Kuala Lumpur was better than I expected it to be. So much better.

Before our UK departure I'd read a whole bunch about it in guide books, from telegraph travel & on blogs - plus I used to have a very good Malaysian friend who visited often and gave me snippets of what life was like in the country's capital (great retail, loads of food, hot weather) - but yet I didn't anticipate the welcome we received. Being in this place, way more than arriving in Singapore, felt like the introduction to Asia we'd hoped for.

Don't get me wrong - the place itself doesn't exactly glow with glitz, glamour or even cleanliness - it was an undercurrent, a buzz - that it was growing into something really quite special. Its not a subtle charm though - all over the place you see interesting business ventures running, meet hilarious chatty people in the service industry, see kids, adults and old people in a lovely, heady mix of relationships - Malay, Chinese, Indian, Arab, White, Black. I hate using the 'Westerner scale' but the sheer number of expats we encountered was evidence not only of KL's importance on an international platform (of which I was fairly ignorant to) but that this was a viable & appealing SE Asian relocation spot.

So whilst we had more rain than not, whilst my camera died a quite dramatic death for the 3rd time, whilst we splurged ('traveller splurged' - read ice creams and 3 meals a day, rather than casinos and diamonds') way too much money and whilst we spent far too much time in our hotel room - we all agreed that KL was a brilliantly exciting start to this next stage of our adventure: Asia!

We spent much of our time in KL attempting to get from A to B with umbrella's blowing in the hot, sticky wind & rain. Particular highlights were our first taste of Asian 'street food' (I was pretty tame and went with banana fritters), visiting the Batu caves Hindu shrine and triumphantly reaching the top of the trillion stairs there in record time, being pleasantly overwhelmed by the sheer size and scale of the incredible Pavillion Mall (more shops, than you can ever conceive of under one roof - Westfield, eat your heart out), having a 3 hour private tour of the imposing National Mosque and then our special treat: dining at the revolving restaurant, 1099ft up at the Menara KL tower! This last bit, the meal, was ridiculous - Traveller 2 who is loath to do anything unless she gets her full monies worth ate enough to satisfy a growing family of 4. The buffet didn't know what hit it. The chefs didn't stand a chance. She was insatiable. Okay, well not entirely insatiable - after cake no.13 or 14 at dessert she called it a day for everyone's sake. But hey, traveller 1 and myself did our fair share of damage too; traveller 1 making several trips to the counter and myself after stoooopidly filling up on f***ing orange fanta all day, needing a 'tactical chunder' to be able to go on to the next course. Ladies, all of us.

Anyway, my last update ended with us sitting on the roof, by the pool - the story continues in that way onwards from KL - after packing up our hotel rooms (yes, plural - in the first and original room our water stopped working. We couldn't exactly see ourselves ploughing on without shower, loo, or sink, so instead of the mass upheaval of all our stuff - we'd practically moved in, wardrobes, cupboards the lot - we insisted they allow us another room to sleep & get on with those water essentials. The first room became a giant walk-in wardrobe. It was seriously cool) but yes, when rooms packed up and during travellers 1 & 2 doing last min checks, I ran upstairs to the 6th floor for a final farewell to the to the pool, to the hotel & to the city skyline view. Then we were off!

Our mode of transport was overnight coach - I'm a bit of an old hand at coach travel - school trips, to & from uni, excursions when living in Sverige - I thought traveller 2 was about the same. Turns out, not so much. Or at least, not on coaches without toilets. We'd been informed that there would be just 1 stop, 4 hours into our 7 1/2 journey to the port at Kuala Perlis. Not ideal, you'd want more opportunity to stretch your legs etc. - but for traveller 2, this prospect was positively terrifying. She'd been mentioning it all day "Omg, no idea how I'm going to do this.", "I'm actually quite scared, not going to drink anything after 2 hours before departure", "Guys, I genuinely just don't want to go anymore" All this culminated in dread, tears and a stomach ache which I'm suuuure, was brought on by anxiety rather than anything she ate. A bump in the road would rouse me, I'd turn to my left and see this sweaty, quivering mess with wide, wild eyes, whispering "Nay. I'm not gonna make it. I'm gonna piss or s*** myself." Then some sobs. Of course she neither pissed nor shat herself - when we reached the halfway stop she bolted off the coach into the apparent pitch darkness and was gone for 20 mins. Oh no, it's not what your thinking - traveller 2 didn't even GO to the bloody loo, think she just wandered for a while, trying to burn/out some of the hysteria.

