Malaysia

I haven't had access to a computer for way too long so forgive me for being behind on the blog.

Malaysia was crazy. We got off the boat from Indonesia in Johor Bahru - the second biggest city in the country. We had planned to spend the day walking around looking at colonial buildings and seeing whatever the city had to offer (not much) while we waited for our midnight train to Kuala Lumpur. We ended up walking over to the state police complex, which was a huge park in the middle of the city with Japanese zen gardens, hiking trails, temple-like structures, and a lot of joggers. We decided that we were actually waaayy too exhausted to see anything, so we sat on a bench and read for a while. Eventually we started walking down the hill to get back into town - maybe to find some food, maybe to find an internet cafe. On our way down the hill a minivan pulled up next to us with two Malaysian guys in business suits. They rolled the window and asked us why we were there.. two Americans with enormous backpacks don't usually stroll around in the state capital's police gardens I guess. They offered us a ride back to the train station. Yeah I know - don't get into a van with two Malaysian guys who offer you candy and ask you to help find their lost puppy.. but they seemed nice enough. So we hopped in. We never got the complete story, but from what I could gather, the driver was a Malaysian business guy and the other one was his friend from Australia who was visiting Johor Bahru to meet up with a woman who was flying in from a remote tribal village in Borneo to do a business deal. Their English was much better than we expected - they started asking us about our travels, where we were going, where we were from, had we ever had Malaysian food, etc... When we told them we hadn't had dinner yet, they said "oh, then we have to take you to the best Malaysian restaurant in town!" They cancelled their plans and took us to a place on the outskirts of the city where they ordered us 5 dished of incredible food and a few beers, which they paid for. They wanted to hear all about or travels and all about our opinions of American politics, they told some great stories about their part of the world, and they dropped us off at the train station - full and happy, but quite confused about our surreal evening.

We waited for a few hours in the sub-zero temperature train station, wondering why no one else was freezing and how it made any sense to waste this much energy on keeping the train station cool when the temperature outside was much more comfortable. At around 1am we hopped on our sleeper train and squeezed into our tiny beds. Luckily I brought ear plugs because the guy in the bunk below me was hacking up a lung all night (Brian wasn't as lucky...) We woke up in Kuala Lumpur and went to find a hostel. The differences between this city and everywhere else we had been were immediately apparent. It was much more rugged, the smells were overwhelming, the people were less Chinese, and the architecture was more interesting. After dropping off our bags at the hostel in Chinatown, we headed straight to the Petronas Towers (the tallest twin towers in the world) to get on line for free tickets to the skybridge. We met some Danish girls on line, with whom we shared travel stories and kept ourselves entertained while we waited. After we got our tickets we went outside to take some pictures of the towers and walk around the beautiful park on the other side of the street. We were approached by some Buddhist monks who bowed to us with their hands together, wishing us peace. They offered me a red envelope and a yellow buddhs-bead bracelet and asked for a donation in exchange for "a life full of peace." I gave them 10 bucks and watched as Novello struggled with them and their badgering - he managed to escape.

Much like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur is segregated into different racial areas, but these ones seemed more authentic. We walked through Chinatown and Little India and saw the Moorish style government buildings. The fact that this is a Muslim country is very obvious in the architecture and the conservative attitude of the people. We went up to the Malay section of town, which was separated from the rest of the city by a huge, walled-off highway. The attitude here was much more relaxed, the food was great, the architecture was very unique and Asian, and we loved it.

We went on our tour of the Petronas Towers, got some dinner, walked around a little more, and went to sleep. There really wasn't much else for us to do. The next day we caught a bus up to the Cameron Highlands. The drive was incredibly beautiful, and it was great to have air condition in the scorching heat. Three hours later we arrived in the Highlands, about a mile high, through a nauseating series of switchbacks. I had been talking to a girl from Slovenia on the ride up, and when we got off the bus we decided to look for a hostel together. From out of nowhere another Slovenian couple latched onto us, and we settled into a great place up on a hill overlooking the town. We went on an organized tour which brought us to a rose garden, a butterfly garden, a starberry farm, a bee farm, and a tea plantation - all important industries of the area, but not too exciting.

