tanks full of small fish actually ate the dead skin from our feet and legs; quite pleasurable once the hilarity subsides. After a traditional Malaysian Christmas meal we decided to continue our new hobby of drinking in rooftop bars of swanky hotels. In KL this meant a visit to ‘Traders’. On the 32nd, the open air bar with its own swimming pool was perfectly located opposite the Petronas Towers. I was concerned that the ‘Mankini’ would make a reappearance like last time Mark and Steven were out drinking together in pool bar, but thankfully they behaved themselves. Instead we shared a much missed bottle of red wine, courtesy of Mum & Dad. Bring on Indonesia where £30 should buy us more than just one bottle.
Despite some crappy weather conditions we also headed for ‘Sunway Lagoon’, KL’s version of Wet’n'Wild. Next to several women in their traditional burkas I felt particularly underdressed in my cosie and received some curious looks. In hindsight however they could have just been overcome by my two dazzlingly white companions. After the guys entertained themselves on the ‘diddlums’ we watched ‘Quantum Of Solace’ then turned in for the night before our epic trip to Indonesia started the following day.
