After our adventures in Indonesia, my friend Charles and I decided to travel around the Malaysian peninsular, starting in Kula Lumpur.

Arriving in KL, we stayed with Christine, who we met through workaway. Christine was a math teacher in her thirties who lived alone in an apartment on the 10^th floor of a ditch-water-grey 14-story condo above a Kenny Rodgers chicken shop. Christine always took the stairs for fear the lift may collapse, always wore shoes in case the condo was struck by lightning, and never walked over bridges. You could say she was anxious, but I think I’d say eccentric.

On arrival, it wasn’t obvious what the work element of our stay would be, but it soon became clear there was no work. Christine dreamed of travelling, but until she could, meeting people from around the world satisfied her itch. Unfortunately, her husband Brian had got fed up with the constant stream of travellers staying and moved to Sarawak, for the moment at least.

A Mexican couple, Fernando and Diane, were already staying and were unashamedly gleeful at this arrangement they had stumbled upon – free accommodation and food, no work. They’d been staying for weeks but barely conversed with Christine, yet they gladly accepted the food allowance she gave them each day. As Fernando ate dinner, his eyes darted about and he morphed into a parasite before my eyes, a wriggling maggot feasting on easy prey. It made me question the selfishness of travelling, for it is ultimately a selfish pursuit – always taking more from society than one gives back. I told myself I’d make every effort to repay my debts later in life, and not become a Fernando, although there was no danger of that.

Happily, Fernando and Diane left after a few days and the sky brightened. Christine had a great sense of humour and loved philosophical chats, which she would engage in animatedly, speaking faster the more passionate she became. Most nights we stayed up late, debating what we should be doing in life, then went out to eat at the square below, which was packed with street food vendors, and stayed busy well past midnight. Malaysia is a melting pot of Asian cooking, and we paid homage to every cuisine going. We spent most days walking from restaurant to restaurant, sampling bowls of creamy laksa, skewers of meat dripping in satay, and bowls of noodles.

When the right time came, we left KL and headed to Batu Arang, a village fifty kilometres away that used to be the coal-mining centre of Malaysia. All the mines were closed now, and life moved slowly.

Just outside the village was Positive Living Community (PLC), a charity that provides a peaceful sanctuary to men with HIV/AIDS. Alex Arokiam set up PLC in 1997, rescuing men with HIV who, shunned by society, were homeless and dying on the streets. Since then, more than one thousand men had lived and died under the roofs of PLC, ending their lives with peace and dignity. A devout Christian, Alex had an aura of gravitas and wisdom and he commanded respect. I immediately felt small and childish in his presence, like he knew something about me that I didn’t know myself.

The men lived in ‘House 16’, the 16th house PLC had been relocated to, a white, thick-walled bungalow with three rooms filled with beds. Leafy green trees stood around the house, fleshy broad leafs growing in their cool shade, and the place was peaceful and calm. Just down the hill was a muddy pond stocked with Talapia, and a patch of dirt where goats, ducks, chickens and geese mingled. The healthier men looked after the animals, while those too weak sat under a veranda watching TV and arguing playfully. The idea was that one day the farm could provide an income for those living at PLC, and we helped to establish a plot of tea plants.

Charles and I stayed on the other side of the village in a simple bunkhouse with another volunteer, Marionne. From Lyon, Marionne had been studying social entrepreneurship in Phnom Penh for the last year. A pack of flea-ridden, mangy dogs slept out in the yard, in the shade of a longan tree and on arriving back from PLC each day, the dogs would hear the gate opening and rush across the yard, snarling and barking and usually ending up fighting each other. It soon became an exhilarating but terrifying game to open the gate silently and run across the yard to our door, shutting it with the dogs gnashing at our heels.

Also living with us was Jon who handled the finances of PLC. Jon was an ice-skating emcee with an appetite for grunge music and marijuana, not ideal when surrounded by drug addicts. He drank a couple of 16% ABV Atlas beers each night and had the belly to prove it, and a few hours later could be found asleep on a chair, snoring like a warthog. Chatting with Jon was hilarious, he was a natural entertainer with an encyclopedic knowledge of world history and a remarkable capacity to regurgitate random trivia.

In the evenings, a kind old man cooked us dinner. The poor guy was infected with a parasite and his legs were swollen with elephantiasis, his ankles so ballooned they couldn’t bend, instead, stiff like the trunk of a tree, his skin as rough as bark. Such suffering was all around us, but the men’s resilience was greater. Another man, Surren, had fallen from a coconut palm as a young boy and having broken a bone, his right leg had been amputated above the knee. He loved fishing and we’d dig up worms and catch tilapia from the muddy lake at PLC. There was nothing Surren couldn’t do, he proudly showed me how he rode a moped and swung around the garden on his crutches, shovelling gravel and digging the beds. I’d forget the men had anything wrong with them, but a few times Surren asked to borrow some money, supposedly for fishing tackle, and I was warned he’d spend it on drugs.