We make it to KP an hour early and are cast alone at the side of an eerily quiet main road. Coach zooms off. It's just, some other tourist(/travellers) far too weathered to entertain our "Goodness me, what happens next" chat, and then a solitary taxi driver. I say taxi driver - he was a man in high waisted trousers & a string vest, with a car. These thing were enough to make him our taxi driver de jour. Survive taxi journey. Wait around for taxi office to open. Fight sleep. Fight, fight, fight sleep. Even my failsafe Angry Birds Rio (say something!) didn't quell the desire to drift away into dreamland.

A massive, soul shaking foghorn did instead. Tickets bought (18 Malaysian Ringett - nice & cheap) we were on our way. It was an interesting ferry crossing. It felt like they knew, erm, sort of, ish, that they should have given a damn (playing the health and safely video) but just couldn't quite commit to it (blasted mega loud Bollywood music over the top). Yes! Arrive in Langkawi and we have a direction to head in - traveller 1 knows someone, who knows someone who may be able to give us mates rates for our stay. I wasn't wildly confident - traveller 1 is one of the worst bulls***ters I know (a quality most would say) and the more she rehearsed her lines the more nervous and reluctant she became to even broach the subject "Hello, we're here from England and we...no, s***. I'll start again. Hello, we're friends with Neil who said, no, umm who mentioned that if we...b*****. Hi, good morning - no wait is it the afternoon? Hi, good afternoon can we stay here and get a special rate?" Etc. Turns out there was nothing to worrying about & the lovely Rasaneh who ran our hostel 'Melati Tanjung' was pleased to help us out and her front desk staff - Jeffery and Euan - were sweethearts. Melati was right on the beach - Cenang beach, THE most chilled out beach ever. Great vibe, never too busy and hardly anyone trying to sell you westernised package tours or nights out. We laid & played here for the full first day - the evening was a write-off; travellers 1&2 were justifiably shattered and I had a teeny bit of restlessness about me so I headed to an open, family run restaurant close by and watched the football. Second day we were sliiiightly more adventurous - moved more than 30 metres from our room and found a cobbler to fix traveller 2's broken bag, organised our onward travel from the island to Thailand and went to Langkawi's biggest shopping mall. So cute, it only had one floor of shops! Still, we managed to spend a thousand years there, I ate my first tasty Curry Mee and traveller 2 & I bought rubber rings in prep for all the upcoming goofy splashing around. A woman in a pharmacy there was in complete awe of my A) being black and B) being right in front of her. With this wonderous loose grin on her face she stared at me whilst I paid then giggled in disbelief after I answered yes, of course she could touch my hair. I found it so odd! She was sweet though and like many people in KL before here and in the rest of Langkawi after, she expressed a friendly curiosity about my ethnicity & british accent ("you're from England? Really?! Wow") not the hostile intrigue I'd been warned to expect as an African upon entering Asia. I shan't be foolish and anticipate all peoples to be as welcoming necessarily, but it was lovely to have at least one of my fears allayed in Malaysia. That night involved drinking, music, drinking and walking home via curry place - standard fare? Would have been had I not convinced the girls to buy 75% proof caribbean dark rum, thus ruining my life the next day. Vomming, sweats, in & out the loo - ghastly the lot of us. Me the worst I have to say.

