After breakfast we met with the agent Christian and Elisabet got hold of. We provided him with the original documents. He had already started the process yesterday with the copies Christian gave him.

At 6 PM we realized that we would not get the cars out before weekend. We decided to go in to Kuala Lumpor and to take a look around town for a couple of days while waiting. We took a room in the Golden Triangle, the big bank, business and restaurant district. To get there we took a ride in a cool monorail train traveling in high concrete pillars across town.

Some cities one like instantly. Kuala Lumpur is that kind of city. A lot futuristic buildings , glazed skyscrapers and neon lights, but here it is not sterile like in Singapore; it is more alive and friendly.

Kuala Lumpur is also a real shopping Mecca, a lot of cheep and nice shoes, clothes and stuff. Bert bought 45 CD/DVD movies, games and programs. We are now well prepared for a few weeks rest on a nice beach.

Today we visited Menara Kula Lumpor, the fourth highest communitcation tower in the world. The highest is in Canada. After that Bert did some more shopping for CD/DVD. He also found three cool, fast drying soccer shirts.

Finally we have got the cat out. When we saw all the demolished containers in the harbor we felt lucky our car arrived in one piece. But we were still a bit nervous about the cars. Would they be emptied from all our valuables or packed with drugs.

Our shipping agent in India demanded that we’d leave them our car keys. In the Haldia Port they needed to open the already sealed container and cars to show the customs our chassi- and engine numbers. After that they said they would seal the container again.

We were not allowed to be present at this occasion. This means that the corrupted Indian officers could do as they pleased with our cars, for example stash them with drugs or whatever and we would be held responsible fort it all. In Malaysia there is a death penalty for drug smuggeling…

We asked our agent in Malaysia if it is supposed to be this way. He told us that were completely against all the regulations. We are supposed to be present at the time of loading, lashing and sealing of the container. After this no one are allowed to open it.

We can now summon the shipping. It took 5 days to get all the paperwork done and to stuff the container. The ship left the harbor 3 days late. The shipping took 4 days and we had to wait for 5 days to get the car out in Malaysia. That adds up to 17 days. 700 Euro Paperwork, TLC, transports, lashing, container, customs and bribes, shipping from Haldia Port, Calcutta to Port Klang, Malaysia. 200 Euro Paperwork, TLC, transports, unlashing, customs check. 400 Euro Air fare Calcutta - Singapore

Looking back on it all the shipping agent in Malaysia plays a different customs league than the ones we met in India. The Malaysian agent was professional, correct, no hidden costs showed up and no bribes. Also the customs in was Malaysia great to deal with. The really made an effort for us to get our cars out quick and smooth . They even worked overtime on our behalf! We recommend Dongnama Shipping, +03 300 58 301 if you need to find a shipping agent.

Ohhh, it is so nice to sleep in our car again – our home. Now that we have a refrigerator again we went to IKEA to shop some Swedish groceries. We also got a pepper mill, a big load of nightlights and a great meal of Swedish meatballs, potatoes, lingo berry jam and cream sauce. Yummy!

We also want to Tesco to store some western like food. It is great to find a real supermarket now and then. We bought feta cheese, Philadelphia-cheese, black pepper, frankfurter and beaked beans.

At the parking lot we met a great guy that recommended us to go to Blue Lagoon, the beach closest to Kuala Lumpur. And if we just waited a fem minutes while he was shopping he’d show us the right way out of town. 10 minutes later he showed up with some food for our journey, juice, sandwiches and buns. The Malaysians are really very kind and helpful.

Arriving in the Blue Lagoon area we stopped for lunch at a beach, and met Mike who where there with a bunch of students learning English. He arranged for us to stay at a private beach at the hotel where they were staying.

Catharina has gotten rid of her stomach problems. The Antibiotic treatment seemed to work. The diagnosis of Amoeba Dysentery was probably correct. Now we can eat sushi and drink beer again. At the supermarket we can get a fabulous 12 piece sushi 2 Euro! Sushi will probably be our staple diet here.

In the evening Mike invited us for a meal. It was a nice evening out with Chinese food and red wine. Catharina love red wine but have not had it for the longest time now.

Today Mike invited us for lunch at one of his favorite restaurants in Port Dickson. It was a busy Indian restaurant serving very spicy food. In the evening we got invited to their finishing banquet of the English course. Mike was the head of the arrangements course and the students was responsible for the entertainment of the evening. Catharina also got to give out the prices to the winners.

The Malaysians are really friendly and helpful. To get this kind of treatment arriving in a new country makes a lot for a fantastic first impression!

