Food glorious food

My body reacted to being dragged from the beach to the chilly Cameron Highlands with horror and a groggy cold. It was Sapa all over again.

Nevertheless, we basked in the coolness of the small town surrounded by aromatic forest, strawberry and honeybee farms. In between sampling every Indian canteen in the town we hiked in the jungle, sliding down muddy slopes and sheltering from spluttery rain showers. Then dried off with scones, cream, strawberry jam and Chinese tea.

We headed back downhill and across the water to the island of Penang. We based ourselves in the city of Georgetown, which quickly became one of my favourite places of the entire trip.


Georgetown is full of lovely old shuttered Chinese houses, shops shaded by painted wooden blinds and colourful retro signs. Everyone who lives there seems to be old – where are all the young people? – skinny, graceful old Chinese people float around the streets and incense pours out of the spangly temples. There’s an elegant seaside esplanade peppered by grand colonial buildings. And then there’s Little India, which is just too exciting for words.

It could be India, if the roads weren’t so nicely paved and there were a few beggars and cows about. But it smells, sounds and tastes exactly right. Pounding Bollywood music, glittering sari shops, towering temples, intoxicating incense and delicious, scoffable thalis…it doesn’t get much better.

We escaped the city for a day with a motorbike and a terrible map to guide us to the beaches, jungle canopy-walks and hilltop temples around the island.

Penang is so proud of its famous street food that there are leaflets guiding visitors to which hawker stalls sell what. So we planned our days around our meals, getting fat on more roti canai and sampling tasty laksa (a fishy noodle soup), powdery Indian sweets and Sri Lankan curry.

Turtle power

We caught a clean, comfortable night train from KL to Kota Bharu, the state capital of Kelantan in north-eastern Malaysia. This was mainly a stopover for the Perhentian islands, but we stayed a couple of nights at Zeck’s, another eccentric little guesthouse full of kittens and friendly staff, discovering another amazing Indian canteen, wandering round the markets and malls.

In Kota Bharu they love birdsong so much that they play recordings of it from the rooftops, and gather with caged birds for singing competitions. Pretty spooky when the chirping is mixed with the eerie calls-to-prayer wafting out of the mosques.

Then it was time for our tropical dreams to come true. We arrived on Perhentian Kecil on a juddery, vomit-inducing speedboat which plonked us at D’Lagoon, a small private beach and guesthouse. The sea was a startling deep turquoise, teeming with colourful fishes.

The wildlife on land wasn’t bad, either: giant monitor lizards would amble across the rocks, owls would swoop down to hoot outside our room, and tiny baby turtles flipped around in a pond, waiting to be released when they were strong enough to defend themselves. A sign on the wall threatened: ‘Dear guest, we are going to knock on your door when turtle come to lay eggs on the beach. Thank you.’ There was also a monkey on a string and a mouse in our room.


But there was no time to laze around – we had come to learn to dive, so we signed up for an open-water course. We spent the first night cramming half a textbook’s worth of mindboggling theory before we met Pierre, our smouldery Swiss instructor. He informed us that we would be diving to 12 metres that very morning, and I nearly ran off crying, scared of panicking underwater and drowning.

But I was glad he threw us straight in because it gave me less time to worry. Once underwater, the obscene weight of the air-cylinder and weight-belt vanished and we floated in slow motion around the coral alongside parrotfish, barracudas, angelfish, tiny bobbing clownfish and shoals of glittering silvery jewels. It was like flying, or floating through space.

Over the next few days we saw stingrays, turtles and sharks skulking in the depths between learning to save each other if our air ran out, navigate underwater and perform fin-pivots. It was excellent fun, and we recovered from three exhausting days in true beach-bum style.

Malaysia truly Asia

A short flight, a hefty ‘departure tax’ and a pot noodle later, we landed in Kuala Lumpur, all excited like.

The excitement was snuffed out the moment we laid eyes on the room we’d booked in the highly-recommended Wheeler’s guesthouse: a tiny windowless cell. Our first meal in Malaysia was in a gloomy KFC. Not a good start. But once we’d switched to a room with actual windows, we were won over by Wheelers’ unique charm.

It was run a jolly gang of gold-earringed, one-eyed or transvestited jolly-boys who kept tanks of giant, terrifying fish in reception; a family of sleepy kittens lived in the rooftop bar; and we were joined at breakfast by a monkey wearing a nappy.

The food got much, much better too. KL’s cuisine reflects its multi-Asian population – there’s Chinese, Malay and Indian restaurants crammed into every street. Malaysia is, as the cheesy advert says, truly Asia. After our first silly night we headed straight to Little India for a proper south Indian thali. Absolute heaven. We walked it off through the bazaars to the sound of Bollywood beats.

KL is the embodiment of that old cliché about old-meets-new: crumbly Chinese shopfronts, pastel-painted terraced houses and incense-clouded temples nestle beneath soaring skyscrapers and gleaming shopping malls. Ancient Tamil men in lunghis hobble alongside strutting Malay women in bright headscarves and stilettos. We explored it all on foot, when we could stand the heat, or by shiny air-conditioned monorail.

