Why am I here? Its all decided by skyscanner
Malaysia was the cheapest accessible place to me after Nepal. Its also very cheap to go to anywhere in Asia from Malaysia.
I arrived at night almost 11pm. when you book a ticket to Malaysia through Air Asia they also offer you a bus ticket to the city and a SIM card for extra charge, Don’t do that!
I expected to get my bus ticket and SIM card in the plane but instead I had to ask in many places in the airport until I could finally find the place the gives me the SIM card and the other place that give me the bus ticket. I’ve also missed all the cool offers provided by other SIM card companies because you know I’ve already paid for it.

after the bus dropped me in the city I wanted to walk to hotel – can’t really afford a taxi -. it was almost 12am but the real problem was humidity. even for a hot country one would expect a good weather at that time of the day but humidity was too high. too high that metal bridges were dripping water. too humid that my mobile’s touch started to act funny.

Finally arrived to the hotel at 1am, I’ve booked in advance and the receptionist was waiting for me outside smoking a ciggerate
He told me the dorm is already full and that I have been upgraded to a single room. cool!
This happened to many many times after that I always recommend booking in advance but only for a day or two.

I didn’t take any pictures while in Kuala Lumpur. the city looked like it was just built and I didn’t like that.I couldn’t wait to leave to the farm I am volunteering at.

after two days in KL I took a bus to Kuala Selangor (Kuala in Malaysian means the point where a river meets the ocean).

a common scam at the bus station: You ask if this bus is going to destination x? the driver says yes and even charge you much less than what you expect to pay then drop you somewhere closer to your destination and tell you to take another bus from there.
I hated this.

Kuala Selangor looks very developed just like Kuala Lumpur but even hotel receptionist (let alone restaurants owners) couldn’t speak English.
Same fancy buildings and super wide streets.


Never seen spiders that big before

Finally I arrived to the farm where I will do my first ever volunteer work for 10 days more.

I slept on the top “bed”

The heat in the farm + humidity was unbearable. I came with the idea of wearing a swimming suite. that way I can regularly cool myself with water.

We didn’t pay anything for accommodation and only paid $3 for the 3 meals.
That included access to all the fruits in the farm including:

Sugar cane or as the french girl calls it shoe-ga

Coconut I’ve only seen it in Disney comics before

Banana

The housing was nice. It was my first time to stay in a house built by the owner and volunteers.

The dogs also gave some life to the farm.

only bad experience with the dogs was when I saw one of them holding a chicken from her neck in his mouth. the owner shouted at the dog then cooked the stolen chicken for him :s

So what did we do? farming, building more places, preparing land for farming, moving rocks, …
While doing the actual work no one could stop and take pictures but here are some photos while I am pretending to work

Finally saying goodbye

The farm was really international, nationality from left to right, top to bottom:
Malaysian, French, Egyptian, Kenyan, American, New Zealand, can’t remember, French, Spanish, French

Another picture with our Malaysian/Chines farming guide and one of my French friends

After leaving the farm I went to Malakka a Malaysian city with some great history. I regretted not taking pictures there. Malakka also had a port where I could take a boat to Sumatra (Indonesia)

The only worth mentioning story here is that when I tried to book the ticket to Indonesia the man checked my passport to make sure I am allowed to go Indonesia but Egypt was not one of the countries on the allowed list.
I was sure Egyptians are qualified for a visa on arrival but what I said didn’t help. he would tell me ok show me your country on the list.
Eventually he called a friend and its turns out that Egypt is called “Misr” (the Arabic name of Egypt) and it was listed under the letter M instead of E.

After that I took the boat to Sumatra