Fishing boats at sunset, Lovina, Bali

From Lovina we caught an overnight bus to Yogyakarta. The bus was extremely comfortable - seriously reclining seats, leg rests and pillows all provided. The only problem was the seemingly unnecessary delays - we drove for two hours to Gilimanuk, where we waited for an hour for a connecting bus to Java, coming from Denpasar. This bus drove for about five minutes to the docks, where we waited for nearly three hours for a ferry. In the meantime Daisy, a Dutch girl we met on the bus, was telling us how a ferry had sunk on this very route just the previous week - not the sort of encouragement we needed to put our minds at ease. However, as we caught the ferry, things eased up a bit, although Daisy had some problems as the Indonesian men would not leave here alone - I suspect that the short skirt and the tight top had something to do with that though. The rest of the trip was uneventful, although we stopped for dinner at nearly midnight, thanks to the delay, and we arrived in Yogyakarta around seven in the morning. After scouting around a few cheap hotels, we opted for the Selekta in Sosrowijayan. We checked in, had a cup of coffee and then went for a walk down to the Kraton, the Sultan's palace. This was closed (at least so we were told by a "guide"), so we went to the old Taman Sari or Water Palace instead. This was basically the sultan's old swimming pool, with a tower overlooking the pools, from which vantage point he would look down at his harem playing and summon one for "entertainment". At least that's the story, the truth of it is perhaps another matter. From the water palace we went to Macdonald's to get something to eat. I was feeling the effects (or at least so I thought) of the heat a bit, so after that Veronika and I went to buy our train tickets to Jakarta before returning to the hotel. That night was extremely uncomfortable for me - I had extremely painful stomach cramps and almost constant diarrhoea. The next morning I was feeling so weak that Veronika called the hospital, and a doctor was duly dispatched. He checked me out and suggested that I go to hospital. There a urine and stool test confirmed that I had gastro-enteritis, and they told me that I would have to stay in hospital for a few days. This was ok, since, as in Bolivia, the hospital was actually fairly luxurious. The only problem was that the doctors failed to tell me anything about what was going on, and we had to change our train and plane tickets. Fortunately, there was one Australian doctor working in the hospital, and she came to visit and told me what was happening. Eventually after three nights, I was released, healthy but still a little weak. We stayed in Yogyakarta, and at least for me this was ok, as Amidas emailed me some work (actually a fair amount) with a short deadline - my favourite sort. So I spent a couple of days in Yogyakarta translating while Veronika read and I recuperated.

The train trip to Jakarta was uneventful, save for the scores of hawkers and buskers who would board the train at every stop and pester us until they finally realised we didn't want anything. We arrived in Jakarta mid-afternoon and caught an overpriced taxi to the cheap part of town. I had phoned ahead to book a hotel, as the day of our arrival was Jakarta Day, marking the anniversary of the founding of the city, and so we figured that it might be busy. We chose our hotel solely on the basis of a statement in Lonely Planet that it had a pleasant pavilion for sipping coffee. The room was very basic to say the least, but cheap, and the pavilion was indeed pleasant. The area of Jakarta was none-too-savoury, although friendly enough, and convenient for Macdonald's and Pizza Hut, where Veronika insisted we eat to assuage her doubts as to the advisability of my eating anything that might have come into contact with, well, anything. We did nothing in Jakarta except I finished my translation, and checked my email several times to see if Iztok had responded to my queries about the text. After three nights in Jakarta, we caught a taxi to the airport and flew to Kuala Lumpur.

The contrast between the two cities is stark. Jakarta is dirty, badly organised and smelly, with lots of extremely run-down areas. Kuala Lumpur is clean, organised and relatively fresh-aired. Another difference is the cars on the roads - in KL, people drive new, fairly large cars, while in Jakarta there are incredible numbers of motorcycles and four-wheeled wrecks on the road. The buses in KL are modern and look fairly comfortable; public transport in Jakarta consists of decrepit minibuses which, if you're lucky, might have doors, but are more likely to have an alternative form of air-conditioning (i.e. large gaps where windows might once have been).