The next day we decided that instead of going to Penang, which we had heard was way too touristy, we would stick around and explore the Highlands on our own and then head up to Thailand. We went on a "trek" through the mountains in the Jungle, which was incredible. It was not a well maintained trail, and we had to climb over fallen trees and shimmy across slippery, steep drops where the rains had washed out the clay trail. The trail ended in a rural farm where we walked through working villagers and found the main road again. We saw a sign for the tea plantation we wanted to go to, about 9km up the mountain. While we were waiting for a car to see if we could hitchhike, a Dutch couple joined us and we flagged down a school bus which brought us up to the Boh Tea Plantation. We thanked the driver and said goodbye to the smiling kids and hiked to the top of the hill which overlooked the dramatic rolling mountains of tea trees below us. The temperature up here was a refreshing 20 degrees cooler than the lowlands. We sat down at the cafe, enjoyed an assortment of the local tea (the best tea I've ever had), and took a tour of the factory. When we decided to leave we asked if there was a bus or taxi that could bring us back to the town, but there was nothing available - it was pretty remote - so we left the Dutch and decided to start hiking down. We realized we only had an hour and a half to get back to catch our bus to Thailand, so we decided to start jogging, in hopes that we could catch a ride back into town with the next car that passed. The jog through the steep switchbacks of the tea plantation valley took us down one of the most beautiful roads I have ever been on - even rivaling the PCH through Big Sur. After running 9km back to where we had picked up the school bus, we still hadn't seen a single car pass (except for the full one bringing the Dutch couple back to town), but judging by Lonely Planet, it should have only been 3 more kilometers back to the hotel. Just a bit further down the road we saw a sign that said "10km to Tanah Rata" - we would never make it back in time! Luckily, a pickup truck pulled up behind us and we jumped in front of it to flag us down. A Chinese guy around our age gave us a ride back into town, and we made our bus with a good half hour to spare. We met up with a French kid who was staying at the same hotel, and set off for our night bus to Thailand.

Celebrities in Indonesia

WOW.....

I'll start from Sunday night. After we spent the day walking around Singapore, we headed up to the roof to see if my friends from Colombia, Australia, and Indiana were there again. They were and they were joined by a few fresh faces: a girl from South Carolina, a guy from Chile, and two girls from Slovakia. After a few beers and some great conversation about our respective cultural experiences, we decided to go out to a bar. We found a reggae club down in the Quays by the river and spent the night dancing to our own, personal live band, who took all of our request and danced with us up on stage. (There were only about 5 other people in the bar that night who we forced to dance with us --- Sunday night.)

The Colombian and I spent the night speaking Spanish, and it took a night of drinking.. but I FINALLY used my Chinese on actual Chinese people! And I was blown away by how fluently it came out! Very cool.

We also saw our group of first lady boys having drinks with some business men. I wonder if they knew or not...

Monday morning we woke up around 7:30 and raced to the subway station to catch a ferry for Indonesia. Of course we missed the train by about fifteen minutes, so we missed the bus to the ferry, and then we missed the ferry. The next one left at noon, so we spent a long morning reading in the ferry terminal.

We went through customs, which was WAY easier than I expected it to be, and we set off for the unknown. (We didn't have a guide book for Indo..) The trip was about 2 hours through a series of small fishing islands in the Riau Archipelago. Riding through the South China Sea was exactly how I would have pictured it -- old men in tiny fishing boats with cloth sails gliding along and riding our wake, tiny fishing villages on stilts over picturesque bays, coconut palm lined beaches, enormous cargo barges crisscrossing the straights. We were the only Westerners on the ferry, which foreshadowed the rest of our frustratingly short stay in this incredible country ----

