Oh yea... and we went to Malaysia!

In September, during Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving), we went to Malaysia. It just so happens that it was also our 1st anniversary.  Good gift? We think so.  We landed in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday night, and left first thing in the morning for Taman Negara National Park, the world's oldest rainforest.

Since we were on a limited schedule, we booked a tour company to get to Taman Negara. On the way there, we were taken to a "deer farm" where we were walked around a sad looking zoo and shown "exotic" animals, like this osterich, some deer, and some jungle cats that looked remarkably like house cats.

We also fed a sun bear and held a python. The other ladies with us on this little excursion weren't that excited about touching the animals, but Clayton and I weren't going to turn down the opportunity. It's not every day a bear eats honey from your hand!

After the petting zoo, we ate lunch and drove to an elephant sanctuary... the real highlight of our time in Taman Negara. We fed adorable baby elephants, rode them, and watched them bathe.

This little guy was so cute!

We were supposed to get to wash the elephants in the nearby river, but the water was too high that day, so we had to settle for this. It was still awesome.

Taxi? Subway? No thanks, I'll go by elephant.

In Taman Negara, we ate on a floating restaurant every day. The food was delicious and the view was amazing!  

 Our first night, we went on a night jungle hike, in search of creepy crawly bugs! Can you see the hand-sized hunstman spider in this photo? Not only is it well disguised, it is fast as lightning.  We also saw scorpions, centipedes, and a wild pig.

 

Jungle!

The view during our hike through the jungle.

After our hike, we went up the world's longest canopy walk. It was beautiful!

After our hard work hiking through the rainforest, we thought it was a good idea to spend some time on the beach.  We took a very long bus ride, followed by a speedboat out to the Perhentian Islands.  We stayed on Perhentian Kecil, the smaller and less built up of the islands. Be thankful you will ever see us again, because if it was up to us, we would probably still be there. It was the most beautiful place.

We spent some time on the beach, snorkeled, and just relaxed. We ate delcious meals of bbq baracuda, king fish,  fresh coconut milkshakes, and malaysian noodles.

We went snorkeling and tried out out underwater camera. It was both of our first time snorkeling, and we loved it!

We threw bread out for some of the smaller fish. But we also saw sharks, and some giant fish whose names we don't know.

We also saw a sea turtle! He was so cute! We were able to swim close to him and watch while he went up and down for air.  As with all sea turtles, this guy is endangered. There were signs all around the island warning against touching them.

Island butterfly.

One of the nights, we went to the other side of the island and watched a fire show. It was pretty incredible. The guy who did most of it was foreign. We imagined that he just showed up on the island one day and never left. A tempting thought...

The view from our bungalow and around the island. 

 

After the island glory, we went back to Kuala Lumpur to experience a little grungy city life. We went to several markets in the city, including one in Little India. We also went to the night market in China town, where we haggled to our heart's content.

 Our second day in KL, we woke up early and headed over to the famouse Petronus Towers. Despite getting there early, we would have had to wait for hours to actually go up the towers, so we took photos outside and went up the KL Tower instead, where we got lovely views of the city and of the towers.

After the towers, we headed out to see the Batu Caves. The Batu Caves hold a large Hindu temple, and many monkeys. This one seems friendly, but don't be fooled. In the temple itself, we were chased by a monkey who attempted to steal the remainder of Clayton's lunch.  The monkey actually launched himself off some stairs and swung on the bag before we made it out.

Given my love of henna, I couldn't turn down this lady who was outside of the caves. She did an amazing job, and she was incredibly sweet. In fact, almost everyone we met in Malaysia was very nice. We really enjoyed our time there.

We were very glad that we took the time to go to the Batu Caves. The multitude of stairs were well worth the climb. The inside of the caves were beautiful. There was moss growing up the side of them, and huge openings where sunlight could shine through. It was a very pleasant end to a wonderful vacation.  We would definitely visit Malaysia again.