We’re now in the glorious tourist country of Thailand.  Did you know that Thailand is a kingdom?  I didn’t.  Apparently the king of Thailand, who has been on the throne for 60 some years (I’d make an “on the throne” joke here but the Thai authorities don’t allow it) making him the longest reigning monarch (Queen Lizzie eat your heart out!)  The kings’ picture is everywhere; it’s on all of the money, many businesses have a calendar with him on it, there are squares in towns devoted to him, etc.  Apparently it’s illegal to step on money because the kings’ image is on it, I guess if you drop a 1000 baht bill in a windstorm you just let it blow away.

I’ve noticed a lot of differences between Malaysia and Thailand.  At first I was really worried because Thailand seemed more 3^rd world than Malaysia (you know, there was only one KFC per block rather than two).  That doesn’t seem to be a problem now that we’ve traveled to a more touristy area.  We’ve only been in Thailand a couple of days but I get the feeling it’s much more touristy than Malaysia (judging from the number of hotels, tourist agencies and, well, tourists).  Other things I’m noticing are the lack of head scarved women as well as mosques.  In the northern portion of Malaysia there were mosques everywhere (the daily calls to prayer sounded like some sort of weird ‘call and answer’ song played all over the city by the competing mosques.)  None of the women here in Thailand are wearing head scarf’s anymore either.  In fact, I’m noticing that the Thai culture seems a lot more permissive than the Malaysian.  I make my permissiveness call based on what I see at the news stands.  In Malaysia, even Dermatology Weekly didn’t show any skin.  Here in Thailand, everything from the Pharmaceutical Digest to the Model Railway Journal has scantily clad women on the cover.

We started our Thailand journey by crossing the border at Sungai Kolok.  Everything was fine except apparently the south of Thailand is struggling for independence and there have been bombings and acts of terrorism and tourists are strongly cautioned about going there (or something like that.)  I actually spent a somewhat sleepless night thinking about the trouble we were getting ourselves into.  Our choices were to go through this part of Thailand or make a long detour through Malaysia to skip the hot zone.  I spent a considerable amount of time reading through travel advisories from various countries to help make a more informed decision.  In case any of you who may be reading this (and yes I realize I’m flattering myself to assume that anyone is actually reading this) write these advisories, since when should the Canadian rating state “Be alert to own security”?  I would think the Canadian rating should be “Good place to visit but remember your parka and toque” or “Safe, but tourists are strongly warned to cheer for home town hockey team”.  The really scary thing about the warning is that it was from the Australian government, you know the place with the deadliest snakes, spiders and sea life, they eat danger for breakfast!  I won’t even tell you what the American site said about the southern provinces of Thailand.  Anyways, we headed out for the hot zone.  About the only thing I noticed were the soldiers in Hummers with machine guns that were cruising the streets.  If you ask Bryana, she probably didn’t see any of the Hummers and they weren’t machine guns, just semi-automatic guns.  The Hummers were intimidating but picture this:  a scooter carrying two soldiers (the guy in the back holding the guy in front with one hand and holding his machine gun or whatever with the other); these were less intimidating bordering on comic.  I hope none of you reading this are in charge of purchasing equipment for the Canadian military because I don’t want to give you any ideas on how to save on military vehicle purchases.  One of the next things we were presented with was the usual borage of drivers wanting to know where we were going so they could offer us a ride.  We actually needed a ride but unfortunately none of the drivers had cars; they all had motorbikes!  I could sort of see myself getting doubled on the back of a motorbike, after all we didn’t have far to go.  What I couldn’t imagine was balancing myself and my human sized backpack on the back of the bike.  After a grueling 2km walk with backpacks in heat asking every store owner where the bus station was (did I mention that Tai people seem to speak much worse english than the Malaysians) we finally found a place selling bus tickets only to learn that we missed the bus by 15 minutes and the next one didn’t leave for another 9 hours.  So we skipped the bus station and went searching for the train station which we easily found.  To get to the place where they sold the tickets however, we had to somehow cross multiple tracks as well as a waiting train.  We figured the obvious thing to do was to use the pedestrian overpass.  As soon as we tried, we were stopped and informed it was closed.  So we stopped and observed that all of the locals were just crossing the tracks.  Simple enough but the odd part was that to get past the waiting train, everyone was just walking through it, not around or overtop (using the overpass of course) but through it.  Whatever.  Once we arrived at the ticket counter everyone was very excited when we told them we were going to Hat Yai.  Apparently the waiting train happened to be going there and if we were fast we still had time to get on.  Fortunately, as we were crossing through the very same train, I noticed that there was no A/C, all of the seats were of the hard wooden bench variety and the cars were packed with people (please refer to the Jungle Train blog posted only a couple of weeks ago.)  I really didn’t want a repeat of that incident.  We ended up waiting around for two and a half hours for the air conditioned train as well as paying nearly ten times as much (of course that means we paid $15 instead of $1.5)  I think it was worth it, you’d have to ask Bryana for her opinion.