The adventure started as soon as we got off the boat. This place is foreign.. after navigating our way through customs and getting our visas, we were escorted to the door and onto the dock which leads to the main village. We were immediately bombarded with taxi drivers and hotel hawkers. We had a posse of people walking with us and yelling at us as we made our way to the main road. My tactic of ignoring them didn't help at all, and Brian's tactic of humoring them with conversation did just as little. When we reached the end of the ferry pier there was a man with a sign that said "marrshel". He asked me if I was marrshel and I said I was. Accepting defeat, the posse immediately dispersed and we followed this strange man who knew couldn't spell my name to the main road, where he explained that he was sent from the hotel I had called earlier that day, to pick us up. We wanted to explore the town before we went to the hotel, so he said he would wait for us and drive us at 5:00. (4 hours later) We had no Indonesian money or ticket out of the country, and at this point with all the hectic energy in the town, we really had no idea what to do about anything. Luckily our driver brought us to an ATM and a travel agency where he helped to interpret for us to get ferry tickets to Johor Bahru in Malaysia the next day. (As we would soon find out, no one else spoke English, aside from maybe a few words like "mista, mista" and "face very handsome!")

We set off to explore this completely foreign and unfamiliar city, where most people had obviously never seen white college kids. EVERYONE we passed stared at us, most of the women giggled and smiled when we made eye contact, and a lot of the guys just watched or confidently tried out their few English words - "hello mista! how are you today!" We rounded a street corner between an ornate Buddhist temple and a very serious stoic looking mosque just at the moment that a parade with hundreds of children from all the nearby islands began to march through in front of us. The kids were playing drums, horns, and odd Indonesian instruments that I've never seen before. Already excited about the athletic competition they were marching to, seeing these two tall white kids with huge backpacks taking pictures of them almost stole their attention from the parade. All the kids watched us as they passed. Most of them grinning from ear to ear, some waving, others shyly glancing, but all very excited to see this spectacle. Like "the wave" at a concert, one kid would notice us and tell his friends and before we knew it the whole parade was enjoying our presence as much as we were enjoying their parade.

We found our way back to the market and Brian tried his luck at buying sunscreen. The vendors knowing no English and we knowing no Indonesian, the encounter was quite amusing. After pantomiming rubbing on sunscreen for a few minutes and turning down an array of lotions and oils, I remembered hearing somewhere that Bahasa Indonesia (their language) is almost identical to Bahasa Malaysia (Malay), so I pulled out my Malaysia Lonely Planet Guide and found the "useful phrases" section, and lo and behold - we got sunscreen! Over the course of our stay we developed a pretty good cache of Bahasa Indonesian phrases: "terima kasi!" "tidak!" "apa kabar!", which have been enormously helpful and appreciated.

After getting some suggestions from local girls who couldn't get over "how handsome!" we were (and no they were not prostitutes...), we took a 40 cent cab ride to this terrific restaurant next to a fishing village and had our first taste of Indonesian food. I had chili gong-gong (sea snails with HOT chili sauce) and Brian had spicy pepper shrimp - both delicious! After our 150,000 rupiah lunch ($4 each), we walked next door to a stilt-village, where some of the island's poorest people seemed to live. It was a little embarrassing at first to walk into these people's neighborhood with cameras, but we were met with a wildly warm welcome. Walking down the narrow wooden plank boardwalk suspended over the water, we passed a house with about fifty veiled women cleaning shellfish. When they saw us walk by they all started to giggle and cat call at us out the green, screened windows. We tried talking back to them and had a great exchange, with some of the more adventurous women coming up to the window to get a better look and try out their "mista, mista!" and the shier ones giggling to themselves and avoiding eye contact. We got a picture, which they loved, and walked down another boardwalk street. An old woman was sitting on her front porch holding a small boy who had clearly never brushed his teeth in his life. I asked if we could take a picture and she agreed. When I showed the kid the picture he screamed out in excitement, and we were joined by kids from all over the village. Seeing us was exciting enough for them, but seeing themselves on our camera screens was something they will never forget - neither will we. I snapped a great picture of Novello kneeling down with a ton of kids surrounding him smiling for the camera and all of the women hanging their heads out of their doors and windows trying to get a look at this extraordinary scene. Sad to leave, we caught a free ride back into town from the host at the restaurant, found our driver, and headed off to our hotel.

The ride to the hotel was about an hour, and it took us through the hills and villages of this beautiful island, past veiled women on motorbikes, roosters running through the streets, mosques set in the jungle atop hills of blood-red clay earth, blasting the call to prayer through the thick, equatorial air.

