By Maryam Shikh Nasir
Malaysia is known for its own weather conditions that can drastically change in a day from hot to wet or vice versa. However, not many people are aware of that. So, one should make himself or herself ready all the time and need to have a bottle of water and carry an umbrella. Sometimes it might rain immediately and there could also be a dry weather on another day.
This is the major difference between Malaysia and Yemen where I was born and raised some 20 years ago. Here is a nice environment which makes me interested to visit many beautiful places and islands of Malaysia. So far I have visited places like Langkawi, Tioman, Redang and Marang. Besides that, I visited Genting Highlands, Fraser’s Hill and Cameron HighlandS with my family throughout my five years stay in Malaysia.
I like the sea where I experienced very nice humidity at Langkawi when I visited the island in 2012 during mid-break with my family and my uncles family. I enjoyed a lot especially to sit and relax by the beach. When the sun rises, it gives very nice feelings that generates positive energy. Peaceful feelings come when you see the birds flying in groups. Subhna Allah, while walking under the morning sunlight, it gives me that fresh wonderful feelings.
The early morning sunlight makes the bone strong. Sunlight is the easiest and healthiest way to get vitamin D. The sunshine is important, which is almost as vital to life as oxygen. When exposed to sunlight, the human body makes vitamin D.
Moreover, it was my first experience to dive under the water to see many colourful fish that made human beings like me thanking Allah, the Creator. After that, we went shopping and what I liked most is that the night markets have many traditional stuffs that one can buy as gifts for friends and relatives. But what I wondered was the prices – they were affordable and very nice quality. This made people wanting to buy many and more.
Regarding the food at the night markets I did not try because the hotel where we stayed offered a lot of food for breakfast and dinner, and for lunch we took nasi ayam, and nasi goring somewhere outside which took us around 30 minutes by car. But at times we took heavy breakfast that can sustain until lunch time and we only took dinner after coming back to the hotel.
My visit to Pulau Redang was a worst experience of its kind because everything was so fast; booking was done during Ramadan and the second day of Eid Fitri was the start of our journey and at the same time I had to sit for my examination two days later. I couldn’t cancel the trip. And I had to come back to Kuala Lumpur and spent two days alone for the exam. It was a very horrible trip that I could not really enjoy my Eid holiday on the island.
Pulau Redang is one among the best islands, which also looks like any island in the West, with clear blue sky and the sunshine reflex on the brown sand, it’s really so wonderful scenery, very attractive to human beings, when remembering the Creator how everything is so beautiful and consistent. This time we had my cousins birthday and it was a surprise to all of us by my uncle who brought birthday cake and we had a small party to celebrate the occasion.
In 2015 during the Eid-Al-Adha, I visited Tioman Island with my family and this time around it was very joyful because my uncle’s family and aunty were here with us and we had fun and enjoyed a lot especially diving under the water and saw many different fishes, big and small in their beautiful colours.
The nice thing that I enjoyed on Tioman was the boat ride where we travelled together enjoying the sea waves. Tioman Island is one of the most beautiful islands in Malaysia known to the European tourists and there was quite a big number of them there.
We had many activities that brought females and males together in their respective teams in the games that were held. Truly, females team won many games regardless of the number.***