Once in Hat Tai I was very pleased to see that Thailand appears as developed as Malaysia (they had McDonalds, KFC and a Pizza Hut.)  Not only that, but prices are cheaper in Thailand.  For example, a dipped cone was only 12 baht (which translates into less than $0.50).  I had two.  Bryana is also pleased that we can once again afford beer.  Malaysia being a strict Muslim society taxed beer heavily.  Here in free thinking and drinking Thailand, you can get a big bottle of suds for just over a dollar Canadian.  Everything else seems cheap as well, breakfast for $2, a room for around $8, etc.

We are staying in a chalet on Perhentian Kecil (a small island off the northeast coast of peninsular Malaysia). We’re at long beach – we were planning to move to the other side of the island for a couple of days, but we’re finding ourselves too lazy to bother. The water here is incredibly clear and warm, and it’s turquoise. So far we’ve had nothing but sunny skies and fairly calm water. It’s still low season, apparently the monsoons only really died down a couple of weeks ago, so there aren’t very many people. And, perhaps because it’s low season, it’s also really cheap to stay here.

But so you don’t get too jealous; we came up with 10 reasons the Perhentian Islands aren’t that great:

1. The sand is too white – lots of glare from the Sun
2. The beer isn’t free
3. The water is really warm, like it was just peed in
4. There is no 6AM Call to Prayer, so we always miss the sunrise
5. We had to endure a crazy half hour speed boat ride to the island with 12 people screaming at the top of their lungs “Whooo Hooo!”
6. When dining on the beach at night, we are forced to eat by candlelight
7. The giant butterflies won’t pose for pictures
8. Coral bay is way, way over on the other side of the island, the walk takes almost 8 minutes in flip flops
9. Have you ever heard the mating call of the Tokay Gecko?
10. The water’s kinda salty

Ok, seriously, there are a few flaws. Mosquitos can be annoying at dusk and we only have power for 12 hours a day (actually, at night, for obvious reasons). There isn’t any internet access here right now; there is a satellite dish somewhere. But none of the businesses are set up - they take all their equipment to the mainland for the monsoons and haven’t brought it back yet. And as far as food goes, the restaurants aren’t serving full menus yet (lack of supplies), so we’ve ended up with chicken and rice on more than one occasion.

The wildlife is great, there are huge Monitor lizards, geckos, butterflies and birds of course. Oh, and big bugs. There are Island beetles in our room (we call them that... they're probably roaches). The corals are great too and you can snorkel from the beach.

There really isn’t much more to say… just lots of swimming and reading (and sunscreen).

Back to Khota Bahru today, Thailand tomorrow!

We’re now in Khota Bahru. We got here by way of the jungle train. It’s called the jungle train because it departs in the afternoon – which means daylight; you can see the scenery. (The same train in the evening is called the express.) It was also our only option as every other train was fully booked for the next two days because of the Chinese New Year.

It’s really hard to push your way onto a train with your luggage and find a seat while people are still trying to get off.  Malaysians are really good at it though. I thought we were done for, but Richard was amazing (if he turns a few degrees left or right he takes out three people with his monstrosity of a backpack). He secured a pair of seats. The train was already moving when I caught up to him, by which point I realized we were in trouble.  We were about to start a seven hour trip and the train car was HOT! No air conditioning in a car that had windows designed for air conditioning – meaning only a couple small windows popped open a fraction of an inch.  Most people were crowded in the space between the cars where the wind kept them cool. There were people fanning their babies’ heads.

The conductor came by to punch our tickets. “Very hot,” he said.

“Yes,” I tried to say, I think it came out more like a gasp.

“Early morning air con malfunction. Wakaf Bahru, all the way the end. You move up, first car ok.”

We didn’t understand exactly what he was saying, but we both understood the part about the faulty air conditioning and it sounded like there was a car with AC. Richard was pessimistic about trying another car; he figured there would be swarms of people in the aisles and moving with our backpacks on would be next to impossible. But I couldn’t take the heat and after just a few minutes he gave in.  We put on our packs and worked our way slowly through the aisle as the train jerked us this way and that. I think there were more people on the train than there were seats. The space between the cars was most challenging as they were packed with people. But the people were very gracious; they held open doors and moved out of our way as much as possible. When we finally reached the fourth car and slid the door open we were stopped dead by the rush of icy air that washed over us. Ok, a bit of an exaggeration, but once we stepped inside and closed the door behind us we felt the difference. There were, of course, a lot of people in the car and there were only a couple of seats that may or may not have been claimed, but we were happy just to be there.  We put our bags in the overhead storage, stood in the aisle and found temporary seating whenever possible.  Eventually we stole some seats from some children and the parents were nice enough to let us keep them. I think that sounds worse than it was. Trust me though; we made up for it by being very entertaining. Richard and I were quite fascinating for some reason.

