Stuff in Penang

Okay, after 4 long days in Penang, I have finally decided I have without a doubt seen it all. I finished my time by going to The Museum of Penang (which is a decent overview of the area's history as well as the various inhabitants of the city...which in my opinion is what makes Penang so special..it's a bit like American when you consider all of the different races, religions, and beliefs that have managed to converge on a relatively small island.) and have tea at the E & O hotel (which is Penang's oldest and most famous hotel...definately a beautiful place, and since the guy sitting behind me was wearing a complete Khaki jungle-trekking-like ensemble, minus the hat...I feel that I may have also been able to channel the spirit of Rudyard Kipling...one of the hotels many famous writer guests...did I mention the man had a fantastic facial hair...white mutton chops, and mustache...fabulous!!)

Anyhow, all of the touring has been fun...but I think my most favorite memory of Penang would have to be something I saw yesterday while wandering thru the botanical gardens....I was walking down a path and noticed a girl and her boyfriend walking toward me, everything seemed really peaceful and quiet...then all of the sudden a monkey came charging from the forest, down the hill, toward the girl....She of course started laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole incident...but the monkey just got frustrated, and started to screech and beg her for her can of 100 plus (Malaysia's version of Gatorade)...so she threw her straw at the monkey, thinking that would deter him long enough for her to escape...but the monkey was a smart little bugger, because he completely ignored the straw, he kept his eye on the prize, and refused to let the girl pass until she had put her can on the ground in front of him....Then he did what all monkeys must do when presented with a beverage in a can...he wrapped his monkey paws around it, picked it up, and drank straight out of the can...didn't spill a drop. It was fantastic!!!! That monkey must have really been dehydrated and in need of electrolytes, because he didn't stop drinking until the can was empty...I couldn't believe it....I know, it's wrong on many levels..and people shouldn't feed wild animals...but come on, it was pretty funny that this monkey knew exactly what to do with the can...

Other things I find funny about Penang...absolutely nobody in the country knows the number for directory assistance...or more specifically..how to reach the operator. I spent a couple of hours yesterday wrestling with the phone system as I had to reconfirm my flight to Bali, and since everything connected with Garuda Indonesia Airlines was closed and unreachable (I had 2 different travel agents (one in Japan and one in Malaysia) working on this simultaneously as well as a very frustrating search on the internet on my part) and all I needed to do was get ahold of directory assistance and ask them to explain to me, WHY THE PAY PHONES IN PENANG SAY THEY WILL DO INTERNATIONAL CALLS, YET SEEM UNABLE TO ACTUALLY ACHIEVE THIS SIMPLE TASK....I asked everyone for the number for the operator (no 0 does not work in this country)...I asked bums on the street, taxi drivers, people who sold phone cards, and people who sold cellphones...I asked the workers at McDonalds, and the Baristas at Starbucks...I asked so many people, then finally found a phonebook in my hotel room...and you know, it turns out Malaysia does not have an operator (international or otherwise) and if they do, they certainly don't advertise it....But the good news is that I did finally get my flight confirmed (if you don't confirm your flight with this company they will give up your seat...even if you have a ticket...sucks I know) I simply had to call Jakarta to do it...and after discussing the astronomical fees of making such a call from my hotel room, I conceeded as I was so over the whole payphone thing. Boy, do I miss my cellphone!!!


Lastly, One thing I still can't seem to get over, is the amount of men I see randomly walking down the steet or hanging out in the eleavator wearing sarongs. I mean there really isn't anything wrong with it, as I have many guy friends who hang out at the beach or around their homes wearing sarongs......but it just seems like such a crazy traveler thing to do, not a "tough guy walking down the street" kind of thing...Whatever, it's totally not an issue, just an observation that I find amusing.

Tomorrow I leave for 15 days in Bali...getting there means that I will have completed a small goal that I had for the year...I wanted to have visited 25 countries before I hit 30...and since I had been all over Europe while I studied abroad during my early 20s, I only had 6 countries left to visit before I headed back to the States. And in going to Bali, Indonesia..I will have hit country number 25.

Oh and in case you were wondering the 6 countries that I did this year are: Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, and tomorrow Indonesia. (Japan and Korea didn't count, as I had visited both of them before.)

