Malaysia: In Search of Fireflies
Travel guide to Malaysia
From “A Tour of Southeast Asia”
THE ITINERARY FOR OUR ENTIRE TOUR OF SOUTHEAST ASIA AND ALL THE TRAVELOGUES FOR SINGAPORE, MALAYSIA, PHUKET ISLAND, BANGKOK, AND BALI can be viewed HERE.
What it's like to see the "columns of fireflies", to attend a Muslim sports festival, and to be the only non-Muslims on an intercity rickety bus at dusk are just some of the things we experienced during our brief trip to Malaysia.
The next morning we woke up early, packed our luggage, and had a delicious and hearty breakfast at the hotel. An elderly man, exceptionally kind and sweet-looking, took care of breakfast.
At 8 o'clock we successfully caught the bus to Kuala Lumpur. I had bought the tickets in advance online as a one-way for two for 30 Singapore dollars with Transtar. I had read very good reviews about this bus company, but they turned out to be unjustified. At the Singapore-Malaysia border, we had to get off the bus for passport control. Shortly after that, the driver stopped for a "pee break". We entered a so-called diner and were met by the first unpleasant surprise from Malaysia: fans everywhere, dirt, stench, and a total lack of hygiene. After wonderful Singapore, this was a complete shock to us. The difference just a few kilometers from the border was shocking! We already missed Singapore.
Welcome to Malaysia!
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The bus drivers were young and drove a bit dangerously. While traveling along the highway, we gazed at forests of palm trees, which are just like the beech, linden, and pine forests in Bulgaria, only with palm trees there. According to the schedule, we were supposed to travel for 6 hours and arrive at Puduraya station at 13 o'clock. We were late arriving, but the worst part was that we didn't arrive where we were supposed to, but at some other, unfamiliar place in Kuala Lumpur. We managed to figure things out and catch the metro to Puduraya. The metro was very dirty again.
The second unpleasant incident in Malaysia started right here 🙂
From here to Puduraya, where you get off to take bus number 141 from platform 23 and what was supposed to take all 30 minutes. Perfectly, but where is platform 23? In the extension of the two-hour quest to find the local bus and the surrounding area, we also asked the question of the platform 23. It turns out that in the same autogarage there are platforms from 1 to 22, but where is platform 23 for God's sake?
Don't be too hasty, we're with a whole bunch of people and we're stuck in traffic and we're like ordinary people. The chorus is not known, nor is it mentioned where the grey place is, but we see it as a place of refuge, you know. It's also ordinary to see how the two women were arrested, but not in the way we're looking for something like that. It happens to be the most popular platform 23, which presents one of the most ordinary sparks of the city transport and we don't mention it in the garage. Well, the spark is looking for something closer to Puduraya.
–> Reviewed and reserved with a budget hotel in Kuala Lumpur. See HERE!
The atmosphere and vibe in Kuala Lumpur didn't appeal to me at all, the main reason being that it is a Muslim country and everywhere was dirty and poverty reigned.
We boarded the trusty bus 141, which was supposed to take us to the town with the string of lights. The bus looked exactly like the former buses in BG from the front at least 20 years ago. The driver, who was a young lad and quite frail, had to constantly wrestle with a broken gear shifter. For 2 hours the bus stopped at every wave of a hand (like marshrutkas in BG) and at all towns and stops along the way. The distance which the next day we covered in 40 minutes, we crossed with this bus in 2 hours.
We were the only foreigners on the bus and didn't feel safe at all.
We arrived in Kuala Selangor around 6 p.m. and we are already having dinner. We took a taxi to the hotel, because we no longer have any strength. The hotel, thank God, surprised us pleasantly. It was called APPS Hotel Kuala Selangor.
It turned out to be very nice, clean, and even luxurious compared to the other sights in Malaysia. Immediately after we checked in, we went down to the river to get a boat. There were a few other people waiting for the same thing.
We threw ourselves into this whole adventure to Malaysia—traveling 6 hours in one direction, and then searching for 2 hours between the intercity bus to Kuala Selangor, in order to arrive and see the colonies of fireflies located along the river, which look like Christmas lights on trees.
We all got into one shared boat and then TOTAL SHOCK! What shocked us wasn't the fireflies, but the disgustingly dirty river.
We had the feeling that we were moving only amidst feces, trash, and all kinds of other filth, and in between there was some other firefly. It wasn't nearly as impressive as they described it and as the pictures on the internet showed. The reason for this might have been the approaching rain, so they had hidden. I couldn't take any pictures because it was pitch black and using a flash was forbidden, and in the end, fatigue took its toll.
(Opening a bracket: Even while traveling from London to Singapore by plane, we passed over Malaysia from above and I noticed that the water in the rivers was, to put it mildly, brown; now we finally knew why.)
After this experience, we hailed a taxi to Kuala Lumpur so we wouldn't miss the return bus to Singapore. Since the taxi was an unplanned expense and cost quite a bit, we ended up with almost no money. We found a woman making burgers with her two children. We were a little afraid to eat street food, given the poor hygiene and filth everywhere, but we had no choice—everything else was closed. We each got a burger, which was severely inadequate after such an exhausting and nervous day. In the end, we went to bed hungry, but no, we didn't sleep like babies, because there was some karaoke place nearby that didn't leave us in peace until 4-5 in the morning.
The next morning, we had rice and other things that apparently are eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Southeast Asia. Then the so-called "taxi" arrived, and 40 minutes down the highway we were in Kuala Lumpur. The "taxi" was actually a middle-aged family who worked in Kuala Lumpur and made some extra cash by acting as a taxi between the two cities.
Since we arrived very quickly, it turned out we had two and a half hours to kill, because the bus wasn't leaving until 11 o'clock. At the bus station, there was a lobby bar where we could wait with free tea.
But we decided to take a walk along one of the main boulevards and stumbled upon a very interesting event. We stumbled upon a large square where a sports event was taking place. The interesting thing, however, was the multitude of young Muslim girls wearing headscarves while riding rollerblades, bicycles, and staring into their smartphones and tablets. All the women were 100% veiled, with some of them showing only their eyes, and this at 35 degrees heat! It was very interesting to us because for the first time we found ourselves in such an atmosphere, where the traditional and religious intertwined with the modern of the 21st century.
The bus to Singapore was already waiting for us. This time we took a bus from the "Nice" company, and it turned out to be definitely much nicer than the previous one, with more amenities, a toilet, and included food. And the fares of the two were almost identical.
On the outskirts of the capital, however, the only pleasant surprise of this whole adventure called Malaysia awaited us. We stopped in front of some ultra-super-luxurious complex, from which more passengers boarded. Apparently, there was luxury in Malaysia too, you just had to know exactly where to find it.
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More photos from Malaysia can be seen below:
