Malaysia
Trip Start
Jan 24, 2007
1
6
7
Trip End
May 14, 2007
Georgetown,
Pinang,
Malaysia
Thursday, April 5, 2007
not one of my excited ports. I actually almost always forgot about it
when I was listing off the places we were going. I feel bad and I hope
that Malaysia accepts my most sincere apology.
We spent the first day walking through the town of...Georgetown. The
island we landed on was Penang, which was the only way they referred to
where we were going to port, so there was a whole bunch of confusion.
Penang doesn't have any port either, so we dropped anchor and had to
use the tender boats (Lifeboats, I think tender is used so people don't
freak out) to get to the shore. They're pretty spiffy for being
lifeboats, however there's a raised area inside and that's where the
pilot sits, but wait it gets better! The pilot must stand up, with half
of her or his body outside of the "tender." Now I'm thinking to myself,
if the ship does capsize or we must evacuate what will the weather be
like? I would say more than likely it will be stormy. Hmm... we don't
have doors on two sides of our tender, and how will the pilot see...?
Just questions I've been pondering while I build my own raft of paper
maché in my room (it has doors and a visor).
We walked around Little India and Little China which was oddly
nostalgic and also foreshadowing at the same time. Malaysia is a
combination of Indian, Chinese, and Malay. This has created an amazing
amount of acceptance of other cultures and religions. Malaysia is very
hot, and has a very large amount of humidity. It really wasn't an
amazing first day. That night we went to a welcome reception but there
were only six students there, they did perform a shadow puppet show for
us. I really wished they'd done a traditional story, instead they kinda
dumbed it down for us, and a smart guy and a stupid guy explain about
Malaysia. We were able to see the instruments afterwards and the
puppets. All of the puppets are made of thin sheets of leather and are
cut out with a knife. There is so much intricacy, it's amazing.
We went to Paula Pangkor the next day, it's an island between Penang
and Kuala Lumpur. We kept calling it Paula until we realized that that
just means island. We took the tender to the dock, then took a ferry,
then took a three hour bus ride, then took another ferry ride, and then
took a cab. After 5 hours of traveling we were all pretty tired until
we saw the island. It was so beautiful! There were all these shacks
along the beach that housed the boats, and they had hammocks where the
locals were lounging about. We got there in the off season so while
there were other tourists there, there weren't very many. We got
settled in a hotel called the seagull that charged a whopping 12
Ringgnets a night ($3.50). Then we went down the block to the local
Chinese restaurant and ate until we could eat no more, and then walked
across the street and laid out on the beach for a few hours. The water
was bath water warm. We did have a few encounters with sea life. I
picked up a crab with my toes, but soon afterwards realized it was a
crab. They also were experiencing a Red Tide in the bay area. A Red
Tide (here's where I get to use my classroom knowledge) is when there's
so much nitrogen in the water that there's overproduction of plankton
and as a result, most of the oxygen is taken up in the water. We were
there just at the beginning but by now there should have been a
significant decrease in fish and other sea creatures. However due to
the Red Tide there were an increasing amount of water fleas, nasty
little buggers. Kevin and Andrea and I swam out to this island about
half a mile away. It was a good swim but on the way back I noticed the
sky was darkening pretty fast. I kept swimming normal pace, then I saw
a bolt of lightning, it kinda scared me but I was counting "one, two,
three, four, man it can't be that close...BOOM!" I sped up. We got back
to our hotel before it began to monsoon pour. After a few games of
Rummy the rain had stopped and we decided to head down to a bar a
couple blocks down. The best part about the area we were in was that
everything was a five minute walk away. We played pool and met two
English guys. Peter had been living on Pangkor for 6 weeks and Tris
lives in (get this!) Qingdao! Apparently they both lived in China for
awhile. Peter was in Hong Kong for a bit so we got the names of a few
places to go while we're there. They offered to show us around the
island the next day.
The next day we went snorkeling. Even though there was a Red Tide there
was still a lot of fish. If you just floated in the water they'd all
swarm up around you. A couple even decided my toes looked tasty. There
were tons of crabs scuttling about all over the place, and they ranged
from so many different sizes, it was crazy. The island that we went
snorkeling around had an unruly inhabitant on it. This Gilligan fellow
was not carefree like the guy on the show, but an evil little pesk that
stole people's shoes and clothes while they were swimming. Luckily we
didn't get into any trouble with him. It took a bit to get back home
that night because there had been a bomb scare on the bridge leading
over into Georgetown. So the ferry was packed. We were all tired and
hungry but everyone decided to go out for my birthday anyway because
we'd be on the ship the next night.
We took a cab down to an area in Georgetown SoHo area. We kept looking
for someplace to eat, but most places had closed already because it was
10:30. So we all started getting crank due to the lack of nutrition. We
were walking down the street and this door had "until 12:00" on the
door. It kinda looked a little sketchy cause you couldn't see in, but
at that point we didn't really care. We opened the door and literally
all gasped. The floor was covered by a glass plate and had a stream
running through the middle of the restaurant. It was so pretty. There
was no one else there either, because it was so late. The menu was
insane. They had four pages devoted to smoothies and juices. We had
ginger honey spring rolls and then for dinner I had grilled salmon with
a spicy plum sauce. And let me tell you all it was one of the best
meals I've ever had. At midnight we all cheered with a glass of wine
and I got some pretty good birthday cake.
After midnight the tender boats only run every hour so we got back to
the dock at 12:45 only to find out that the boat had just left. So we
played spoons for an hour. I think we scared some of the locals,
because we were playing cutthroat spoons. At one point Andrea and I
were knocking over our chairs and tuffleing through the area (I won).