I find this so wierd...

I have 4 days in Penang...that is about 3 days longer then one actually needs to be in this town, as there isn't much to do. But I miscalculated the amount of time I needed to be here, and realized after I had paid for my room that I would need to be here and extra day or two....so I call this my vacation from my vacation, as I have taken to reading trashy novels and watching all of the movies I can see at the movie theatre...

Speaking of which, I think that it is such a strange thing that at the mall in Penang, you can go to the movie at the theatre then walk back out to the mall and buy the DVD of the movie you just saw...or better yet, buy the DVD of the movies that have yet to be released, but were previewed in the trailers before the movie started...The pirate movie industry of south east asia is actually pretty ridiculous, as there really don't seem to be any enforced regulations...and it is not that wierd to turn on the TV in the hotelroom that I am staying in and find a pirated movie playing on their version of a movie channel....just the other day I tuned into that new Hilary Duff/Chris Noth movie...it was a bit fuzzy and it did come with its own laugh track...What the heck?? So I started asking people about it, and it turns out that pirated movies are so popular and widely purchased that movie theatres are closing up in Malaysia, because people would rather just buy the cheap fake version instead...I am appalled by this, especially since the quality of all of the versions that I have seen on TV are horrendous...its not even like they are trying to hide the fact that things are pirated....

Okay, enough about my rant on piracy....

I made it out of Cambodia

Flight-wise everything went smoothly...although, as I was leaving Siem Riep a girl got onto the plane wearing a SARS mask and visibly feverish...and of course my flight Karma being so amazing...she sat next to me (well the aisle across from me). The flight attendants were discussing whether or not to let her on the flight but decided since the flight was only an hour long, not to worry about it. So of course I ask to move seats, but therr isn't anything they can do as the flight is full....so I sit and watch her, and think, "I hope to God she just has food poisoning." In fact at the end of the flight I actually asked her friend if it was food poisoning...her friend said (in broken English), "She has the flu"...Yeah, well I hope it isn't bird flu...as we were in an area that is known to have been infected by SARS.

After I got off the flight and felt it would be okay to take a deep cleansing breath of fresh-ish air (I mean, I was still in the airport, just not on the flight with the re-circulated air) I looked out the window and saw the girl being escorted to an ambulance..."Great, just great...I guess it really and trully isn't food poisoning."

On the plus side, I made it safe and sound to Penang, Malaysia.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

At the last minute (well right about the time I arrived in Saigon) I decided to take a short trip to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. It is only about a one hour flight from Saigon, so I figured...Why not? Unfortunately, because I made up my mind to do this only 2 days before leaving, I didn't have time to shop for travel agents, instead I just had to trust the Hotel's service...which turned out to be a mistake, as they really messed up my flight leaving Cambodia...(Keep your fingers crossed for me, because in about 2 hours, I will find out if things will work out or not...if they don't, I may be spending the night at the Saigon airport..i.e. like in the movie The Terminal...as I don't have a re-entry visa for Vietnam, so I won't be allowed back into the country...and there won't be any flights out of the country until the next day...But I'll keep you posted on that.)

Anyhow, back to my story...so Siem Reap...Wow!!! What a cool place!.. I really love it here (coupled with the fact that my hotel somehow confused my reservations and I got upgraded to an Executive Suite that is bigger then my last apartment and has two bathrooms, really who could complain!)...I spent an entire day exploring the Angkor Wat archeaological site (man my spelling is getting worse by the day...sorry!!), there was so much to see, and my driver really managed to work it out so that I was visiting stuff at times when there were hardly any tourists around...which confused me at first, because I didn't understand why I was visiting Angkor Thom before Angkor Wat..but whatever, it worked out perfectly!!! So there I was, wandering the ruins of some of the most incredible buildings I had ever seen (I kept imagining myself to be Lara Croft, as it really did feel like I was discovering some sort of hidden treasure)...and as of now, most of the buildings are still open for people to walk thru, so it's not like Stonehenge or the Pyramids, where they have a fence around the monuments and you can't actually go near them...I was able to walk right up to them and touch them and really explore the structures.