Water palace in Yogyakarta

We caught a taxi from KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) into the city for an expensive 66 Ringgit, although to be fair the driver was very helpful and must have driven us nearly 60 kilometres, so perhaps it wasn't so expensive after all. We made it through customs without any problems, despite my nervousness - we weren't stupid enough to carry anything illegal into Malaysia, but the very existence of the mandatory death penalty made me nervous, especially as we were forced to wait in line to go through immigration for about forty minutes while our luggage went round the carousel, available to any mean-spirited soul who might be tempted to dump on an orang putih careless enough to leave their luggage unattended. As usual we had problems at immigration, as the immigration officer thought Veronika was from Slovakia, which doesn't have a visa waiver agreement with Malaysia, and Veronika's attempts to explain that Slovakia was part of Czechoslovakia and Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia, while accurate enough, served only to confuse her (the officer) and to confirm her in her erroneous belief. Eventually though we made it through and customs was a relative breeze by comparison.

We checked into a cheap (by Malaysian standards) hotel and wandered off to have a quick look at Merdeka Square. This had been the heart of colonial Kuala Lumpur, and the grassy area in the centre of the square was used for cricket under the British. It was also the site of the Malaysian declaration of independence, whence the name ("merdeka" means freedom in Bahasa Malaysia). This name appeared to us more than a little ironic, since when you arrive at Merdeka Square, you are greeted with a large bilingual (Malaysian and English) notice informing you that such offences as "use of offensive language", "inappropriate dress", "the selling of any item whatsoever", "the consumption of alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages", "walking on any blade of grass" and "the removal of soil, seeds or leaves" would result in a 2000 ringgit fine and one year in prison. As soon as we left the square, I was relieved and swore profusely in several languages.

On the Monday, we slept in, had breakfast at our hotel, and went in search of the Thai Airways office. We wanted to change our flights from Bangkok to Calcutta and back, and at first there seemed to be no problem. However, it emerged that we would have to pay some $65 each, as Thai Air had put their fares up on May 1st, after we had bought the tickets. After talking to the very helpful woman at the office, she advised us to keep our new bookings, and to buy a discount ticket when we get to Bangkok, and then collect a refund on our original tickets. That way we should be able to save some money. On the way back from the airline office, we passed the Petronas Towers, allegedly the tallest building in the world, although there is considerable dispute about the claim. The so-called skybridge on the 41st floor between the two towers was recently opened to the public (May 1st this year), and we wanted to check it out, especially as the price is right (i.e. free). However, it's not open on Mondays, so we just got some information and decided to return the next day. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped in at a clinic to pick up a prescription for Lariam (anti-malaria), which was not a problem; we picked up further supplies of Lariam from a pharmacy. After that, we went for a chicken curry in Little India, and then explored Little India a bit before returning to the hotel.

The next day we did visit the Petronas Towers skybridge for a pretty good view of Kuala Lumpur.

From Kuala Lumpur we caught a bus to Taman Negara national park. The bus dropped us off at Kuala Lipis, where we waited for a boat to take us along the river to the park itself. While waiting for the bus, we met an Australian bloke called Nigel; as he was sporting a Spiritualized t-shirt, I felt obliged to talk to him, and we ended up having lunch with him while waiting for the boat. The boat trip, which lasted for three hours, was pretty cool, I must admit. The scenery was very pleasant albeit not as spectacular as our favourite boat trip thus far, from Rio Dulce to Livingston in Guatemala, but by the end we were getting a little uncomfortable.

On arrival at Taman Negara, we decided to stay in the village, as accommodation was considerably cheaper - 10 ringgit a night for a bed in a four-bed dorm, as opposed to an absolutely outrageous 43 ringgit (11 US$) per person in the resort for a bed in a twelve-bed room. Other accommodation in the resort was even more outrageously priced; an added bonus was the free ferry boat across the river for people staying in the village. The resort is owned by some people from KL, and virtually none of the money filters down to the local villagers.