There was one more car that had AC, but a quick visit was enough to rule it out.  We now understand the “No Durian” rule on Singapore trains.  Those things really stink.  It smelled like a mix of sour gas, rotten fruit and propane in the car and it was really strong. Still, it wasn’t any less crowded. They say Malaysians have an “unexplainable devotion to the durian.”

Sadly, for the first couple of hours, the scenery was really disappointing – the jungle starts about an inch from the train window so it was just a big green blur. Eventually, there was more to see – mountains, cliffs, banana plantations, waterfalls, villages and rivers. And it’s neat to look out the window and see big monkeys swinging from tree to tree.  You don’t see that in Canada.

We're heading to the Perhentian Islands tomorrow.  We may not have internet access while we're there.  If it's the paradise they say it is, we may stay a week. We'll update you as soon as we get back.

Richard has posted a blog too, keep reading!

And check out the last photo album - it's fully uploaded and edited now that we have decent internet.

Since we’ve been traveling in Asia, I’ve noticed a number of differences in restaurantisms between here and back home.  I’m not talking about the kinds of food that you order; a lot of the food here is just plain strange (especially in Hong Kong), but that’s a whole different story.  What I’m talking about are the little things, not necessarily good or bad, that make the restaurant experience what it is.

-Just like back home, restaurants take on many different appearances; some are fancy and clean (although I’m starting to think that anything clean is fancy), others I wouldn’t eat at if…I were really, really hungry.  Here, there are lots and lots of small hole in the wall (I use that expression more literally than usual) restaurants with maybe 5-10 tables.  While I’m on the subject of tables, I think plastic tables and chairs must really be the in thing here.  Almost everywhere you go, they use plastic tables and chairs like we use for our lawn furniture; not bad just different.

-The plates and cutlery you’re given are also very distinctive; generally, like the table and chairs, the plates are plastic, in fact I can’t remember the last time I ate off of a glass or ceramic plate.  I’m not really sure why they do this, perhaps it’s economics, maybe everyone here is really clumsy and they save on broken plates, I’m just not sure.  The utensils they give you are metal, but you’re always given a fork and big spoon, almost never a knife.  I guess I haven’t eaten a steak in a while, but there have definitely been times a knife would have come in handy (have you ever tried to pull the gristle off a piece of meat with a big spoon, it’s not pretty!)

-Something else that’s really hard to come by are napkins.  Normally I could care less whether I get a napkin or not.  However, when you’re covered in food after trying to cut up you’re meat with a big spoon, a napkin or two might come in handy.  Also, these people don’t believe in toilet paper, there’s just a mysterious hose beside the toilets, but that’s another story.  When you do get one, a napkin makes really fine toilet paper substitute, especially after it’s softened up in you pocket after carrying it for a day or two.

-Next is the ordering of the food.  You are typically given an English menu (I’m not sure why they assume I need English).  The menu is pretty much a standard menu (of course it contains all sorts of stuff you’ve never heard of but that’s also another story).  What we’ve discovered however, is that despite a menu containing a variety of selections, chances are quite good that no matter what you order you will end up chicken and rice.  Here are some examples of how this can happen:  You might order what you think the Malaise equivalent of pizza is only to end up with chicken and rice.  That’s right, you’re sitting there expecting double cheese and they bring you a plastic plate of chicken and rice.  You might politely mention this to the waiter and they just smile and nod.  Or you might order the fruit salad only to learn that it is not available.  So you go to your second choice, only that’s not available either.  By the time you discover that your fourth choice is not available you just break down and order the chicken and rice.

-Once your order has been taken, your food comes ridiculously fast.  I believe than in the kitchen, behind the scenes, there must be some sort of German highly engineered precision machinery or an army of highly organized and skillful chiefs ready to make food at a moments notice.  Of course I don’t know this for sure, but I can guarantee your foods’ arrival within about 3 minutes.  One time my food came so fast that I was actually eating before Bryana had finished ordering…seriously!

-Besides the usual sit down type of restaurant, there is also the food court style of food establishment.  It’s just like going to a food court at a mall back home, but of course there are some important differences.  First of all, there isn’t the standard A&W, Dairy Queen, Taco Time, etc.  Instead the various vendors have generic looking signs with either a name or a title of what they’re serving.  For example one vendor will serve beverages, another will serve desserts.  Then you might see Apu’s Vegi Cuisine or Western Food (of course you know that regardless of the name, all that’s being served is chicken and rice).

-The next thing that really freaks me out is that they don’t put a lot of importance on the temperature of the food; the hot food is cold and the cold food is warm.  I guess what I’m really saying is that all of the food is at room temperature.  What this means is that as you’re eating your cold chicken and rice, you’re wondering just how much salmonellae has cultured in the chicken.

