In the Middle of Nowhere in Raub

We had decided to leave the island today, even though we had only been there for two days. We had a long journey ahead of us around Asia and were eager to move on. Our next destination was Bukit Fraser, which turned out to be quite a long trip, taking us through some places where tourists don’t usually go—places where they don’t speak English either. Bukit Fraser is a town high up in the mountains, so the temperatures are more like a Danish spring. We definitely needed our warmer clothes since we had just gotten used to the heat and humidity. Bukit Fraser is also a great spot for golfing, which was the main reason we decided to head there. At 8 AM, the taxi boat came to pick us up and take us to the mainland. Once we reached the mainland, we grabbed a taxi to Kuala Krabi. It cost us 35 RM in total for a two-hour ride. Then we had to take a bus to Gua Musang, which was 7 RM per person for another two-hour trip. On the bus, we struck up a conversation with a 21-year-old Malay guy who worked as a housekeeper. He was very chatty, but as a Muslim, he preferred to talk to men, so he only chatted with Honny. After the bus ride, we had another taxi trip to Kuala Lipis, which cost us 40 RM for a 1.5-hour drive. By this point, we were quite far from civilization, so prices were starting to go up a bit. It also became much harder to explain where we wanted to go since no one spoke English. However, we managed to find someone who spoke a little English and was willing to share a taxi with us, making it a bit cheaper. Our journey wasn’t over yet, as we still had one last bus leg to tackle. We had to take a very local and somewhat primitive bus to Raub, which cost 4 RM per person for a two-hour ride. We decided to spend the night there and found a hotel close to the bus station. We still had some energy left after the long journey, so we managed to negotiate the hotel room down from 120 RM to 96 RM in total. In the evening, at the restaurant where we had dinner, we ended up chatting with a Malay-Chinese guy. His family had fled during World War II. There are many Chinese people living in Malaysia today. The situation is that the Chinese seem to think the USA is okay, while many Malays are against the USA, as they are Muslims and feel that the USA interferes too much. Our dinner turned out to be quite surprising since we weren’t entirely sure what we had ordered. We found some strange fish pieces and chicken-like cartilage on our plates!