My most favorite site was Banteay Srai (which is the Women's temple), it was probably the best preserved of all of the sites, and the structure itself was a miniature version of all of the main structures (and by miniture I mean of a smaller scale, you could still walk thru it, but things were about 5xs smaller)..the buildings were set inside a moat that was filled with water lilies and lily pads, then outside of that there was some really dense jungles...the place had such a magical feel to it that I would not have been surprised if someone told me that I had discovered a Fairy kingdom, because those are exactly the types of inhabitants that belong there.

Well after a long day of trekking and exploring, I headed back into town to explore the Old Market...which was like most of the markets of South East Asia, selling produce and meat (I am so going Vegetarian, I am not sure how many more dead chickens or headless pigs I can see without freaking out...and the smell of rank fish is so overpowering it often stays in my nose long after I've cleared the area.)and tons of tourist stuff (although most of tourist stuff I have seen already in Thailand)...the only things I wanted to get were shadow puppets, which I got then realized I had no room for in my backpack (oh well) and strange cow and horse bells (which I wanted to use for some new jewelry ideas that I have)...We shall see if any of the stuff I got makes it home.

Well, I gotta get out of here and finish packing...I have a long day of flying ahead of me (Siem Reap to Saigon to Kuala Lumpur to Penang) cross your fingers that I make all of my connections.

Saigon Day 2

After our adventure at the tunnels, Mom and I decided to go a bit more low-key. So we did a bit of touring thru town...visiting things like the reunification palace (where the communists stormed in and took away power from the former leaders), the opera house, the post office (which has really cool architecture), the Cathedral (which is modeled after Notre Dame), and Chinatown...

Chinatown was my idea, as the book made it seem like an area filled with nostalgia and kitsch...I guess it all depends on one's idea of nostalgia, but I found it to be one of the most disgusting Chinatowns I had ever been too. Plus, I caught a guy trying to pickpocket my mom...(there was a bit of yelling on my part, and my mom looking at me all confused as to why I was yelling at the guy...but everything worked out okay.)...but other then the grime and crime, we did find a really cool herb shop...that sold all sorts of wierd stuff (some of which was illegal or endangered...i.e. ivory tusks, dried seahorses, snakes, dried sea turtles, etc.) and while we were waiting to ask the guy about Saffron, we watched as the pharmacists (it was a strange chinese drug store of sorts...with alot of natural remedies) followed some sort of ancient recipe and compiled a bunch of random herbs for a man (it included blades of grass, dried flowers, leaves, seahorses, and a dried turtle) then packaged the whole thing in a huge paper parcel for the man to take home, and I assume toss into a boiling cauldron...I'm not exactly sure what it was all for, as we tried to ask, but everyone spoke Chinese...and the pharmacist was a bit mystified that I did not speak Chinese. (I am regularly mistaken for every type of asian person on the planet...not that I am complaining as it often works in my favor.)

At the end of the day, we made it home safe and sound...without any saffron and completely confused about what we had just seen...but happy to be out of Chinatown (where we hope we did not catch SARS or anything horrific like that.)

Saigon

On August 13th we finally arrived in Saigon. I had no idea of what to expect as the only real images I had in my head about Saigon were from the musical "Miss Saigon", so you can imagine my surprise to find that there were no helicoptors landing on shanties or people dancing around Ho Chi Mihn statues (although there were plenty of statues of "Uncle Ho"...as the people like to refer to him)....Saigon is a really cool place...not as chaotic as Hanoi (maybe because it is a bit more spread out.) but with the same tree-lined streets (albeit wider streets) and many of the same bits of charm as Hanoi (like the french-colonial buildings)...

My mom, decided that we needed to end our trip with a bang, so she booked us at The Majestic, which is one of the best hotels in Saigon (It's 80 years old this year!!) located right on the Saigon river. For some reason, the hotel decided to bump us from a plain old double room to a Suite (strangely we got upgraded at almost every hotel we stayed at...my mom thinks its cuz we are Americans and they want more Americans to come to their country, so by upgrading us, we will tell all of our friends...)Anyhow, the room was spectacular as was the hotel. But, we never spend much time in our hotel rooms because traveling with my mother is ... go go go!!!