Today we went south to Malaka which is a must see in Malaysia. We where not that impressed and we spent just a few hours before heading on. The most fun thing to see was the fantastically decorated bicycle rickshaws. The divers all tried to outshine each other and some of them even had a stereo or TV in vehicles!

All over town we can find water machines where we can fill up our water bottles. For only 2 Euro cents we get 5 liters of filtered drinking water; simple, cheep and eco friendly.

There a great truck-stops along the highways. Cheep food, very clean toilets and showers – and they are free!

The roads are like a dream, smooth, wide, multilan and well signposted. The cars are modern, clean and without dents and people drive fast but very good. After six months in India we are not used to this kind of speed.

The petrol is extremely cheep, 50 Euro cents per liter. Great! Malaysia has own oil wells at sea. Not since Iran we have had this cheep petrol.

Today we crossed Malaysia from the west cost to the east coast – in just a few hours. It feels a bit a bit strange. To cross India takes several days. Anyway, it is on the east coast and on the islands we can find all nice beaches.

The beach we found as not to our liking. Today we continued looking for a nice place to stay towards Mersing. We fund a sheltered private bay with a small tranquil beach resort.

We were lucky. During the week they did not have many guests and they let us stay right at the beach for only, 1,5 Euro per night, including our own shower and toilet. We definitely are going to stay here for a few days.

We met a newlywed couple that was taking wedding photos at the beach. The sister of the bride knew some Swedish phrases. It turned out that her boyfriend had been working with the in Sweden very famous reality show “Robinson”. The reality show that has been running for years was shoot at the island Pulau Besar, just of the coast from here. Even of none of us where into “Robinson”, it would be fun to see the place.

Fishing Bay Resort is a great place. Today we rented a kayak to paddle out to a desert island and went swimming nude.

For dinner we had Abbas herring, boiled potatoes, Kopparbergs pear cider, Leksands Rye and Arlas Cheese – all proper Swedish brands and products we bought at IKEA Swedish Shop. The only thing missing was the spiced snaps we usually drink with this kind of a meal.

Yet another lazy day in the sun with lots of time for thinking, reading, Qigong at the beach and a slumber in the sun.

Today we took a speed boat to Tioman Island. Rumors has it that it is one of the ten most beautiful islands in the world. Our plan was to go scuba diving so we headed directly for Salang on the northern part of the island.

The coastline was bordered with white sandy beeches, palm trees swaying and a turquoise sea. This looked awesome!

Arriving in Salang we headed strait for a scuba shop to check out the dive sites and prices. We got disappointed when we learnt that the visibility had been poor for the last days; only 6-8 meters. We decided to let it rest for a few days.

Tioman Island is an island only for tourists. Even so it is possible to find reasonably cheep accommodation. We stayed right on the beach for 13 Euro a night. A sea food dinner for two, including beer is about 12 Euro.

We made an snorkeling trip to check out the visibility and the marine life. We went snorkeling at three places around ”Coral Island”. The snorkeling was OK, but the visibility was still very poor.

The high light was to see 30 octopuses, all about 20-30 centimeter long circling around the site. The was great! Before we only have seen one at the time.

After that we went to a really nice beach at ”Coral Island” get warm again. Even if the water is warm we get cold snorkeling for 40 minutes.

A day of snorkeling with poor visibility was enough. If you can not scuba dive or go snorkeling it is not much to do at Tioman Island. We decided to go back to the mainland. We like it much better staying in our car, where we have all our stuff.

Even though we don’t agree that Tioman Island is one of the ten most beautiful islands in the world we recommend a visit. It is a laid back place with lots of great possibilities for sunbathing, swimming, snorkeling and scuba diving.

After stocking up on food and drinks we went back to Fishing Bay Resort.

Already at breakfast we discovered that we where out of gas. And most of the day passed as we tried to solve this problem. In town we found several places where they sold gas in 40 liters exchange bottles, but no one that could fill up our two liter bottle with an Indian nozzle.

After several hours we bought a tube and a Malaysian nozzle and we got to fill up our two liter bottle from the big kitchen bottles at our resort.

But as we where looking around for a filling station we came across a bowling alley. We took the opportunity to make a few rounds.

For days we have had a mini ant invasion in our car. Today we found the nest with eggs and all and immediately we declared a war. We spayed the car with poison and cleaned it all afterwards. Hopefully we have seen the last of them now.

