Malaysia Tourist Trap Tips by D_Shannon

Penang. Yes, all of it.
I was told that I absolutely could not miss Penang, but why I've yet to work out. It's brutally polluted and not very interesting - lots of crumbling colonial architecture and little else to occupy tourists. If you've only got a short time, skip it - there's lots of good food elsewhere in the country.

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The jungle train.
One wacked out guidebook suggests that the views from the day jungle train are 'superb'. Yeah, right. Look, the first hour is fun and you get to see lots of greenery flashing by, but by the 5th hour you're a bit bored and by the 12th hour you'd like to slit your wrists because you realize that you've wasted a perfectly good day on a rather boring, rattling, hot train. Take a bus or take a night train, unless you have an awful lot of time to kill. There were quite a few tourists on the train (we all had the same guidebook) and we were all disappointed. Oh yeah, here's another thing our guidebook didn't mention: if you take the day train you're going to get stuck in a little crappy town which doesn't even appear on some maps. The train pulls in around 7pm but the connecting train for Singapore doesn't show up until 2am and there are no evening buses on to Melaka so you have to spend the night and take a bus the next morning.

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Light and Sound show in Melaka. The light show consists of green and red floodlights momentarily brightening the nearby mansion and A'Famosa and the sound show is a muffled account of Malaysia's history. Trust me, just go to the museum which, by the way, is free.

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