When we got to the other side of the island where our "hotel" was located, we pulled into a tiny dirt road where we were dropped off at the most breathtaking beach either of us had ever seen. This was no cheap backpacker flea pit hotel -- this was paradise. We were led from the van along the edge of a soft, white sand beach to our one-roomed, stilted bungalow overlooking a the sunset on the pristine South China Sea. As dusk became night, one-by-one little lights on the water would appear from the seasonal fishermen who live on wooden floating houses miles off the shore. We were served a traditional Indonesian dinner and fell asleep under the mosquito net in our bungalow, to the peaceful sound of calm waves lapping against the beach just meters from our balcony. We woke up early to catch sunrise, Novello went for a hike down to the granite formation at the far end of our deserted beach (we were literally the ONLY people there), while I went for a run, did some yoga, and meditated with my feet in the calm 80 degree water. I'm trying to be as visual as I can with this description because even the pictures don't do justice to the unbelievable beauty and serenity of this place - don't think I'm just exaggerating :-)

After a breakfast of mee goreng, eggs, and delicious tea with the son of the owner who proceeded to roll a spliff for himself (which I'm sure is his daily routine and a pleasant way to appreciate the beauty of this place), we went for a swim, tried out the squat-toilet (which was an adventure in itself -- but I will explain later), and reluctantly headed back to Tanjung Pinang to catch our ferry while getting an Indonesian language lesson from our driver. We were escorted to the ferry terminal by a guy from the coast guard who was about our age, and who continued to brag to everyone we passed that we were his "American friends". He and his friends at customs sat with us proudly as we waited for our ferry and continuously complimented us on how interesting we looked and how cool it was that we were from "New York". Every time Brian would glance over the kid was staring at him with a huge grin (a little awkward but all with good intent). After saying goodbye to our new friends and our new favorite place on earth, we hopped on the ferry.

In complete awe of what had just happened to us by complete luck -- we headed across the straights to Malaysia, not quite the same as when we arrived.

(I'll write about Malaysia later..)

Singapore

After 3 full days of being here I feel like I've formed a solid impression of this country/city. In every sense of the word, this is a melting pot. Much like the US, there is very little unique culture tied to the geographical location and historic population, rather the nation's culture is characterized by coexistence between many unique communities. This is pretty obvious in the language situation here. You think Canada is bad, mandating that everything be in French and English? Singapore has English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil (sometimes Hindi) on pretty much every public sign. There is no majority language here at all. English is the standard, but more people speak Mandarin (still only about 30% of the population), so communicating is interesting. There are different districts throughout the city where the segregated ethnicities are based: Chinese, Malay, Indian, Indonesian, etc... and each of these cultures brings its own cuisine. The food in Singapore is terrific, abundant, and cheap. On any given street corner there are at least two restaurants stalls from each culture.

Race definitely comes into play here. All of the native/expat Caucasians I've seen have been wearing suits walking around the business districts. Lighter skinned East Asians make up most of the population and seem to make up the middle class. The darker the skin (Southern Indians, Bangladeshis, and Indonesians) are the only ones doing manual labor. Interesting how that plays out.

One of the biggest things I noticed here is how much "left sided traffic" on the roads affects EVERYTHING. People walk on the left side of the sidewalk (I kept running into people the first day), they use the left door to go into a building, the escalators are on the left side and people hold onto the left handrail while people pass on the right. There are so many situations in which I never would have noticed the importance of "left and right".

The weather is really hot, really humid, and really wet. It rains a LOT every few hours but then immediately gets sunny again. Normally a good thunderstorm would alleviate the humidity, but here the humidity just changes from thick air, to a sea of rain, and then back to thick air.

Capitalism is definitely the way of life in Singapore, and it seems a little forced at times. For example, sidewalks randomly end and there will be a sign warning that crossing the street to the next piece of sidewalk is illegal and will be punished by a hefty fine. How to cross the street? You have to go down into the "underpass" which just happens to run through a shopping mall. I imagine any big business can pay to have the sidewalk rerouted through their store. It's a lot more expensive here than anywhere throughout the rest of my trip will be; the prices are comparable to New York at times. (I saw a pint of beer for 25 bucks yesterday!) But this is still Asia -- bargains are to be had if you look hard enough (a full street meal is about 3 bucks).