Veronika has a close encounter with a Macaw in KL

We stayed in Taman Negara for a couple of nights without doing anything overly strenuous. One day Nigel, Veronika and I went for a walk through the jungle, which was quite pleasant although hot and muggy in the extreme. We found our way to the canopy walk, where for a small fee you can walk along some extremely rickety rope walkways in amongst the trees. The Malays like to pretend that Teman Negara is a wildlife park, which is frankly laughable; in our entire time in the park, we must have seen maybe six birds and a few butterflies, and nothing else. Still, especially when we walked along a quiet path through the jungle in successful pursuit of solitude, it was a very pleasant few days. As almost everywhere else in Malaysia (the exception being the Perhentian islands), the food was excellent, although the portions were so inadequate that we ended up eating two main courses each!

From Taman Negara we returned along the river to Kuala Lipis, where we caught a share taxi to Jerantut, which is a small uninteresting industrial town and service centre for the national park. We had planned to take the so-called jungle train from Jerantut to Kota Bharu, but we were advised that if we did so, we'd probably end up standing for most if not all of the 13 hours. Heeding this advice, and also some comments to the effect that the jungle train was wildly over-rated, we opted instead to catch a bus to Kuantan and then another bus up the coast to Kota Bharu. On our arrival in Kuantan, we found that of the six companies advertising buses to Kota Bharu, only one was actually operating the service, and we had to wait for several hours and would not arrive in Kota Bharu until late in the evening. We decided to book a room, which is not something we normally do, and I tried to find a working phone, at first glance not much of a challenge but due to the fact that the first seven phones I tried were broken, in fact more than a little frustrating. Eventually I found a working phone and managed to find a room at the second attempt, so we headed off for lunch. The trip to Kota Bharu was unremarkable with a couple of exceptions; the driver stopped after just 30 minutes to get something to eat, which struck me as a little disorganised. Then, just as dusk was setting in, the bus pulled up outside a mosque, and half the bus piled in for evening prayers. One American girl, apparently just woken up, thought it was a dinner stop and was about to wander inside in search of a snack when realisation struck her and she sheepishly returned to the bus. After a 45 minute delay, the bus once more got underway, and we arrived in Kota Bharu a few hours later. On arrival, we were accosted by taxi drivers anxious to part us from our money. As the place we were heading for was not far away, we politely refused and instead asked them for directions; as was probably inevitable, they sent us the wrong way, so that what should have been a fairly short walk turned into a two kilometre trek in the dark laden with luggage. However, when we arrived at the Ideal Travellers House, we were pleasantly surprised by a large airy room and a pleasant garden for sitting in; the owners were also extremely friendly and helpful. All in all, it was the best place we'd stayed in for quite some time, and also the cheapest place in Malaysia at just 15 ringgit a night, a real bargain. We decided to stay in KB for a couple of nights before heading to the Perhentian islands for a couple of nights; we'd heard that the islands were beautiful but expensive by Malaysian standards, and this turned out to be true on both counts. We wandered around Kota Bharu for a while, and discovered a reasonably pleasant if rather soulless town, and a place very much more obviously Islamic in character than anywhere else we'd been to in Malaysia. Almost all of the women wore head scarves, and the supermarket even had, much to my surprise, separate check-out lines for men and women. This actually suited me, as since I was the only male customer in the entire shop, I breezed straight through, while the women had to wait in fairly long queues. Another strange feature of the shops was that customers were not allowed to wear hats inside (or even carry them) or carry cameras or anything else for that matter, and they had officious security guards posted at the entrance who rather brusquely pointed me in the direction of a counter where I could deposit the offending items. As the counter seemed to be rather chaotic and none-too secure, I was reluctant to leave my camera with them, so instead Veronika waited outside while I went in for our supplies. The only other thing worth mentioning was that the supermarket displayed an absurd diversity of prices - bottled water ranged from 80 sen (1 ringgit = 100 sen) to 9 ringgits a bottle; I have to question the sanity of anyone buying the overpriced Evian, although I did see a couple of tourists wielding their French water.

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