Not the right day for tearing out the mattress and washing the sheets and quilts. The rain was poring down most of the day. We are lucky to be at Fishing Bay Resort. Here we can sit at the roofed terrace during the showers; it really gets too cramped in the car when it is rainy outside.

Today we went Island Hopping and snorkeling at the Robinson reality show islands; Pulau Besar, Pulau Tengah and a few other islands. We had a boat all to ourselves and we could go exactly where we wanted.

Our absolute favorite island is Tengah. Wow, those beaches ! A real tropical paradise. We would have loved to stay there for a few days if we had brought a tent, food and water.

Unfortunately there were no sign of the shooting sights for the Robinson reality show. This year Robinson is being shot at the Philippines, but next year they are planning to be back on these islands.

Some of the islands were uninhabited. Others were sparsely developed with still quite small bungalow villages. We felt that the islands seemed nice, cozy and not too over heated yet.

We are now heading north along the east coast. But first we want to take a small detour to Genting Highlands. As soon as we start gaining altitude the climate gets cooler, nice. At the top, at 1 700 meters a gigantic theme park spreads out.

Genting Theme Park are huge hotels, restaurants, shops, an amusement park, snowland, climbing-wall, 4-d cinema, Ripley´s Believe it or not and lots of other things.

But it is the “Sky Venture – free fall simulator” that we are most interested in. Tomorrow we will go flying!!!

+20°C in the car last night, perfect or what? The sheets felt dry, smooth and cool against our bodies. We enjoy every second of sleeping here.

When we woke up we felt all excited. We are going to fly today. Wow! We heard some voices, looked out the window and found a massive police force outside. Luckily it was not us they where after.

Freefall simulator Sky Venture did not open until 12 noon. This gave us time to explore the amusement park. We did all the adult merry-go-rounds a few times. There where several roller coasters, one cork screw , shoot up and some other fun stuff to try out.

At noon we went for the freefall simulator. We bought 14 minutes fly time for 57 Euro. We started out with 30 each alone in the simulator to get a feel for the air stream and our free fall positions. Then we spent the rest of the time doing two way formation skydiving.

We felt a bit out of practice because we have not been skydiving for the last three seasons. Because there where no slick suits to wear or no weights our free fall positions were somewhat different too.

It also felt a bit cramped with such a small space as 340 centimeters surrounded by walls. Usually we can fly all over the sky.

But before we knew it we got used to it. The last two minutes we actually made a three-way formation skydive with one of the instructors. That was great fun! In fact it worked better than expected. But because of the limited space we could only do compact formations like ”donuts” and ”compressed”.

This is really great fun! All afternoon we went around with ridicules smiles on our faces. The corners of our mouths were up by the ear lobes, and it was completely impossible to lower them. To fly a free fall simulator is not at all an adrenalin rush. But still it gives us the same kind of feeling. Maybe skydivers are like Pavlovs dogs. Free falling is so completely connected to skydiving in our minds. Our brains think we are skydiving for real and reacts on that information.

Rumor has it that there was a SAAB workshop in Kuala Lumpur. We thought it was time to make a service. The last one was quite a while ago and we cover a lot of mileage.

At the SAAB work shop they got all excited over the guests from far away arriving in a very unusual vehicle. Immediately they started to work on our car; oil change in gear box and engine, change of brake fluid, 250 000 kilometer service, front suspension correction, change of air filter, mend the silencer etcetera. It was a real work through.

After a while the senior marketing executive showed up. He wanted to send out a press release and he asked if we could do an interview tomorrow and make some photos. Also he wanted to invite the SAAB 900 club members to meet us and to see our fantastic car.

While they where working on our car we where sitting in the soft black leather sofas in the air conditioned waiting room, using their wireless Internet, drinking espresso and watching TV. Feeling quite civilized actually.

When the work shop closed we went to IKEA and Tesco to stock up on food again.

We spent the night at the SAAB garage because they had to continue with the service today. The staff where great, we could use their shower and toilet.

There are SAAB enthusiasts and there are SAAB ENTHUSIASTS. We met some of members of the local SAAB club today. They got very excited over our car and invited us for lunch.

Shan and his family have nine SAAB cars. In front of their house they had six extra engines for taking spare parts from. In the hallway there were four extra car seats and they had a room completely packed with spare parts and special tools. Wow!

Shan also keep a website where he publish detailed instructions how to fix the SAAB cars and lots of other stuff.

Before leaving Kuala Lumpur the senior marketing executive Derik Tan Teck Lik interviewed us for an article to be published in two of Malaysia’s major newspapers.

