Tet Holiday Trip Pt 4 - Kota Bahru, Malaysia

Ryan and I arrived in Kota Bahru in the morning and took a taxi to the center of town to find a hotel. The taxi drive dropped us off in front of a hotel that probably paid him to drop people off, but when we went inside and looked at the room we realized immediately that this wasn't for us and left. We wandered around the town for a bit looking for places that we had seen in our tour book. Finally, we arrived at Zeck's Traveller's Inn and booked a room for a night. We took a really long nap because (at least for me) it was difficult to sleep on the overnight train.

There really isn't too much to do in Kota Bahru and usually people stay here for a day before they head to the Perhentian Islands. Since we didn't have enough time to go to the islands and still make it back in time to go to the Batu Caves and back to Kuala Lumpur, we only stayed in KB for two days and one night.

Kota Bahru is the capital of Kelantan - the Islamic state of Malaysia. It's a slow moving and conservative sort of town. Almost all of the women in the town wore the hijab or some other type of head covering. The Kelantan government wanted to put into place Shariah law which would have made separate sex everything - from bus stops to lines at the supermarket, but it never passed.

Ryan and I walked around the town and found something to eat. By the time we were finished it was around 4:30pm and at this time all of the museums or anything of interest were closing, so we just walked around some more and returned to our hostel.

That evening Zeck and his wife told us that we should go to the night food market for dinner. This is a place where lots of locals come to get some grub. People set up little stands serving all sorts of local food, you find what you like and you sit at a table. The tables are "owned" by the people who run the beverage stands, so wherever you sit dictates where you will get your drink. Someone then comes by and takes your drink order and provides you with utensils for your food.

I ate Nasi Kerabu - a blue rice sort of dish with fish and coconut. Ryan had Nasi Kuning - a yellow rice with some sweet/spicy chicken. Everything was absolutely delicious!


The next morning we bought some bus tickets to get a ride back to Kuala Lumpur that evening.

I had read that there were a lot of Batik shops in Kota Bahru and I wanted to find them and perhaps purchase some items. We took a bus towards the beach, about 15 minutes outside of town and near to where all of these shops are clustered. Once there we found a few shops and as we perused them Ryan and I both came to realize that batik (at least the stuff they were selling) is actually kind of ugly. Also, their products were imported from Indonesia, so that was disappointing.

We started to walk back towards the town, found a bus stop and waited. As we were walking to the bus stop we heard the call to prayer from a loudspeaker at a nearby mosque.

Once back in town we ate lunch at McDonald's. I know, I know. Besides the ice cream we ate at McD's in Kuala Lumpur, I haven't eaten at a McDonald's in almost two years. Normally I'm very against eating at one of these fast food joints, but it was there and we were somehow craving it. Afterwards, though, we said we would never eat there again....except for the ice cream when we returned to KL.

Later that evening Zeck took us to the big bus station in town and off we went on an overnight bus back to KL.