But mostly, we ate. We tore ourselves away from the Indian canteens to eat chilli-sodden fish, giant bowls of noodles and what would become a staple of our Malaysian diet: the amazing roti canai. Mmmm.

Two wheels good

We headed east, back to the mighty Mekong, to two towns perched on the riverbanks which were almost exactly the same. Kompong Cham was first: muddy streets, a riverside promenade and a big indoor market. It was surprisingly touristed so we ended up in a gloomy ground-floor hotel room where we remained trapped for most of our visit – the rain absolutely hammered down. We escaped during a short reprise in the downpour to cycle through a friendly Muslim village, but soon got soaked and pedaled back to the comfort of our room and Animal Planet TV.

In Kratie, all faded colonial elegance and Mekong sunsets, the rain held off. We rented bikes and rumbled up the river bank in search of Irrawaddy dolphins. We pedaled through pretty villages shaded by swaying sugar palms and creaky bamboo, tiny children lolling in doorways shouting “hello!” at us. An hour later we boarded a boat and scooted across the wide river, perching among grassy islets to watch the dolphins frolic.

We set out again the following day, crossing the river to loop around Koh Trong, through gleaming rice fields, meadows of velvety cows and orchards.
The food in Kratie’s restaurants and riverside stalls was inexplicably bad. Thankfully, the local market delicacies were a treat: sticky rice mixed with coconut milk stuffed into bamboo sticks and steamed, and banana-leaf parcels of spicy, raw fish. Most excellent picnic food.

Over sunset beers by the river one night we were befriended by an eccentric German hippie named Johnny Twilight. He was funny and entertaining at first, obsessed with crap British films and full of silly stories. But five hours later we were still listening to his monologue – he was intense and full of probing questions. We somehow ended up back at his room looking at pictures of his ex-girlfriends before finally making a run for it. We spent some time in Kratie avoiding Mr Twilight.


Our final stop in Cambodia was Phnom Penh. It was alarming to be back in a big city with roaring traffic to navigate and tuk-tuk drivers begging for our custom every couple of steps. Young Khmer people gather in the evenings in grassy spaces to dance in choreographed groups to blaring pop music, and well-dressed NGO workers dash between slick bars. We visited all the sad sights: the horrific S21 torture museum and the killing fields, with its monument filled with skulls and gaping mass graves. The Khmer Rouge atrocities were so scarily recent; you can tell Cambodia has had its spine ripped out.

On that happy note, we bid adieu to Indochina and boarded a plane to Malaysia.

Angkor and more

After building up our strength lazing on Koh Rong, we boarded a night bus to Siem Reap for the obligatory visit to Angkor Wat. We were fully expecting Siem Reap to be an aggressive, hassly place, as these tourist hotspots tend to be, but, once we’d recovered from a 5am deposit into a ditch swarming with eager tuk-tuk drivers, we discovered it was a nice, friendly little town. There’s a couple of sprawling markets, a lazy river and a road called Pub Street which is exactly what it says it is.

It was scorching hot in Siem Reap, so we headed to the Angkor complex as early as we could manage. Despite the searing heat radiating from the crumbling grey rocks, we had a good old explore. Angkor Wat itself, while beautiful, was the least interesting temple: Bayon, with its giant looming faces and Ta Prohm, all mangled with jungle roots taking over the stone, were the best. There's lots of Hindu symbolism mixed in with the headless Buddhas and fierce stone snakes.

The hordes of children and raggedy women selling bracelets and fans and water across the grounds were a constant niggle. Even more saddening, we discovered that the entire Angkor complex is rented out to private companies each year, so Cambodian people don’t actually make any money out of the whopping entrance fee. Unless they’re employed to cut the grass by hand in the beating sun, or drive us around in tuk tuks, or beg us to buy their trinkets. Or simply beg.

We bumped into Doug and Hannah again, waiting for the sunset on Phnom Bakheng hill. So we revived our flagging spirits with strawberry frozen margaritas and Mekong whisky that night, then spent a relaxing day at Aqua, a wide open-air swimming pool across town.

The monsoon kept up a steady presence, flooding our hotel in Siem Reap in a flash storm then holding us hostage at various points in our onward journey. In Battambang, a friendly town downriver from Siem Reap, we avoided it just long enough for to ride the delightful Bamboo Train. This is literally just a small platform of bamboo which rattles along the old railway tracks into the countryside – most fun, if you don’t mind a few bangs and judders.

We also took a cooking class in Battambang. We started in the market, gathering vegetables and herbs, then watching semi-conscious fish having their heads and scales lopped off for us. We learnt to cook delicious coconutty amok curry, a less-delicious chilli and basil dish, and fresh spring rolls. It was nice just to cook, we both miss it; eating out for three meals a day gets tiring!