Despite all of these differences I haven’t had stomach cramps once, my pants are still too tight and I’ve eaten a couple of different (Richard scary) things that I’ve actually enjoyed.

I saw a really interesting TV commercial the other day. But first I should mention that Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, most women wear head scarves at all times (funny under a motorcycle helmet). The commercial was for shampoo, but the target audience is essentially women who never show their hair in public. I didn’t understand the voiceover in the commercial, but I don’t think that part was important. The commercial starts with a sad, young lady wearing a dull head scarf (probably burlap).  She then tries a new shampoo.  You never actually see hair, but the shampooing process is suggested with a shot of running water and the shampoo bottle.  The woman then appears again wearing a silk scarf and a big smile.  She is joined by a young man (perhaps they are on a date).  At the end of the commercial the wind catches the end of her scarf. I thought I was going to see hair! But the young man caught the scarf and gently wrapped it around the back of her neck and draped it over her shoulder. I know I’m convinced.

Yesterday we got up early and went to the Petronas Towers again.  They are really nice in person; stainless and glass. Very shiny. The lifts (elevators) are double decker and hold 25 people per deck (I think). The sky bridge is double decker as well.

Then we went up to Kuala Selangor Nature Park for a night. In the evening we took a trip down the river in Kampung Kuantan to see fireflies.  It was fantastic.  There were millions of fireflies lighting up the Berembang Trees along the river.  They flash their lights in sync with one another and it’s so bright that you can see groups of them lighting up trees further down the river. Not bright enough, unfortunately, to take pictures (at least not from a bobbing boat). But it was really neat and definitely worth the long, hot bus journeys we had to endure.

We also went on a horrible hike while we were there.  Horrible because we had to wear long sleeves and pants to avoid mosquitoes (they got us anyway) which made us so hot and sweaty we wanted nothing more than to go back to our chalet for a cold shower (which we did) (Richard’s note: Our chalet only had cold showers). (Bryana's note: Richard is a sissy). On our walk we saw nice birds, some monkeys, a couple of monitor lizards and lots of walking fish.  Yes, the fish walk.  Richard says: Darwin eat your heart out!  They live in the mud and walk with their fins.  They look like tadpoles, but they aren’t.  We’re told they climb trees too.  We only have a few pictures because the mosquitoes got us whenever we took our hands out of our pockets.

We have a video of the fish too, but we can’t get our video to upload to any usable website to share it. If anyone knows of a good (free) way to share videos, let us know.

We are back in KL for the night, tomorrow we’re off to Taman Negara National Park for a few days.  There we may not have much internet access, but we’ll be in touch again soon.

Richard has a blog entry today too, make sure to read on!

The bus ride to Kuala Selangor was very bad.  It was bad from the very beginning.  We were told to go to platform 23 at the bus station and to get onto bus 141.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  We went to platform 23 and the guy at the platform stopped us and told us that this was the wrong place to catch the bus.  He sort of gestured to his right.  Of course platform 23 was the last platform so ‘to his right’ meant outside the building.  One thing you need to realize is that Malaysian bus stations aren’t like the ones back home.  Instead of going to the station and buying a ticket at the counter, there are literally dozens of counters of competing bus companies all selling tickets at different prices to different places on various types of busses.  And as soon as you walk into the station you are bombarded with ‘agents’ from the companies asking you where you’re going and then they help you to find the right (i.e. their) counter.  Back to the guy on platform 23, we weren’t sure he was steering us toward his company or if the bus really didn’t stop there.  We headed outside and asked a few people on the way and we kept getting directed to the same area.  Finally we got to an island in the road (you know what I mean, kind of like the cement islands where there’s a left hand turning lane only ours was a bit bigger).  We were told the bus ran every half hour.  Not so bad.  We waited, and waited and after about an hour the bus came.  All of the busses up to that point had been Grey Hound type busses with AC, luggage storage, nice seats, etc.  And then there was our bus, perhaps a reconditioned city bus from the sixties, perhaps a bus from the set of M*A*S*H, I’m not sure.  Once we were on, things didn’t get any better.  The seats were designed for the Malaysian body, (read as too small for a large cat), the suspension was, um, stiff, there was room for our packs as long as we held them in place with our feet.  Fortunately the driver on this bus didn’t smoke and the muffler had been changed within the last decade so the bus wasn’t too loud or too exhausty.  To make a long story short, the ride was long, hot and bumpy. It took about 2 ½ hours.

Despite all of this, the fireflies really were awesome.

This morning we got up, killed a couple of cockroaches and headed for the Petronas Towers.  The towers are very impressive, inside and out, but the sky bridge is closed Mondays in February, so we’re going back tomorrow.