On the way back they let me sit up on the platform where the pilot
steers and everyone coming back sang "Happy Birthday" to me.
We were back on the tender at 10 the next morning. Our taxi driver from
the night before, Mohammed, piled everyone into his car and drove us by
Starbucks (I know...I know...but tell you me that Caramel Macchiato was the
best I've ever had), the girl behind the counter was named Wendy too!
We climbed back in the car and Mohammed drove us around Penang. We
stopped at a Batik shop first. Batik is a way to make patterns on the
fabric. It's a lot like Kitsky (spelling?) eggs. They start out with
white fabric and everything they was to stay white they cover in hot
wax. They use a triangular metal tool to draw out the patterns. Then
they dye it yellow, then everything they want to stay yellow they cover
in hot wax, and etc. etc. When they've gone through all the colors they
want they boil the fabric in water to remove all of the wax. It was
amazing watching all of these people work. On piece of fabric was close
to 20 yds long! And they were dying it by hand!
Next Mohammed took us to the fishing docks. There were a lot of boats
and it was really interesting to see the men coming back in. They go
out at about 3 am and then come back around noon. Usually they get red
snapper around that area. The best part about Mohammed driving us was
talking to him in the car. He answered all of our questions and then
added some of his own info as well. We learned everything from how
prominent AIDS was in the community to whether or not Malays preferred
cricket or football.
After the fishing docks Mohammed asked if we'd like to walk through a
Malay community. We said ok and ended up walking through HIS
neighborhood. Most traditional houses have half the house on stilts so
that people can sit under it and in the shade when the day gets really
hot. We also saw a Muslim grave yard. Instead of tombstones they have
stone pillars. Also after five years they dig up the same spot and bury
another person there. Then there are two posts at that one spot. After
we walked through the area he invited us in for some mango juice. He
said he had called his wife and asked her to make it, she had just
pureed the mangos from the tree in their backyard. She also served us a
traditional breakfast that is a lot like French toast, except there's
no syrup and the bread isn't soaked in egg. The egg is just dusted over
the top. We met two of his four children, his mother, sister, niece and
great niece. We sat and talked with him and for a little while and
about the schools around the area. All of the schools teach English as
well but the Chinese schools also teach Mandarin. His great niece was
seven and spoke three languages. He told us about how excited he was to
complete his Haj, or pilgrimage to Mecca the next year. All of his
sisters (seven!) had already gone with their husbands, but he gets to
go next year. Apparently it's a 45 day trip! This was the coolest part
of our trip. I would suggest you try and procure this experience if
you're ever in another country.
Afterwards he dropped us off at the butterfly museum while he went to
complete his afternoon prayers. That was pretty cool. There were tons
of butterflies, including one that decided sitting on the front of my
camera lens was great fun. They also had reptiles including a Mountain
Horned Dragon! Apparently Etch, my Mountain Horned Dragon is going to
get quite a bit bigger. There were Mandarin Ducks, Horseshoe Crabs (I
just did a project on them for class), and scorpions. There were also
fluorescent scorpions which glowed after exposed to fluorescent light.
After that we went to the Tropical Fruit Farm. They had tons of
different types of fruit. I saw a red pineapple, and giant bananas and
Durian...oh Durian. It's a spiky brown fruit that smells like someone
left it in an outhouse. Malays LOVE it! It smells terrible but it
tastes semi-sweet. In my opinion not good enough for its horrendous
smell. I also learned that too much Nutmeg can kill someone hence the
tiny amounts used. There were two Japanese families on the tour with
us. Ralpho, one of the sons, was a soundtrack producer that lives in LA
and was hanging out with his parents on Vacation. He'd been to Kobe, so
he and his parents spoke a bit and then wrote down the best places to
go that weren't nearly as expensive as everything else in Japan. He
also informed us that sushi is CHEAP! "Better than the US and
cheaper...it's like heaven, I don't even eat sushi when I'm in the States
anymore." We all were pretty pleased about that.
After that we went to the botanical gardens. They were very beautiful
and full of Monkeys. These guys loved peanuts and hated each other. It
was pretty funny watching them. They looked like tiny lions. The people
in the garden were almost as colorful as the plants. All of the Muslim
women wore brightly colored skirts, long sleeve shirts, or sarees and
head scarves. They were so vibrant with their pinks, yellows and
purples.
Our second to last stop was a side of the road Hindi temple, this is no
ordinary temple. It was for new cars, people bring their new car to the
temple to be blessed. It starts with the new owner handing his keys to
the priest and then getting down on his knees in the temple while the
priest throws flowers on the car and offers a type of incense to four
different gods. Then they light a candle near each of the tires, throw
ashes on the car, and mark it with a "third eye" also known as a Bhindi
or that red dot Indian women have on their foreheads. Last but not
least the owner takes a burning coconut and smashes it on the ground in
front of the car. Another interesting tidbit: Chinese owners pay up to
the same or more amount of the car for a license plate with one or more
8's in the combo.
Our last stop dear friends and family was at the piercing parlor.
That's right I got my nose pierced in Malaysia. It was a tad bit scary
but luckily I had Dannie to hold my hand. Unfortunately they used a gun
instead of a needle. So in an effort to have a smaller post forming the
hole in my nose we were unable to re-input the stud in my nose. So
unfortunately I allowed my new accessory holder to close. However for
those of you who are disappointed I will be able to get it re-pierced
in Hong Kong! Don't worry it looks cute.
I love Malaysia, it was lovely and fun and well...WOW!