So right after checking in, we immediatly booked a tour to the Chu Chi Tunnels...And our hotel being ever so obliging...hooked us up with a tour guide who was a former member of the VC, who had originally fought in the Central Highlands, but during the last year of the American/Vietnam war, was transferred to these tunnels....so he really knew his stuff. I imagine this experience would be comparable to get a tour with a guy who stormed Normandy or some such thing.

This man was able to explain in great detail how the various booby traps were made and used against the Americans, markers he would leave so his fellow VC would not accidentally set off the traps, as well as what it was like to live underground for a year (they couldn't come out during the day because the light hurt their eyes). The whole thing was chilling as well as educational. Then we went thru the caves...or I went thru the caves (my mom had a bout of claustrophobia and chickened out at the last moment...I kind of wished I had while walking thru as they were really small...and my daypack kept getting stuck.) I don't know how these people did it..even now, my mom and I will occasionally look at each other and say..."those people had to be crazy, that is the only way to explain how anyone could have lived like a mole for so long." I am just really happy that neither of us had to stay down there for very long...

And when we came out, we found ourselves in the midst of a typhoon...torrential downpours, winds, mud, flooding...the whole she-bang...but our guide laughed it off and said it was part of life in the jungle, as my mom and I dove into the car and headed back to our hotel.

My Son

My Son is actually the old Champa capital (the originally Vietnamese people...kind of like the Native Americans)...NOT A CONFESSIONAL ENTRY ABOUT A LOVE CHILD I FAILED TO TELL ANYONE ABOUT!!!

Mom and I decided to escape Hoi An for a few hours and check out My Son, which was about an hour outside of the city. Neither of us had any idea of what to expect, but I had read in our trusty Lonely Planet, that it was a small version of Angkor Wat, so I figured...I may or may not make it to Angkor Wat, so I might as well check this place out...and man oh man am I glad I did.

It was really cool, although a bit sad, as there had been a really bloody battle that took place during the American/Vietnam war here...so many of the towers had been destroyed by bombs and such, plus over time alot of it had gotten pillaged..nonetheless, it was really awesome to be able to walk around the ruins (there were no fences) and pretend to be Indiana Jones, discovering a treasure (my mom and I were the only ones at the sight, so it was really easy to pretend we were the discoverers)...

The towers were all made out of bricks, after the bricks were layed the Champa people carved intricate details into the walls...leaving behind gorgeous buildings. It was trully a sight to behold.

Then we saw a strange red snake (I have no idea what kind of snake it was) and my mom decided maybe we should get out of there, before anything attacks one of us and the other has to drag the person 2 miles back to the car (and it really was a long walk to the car...and probably really far from a hospital..as we were in the jungle). So we headed back to the hotel for another bowl of cau lao.

Hoi An

Hoi An is probably my most favorite city in Vietnam. I believe the entire city is registered with Unesco as a world heritage site (which basically means it is to be preserved and protected and big hulking buildings are not allowed to build there.) More importantly (well i guess depending on your perspective) it is a town filled with artists and tailors.

So the first thing I did in Hoi An was get measured and order a bunch of new clothes. I walked into the tailor shop armed with design ideas for new pants and a dress, then worked with someone in choosing the best fabric and revamping the styles so that they would better suit me. It was so much fun...there were shelves and shelves of fabrics to choose from and all of them went from the floor to the ceiling...It was amazing!!! After surviving my first set of measuring, my mom (who also went crazy and ordered even more stuff then me!!) and I began our day of sightseeing in the ancient section of town.

The town of Hoi An has a neat little legend that surrounds it...Long ago the people of Vietnam believed that there was a huge dragon that lived in their country...it was so big that its head was in India and its tail in Japan....whenever the dragon got mad it would swing its tail in Japan (and cause an earthquake)...luckily the middle of the dragon was located in Hoi An, as that area never suffered any geological disasters...because of this the town is considered to be "the town built on a dragons' back"...and there are dragons everywhere!! It's actually very beautiful and quaint...with narrow streets filled with old storefronts (the whole town actually looks like a movie set.)