Fortunately, we had a backup plan for today and we took a bus out to the Batu Caves.  They are incredible from the inside and well worth the 272 steps to get up there. Of course, once inside there are more stairs. The caves are of great religious significance to the Hindu people since they discovered a rock that was shaped like a Hindu Lord or something. We never figured out what rock looked like who, but the rock formations are very stunning and could look like just about anything after climbing those stairs in this heat (Rich thought he saw Elvis).

There was a surprise awaiting us in the cave – Lots of cute hungry monkeys!  Luckily we had bananas to share. They were very friendly monkeys and they took the banana right from my hand. There were also a few baby monkeys clinging to their mothers bellies.

We had a traditional Malay lunch, served on a banana leaf. Vegetarian (if you ignore the ants). We got cutlery, but most people eat with their right hand.  The left hand is used in the bathroom for other things (toilet paper is almost never supplied).  The cook prepares and serves food with both hands, so if you can explain how the left hand right hand thing makes sense, I’d love to hear it.

We’re now in Borders Book store (the largest in the World).  It’s air conditioned and there’s internet, so we’ll stay a couple of hours. Tomorrow, after the Petronas Towers, we’re heading to Kuala Selangor National Park.

We’re now in Kuala Lumpur.  The Petronas Towers look great lit up at night.  We’ll get pictures another night. We should be here a few days at least.

So far KL is nice; it’s a city much like any other.  We’ve walked through china town and checked out knock off Prada bags.  I wasn’t actually interested in buying a bag (they were kinda ugly) but I wanted to know what they cost.  Apparently the vendors ask for huge amounts initially but will offer to sell the item for a third the original amount as you are walking away.  A knockoff Prada goes for anything from 20RM to 60RM (7 to 20 Canadian). The RM means Ringgit, but for some reason Richard won’t stop calling them Reminkies.

KL is hot and humid, so we headed for air conditioning.  We stumbled into a big mall that had about every kind of store you can imagine.  I particularly loved the travel store that sells luggage and coats, hats, mitts and sweaters. There was also a Karaoke recording studio that was quite entertaining (but not as entertaining as the line dancing in Chinatown).

Rich and I split up in the mall for a bit.  I went up to what I thought was the top floor and realized there were at least 6 or 7 more floors.  When Rich and I met up I asked, “Did you go upstairs?”

“Yeah, did you?”

“Only to three, but there are lots more floors.”

“I know, I went to ten.”

“There are ten?”

“Yeah.  There is a food court on ten.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the Worlds largest, apparently.”
”Ok, let’s go I’m hungry.”
”Sure. Did you see the roller coaster?”

“There is a roller coaster?”

And there was in fact a roller coaster.  In 2003 the mall had the biggest indoor amusement park in the world (or so the sign says).  The food court may not be the biggest in the world; the sign just says “Largest food court”, which could mean anything. It is big but it’s Malaysian style.  The McDonald’s, Starbucks and Dairy Queens were all on other floors. There were actually 13 floors and two levels below ground, though the top floors are business offices and some floors are somewhat vacant.  But it is quite a mall indeed and it is the home of the Worlds largest IMAX screens (or so the sign says).

We walked through several gardens on the east side of KL.  The flowers were amazing but we passed on the bird park because we were too hot to get our 30 Ringgits worth.  It is (as you may have guessed) the largest covered bird park in the World (or so the sign says).

We’re still relaxing in Malacca.  We like the guesthouse we’re in (and it’s cheap) and we really needed another day of rest before moving on. 

We haven’t done a whole lot but we have a few new pictures.  We visited the oldest Chinese graveyard and temple in Malaysia.

There also isn’t much to say about the last 24 hours except that I’m being eaten alive by mosquitoes and Richard hasn’t been bitten yet. We’re taking our anti-malarials but I’ve had a weird taste in my mouth and I’m wondering if it’s the pills. Otherwise we both feel great when we’re not overcome by the heat.

Tonight we’ll check out the market and tomorrow we’ll get up early and head for Kuala Lumpur. We should have internet there and we’ll be sure to stay in touch.

Just a quick correction; Rich disagreed with my spelling corrections.  We surfed the net and determined that Malacca can be spelled Melaka, but it's not as common.  Many words here sound the same as our English words but are spelled differently (Taksi and Polis).

Yesterday we moved into the “place with the cats” as Richard called it.  It’s a guesthouse, not much different from a hotel but it’s quirky and cheap. The courtyard is full of plants and wind chimes and the owners have tea lights floating and hanging everywhere so you can find your way around in the dark. There aren’t really bathrooms in the traditional sense, there are shower stalls upstairs (near our room so I can make the dash in my towel), the toilets are downstairs (long walk in the middle of the night so I’ll have to watch my beer consumption this evening) and the sinks are open air in the courtyard.  Oh, there is a girl making the dash in her towel right now!

