This morning we managed to squeeze six people into our little rental car for the short drive to the Telaga Tujuh waterfall. It is just 2 kilometers north of Oriental Village. Lonely Planet had said it was a 10 minute walk up to a waterfall where you could slide down the rocks. We were envisioning a waterfall like the one in Vanuatu, with a big waterfall where you jump into a pool of water that leads into a series of several tiny waterfalls where you slide from waterfall to waterfall.

We pulled into the parking lot. The “walk” is up a steep staircase carved into the mountain. The steps are made of concrete and there are benches placed every few feet. The trees are tall and provide good shade, but it doesn’t feel very “naturey”. About 10 minutes later we reached a sign saying there were 638 steps total and we had 367 more to go. We couldn’t believe we were less than half way up. Sigh. Huffing and puffing, we reached the top of the staircase in about 10 more minutes. We were disappointed to see there was no waterfall at all, just five or six small pools of water from a stream. A couple people were sitting in one of the pools. This couldn’t be the spot. There isn’t a waterfall.

We looked at a map posted near the pools. There were two paths Continue reading →

On Sunday, Eric’s cold was much worse when he woke up. He was feeling awful, and wasn’t up for going anywhere or doing anything, so we had a quiet day aboard Kosmos. On Monday (yesterday), he was feeling somewhat better, so we ventured out. The first outing was to a strip mall we had seen from the taxi on our way to Melaka that looked like it was within walking distance. It turned out to be about a mile walk. In the strip mall are 4 restaurants, a small grocery store, two small mini-marts, a clothes store, fishing store, and a store that sells cameras and does portraits. Across the street from the strip mall is a hospital. Up the street we could see an office building. Not much for excitement, but at least there were a few restaurant choices.

We chose an Indian restaurant called Cahaya Musthafa. We each got an order of paratha bread Christi egg and Eric plain and we shared the entrée, murtabak paratha. We were expecting small fried pieces of meat baked into the bread. It was actually a patty with the different meats all ground into it, along with seasonings, and the patty was in the center of the bread. It was very good and cheap. The whole meal, including three beverages came to USD $2.50.

Our next big outing was Continue reading →