When I woke up on my first morning, I decided I would just walk around with my map and see the major tourist sites. I stopped by the famous Raffles Hotel, which was nice but nothing to write home about. The Esplanade is very cool. It's Singapore's version of the Sydney Opera House, but it looks more like the eye of a fly. I stopped at a "hawker center" for lunch, which was a sensory overload. Thousands of people, hundreds of food vendors, dozens of national cuisines, and very low prices. I walked down Orchard Street which is basically a 4 mile long tourist trap/shopping mall, and I wasn't very impressed. I strolled along Emerald Hill, which is I guess one of the early colonial neighborhoods which the government hasn't torn down yet to build skyscrapers. I spent the afternoon at the National Botanic Gardens which was definitely the highlight of my day. The manicured fields nestled between jungle flora and fauna, a 4 hectare patch of primary-growth jungle/rain forest, and an impressive orchid garden were worth the schlep. (Mom - your orchids would actually rival a lot of what I saw there.)

The second day rained continuously. I don't think I saw the sun once, but for some reason it wasn't as depressing as an overcast day back in New Jersey. I took the train up to the middle of the Island to see the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Buddhist Monastery, which is the biggest one in the country and very impressive. There clearly aren't many tourists that make the trip up there because when getting off the train and riding the bus to get there I got many confused glances. Walking around the beautifully ornate Chinese style temples and pagodas for a few hours was very peaceful. It was the first time I had ever been to an authentic Asian temple, so I was pretty excited. There was a large, open room with an ENORMOUS golden Buddha statue, where I got to spend some time meditating with the monks. This was clearly not an appropriate place for tourists and pictures, but I managed to snap one. After the monastery, I got back on the train which looped around the entire country in about an hour. It all looks the same - not much geographic or architectural diversity. I got off at the Chinese Gardens, which are a series of Chinese and Japanese style pagodas, gardens, sculptures, bridges, and bonsai trees on an Island in the middle of a lake. It was very cool. Afterwards, I was pretty beat so I came back to the hostel, grabbed some dinner, and headed up to the garden/bar on the roof where I met the first American I've seen all trip who is spending the first semester of his 8th year of college here, a dread locked Australian surfer who has been living in Indonesia for the past year (who is on his way to England BY LAND), and a very inebriated Colombian guy who loves New York. I'll probably go out to have a drink with them tonight.

Today I spent my morning walking around Little India, Little Arabia, and the Quays while I waited for Brian to get here. I was exhausted so I took a nap, and when I woke up and walked downstairs, he was in the lobby checking in. Perfect timing! Having been here for three days I have an idea of what is actually interesting to see in Singapore, and I brought him around the city on a condensed one-day tour, as we're planning on leaving for Indonesia early tomorrow morning and he won't get another chance to see Singapore.

Sorry that was so long, but now the blog is up to date!!

I've been posting all of my pictures, which you should definitely check out and comment on. Here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/MxMrshll/Asia

(It's also listed on the right side of my blog..)

That's all for now!

Never Take a 30 Hour Plane Ride

I'll start with a few quick observations:

1. Singapore is DAMN far away
2. To quote Good Morning Vietnam -- Singapore is "hot and wet! That's nice if you're with a lady, but it ain't no good if you're in the jungle"... I guess that's what you get for being 1 degree north of the equator. --- It's gonna take me a while to get used to swimming through air.

So, about the most hectic trip ever - I got dropped off at the airport Wednesday morning with an hour and a half to catch my flight. There's were now lines, and I had an e-ticket, so I should have been in the clear, right? NO! The automatic e-ticket machine sent me to the old fashioned person-standing-behind-a-counter, who told me that Singapore will not let me in. Since my only proof of depart from Singapore was a return ticket from Beijing in December, two months after the 90-day tourist visa cutoff, I could not get a boarding pass. My parents had left, and I had 20 minutes until my flight began to board - I was screwed. Since I didn't bring my cell phone I had to resort to the pay phone to get in touch with anyone. I tries the travel agency, which was based in California, but surprisingly no one was working at 3:30am Pacific time. After updating my parents with the new developments, I went back to the ticket agent to try to buy a refundable ticket out of Singapore which I would immediately cancel once I got there. Since my plane was scheduled to leave in 10 minutes, he gave me my ticket to San Francisco and told me to deal with it there.