There is no hot water, but Richard seems to be taking it well. I can’t imagine a hot shower in this heat!

They have fish pond in the courtyard and I asked last night if they had problems keeping fish in an open pond with the cats roaming around.  She laughed and said, “Not anymore. Before yes, but not now.”  We were interrupted so I couldn’t ask for an explanation.

There are a lot of cats in town, but last night, out on the street, we saw a cat chasing a couple of big mice, so that may be why so many people keep cats.  Or maybe the people just tolerate them; I don’t think they consider them pets.  Most roam free and live on table scraps and garbage.

The streets are very quiet here at night, much different from the other places we’ve been so far. Walking last night we heard a noise that might have sounded like a gunshot. Richard was ready to turn around, but I was sure it was just somebody dropping something. I was right.  It was the sound of a pig hitting the street. Well, maybe not quite, but the noise did come from a shop where some guys were dumping pigs from a truck onto the street and then dragging them inside.  They were really huge pigs. We figure that’s something they do at night when the tourists are indoors.

Right now we are chilling out in the shady, breezy courtyard while the midday sun fries the rest of the town.  Richard is lying in a hammock, reading our travel guide, but he’ll be asleep in a few minutes… I think. 

There is just one thing I don’t like about our accommodation – there is a mosque across the street, and mounted on the bell tower are several speakers that blast us with chanting and singing several times throughout the day.  I believe the call to prayer was at 6AM.  But I’m not sure there is anyway to avoid it.  Sometimes, between sentences or song phrases, you can hear other voices coming from other mosques in the distance. The city seems to be well covered. I think we’ll just have to get used to it. At least they only sing for a couple of minutes at a time.

Just a quick update to let you all know we’re alive and well.  We’ve been moving around a bit in the last few days so time and internet connections have been sketchy.  We left Tanjung Pinang on Feb 5, took the vomitous ferry back to Singapore( I took sea sickness pills and was wearing my acupressure wristbands this time so I was ok, barely, but we got to watch some other guy barf).  As if that wasn’t enough, we decided to make a break for the border town of Johor Bahru in Malaysia.  That makes of record of actually being in 3 countries in one day.  All of the books said not to go Johor Bahru but we did, and it wasn’t bad.  Not much to see but the hotels were cheaper than Singapore (main reason for making the break on the fifth), and we were that much closer to our destination of Malacca.  On Feb 6 we took the train to Malacca…well almost to Malacca.  The train doesn’t actually go to Malacca but rather to Tampin.  From there, so the poster told us, it was a short taxi or bus ride to Malacca.  So we get dumped out of the train in the middle of almost nowhere (there weren’t even the hoards of cabbies swarming us that we’ve become accustomed to).  The guy at the train terminal said the bus terminal was about 1km away down the road and to the left.  We started walking; the town of Tampin sort of reminded me of rural Albertan towns, hot, dry and nothing special to look at.  However the people were friendly and kind of spoke english and eventually we found the bus terminal.  The bus itself was pretty rough, and best of all we got to ride with all of the school children going home for the day.  It was cute at first; Malaysia is a very Muslim country so all of the girls have their heads covered.  It was only cute for a while because the 30km trip took over an hour.  Between the deafening noise of the bus, the heat, the exhaust fumes, the drivers’ cigarette smoke (it was a non smoking bus but I guess that doesn’t apply to the driver) and the constant stopping at every shack along the way, I was very happy to get off the bus.  I was even happier when we found an A&W at the bus terminal.  After that bus we got onto another bus, reluctantly.  This was public transit to get to downtown Malacca.  Finally we got into town, found a place to stay (although we had to wait a day to get into the place with the cats).

 Today (Feb 7) we’ve had some time to explore Malacca.  It’s definitely a tourist town, although it’s not extremely touristy.  The area we’re staying in is the old part of town; the narrow streets are lined with wall to wall shops.  If you get a chance to look in, way in, there’s usually a big court yard or open area in the back.  The place we’re staying has sort of an open garden area with a bunch of rooms surrounding it.  That makes it sound really nice, it’s nice, well maybe not bad, but what do you expect for $8 a night.  We walked around town today.  We’ve seen a lot of clothing shops and restaurants selling the usual weird Asian cuisine (I’m still not used to it and eat at every North American place I can find whether I’m hungry or not).  We saw the ruins of St Paul’s Church today; semi interesting ruins and a good view of the city (it’s on top of a hill, the church, not the city).  The toughest thing we’re facing right now is the heat, it was 31 today with 66% humidity, but it felt a lot hotter.  We’ve ducked into an air conditioned mall and are planning on hanging out here until they kick us out!  One strange thing about Malaysia is the malls.  The country is not exactly first world, there’s a lot of little shops stuck everywhere, old shacky houses and dilapidated bikes; but the shopping malls are big, modern and rival anything you’d find in North America…strange.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

We’re in Tanjung Pinang for the night.  To be precise, we’re locked in our hotel room eating peanut butter.  I know I’m supposed to be the adventurous one, but I’m not sure this is the type of place a tourist should explore at night.  We turned a lot of heads today.

