A month in Malayia with a visit to Borneo
A month in Malaysia with a visit to Borneo
Whilst we were in Thailand, we found out that Malaysia had finally re-opened for tourists, and although we had a ticket to Vietnam, it turns out it'd be too difficult to get a visa for Tanya, as she needs one to enter Vietnam. The time restraints we had in Thailand meant that we'd run out of time.
Being unable to get a refund for the flights was very annoying for me, losing about £150 each on the flights.
We booked to fly from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur. Landed in KL and spent a week at a nice apartment outside of the city before flying to Borneo with Malaysia Airlines, the infamous airline.
We wanted to visit Borneo as it's one of those places that most people never visit, full of nature, wildlife and mystery. We went to an orangutan sanctuary, and to see some sun bears which are the world's smallest bears. The animals are very well taken care of, which is good to see. Borneo is the third largest island in the world after Greenland and New Guinea. It's also split into 3 countries: Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. There's also a major territory dispute with Philippines, which has caused a lot of issues in the region we visited on the coast.
We stayed in Sandakan. The locals were very friendly to us and happy to see tourists back on their island. People were shouting out of their cars just to say hello and welcome to their island.
We had good food, stayed in a pretty mediocre, run-down hotel, then flew back to Kuala Lumpur.
We stayed in the city centre this time, in what we thought would be a very nice apartment. It looked nice, but 2 weeks in an apartment with paper-thin walls means a lack of sleep. We could literally hear the people next door snoring every night,. I complained to the company, who decided just to ignore my messages unless they were positive. They responded about cleaning, but as soon as I asked to be moved, or for some sort of help about the neighbours playing music at 6am, they ignored me. I thought it was a one-off until we moved to a new apartment near the airport, and that company did the exact same thing! Is this a Malaysian thing? Avoid confrontation by just ignoring complaints? Terrible customer service, which just doesn't represent the Malaysians I met.
We tried some class food, met a great Malaysian guy called Alvin who showed me around KL and a Malay village called Kampung Baru, which is literally inside Kuala Lumpur.
I'd return to Malaysia to visit some other parts I reckon.
It's cool to be in a country where the people are naturally kind and generally quiet, like in Thailand. It makes a massive change to countries where it's just constant chaos and people screaming at each other, pushing, and only thinking about themselves.