On the way to the east coast we passed Genting Highlands, again. We could not resist the temptation to go flying the Sky Venture freefall simulator, again. It such great fun!

We booked us for four minutes flying time. Including skydiver discount we paid about 17 Euro. This time we managed to borrow real skydiving suits. It was much easier to fly in there suits. We practiced 360° turns and Catharina tried out new techniques for the 360° turns.

After that we went to se Christian and Elisabet at east coast. They had e-mailed us their GPS coordinates and there were no problem at all to find them at the beach.

Freaking hot, +36°C and really sticky. The beach is Ok but the water is mixed with sand and not that clear, blue and dreamlike as we would like it to be. The water has been like this all along the coast line. Maybe it is because the sea has been rough for quite some time now. It is just out on the islands the water is really nice and clear.

Today Christian made us his famous “stuffed calamari’s”. We have been looking forward to this since Goa. Yummy!

We planned to have crab for dinner. The beach is full of them. Bert and Christian were running around trying to catch them with a pot. They managed to get a few. But when the crabs started to eat on each other in the bucket we decided to let them loose.

Catharina wrote an incident report for the insurance company to get a refund for the hospital bill and the medicines..

The water is getting clearer. It feels much nicer to swimming.

Today we bought a big load of fresh shrimps for only 2 Euro. We decided to barbeque them on the beach. None of us had tried this before so we did not how it would turn out. We are lucky to have Christian, because we didn’t have a clue how to do it.

Before we had gotten all the food together it was pitch black. We had to peel the shrimps in the dark, and a lot of peel went down the throat…

Took our goodbyes of Christian and Elisabet, packed our things and took a swim before setting off north along the coast to Cherating.

Along the way we took the opportunity to take a look at the beaches we passed. There are a lot of nice beaches, but the ones we are looking for need also to have some kind of facilities like toilets and showers to for rent.

Cherating is a nice beach, small village and a very laid back place. The crowd here is both western and Malay people. We are parked right at the beach, and we use the shower and toilet at the restaurant next door. In the shadow under the trees we can have a glass of wine, or two.

In the evening there was a free show in the village with song and dance acts. It was in malay and we did not understand much. But one message from the information department got through loud and clear; drugs kill and dealers get hanged.

Take a look at what we found at the beach today; a monster jelly fish! We knew there was a risk of getting stung this time of year. But we had no idea that it was kind of monster jelly fish we could expect to meet in the sea.

In the afternoon we left Cherating for Cameron Highlands. Somewhat cooler nights would be great or at least non sticky nights. We decided to take the new highway. In the middle of nowhere we discovered that it was not completed yet. This morning we talked about the lack of adventure right now. Already today we got it. We had to travel 50 kilometers “off road” before we reached the asphalt road again.

Today we arrived in Cameron Highlands. We stopped at fantastic old English style place to have tea and scones. The Bala´s Holiday Chalet used to be an English boarding school in the 1930. It has now been very delicately renovated and rebuilt into a small and absolutely charming hotel.

We got served tea, scones, cream and strawberry jam the old fashion way in their cozy ”tea garden”. The gardener has been tending this garden for 47 years. I guess you can imagine what it looks like after that long time of caring. This place is really worth a visit!

Cat, cats, cats. The guest house we are parked at in the garden has 12 fully grown cats and 9 kittens. The cats sneaks in our car, hanging from our curtains; they are everywhere. A couple of them are really talkative, they are meowing constantly. It feels really good to have them around.

Jean-Jac gave us some tips. He has been traveling the South East Asian countries for this past eight years.

Started out with a visit to ”The Butterfly Park”. Bert got very excited over all the nice photo opportunities. Beautiful, huge butterflies that kept their wings open; instead of closed as they usually keep them. There were also snakes , lizards and scorpions there.

Afterwards we visited one of the many Strawberry Farms in the area, to pluck big, red, succulent strawberries. The climate in Cameron Highlands is quite like a normal Swedish summer, and just right for growing non-tropical fruit and vegetables. Strawberries is a big thing here even though they are proportionally expensive, we had to pay just over 2 Euro for one liter. We also tried something new; dried strawberries. They where extremely sweet, but still we bought some to spice up our breakfast porridge.

Today it is Malaysia’s national day. But it feels a bit strange. We have been in Malaysia for a month, and still we feel like we have not got a grip of the country. Everything is very organized, people are friendly, there are no beggars, everyone seems to have a good life, it is nice and warm, it is cheep and everything just works smoothly. For us it feels like being in a kind of vacuum, no surprises, no hardships - Malaysia just is.