I like the town, but I’m getting tired of is the singing coming from the Mosque up the street.  They seem to have someone singing every hour and they broadcast it to the whole town with big speakers.  The singing isn’t so bad and I don’t mind it every hour, but each song lasts about three quarters of an hour.  And it’s always the same song and it never seems to get to the chorus. 

Around midnight the power went out in our hotel.  Actually, we think it went out everywhere because it got really dark outside.  After a lot of shouting and laughing in the hallway we heard some creaking and banging outside, followed by an engine sputtering and coughing.  I would be happier for the emergency lighting if the generator weren’t just outside our window.  Actually, the power was only out about half an hour and I think the song is finally over.

Monday, February 05, 2007

I was not too happy to be awoken at 6AM by the call to prayer from the mosque.  It went on for a while and was followed by – you guessed it – a song.  I don’t think Rich set the alarm right, so at least we were up in time to catch our ferry.

I think the standard Indonesian breakfast is chili pepper rice and omelet.  We’ve had it all three mornings.  It’s very spicy; I guess it wakes you up if nothing else.

We’re back in Singapore, but only for lunch.  We’ll be in Malaysia in a few hours. Again, we don’t know how much internet we’ll find, but we’ll be in touch again in the next few days.

Bye for now!

Tonight we’re staying in a town called Tanjung Pinang on the Indonesian island of Bintan.  Sounds kind of exotic…I guess.  Tanjung Pinang is a port town.  This is where the ferry dropped us off and this is where we’re leaving from.  We’re staying here tonight so that we can catch an early ferry to get the hell out of here…sorry that slipped…tomorrow.  It’s an interesting place.  We walked around town for a few hours today and did not see a single other tourist or caucasian.  It’s a strange feeling.  We were treated nice enough for the most part (by the way Bryana just barricaded us in the room with a very sturdy wicker chair).  Every other person we would walk past would greet us with “hello” or “hello mister”.  It’s about the only english we’ve heard today except for in the hotel and, strangely enough, in the bakeries.  We sort of think that we’re the talk of the town, like “did you see the lost white tourists today?”

 We discovered this very interesting stilt house area of the city.  The region consists of several square blocks of stilt houses; basically they’ve built this grid of elevated cement sidewalks and then placed houses within the grid (much like a regular city), the only difference is that it’s all above the water up on stilts.  The remarkable thing about it was the sheer number of houses as well as a Chinese temple, all on stilts.  It’s kind of strange considering that the island isn’t exactly over inhabited or crowded.

 Once again I’m having a hard time adjusting to the local currency.  Here the currency is rupiah.  The crazy thing is that 10000 rupiah is about 1 US dollar.  This means that when we went to the ATM machine we took out a million rupiah for our stay (it’s pretty cool to be carrying around a million in currency!)  Of course the fairy tale ended when we saw the prices of things, our hotel was 137000 rupiah, a can of pop is 8000 rupiah etc.  However it’s actually extremely cheap here.  Here’s a list of stuff that we bought from the grocery store tonight:  beer (large 650ml), cranberry/vodka drink(275 ml), water (1500 ml), 2 cappuccino drinks, cookies, 2 peanut butters (comes in really cool space age squeeze tube package), tiramisu biscuits and strawberry jam.  All that cost 49 400 rupiah or about $5.80 CDN…kind of ridiculous.  (Bryana wants me to let everyone know that yes, we realize its all junk food.)

 The exchange rate is good but there’s a lot of not so nice stuff about this place.  First thing is the open sewer.  There’s a trench beside all of the sidewalks with God knows what flowing through them.  There are also a lot of cats here.  Now I really like cats but there are a couple of problems with these ones.  First of all most of them don’t look like pets.  Instead they’re skinny and a bit rough looking.  I can handle that, cats are pretty good at fending for themselves.  What bothers me is most of the cats only have about ¼ of their tails, and the remaining portion usually has a sharp bend in it right next to their bodies.  I don’t know the grisly details but apparently people like their cats not to have tails here so they break them.  The other heart wrenching part is the number of kittens you see around the streets.  They’re cute and pathetic (like all kittens should be) but so dirty you can’t really touch them.  I know one thing; if I lived here I’d adopt a lot of cats!

