Big lights of the big city- have been eating coconut rice and everything

All getting very excited as we have made it to KL and this means we are only 200 miles from Singapore.

We have been lax in the posting on the blog stakes recently as the internet cafes that we have found have been highly unsatisfactory. The internet cafes have either have really slow connections or have logged us off for seemingly no apparent reason. We are ok now though so don't worry.

We have managed, in the last couple of blogless days, to meet even more interesting people on the road- a photograph will follow in the 'people we meet on route' album where appropriate.
The two most noteworthy people are a couple of Sony engineers that traipsed all around Butterworth (mainland side of Penang) to find a pulley for Wilma's engine. We discovered that the pulley for the alternator belt had jammed and that was why the belt kept wearing out and eventually broke when in George Town.
The Sony engineers also helped us to discover that it is neigh impossible to get a car part for a diesel part for a Citroen ZX in Malaysia; they ran around for 4 hours helping daddy and Tessie get the 100 pound part (1/3 of what we paid for car).

After daddy worked very hard at fixing the pulley- a job that, according to the Haynes manual only has a difficulty rating of 2 spanners out of 5- we set off for the Cameron Highlands in search of a respite from the heat. We managed to camp twice in the Highlands and worked our way through all of the free attractions: a honey bee farm, a cactus centre, a tea plantation and a rose garden that we paid for as we had not yet got into the swing of things.
The BOH tea plantation taught us the wonder and global influence of BOH tea and was one of our favourite activities of the day, especially as they had a tea shop with tea.
Drove up the highest road in peninsular Malaysia (2000 meters) and very nearly didn't make it. Even with Tessie and me walking, Wilma was coughing smoke.
In the Highlands, as we were going though the tourist guide, we decided to go to the ye olde englishe Smokehouse Hotel for the recommended cream tea. We decided to splash out and order one Devonshire Cream Tea for 25 ringets and one Smokehouse Cream Tea for 33 ringets because it included a slice of fruit cake. Suffice to say that there was an incident where daddy was forced to write an angry letter, due to the absence of a manager, bemoaning the size of the 2cm x 2cm x 2cm slice of fruit cake. The scones and tea were most satisfactory.

During the evening of our second day in the Cameron Highlands we accidental walked into a jungle adventure. We got a little lost in a park-like area -having just spoken to the park manager who told us that is was impossible to get lost- and decided to take what we thought was a path. I thought the path was most definitely there but it was covered over with the vegetation of the rainforest and as the torrential rain fell Tessie began to doubt my judgement.
There were scratches, scrabbling muddy hills, logs, bogs and a river.
When we were safely camped once more we all decided it had been a wonderful adventure.

We have just come back from watching High School Musical 3 (quite possibly the best film ever made) in the Patronus Towers where we tried to get a taxi from the official taxi stand. By the taxi stand was a sign telling us not accept taxi touts when none of them would let us use the meter. Instead we walked back in the rain. For the record daddy talks about 'jobsworths' with alarming frequency and not a day goes by without him mumbling something or other under him breath.

Dinner with a husband and wife we know through Graham who are going to drive through Africa. Off to see a factory for work on Monday before we make our way down to Singapore, perhaps via Malacca.