After checking out a couple of the sights (we went to an old potter tradesman's house and saw a "typical" Hoi An house) doing a bit of shopping (the town is also famous for its silk lanterns...which look so cool at night) and stopping every few hours for drinks and people watching.

All and all our time in Hoi An was lovely (we stayed 2 days, and managed to do pretty much the same thing both days) plus we discovered my new favorite Vietnamese food (move over Pho...) Cau lao...oh my god it is awesome!!! (and another Hoi An specialty) Fat noodles, croutons (wierd I know) fried rice paper, mint, parsley, chili sauce, vinegar and soy sauce (and probably a bunch of other things i can't exactly identify)...my mom and I ate this so many times in Hoi An, I am surprised we didn't roll out of there as giant Cau lao balls...but it was only about .50 a plate, so how could we not??

The ancient city of Hue

Woke up at 3.30 AM to pack my bags, catch a 4.30 AM taxi to the airport and a 6 AM flight to Hue (which is in Central Vietnam). I didn't know too much about Hue, and honestly at 3.30 in the morning I could have just skipped the whole thing...but by some miracle (or maybe it was my mother, who managed to kick into cheerleader mode...I think that is the most annoying way to be woken up in the morning...and dragged me out of bed) we made it to the airport on time, only to learn that our flight had been postponed until 11 am (I got up for this??)....

Vietnam Airlines was "so sorry" that we were going to be put out like this, that the offered to take us all to a hotel for rest and breakfast...what the communist airlines forgot to mention was that the flight was actually cancelled until 4 pm, an that there were people who had been waiting for their flight at the airport for 2 days, who had been in the same situation as us....They also failed to mention that the reason for all of this was not a technical difficulty on the part of the plane...but merely a technical difficulty on the part of the travel agents who had not managed to book enough people for the flight (consequently, people had been waiting for up to 2 days to fly)

Well, after the entire flight had managed to sleep and refuel at the hotel, we came back to the airport to find that unfortunatly we would not be flying until 4 pm (although originally they figured 7.45 PM so actually we were getting off lucky...)

Turns out the passengers of the plane didn't quite agree with the airlines' way of thinking (surprise, surprise) and held a group mutiny (why didn't the people who had been sleeping at the airport for 2 days think of this?) People from 8 different countries started to argue with the airlines and wouldn't stop until they got their way...I decided to watch from far away as the Spainards were a pretty rowdy group...an you never know what they will do next...but my mom got right in there. The whole thing was pretty interesting to watch play out...as I was sitting next to a Dutch guy, a Japanese guy, a French woman, and a bunch of Italians...we were all talking to each other in different languages (English being the main language, but there was a bit of Japanese and French being used as well)...Anyhow, in the end the mob convinced the Vietnamese Airline that, people on holiday were a force not to be reckoned with...as the airline finally agreed to get a bigger plane for the 12.30 flight and fly out by 1 pm...problem solved we made it to Hue by 2.30.

The city of Hue is only slightly interesting. It has the remains of a huge citadel fort in the center of town, which is pretty cool to look at...but after all of the trouble it took to get there, I am not sure it was actually worth it.

The next day we caught an early bus to Hoi An...which is where I am at now, but i will write about that later.

Hanoi Day 3

Today we had quite the adventure...mom and I spent a chunk of the day riding on the backs of motorcycles...not one person per bike (no we are cheap and cheerful backpackers, so we need to save money...or so I keep trying to explain to my mother, who still isn't quite clear on the meaning of backpacking...but since I said it would be okay for her to bring her roller suitcase instead of an actual backpack, i guess we are broadening the meaning of backpacking as we go along.) Anyhow, there were 2 of us stacked on the motorcycle...behind the driver. Along with all of our shopping bags and daypacks (mom did bring a day pack...so technically she could say she backpacked thru Vietnam)...couple the tight quarters on a bike with the insane traffic in Hanoi, and you can only begin to imagine how scary (and I suppose exhilarating) the whole thing was. We survived the first ride and decided to continue using the motorcycles whenever necessary (which means, whenever we can't find a cyclo driver...you know the rickshaw-like things, where the guy pedals a bike and pushes the people, who are seated in a big basket in front.)