 You know the expression “Just got off the boat”?  Well I understand it better now.  When you first arrive here and you’re just getting off the boat, there are a lot of people waiting to “greet” you.  I think it started with the immigration officials.  It cost us 20 USD to get visas to enter the country (why US dollars and not rupiah or Singapore dollars like the rest of the country uses I’m not exactly sure).  We gave the border guard a fifty thinking that would be a good place to break it.  So we gave him the money, he processed our papers (which took forever) and never gave us our change.  Bryana questioned him and he held up a twenty.  Now if it was me, I would have probably smiled and nodded and left, I don’t like pissing off officials with guns and latex gloves.  But Bryana didn’t quite see it that way.  When he held up the twenty she said no she gave him a fifty which the guard then miraculously found.  We got our change and got out of the office as fast as we could carry our 25lb backpacks. 

Saturday, February 3, 2007

We are in Indonesia now (Palau Bintan) staying at Trikora beach in a hut that is built on stilts in the water. Of course, by the time we can upload this, we will have moved on.  We have power at night (to charge the computer) but there aren’t any wireless signals here at all.

The ferry trip was classy, we had lifejackets and they showed a bootleg copy of The Medallion – slightly out of focus and shot from the left side of the theater.

I don’t know how Bintan Island compares with the rest of Indonesia, but it is nothing like Singapore.

As soon as we walked out of the customs office we were attacked by taxi drivers. “Miss, Mister, where you going?” “Maybe you would like to go to Trikora Beach? Is very nice.”  “I have a car, I know this place, I could take you.” Of course, that’s where we wanted to go, but we had read that the taxi drivers at the ferry dock like to target tourists and charge too much.  They were asking $25 USD for the trip.  We tried to shake them off, but one of them would not leave us alone.  He followed us to three banks, where we eventually found an ATM and took out $1,200,000 rupiah (about $133 CAD).  He kept pointing at the banks as we walked into them, saying “here is a bank,” “you need an ATM? There is one here.”  Richard told him, “we’re doing fine, you don’t need to help,” but the guy was like a leach.  He followed us to a bakery; Rich and I went in, bought drinks and buns, sat and ate – he waited outside for us to come out.  Eventually, we did and the conversation went something like this;

“Come, I take you now.”

“No, it’s too expensive.”

“Twenty-five is standard rate, ask anyone.”

“No, it’s too much.”

“Well, how much you think?”

“Five or six.”

“Five oh what?”

“Six.  Six dollars.”

He didn’t even try to negotiate, just shook his head and walked away.  We would have paid nine or ten, but I have a feeling he went back to the ferry dock and found someone who paid 25.  Right after he left, we found a cab.  He offered to take us for $120,000 rupiah, or $12 USD. Better, but still a bit high. His story about the rising gas prices was very heartbreaking, but we didn’t want to waste anymore time looking for a taxi, so we agreed “No stopping, no picking up other passengers, direct to Trikora, you stop – we get our money back.” And aside from stopping to get some gas, he was true to his word. We didn’t get a shack at the first place we tried (the Shady Shack), so they drove us about 100m up the road to another one.  It cost us another $1 USD to get rid of him.

The hut we’re staying in, or shack, or whatever it’s called, is very basic.  Richard would like it to have hot water.  We both wish it wouldn’t shake when the tide was coming in.  There are some concrete blocks below us, but I’m not sure we’re actually attached. The waves are also quite loud throughout the night, so I didn’t get much sleep until the tide went out. As it turns out, however, our hut is nicer than the Shady Shack which was recommended in the Lonely Planet book.  2005 was a long, long time ago.  Since the book was written, 5 of the 9 shacks were destroyed in a storm.  The remaining shacks look terrible.  We heard some of the Shady Shack guests saying that they had mosquitoes and cold wind to deal with during the night.  I guess we were fortunate the Shady Shack was full when we arrived.

The owners’ wife is a good cook… she only cooks one meal – same thing every time, but it’s good.  Both of us tried the tofu dish last night – I don’t think there was any tofu in it at all.  It looked like sticks of sesame seeds coated in a dark (spicy) sauce.  We both tried it before realizing that some of the sticks were little whole fish, after which, Richard refused to eat any more of it.  I picked at it, but ate only a few of the fish; crunchy and fishy, obviously not tofu.

Some of the beach is really nice, but the water isn’t very friendly for swimming.  We were told there was nice beach 2km north, so we walked, and walked, and walked… we never saw anything much different and I know we walked a lot further than 2km.  We did, however, see a lot that made our journey worthwhile.  We came across fishing villages and saw floating houses which go out at night and come back loaded with fish in the morning.  The people seemed very happy and very friendly.  We met a family on the beach that was collecting clams and crabs at low tide.  They showed me the contents of their plastic shopping bag.  The father held up a crab and, as we understood later, proceeded to tell us a joke. From the gestures, we concluded that the punch line had something to do with a crab’s pincers and a penis.  As we walked away I spotted something in the water, a big shrimp.  I poked it a couple of times to keep it from burrowing.  Shrimp can really jump, I think I shrieked. The guy with the jokes captured it so I’m sure it became dinner a short time later.