Once I arrived in California I talked to my Dad who told me he had been on the phone with the Singaporean embassy who said I needed to go online and purchase a train ticket to Kuala Lumpur and print out my confirmation to show to the desk agent to get my plane ticket out of the states. After looking everywhere and asking everyone where to find a computer with a printer in the airport (SFO has zero public computers), I was forced to leave and take a 30 minute taxi into San Francisco to a hotel that had a business center where I bought a $100 dollar train ticket that I probably won't use and then take another $40 taxi back to the airport where I would have 1 hour to catch my plane. Of course the check-in line was about 1 hour long... Again, ten minutes before my plane was supposed to take off and ten minutes before my heart stopped from anxiety, I got to the ticket agent who said "so I assume you've heard your flight was delayed two hours?" Phew.... but that means I was panicking for nothing. I got through security, found my gate, and immediately purchased a big bottle of duty-free vodka.

Being in the international terminal of the SFO airport was almost like being in Asia already. I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese people who were talking about all the customers in Mandarin. Everyone waiting for my flight was Asian. The Indian man sitting next to me at the gate, with no social qualms whatsoever, leaned toward his wife and let out a long, loud burst of curry scented gas just to remind me that I'm not in Kansas anymore, this is going to be quite a culture change. They were, of course, sitting right behind me on the flight, but they moved up to the seats next to me because they just happened to be unoccupied. Somehow whenever a meal was served, whether it be Japanese chicken or ramen noodles with bread, the gassy Indian couple was served a special curry dish. Needless to say my flight was not the best smelling one that I've had. I took a sleeping pill which lasted 3 hours... It was a long flight.....

When we reached the Asian side of the Pacific and finally and saw land for the first time - Japan - I started to get pretty excited. I guess Asia had always seemed so far away that it never felt completely real to me, so seeing the Japanese landscape below firsthand was pretty cool. Flying into Hong Kong at sunset was beautiful. I never imagined it to be such a breathtaking city. Seeing all the signs in Chinese characters and hearing it spoken in the airport was getting me really excited for the upcoming semester. Of course since our flight was delayed two hours I had to race to the gate for the Singapore flight, which I just made, but not before Chinese bureaucracy decided that since I had bought duty free items in San Francisco and not in China, I would have to check my backpack.... just another thing to add to my anxiety level. I slept for most of the flight and was ecstatic when we landed, not only to be in Singapore, but to be finally done with the 30 hour trip.

I got to customs, very nervous that they wouldn't accept my train ticket receipt as valid proof of departure and that I would have to be sent back to the US...

The woman at immigration asks:

"Are you leaving by plane or train?"

"Train"

"Ok have a nice stay." Stamp, stamp.

Jeeeez... alll that for nothing. I pick up my backpack from baggage claim and see the Indian couple looking for a taxi. I helped them carry their bags and we shared one into the city, saving me 5 bucks. I got to my hostel at 2am and fell asleep. The end. I'll write about Singapore later, this was long enough.

Last Day in Jersey

I'm leaving for the airport in four hours for my 26 hour series of flights to Singapore. The past few days have been pretty perfect, and it has been great to see most of my friends before I leave. Last night a bunch of dedicated TCNJers came to the lake to say the real final goodbye to me (there were probably 5 nights that were supposed to be the final goodbye, but we dragged it out as long as we could). My parents are probably relieved that I won't be having any more parties until next summer, so I thank them for their patience. I got a chance to have a good heart-to-heart with almost everyone that stopped by, which meant a lot to me. Although Asia will be incredible and it will probably change my life, there's a lot about this place I will miss, especially the people I'm leaving behind. The rest of the lake crew came by tonight to see me off and pre-celebrate my birthday with ice cream cake and Belgian beer. What more could I ask for?