The other project we helped with was constructing a new building to accommodate more men. By the time I’d left, we’d created level foundations and poured the concrete base and I was heartened to recently see on the PLC website that the building has now been finished.

My abiding memory of PLC is the great characters I met. There was a group of young Rohingya boys who, persecuted in their own country, had fled from Myanmar and got to the Malaysian border. There they’d been beaten and held forcibly in horrendous conditions until people in Malaysia offered to pay to rescue them. They arrived at PLC barely alive and were staying until they recovered. These boys were younger than me, and I felt sick at the injustice of what they’d been put through.

After our time at Positive Living Community, Charles and I decided to go for a cycling adventure around Malaysia. We bought a couple of bikes from Rawang for £60 each and set off with not much of a plan. Taken from the diary I wrote at the time, here are some anecdotes and highlights from the trip.

We packed my small rucksack with a mosquito net, one change of clothes each, our phones and our wash bags and then left Batu Arang in the early hours. The road out of Batu Arang twisted through the jungle, and we soon came upon a troop of long-tailed macaques on the side of the road. As we cycled past, they chased after us barring their teeth – just the adrenaline kick we needed to wake us up.

The road was wide, the tarmac smooth, and as was the case for most of the trip, there wasn’t much traffic on the roads other than the odd truck that trundled by, passing us generously. Malaysia is a far safer place to cycle than back in the UK!

Mist hung over the Selangor Fruit Valley as we descended into the land of palm oil. Vast plantations stretched as far as the eye could see, land which was all once rainforest. There was something sinister about the plantations, perhaps the lifelessness and uniformity of them or more likely the signs proclaiming ‘trespassers will be shot’ and the armed guards of the Sime Darby mafia.

Malaysia is the second-largest producer of palm oil in the world (after Indonesia) and the plantations have expanded to occupy over 20% of the land with devastating environmental effects. The industry employs over half a million people and accounts for nearly 15% of GDP, and can we blame Malaysia when a huge amount of palm oil is exported to the West, where it’s used in 50% of packaged goods in supermarkets, mostly in cosmetics and food?

After a monotonously straight road that went on for miles we stopped for a milk tea and 100 plus in a roadside cafe, watched over by the local hitman- a guy with a big ruby ring, aviator glasses and leather shoes, smoking a blunt.

Eventually, we arrived in Slim River, a small town that was the site of an important battle in WWII between Japanese and British forces which effectively ended British hopes of defending Malaya. At the time I was reading a book by an idol of mine, Freddy Spencer-Chapman, who had spent time in Slim River. A British naturalist, arctic explorer, mountaineer and war hero, Chapman ran a commando campaign behind enemy lines that was effective enough for the Japenese to deploy an entire regiment to hunt him down. He survived alone in the Malaysian jungle for over three years, despite being racked by tropical diseases.

Just as we left Slim River, the freehub on Charles’ bike, a worrying mechanical problem to occur so early on the trip. We pushed back to the town, found a bike shop and had tea while it was fixed. Then we continued on to Sungkai where we found a hotel and a Chinese restaurant apparently famous for pork knuckles (with good reason it turned out).

As we set off in the morning the Titiwangsa mountains, the central range that runs down the Malaysian peninsular, loomed above us in the clouds, Mount Korbu at over 7000 feet. I realised that perhaps we’d started the trip a little hastily, for Charles was not a seasoned cyclist, and his legs were tired.

We got to Tapah and began to climb up to the Cameroon Highlands, an area of the Titiwangsa mountains that was recognised by William Cameroon as a suitable location for a hill station in 1885, because of its natural plateau and cooler climate. British colonials built a road up there in 1930, and people moved to grow tea and vegetables, and live in the resort towns where the air was fresher.

We cycled up this road through luscious green undergrowth that dripped with moisture and hummed with the sound of insects and birds. An occasional stall was on the side of the road selling honey and plants from the jungle, and stray dogs came out of earthy burrows in the banks of the road as we passed.

The incline was steep and we worked up a sweat, so it was a welcome break to stop and strip off at a waterfall to bathe in the cool mountain water. After a couple of fresh coconuts, we set off again up the twisting road, cooled now by a light drizzle.

The temperature dropped and we were engulfed by the clouds at around 1200 metres. Eventually, we reached Ringlet, an isolated, bleak town nestled in the bowl of a hill, that had the feel of an Andean mining town (although I’ve never been to one). Our search for a hotel was fruitless – there wasn’t one – so we had no option but to carry on to the next town.

Charles’s legs were exhausted, so we decided to hitch a lift. I found some yellow card in a bin and made a sign for Tanah Rata. I’d have to be selective, as the vehicle needed to carry our bikes too. In less than 10 minutes, I’d flagged down a white pick-up truck and we jumped in the back with our bikes. The driver turned out to be a complete maniac, driving up the twists and turns of the road at crazy speeds and overtaking cars on blind corners. I held on to a handle for dear life, convinced any moment we’d crash or be thrown out of the shallow cargo bed. The driver grinned as he dropped us off, either taking pleasure in scaring us or thinking we were impressed.