After some faffing (which included the fixing of my camera - yippee!) following day we headed to the 'Oriental Village' with aspirations of catching the cable car up to a viewpoint of the island. The village was a disappointment - hardly any food outlets and rammed full of souvenir shops. The cable car was another matter. My fear of heights has gotten increasingly worse as I near my mid-twenties to the point that just looking up up at the cars ascending the rock face worked me up into such a state that I was crying. Crying in the middle of the day. In the queue to get tickets. Actually crying. Traveller 1 sweetly tried to calm me suggesting why don't I close my eyes on the way up, or read a mag to take my mind off it? Unconvinced, but determined I bought the friggin ticket and sobbed all the way up with my head in my lap. We had a chinese couple in our car who were snapping pictures of me, the hilarious wimp, as though I was part of the tourist attraction! Reach the top and my god was it worth it. Although there were hoards of people up there, the sheer size and scale of the platforms at the top, along with the way they were set out made it feel not to busy at all. Traveller 1 & I agreed it was the single best view we'd ever seen (praise indeed from traveller 1 who is somewhat of a 'view and scenery coneisour'). It was breathtaking - you could see right the way out over the lush green island, watching the forest itch with life and then out across the serene Andaman sea. Tried to take a bunch of photos, but don't think any do it justice. There were a few too many couple having tender moments, but really nothing could have spoiled it. We were up there for an hour or 2 just taking it in, was great. Later that evening after our failed attempt to get a hookah pipe, I strolled into town to find another lush-smelling eatery. Sitting down I was met Chombie and her very pretty daughter, Sophia. Chombie told me about her life on Langkawi - always outdoors she said, always seeing tourists. She said she had 4 children and that Sophia was 2nd oldest. When she discovered I'd been to Kuala Lumpur her eyes lit up and she excitedly sent a slew of questions toward me, occasionally slipping into her native Malay! She told me about how she'd moved to KL when she was younger, to work - just a short way from where our hotel was - and that she loved it. Sadly though, her mother died and her father sent for her to return to Langkawi to help the family & thus ending her dreams of a career in the big city. Sophia smiled as her mom spoke, looking at her proudly and affectionately - it was so sweet. Sophia talked; she explained how her hair gets messed up as shes on and off the scooter all the time and talked about her Facebook page. She said she didn't have a profile picture on hers and asked if I could take a picture & email to her? "Of course!" We 'vogued' for a while - my terrible camera in the dark never quite capturing all her lovely expressions. It's a special part of this travelling lark - getting even the smallest insight into the lives of the people who reside where we pass through :-)

On our final full day on Langkawi we woke up early for the island hopping tour we'd booked the day before. I'd hoped to find a tour that went to more than the 'generic' 3 closest islands and explored a bit further, but we just didn't have the time to do our research properly. We were herded into small passenger jet boats and taken to the island of 'The Pregnant Maiden' a gorgeous spot, so called because of the shape of the hills from the main island: it looks just like a heavily pregnant woman laying down. There it had a large freshwater lake - which locals believe can cure your infertility. Walking back to the jetty there were a few score brown monkeys. We'd been warned about them - nothing too dramatic, just that they were clever and greedy, so not to let them see your food at all. A few minutes after waiting at the jetty a distressed looking traveller 1 approaches, deadpan "I was attacked by a monkey" I laugh, but it's returned only by a serious steely stare. "No Nay, seriously, it's not funny - a f***ing monkey just ATTACKED me, it was so scary and I was alone" Traveller 1 has an almost supersonic ability to overreact in any situation involving her personal space or belongings. I later discovered that a cheeky monkey had merely jumped near to her and that traveller 2 was just a pace or two behind. It was like on the way into the island, when the wardens fired a loud shot into the air to scare off some of the monkeys (didn't work, they're right hard b******s) and traveller 1 turns to me and says "I don't much appreciate being shot at". SHOT AT. Pah. Anyway, we saw the big eagles, the symbol of the island feeding which was thrilling watching the big birds gracefully skim the water and pull put a meal, then went to another, more deserted island to chill and look around for a few hours. Was a great way to spend a morning. After that, our plan was to do a bit of hand-washing (oh the glamour!) then make our way to Tanjung Rhu - a deserted beach we'd read about, with white sands and supposedly one of the best sunsets in SE Asia. But, you know how it is, an hour turns into two, then you grab some food, then back in the sun, into the sea again, another hour has past and lazily we decided to stay on our local beach rather than take the 30 minutes taxi journey to Rhu. Am still gutted about that & if Im ever lucky enough to return it'll be top of my to-do-list.

That night was ruined by a disagreement between us all about nationality and personal identity. After a question another tourist asked us, "Where are you girls from then?" my answer "We're from the UK" sparked a rather unpleasant debate about when and why we'd each refer to our home as the UK or England. The girls summarised that my feeling more comfortable with the former was an affront to national pride and proceeded to wear me down through boring assertions that my being 'British' and also 'Sierra Leonean' ought to be secondary to my feeling 'English' which, personally for me is certainly not the case. Needless to say, it was a bit of an awkward buzz kill and we drunkenly went our separate ways home. All seemed to be forgiven the next morning though and we'd rapidly packed up the room together before boarding the first of our 2 flights to Thailand.

Would recommend a stay on that sumptuous little island to almost anyone - if visiting has entered your thoughts even a teeny bit and you've got the means and the time to get out there: do it. The people aren't friendlier, the food isn't tastier, the days aren't longer and the vibe isn't more chilled anywhere else.

Langkawi, you've been a seriously sweet treat. Thailand, you've a lot to live up to. Next stop - Phuket Town...