During the day we managed to see the Temple of Literature, the museum of ethnology, have coffee on the West Lake, eat at an awesome French resturant, and do alot of shopping (yeah, I am not being a normal backpacker on this trip either, as I know I can send anything I buy home with my mom, so I have had a lot of fun at the markets and the galleries!!)

Hanoi

Been in Hanoi for 2 days now...I have some pretty mixed feelings about the city.

The thing is, I have never been to a city that I straight up despised...and although this place has grown on me (It really is a beautiful place, a bit like Paris in certain areas)...the congestion of scooters and the constant honking of horns, is driving me INSANE!!!!! I actually hit a point yesterday, when I looked at my mom and said, "I can't hear what you are saying...I can't hear what I am saying...and I really can't hear myself thinking...I need a lot of coffee and a quiet space, right now!"

She complied, and things got better...once I learned to live with the horns.


Okay, angst aside...this place is awesome. There is literally a kodak moment around every corner. People walking around with baskets of merchandise balanced on a rod (like a scale)...school girls in beautiful white uniforms and the traditional hats (I'd call them rice paddie hats, but I feel that might be a bad description.) riding bicycles....cows and ducks freely roaming the streets and rice paddies...The images are amazing.

And then there are the things to do...Last night we went to the Water Puppet show. Everyone who has gone before said it was a must-see...but no one was able to describe it accurately...Well, it was fantastic...a folk art passed down thru generations for over a century...the farmers used to create puppet shows on the rice paddies for entertainment...this was one such show. The puppets were wooden, and flowed smoothly thru the water, almost as if they had a mind of their own. Okay, that isn't a great description, but its the best I can do right now....I will put up pictures later, when I am back home.

Today we went to Ha Long Bay...I had a moment when I woke up from a nap and had to smile when I realized I was sleeping on the deck of a Junk (one of those big huge boats with the orange, yellow, or red sails that you see in movies about Vietnam) surrounded by thousands of small limestone islands and beautiful green water...I had to pinch myself as it really could only have been a dream. The boat we hired was ours for the day...it worked out that it was only my mom, me, and a tour guide...there was actually a bigger crew on the boat then in our group...They made us feel like queens, serving us a 12 course meal, and tending to all of our needs (man, I love traveling with my mom...she always makes stuff like this happen!!)

Then we visited a cave...It was stunning...Huge...amazing!!! in fact it was called the cave of amazement...appropriately named! But, a cave is a cave, so I really don't have much to expound on.

Tommorrow, we are going to tour through town (hopefully I won't go postal all the horn honkers)...that's it for now...I'm out of time at this internet cafe.

Sick in SE Asia...

Okay, so the reason I spent soooo much time in KL, was not merely because I had a lot of retail therapy to catch up on (silly people, I have a backpack and can't fit very much into it...I have to be selective.) But also, because I had aquired what I thought to be Traveler's Diarhea (somewhere on the Perhetian Island)...I totally self-diagnosed myself based on the syptoms described in the lonely planet (which is so much more then a guidebook...I feel like it might actually be the key to all life...but that is a whole theory that I might expound on later.) ... I did however fail to recognize the fact that I didn't actually have the key sypmtom (Diarhea)...but was so eager to not have Dysentary (had it when I was 16...never want to have it again...but I was beginning to get paranoid, as my symptoms were reminding me of that time when I was sick and alone in Belgium)...So I used the book to self-medicate. Miraculously, the pharmacies in Malaysia don't actually require a prescription in order to buy prescription drugs...so I find myself getting better (sort of) over 3 days (the book says you will get better immediatly..).

Today, after over a week of being on and off again sick...but a lot healthier then I was when I first arrived in KL (i could barely walk then, as I had stomach cramps so bad, I wanted to cry)... I figured out why I am so sick. I am allergic to MSG...a principle ingrediant in All Asian cooking. (in the US, they rarely use it as many people have this allergy...and in Japan, I tend to only eat Sushi, miso, and western foods...so I never had it there)...So its been years since I had a reaction...and basically, the reaction feels exactly the way I have been feeling...HORRIFIC cramps and general grossness!!!...