We cycled to The Chapel Of Our Lady Of Mount Carmel, a Roman Catholic chapel sat on top of a hill looking over the town, surrounded by a beautifully kept garden. There we met Father John who said we could sleep in a couple of tin sheds in the garden with mattresses in them, and we could stay as long as we’d like. Feeling very hungry, we went and had dinner, where we met two middle-aged Malaysian women, Apple and Angela. Like a couple of hyperactive kids, they chatted incessantly at a frenetic pace, and although we were had no idea what was going on, we understood Apple would meet us at the chapel the next day at 8.00.

Returning to the chapel in time for Mass, we met Elias, an Austrian man in his mid-thirties who was there as a missionary. Charles and I both felt a little uncomfortable attending Mass, neither of us being Roman Catholics, and both of us having nothing to wear but a T-shirt and shorts, but Father John knew this and had invited us to attend nonetheless. However, he began by reprimanding his congregation for not dressing smartly, and we couldn’t help but feel his eyes lingering on us. The whole service was very intense, especially since we were standing next to Elias, who worshipped with disturbing vehemence, shouting with tears rolling down his contorted face. Mass over, we went for a walk with Elias, who turned out to be crazy too. We were left unsettled and stunned as this devout Christian ranted about his plans to eliminate Muslims and create a super society.

It had been a long and mad day, and not one I’ll ever forget. Here I was, lying in a tin shed outside The Chapel Of Our Lady Of Mount Carmel with rain pitter-pattering on the roof, an insane Austrian neo-Nazi somewhere outside, and an appointment with Apple the next day.

We met Angela in a rather grotty looking pub that,  in fairness, did cook me a delicious banana chapati with three different sauces. Apple then picked us up in her car and revealed she was giving us a tour of the Cameroon Highlands. We had a bizarre day visiting some agricultural tourist sites including the Boh tea plantations, a honey farm, and ‘cactus valley’, but Angela and Apple’s generosity was touching.

We said goodbye to all of the characters we’d met in Tanah Rata and then headed on. The road rose and fell between the towns of the Cameroon Highlands and then we freewheeled for miles, following a boulder-strewn river that twisted down a valley through the jungle.

The weather had been kind on our trip so far, but after we’d had lunch in a roadside restaurant, the heavens opened and we were caught in a torrential rainstorm. The road was exposed with nowhere to shelter, and within minutes we were soaked through, the road now a muddy river. At this moment a boy approached us on a moped with a box full of ice creams on the back, and I think we were equally surprised to see each other. We bought two ice creams and ate them just standing in the pouring rain, having accepted our fate. Further on, we sheltered under a sheet of corrugated iron and getting cold now, hitched a lift to Gua Musang.

Around Gua Musang were some impressive limestone mounds that rose up out of the ground and towered above the surrounding land. Local folklore said that seven hunters were once climbing the biggest hill when a stone staircase appeared before them. They climbed it and at the summit six of the men drank from a bowl of pure water they found beneath a tree. On the descent, the hunter who hadn’t drunk from the bowl turned around to a blood-curdling scream, to find his six friends had vanished, taken by the God of the cave. Their bodies were never found.

We turned off the main road into Taman Negara national park, one of the world’s oldest rainforests at more than 130 million years old, and home to Malayan tigers, Asian elephants and Sumatran rhinos. It would be over 100km before we reached the next town and Charles’s legs were fading so we sat on the side of the road, and waited for a ride. Nothing passed for 1/2 hour, and then two Chinese aluminium merchants in a pickup truck stopped and we jumped in the back. It was a great journey with amazing views of Kenyir Lake, a huge artificial lake, the biggest in Southeast Asia.

The men took us to a house they were building in Kuala Berang and said we could stay in a spare room they had. It was basic, with just a mattress on a dusty concrete floor, but we needed nothing more.

Now on the East coast of Malaysia, the flat coastal roads were a welcome respite. We cycled through fishing villages, wooden boats lying on the banks of muddy creeks next to gnawed wooden shacks and continued our culinary tour of Malaysian street food.

One day the wheel on my bike became loose and we had to walk a kilometre to the outskirts of Chukai. There I found a garage and a man fixed it, giving me two adjustable spanners in case it happened again. Every person we met on our trip was so kind and generous. Hitchhiking was easy, even with bikes, as the first car to see our sign would stop immediately. Often we would stop to eat during the journey, and the driver would insist on buying us the meal.

The coast turned into an endless stretch of golden sand, and it was a joy to swim at the end of a hot day.

One night, I convinced Charles we should build and sleep in a shelter by the beach. I somewhat regretted this in the morning when goats had kept me up all night and my skin looked like salami from mosquito bites.

We continued South to Pekan, then crossed back over the country to Malacca via Muadzam Shah, and finished our tour in the metropolis of Seremban.