Travel guides, either printed or online, pretty much agree that there is not much to see in Kota Bharu. And right they are. One of the few sights is the big central market, conveniently located near the hostel. I went there with two fellow backpackers I met at the hostel. The market is, compared to the one in Melaka, a dirty and smelly hole. One of the butchers had sense of humour though and handed me his axe to give chopping bones a crack.

Yesterday an 8h bus ride brought me to the north-eastern part of Malaysia. It was another of these really comfy buses, definitely not the worst way to travel and definitely better than any train I’ve seen in SEA. At a time the ride got a bit painful when they started playing some Malay pop music. Worse than anything the 90s ever brought forth. We stopped twice, once for lunch and once at at mosque.

Once the weather got better, my stay in Cherating improved as well. The beach, almost depressing on a wet overcast day, looked actually ok with a lot of sunshine. Still nothing to write home about but definitely ok. The whole beach was more crowded today, that was probably due to a combination of nice weather and weekend. The beach apparel is a bit different to what I’m used to. Not everybody is dressing like that though.

Coming to this remote place that doesn’t even have a proper bus stop, I expected peace and quiet. Just plain nothingness, no frills. Unfortunately the first night was anything else but quiet. A nearby bar played music/karaoke till the early morning and that crap pretty much kept me awake for hours. Today around noon the weather cleared up and I went for a little exploration on the beach. Like all beaches in SEA it suffers from pollution, people are just used to dropping their garbage where they stand.

After a hearty breakfast with toast and jam I checked out of the hostel and made my way to the PWTC station. It’s about 15 minutes on the LRT from Chinatown. From the station it’s another ten minutes walk to the Putra bus terminal where I got myself a ticket to Cherating via Kuantan (RM 24.60 with Utama Ekspres). The ticket shows Kemantan as destination but you can tell the driver to drop you off at Cherating.

Getting around in KL is pleasantly easy with trains connecting the major destinations and all signs printed in Latin alphabet. And unlike in Vietnam it is actually possible to pronounce the words here. Today I was somewhat busy with work but I had enough time for a visit to a nearby shopping district. It’s not a very touristy destination, more a place where locals go and get their stuff. A lot of people in the area are Muslim and countless shops cater for their special needs.

I spent my last evening in Melaka with local couchsurfer Ping, who introduced me to some more of the local cuisine. They have a restaurant here were people sit around a table with a pot of boiling chilli sauce in the middle. All the food comes on sticks and is boiled in the pot before being eaten. Very nice stuff. Ping, being Chinese, could also shed some light on the situation of the Chinese in Malaysia.

Always on the hunt for a local experience, I asked my host where the locals buy their fresh produce. Melaka Sentral wet market was his recommendation. The term wet market refers to the extensive use of water that is used to keep the merchandise fresh and the floor clean (usually resulting in a wet floor) and I have seen them all over SEA. The market in Melaka is of average size and seems to see few western visitors, as a fellow backpacker from the hostel and me were pretty much the centre of attention.

My home in Melaka was the Backpacker’s Freak Hostel. No idea how it got that name, nothing freaky about it really. The staff are extremely friendly and helpful and went out of their way to make my stay a nice one. Being somewhat on a tight budget at the time of my stay, I went for a bed in their only dorm, a 4-share. The room is one of the few (maybe the only?

Melaka River Dutch Heritage I hope She’s not a Bride Shopping Mall