Halitosis Airlines - the only way to travel!

We left Indonesia at the right time. We have spent just over 4 weeks travelling around just a few of the over 1,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago and were ready for a change. Additionally, Ramadan is coming to an end and the country literally shuts down...so off we went to Malaysia...another country consisting of over a 90% population of Muslims. The flight from Indonesia to Malaysia has most certainly been the worst experience thus far in relation to 2 main things. The first being the sheer expense of this internal flight due to several factors...it being Ramadan and everyone is travelling home to celebrate with their families and the travel agent who totally ripped us off on the flight booking due to the fact that it is impossible for one to book a flight with a credit or debit card that does not have an Indonesian address against it, therefore one MUST use a travel agent and they all charge random fees. Once we booked the flight and bitched about it for days, we wrapped up our time in Indonesia with a movie and a Dunkin' Donut and a flight on Asia Air. We got on the plane with about 300 Muslims travelling to be with their families and 2 other travellers from France that we have seen from time to time in Indonesia and now in Malaysia. The travelling circuit is a small one and you tend to see the same travellers over and over again...which could be a good thing or a bad thing, but these two were lovely. They actually helped us find the dorm hostel we are staying in at this very moment. So off we went on our flight from Indonesia to Malaysia in a small flying tube with no fresh air circulating and 300 fasting Muslims on it. Now, fasting means, NO eating or drinking water from sunrise to sunset each day and that means halitosis. It took a few minutes for the air to fill with that sweet sick smell of halitosis that is born in the pit of the stomach and usually occurs for me when I am very nervous...like when I used to have violin recitals and would be super stressed out before going on stage, but multiply this by 300 and you can imagine how stank the air was. I have actually read about the sweet stale smell of the breath of a fasting Muslim during Ramadan in The White Tiger by Aravind Ardiga, but had never experienced it myself until now. Alex and I struggled to control our faces and expressions and ultimately just covered our noses with our sarongs that have many purposes...a towel on the beach, a skirt or dress, a blanket and now a nose cover when surrounded by fasting Muslims. Bless them all starving and dehydrating all day long, but what a stinky flight. We eventually made it to our dorm hostel, which I was skeptical about, but we are on a very tight budget and need to recoup some funds for Australia, as this will be a very expensive place and we don't want to run out of money. Dorms come in all shapes and sizes and Al has told me some true nightmares about some of them so I was NOT looking forward to ours, but it has actually turned out to be a lovely place and the cleanest of the hostels we have stayed in thus far on our travels. It is a small room with a bunk bed and one other single bed and a door that slides closed with a chain lock and can only be locked from the inside. The toilet and showering areas are all shared and there is a communal living room area with television and DVD player and computers with Internet and a kitchen as well. We have lucked out so far and it has only been Alex and me, but we will see if anyone else has moved in when we get back tonight. We have spent our days walking around Kuala Lumpur, the capital, and enjoying juts how lovely and easy Malaysia is. The buses, metro system and trains are just so easy to navigate and cheap and there are all sorts of food and shopping and things to do...we just love it. We spent the morning travelling by bus to the Batu Caves, which are a series of 3 interconnecting caves with thousands of monkeys and pigeons guarding the 272 stairs you must take to enter the Temple Cave. The monkeys are the worst and one can hear the screams of many a tourist as they climb the steps up to the caves. We even witnessed a father holding his little daughter's hand on the way up the steps when a monkey fast approached from the left grabbing onto his leg looking for a treat and the father was so frightened that he dropped his daughter's hand screeching up the the rest of the stairs leaving her standing there. It was awesome. They literally rip things out of your hands and another girl literally beat a money with her bare hands when it tried to steal her handbag...while another woman screamed so loud and twisted herself in such a way that she actually pulled a muscle in her back and limped up the rest of the stairs crying. Alex and I took our time and studied the monkeys' behaviours and patterns and decided that the best thing to do was go up the middle of 3 stair cases and also ensure that our camera was in our backpack and nothing was dangling or sparkling, as this would catch their eye. Additionally, no eye contact is to be made with any monkey at any time for any reason. If we did want to take a photo, we made it quick and to the point...no dawdling. With all these techniques and our monkey prowess in full swing, we actually made it up and down without incident! Later that day, we waled around in the rain to the twin towers to the KL Convention Centre that is attached to a giant posh shopping mall, where we looked around for a bit and eventually went to the 5th Annual KL Book Fair that we read about in a Yogyakarta newspaper. It was a lovely afternoon of browsing through books and art supplies and sitting on the floor reading snippets out of books we want to purchase in the future and writing down the titles and authors of those books. We made it back to our hostel after having alovely and cheap vegetarian meal in Chinatown, where we are staying, and then retired to our room after a lovely dinner of veg and boiled rice. There are so many interesting and fried things to try, but since we spent most of our time reading nutrition and work out books at the book fair earlier that day, we were inclined to eat as healthfully as possible...and this is no easy task in Southeast Asia. We were entertained with dinner and a show, as a man working one of the booths with knock off handbags across from the restaurant had some sort of epileptic fit and fell from his chair onto the floor convulsing. Everyone gathered around him and did the worst possible thing...put random objects into his mouth while trying to make him stand up. Alex ran over and told them to leave him on the floor to fit, take everything out of his mouth and call an ambulance if he doesn't stop convulsing in 3 minutes. He eventually stopped fitting and then got up and wearily walked away...a bit scared, a bit embarrassed. Bless him. Tomorrow we are leaving for the Taman Negra, which Lonely Planet describes as, "a mass of primary jungle over 130 million years old and sprawling 4343 square kilometers." There is trekking and hiking and sightseeing and camping and animal watching and cave exploring and a canopy walk and just so many other outdoor activities...we cannot wait. It is a bit remote and we are hiking to what is called a Hide, where you sleep outside in a sleeping bag under some sort of roofed enclosure so you can hear the sounds of nature and see jungle night animals. We read that rats like to lurk in these hides so tie your food up high...we can't wait. Then, we travel to the Cameron Highlands, which Lonely Planet describes as, "just high enough to mingle with the clouds...a cool picturesque retreat from the tropical lowlands...altitude tea-loving plantations form emerald-coloured corduroy vests along peaks of stout pyramid-shaped mountains." We cannot wait to see all of this...and we hope it won't rank in the Lonely Planet Mysteries in which we need to give it the old Mel and Al Star Rating!