So I guess from now on, its me and the granola bars that i brought (and I did pack some Peanut butter, so I won't starve)....I guess the best way to look at this is, that I might miss out on some really great food....but at least I will lose about 15lbs (if i'm lucky:)

I'm in Kuala Lumpur now...

What do ex-pats who have spent too much time in Japan do in KL? They spend way too much time at the Petronas 6 floor shopping mall, what else?

Oh my god, I am embarrassed to say it, but I have been to that mall at least once a day, everyday for the last 3 days...mainly to catch up on movies (only $3 a movie...and $1.50 for a soda/popcorn combo) but also to do a bit of shopping and eating. (they have english book stores, Coffee bean and Tea leaf, random American resturants, and clothing that actually fits!!!)...Back in Japan, every once and awhile, my friends would talk about what we missed the most about our lives back home...the answer to that was pretty universal: The ease of doing our everyday things...(i.e. being able to buy a book that we wanted, or wandering into a music store and being able to read the labels). Being in KL, isn't exactly like being at home...but the comforts of home are definatly readily available. I guess that means I won't necessarily have to have that day I had mentally planned of a Target shopping spree, manis and pedis, haircut, burrito and Fresh squeezed OJ....

Leaving KL tomorrow...heading to Hanoi..not sure what the internet situation is like there, but I will keep you posted as I get the chance.

Perhetian Islands

Kiwi-boy and I spent 2 days on the Perhetian Island of Besar. Wow, it was beautiful!!! And I totally hate to rub in how cheap our ocean-view chalet was (only $30 a night)...but I can't help it as it was a stellar deal. Plus the snorkeling was amazing!!! We saw giant sea turtles (Elsie, Shan, and Brandon...these guys could eat our Maui sea turtles for lunch!!)...I mean they were about the size of the Galapagos tortoises that you can ride on at the zoo (not a PETA approved activity!) and Kiwi-boy actually saw a shark (he'll admit that it was a small one...but still it was a SHARK!)... the reef itself was awesome, and like nothing I have seen before. It was literally a forest of coral branches...in all sorts of colors. Amazing!!

After a day of snorkeling, we rented a sea-kayak and found a private beach away from the other tourists (believe me there weren't that many tourists...probably only a few hundred on the entire island)....we stayed on the beach (white sands for miles) for hours...it was a really great day...I actually can't believe that nobody else ventured to our beach until we were getting ready to leave (then 2 boats with about 6 people each, pulled up to the beach.)

All in all...I think we managed to find our bit of paradise in this crazy world...

Malaysian Taxi Drivers

Oh my goodness, I think I may need to take a moment and thank whomever above who is keeping an eye out for me...as every time I get into a cab, I think, "this is it,this is the end." My heart pounds, I break into sweats, I mentally say my farewells to my beloveds...and by some miracle I manage to arrive at my destination safe and unscathed.

Malaysian Taxi Drivers might possibly by Asia's worst drivers. I have yet to get into a cab where the driver hasn't spent at least 55% of the time on the opposite side of the road, (attempting to overpass cars, meanwhile playing chicken with the oncoming traffic)... It is insanity...sure the rides are cheap...but holy cow, I was in a cab 2 days ago,in the middle of nowhere, with no one around...and the driver still managed to drive on the wrong side of the road...YIKES!!!

I'm going to try my luck with the trishaw drivers tonight...maybe they will be safer (considering they are riding on bicycles,I hope that is the case.)

the express jungle train

2 mornings ago,I woke up on the Express Jungle Train. Heading from Teranjut to Kuala Krai. The train was reasonably quick (although compared to Japanese standards it was ridiculously slow and late...it came 30 minutes after it was supposed to arrive...I guess it is still faster then Amtrack)freezing cold (it was like a refrigerator) but after the sun came up,it was totally worth it. Seeing the sunrise over the Jungle was like watching a Gaughin painting come to life. I watched as people came out of their little huts to start their day. They plowed the fields, the cows got into the cabbage, the chickens ran wild over the roads, little children ran around naked as their mothers tried to get them in the bath...it was so quaint and beautiful. I think of all of my memories of Malaysia thus far,that will remain the most vivid for me.