Travelling in Malaysia

To compare the life of Malaysians in Kuala Lumpur with the rest of Malaysia I have travelled around Malaysia. During my internship I made some trips around West-Malaysia. I made weekend trips to the island Pulau Penang on the west coast and to Singapore. And I made several day trips for instance to Malacca, a city with a lot of Dutch colonial buildings, to an elephant sanctuary in Lanchang and to Putrajaya; a complete new city next to KL with all government buildings.
But besides those small trips I made a big trip through the rest of Malaysia after my internship. For three weeks I’ve travelled around West-Malaysia with my girlfriend. We’ve been to the beautiful islands of Pulau Perhentian on the East-coast, did trekkings in the Taman Negara: the oldest jungle in the world, we visited the tea plantations and the Orang Asli in the Cameron Highlands, we’ve seen the mangrove forests in Taiping and we enjoyed the nature, beaches and tax-free alcohol on Pulau Langkawi on the West-coast.
After that I went to Sabah on Borneo. I climbed the mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain in South East Asia; I have dived at one of the top 3 dive sites in the world at Pulau Sipadan and spent a few days in the jungle to spot all sorts of wildlife. All of these experiences were better than the other! Malaysia truly is a beautiful country and travelling is pretty easy. The public transport is really punctual. Accommodation is easy to find and although it’s very basic most of the time it was very decent. And people are in general very happy to help without wanting anything in return. Of course there are a few exceptions like the cab-drivers trying to rip you off but I think that’s pretty common all over the world. I must add that there is quite a difference between travelling in West- and East Malaysia. In East Malaysia people are poorer and are trying harder to make some money out of tourists. When I was travelling from Sandakan to Semporna I got stuck half way in Lahad Datu: There were no more busses going to Semporna after 05:00 pm. The next opportunity would be to take the bus that was going the next morning. I wanted to be there the same day as I was going to meet up with some other backpackers I met earlier on my trip and I wanted to dive the next morning. When I was asking local people to help me find a bus or a taxi they told me no more busses and taxis were going to Semporna. One of the people I was talking to came up to me about fifteen minutes later and told me he found a ride for me. It was just an ordinary car with someone who was picking up people to go to Semporna. I had to pay 200 Ringgit and then I could come. After bargaining I could get the price to 100 Ringgit (20 euro’s), still ridiculously much for Malaysian understandings. But I really wanted to go so I agreed on paying the 100 Ringgit. There were three Malay people coming as well. One of them had to pay the bill of 20 ringgit at the gas station and the other two had to pay 20 Ringgit. They were trying to do this so I could not see, but I was already expecting something like that and noticed it. I just accepted the fact that I as a tourist would get ripped off and decided not to say anything.
West Malaysia, and especially KL, is different from Borneo. You can see the difference in development: cities in West-Malaysia have better infrastructure and more developed architecture. The nature in West-Malaysia is ruined by tourism, on Borneo it’s not. I have been to the Taman Negara on Peninsular Malaysia, the oldest jungle in the world. But the jungle has been prepared for tourists. There are pathways everywhere and on slopes there are stairways. We were lucky we were there in October, when it’s not the touristic season. When we were walking around we saw very little other people. But in the tourist season there are thousands of people walking around there. So it’s not very strange that wildlife has moved further into the jungle. If we wanted to see tigers, elephants etc. we had do a trekking of seven days in to the jungle. Unfortunately we did not have the time to do that. In Borneo however I have been in the jungle and spotted ten kinds of monkeys in the wild (including Orang-Utans), saw an incredible amount of birds, alligators etc. In Borneo the jungle is in danger because of the palm oil plantations that are build everywhere. So living space for the animals is getting smaller and that is a great threat to all the wildlife.