Hello again, avid followers! It's been a while because we've been too busy having fun and rushing between buses. So, here we are in Penang on Malaysia's north-west coast, our last day in Malaysia before we head for Thailand.

We left you last in Singapore, from where we bussed through two sets of border controls to Mersing in south-east Malaysia. We were aiming for an island but weren't sure which; money eventually convinced us to go with Tioman rather than Besar. It was a nice enough place for a chill-out stop: good snorkelling and a nice enough beach with reasonable (in quality and price) accommodation and food. Pulau Besar would, we later found out from some fellow travellers, have been far more the paradise island I was after, but also three times the price. Our first full day we trekked over a headland to a more secluded beach called Monkey Bay where we were duly set upon by a troop of long-tailed macaques. They only got our rubbish, but it took a lot of throwing things at them to convince them to leave us alone. We tried some snorkelling, but the wind had stirred up far too much sand to see anything. The next day the weather was much better, so we spent that lazing on the beach and snorkelling. Very exciting, especially for Mark who'd never really been snorkelling before - not anywhere there was anything to see, anyway.

After our beach stop we headed for Taman Negara, a national park 5 times the size of Singapore with some of the world's oldest rainforest: 130 million years! How they come up with that figure I have no idea, especially given that the angiosperms that characterise modern rainforest barely existed then... but cool all the same! At the bus station in Kuantan (hal way) we ran into Steve, an Australian we'd met in Mersing who had also been on Tioman, who was also going in our direction. We found him again in Temerloh, 2nd-last stop en route to Taman Negara, where he introduced us to another couple, Mari and Alex, who'd also come from Mersing (and Pulau Besar). There was yet another couple of steamies (Swiss, to be precise), who were also jungle-bound, and after waiting an hour for a delayed bus we decided to all share a couple of taxis to get to Jerantut that same day, allowing us to get a decent night's sleep and an easy start the next day. A three-hour longboat trip up the river took us to Kuala Tahan, the village opposite the park HQ. After a bit of wandering, we decided to go for an overnight trek, and who else should be booked on the same one but Mari, Alex and Steve! The next morning we met another British couple, Rebecca and Sam, who were also joining us. It was a relatively straight-forward walk - sweaty, of course - and just as dark fell we arrived at our sleeping place: a massive cave! It was very exciting and surprisingly comfortable, though the animals that sometimes come to clean the plates during the night didn't materialise. The next day was similar, with the added excitement of an encounter with angry bees and a swimming stop by a river. Back in Kuala Tahan, we headed almost straight out to Jerantut to get a good rest and, more importantly, bag up our veeeerrry smelly trekking clothes!

An early start the next morning got us via KL to Penang in a mere 11 hours, including 1.5 hours of bus delay. And here we are the next day, about to head off sightseeing! Until next time....