Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

ANNNNDDD now we're in Malaysia, but first, a quick recap from the last week or so...

Phi Phi Islands: After arriving in Krabi and spending two nights in this fantastic hotel, we took a ferry to the nearby Phi Phi Islands. For all you cinephiles out there, this is where the movie The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio (Leo!) and Guillaume Canet (a.k.a. the hottest man that has ever lived) was filmed. Actually if you really are a cinephile you have probably not seen this movie. Anyway, it was like gorgeous in a very screen savery kind of way. The photo above is really what it looked like (the one with the cliffs). Anyway, it was cool and all, but like totally geared towards European (there were like no Americans to be found anywhere) tourists, and yet it still managed to look like one giant college party. There were bars with "bucket" specials and all you can eat buffets, and the tourists all really looked American- they were all wearing way-too-short shorts, knotty wet buns on the tops of their heads (the girls), and those ridiculous HAvainana Flip Flops (see image above) which cost like $50 a pair- but they were European! They were all like Finnish or whatever.

ANyway, we spent two days on the islands and went on this schweet snorkeling adventure where I got dangerously sunburned and saw a shark! After we left, we spent another two days in Krabi and then took a van into Malaysia to Penang...

Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia: This was a lovely place to spend a few days. I think??? it was the colonial capital of the country, but in any case, it has a lot of British colonial architecture, and is pretty laid back and easy to navigate. To our delight, we found Malaysia to be just as keen on the hawker stall street food scene as Thailand was, and so we ate lots of delicious seafood, curries, shave ice, noodles, and burgers (tasty ones!) for very very cheap. We saw a cool temple in Penang which they accidentally locked us in at the end of the day, so we had to kind of worm our way through closed gates and things and back down a random hill to get to where we wanted to go. Other highlights from Penang included seeing the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and if I may, Penelope Cruz was a vast improvement over Kiera Knightly.

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia: This is where we are now. It's like this sort of hilly resort town in central Malaysia which is famous for it tea, strawberries and butterfly farms. It's nice because it's cooler than everywhere else. We went for a nice long hike today, and then had Indian food for lunch. Malaysia food is really great because they have co-opted all of the best dishes from neighboring countries in addition to having a lot of unique Malaysian dishes (most of which involve seafood). There is also seemingly more cake in Malaysia than anywhere else we have been which is a welcome change.

Oh. Ha! Funny other thing about Malaysia. Malaysia is very developed and modern. They have all the American chains (Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Starbucks, etc.) which is not surprising, but what is sort of funny is that it seems to be a badge of honor here to be what is known as a "McDonald's VIP." Correction. It is called a "McDonald's Drive-Through VIP" (I understand that these people enjoy none of the same privileges should they actually enter the store). I don't know what rights these VIPs have, but apparently they are not too selective about who gets this honor since seriously like every other car here, has a "McDonald's Drive-Through VIP" sticker displayed prominently on its front windshield. Anyway, if anyone has more information about this program, I'd be interested to know the details.

OK, I guess that's it. Tomorrow we're going to the Perhentian Islands (see above photo of pier and hut looking thing). Woot. Later!