Visa woes, Chinese New Year and a lot of karaoke

After a four hour bus ride (it was supposed to be 2), I arrived back in KL. The following morning I made my way to the Chinese Embassy to pick up my passport. I decided to head on over to the US Embassy and get some extra pages added as mine only had one blank page. I was amazed at the crowd outside. There were at least 200 people lining the streets waiting to get in during the 2 hour window to process their visa applications. As a citizen, I just walked in. I even got the visitor's badge that didn't require me to have an escort. Surprisingly, the additional pages were free and inserted while I waited.
I got back to the guesthouse around 12pm, surfed the internet for a while before chatting it up with some people and watching a movie. I was in a dorm room, so it was much easier to meet new people and go out on the town during the past couple of days. I met some really nice girls from Canada. They had just come from Tanzania and had some great stories and picture (now it's on the "to do" list), two Dutch girls on their way home from a 6 month study abroad in Australia, two Brits on their way to Australia to work for a year, another British girl who has been living and working in Miami for 3 years but is travelling for about a year, and many others. Since I had a couple of days to kill in KL, I became a social butterfly and rallied to troops to go out and see the city at night.
Most of the bar around the guesthouse are for tourists - therefore beer costs about $10 a pint. The local bars, where it costs about $3 a pint, are all karaoke joints. And the Malaysians are pretty serious about their karaoke. I sang along to a lot of songs, but the only one where I actually held the mike was "We Are the World."
It wasn't a bad couple of days in KL, just not all that exciting. Chinese New Year celebrations were pretty mild, so no fun stories there.

Now I'm in Siem Reap. I'll be here until the 22nd. Tomorrow morning, I will rise at 5am to go to Angkor Wat to see the sun rise. Hope to get some good photos!

More Malaysia

On the 12th, I came back to KL to process my visa for China. I left again on the 14th to explore the colonial town of Melaka (which used to be the home of the Dutch East India Co.). It's a popular tourist destination, and only 2 hours from KL, so I decided to give it a try.

The city itself is very western as well, but the population is less than 1 million people, so it is much smaller and more inviting than KL. My guesthouse was ready for my arrival and so I got to take a short rest before exploring the city.

On the afternoon of the 14th, I explored the colonial part of the city. First they were conquered by the Moguls from India, then the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and finally the British. Don't forget the great Chinese migration to Malaysia in the 1500s too!

It's amazing to see this mix of Indian and European architecture, customs and culture integrated in the city. The buildings, food, decorating styles, everything exhibits the multicultural influence of the town. It was breath taking.
I started out my adventure at the "People's Museum" to get a better understanding of the history of the city and then wandered through the Islamic Museum, St. Paul's church (built by the Portuguese), Church of Christ (built by the Dutch) and administrative centers (built by the Dutch but altered by the British). I had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant and hit the sack pretty early so that I could head out early and beat the heat the next day.

On the 15th I explored the Chinatown district of Melaka. It was quite funny to wander around this section of town. The Chinese took over the Portuguese area of the city, so there are all these Chinese shops and businesses located in Spanish style buildings.

After a quick lunch of rice chicken balls, it was time to head back to the guesthouse, collect my things and head back to KL to pick up my passport on Friday morning, the 16th.

Wonderful Wonderful Malaysia

On February 5, I flew to KL (Kuala Lumpur). My friend Stefan (I met him in Istanbul) came to the airport to meet me. We spent the night catching up over cheap chinese food, and relatively cheap beer. The bar we found ended up being a karaoke bar. It wasn't packed with locals, but there were enough so that there were endless love songs in English and Chinese being sung until the wee hours of the morning.

Our first day in KL was spent site seeing. We went to the KL tower first and paid a whole 20 ringet (about $6) to go up to the observation tower and get a look around the city. KL is really a western city in the middle of south east asia. It's got high rises and banks everywhere. There are 3 metro systems and drivers actually obey the traffic signals. From there we walked to one of the many shopping malls for lunch and then over to the KL Twin Towers (they now boast them as the tallest "twin towers" in the world. There is a bridge connecting the two at the 20th floor. They are nice during the day, but are lite up at night. They are an amazing site. We then walked around Chinatown and it's major shopping street Petaling before crossing over to Little India for dinner. Exhausted from walking - the weather here is about 80 degrees and humid as hell - we opted for an early night.

Day 2 was spent exploring the colonial area of the city. We started off at Independence Square which is surrounding by both colonial (british) architecture and beautiful arabic inspired buildings. After a short stop at the National Mosque and a look at the old train station, we began an epic walk through the gardens and parks on the western side of the city. We walked past the bird park, orchid and hibiscus park, deer park, and swimming hole to reach the ASEAN sculpture garden and national monument honoring Malaysian soldiers who fought for nationhood nearly 50 years ago. A long walk back through Chinatown took us back to our hostel for a shower and a rest before dinner at another Indian restaurant and drinks at our favorite karaoke bar. They really wanted Stef to sing, but he declined graciously several times. During this visit to the bar, there were several female/male duets being sung. The female parts were sung by our bartender, a man with an incredibly high voice who seems very eager to be a part.

Day 3 in KL was spent trying to figure out what was next. Stef caught a bus to Singapore and I decided to meet up with Alicia (a potential IEP student) on the tropical island of Pulau Tioman off the eastern coast. I took a 6pm bus to Mersing (the port city), spent the night there in a questionable hotel (I got there at 12:30am, so I had to take the only thing that was open), and got on the ferry at 9:30am the following morning.

Pulau Tioman is actually the island in which they filmed the musical "South Pacific." It's a lush tropical paradise. There are only a couple of villages on the island and there is no road connecting the villages together so the only way to travel between them is by renting a speedboat. They may or may not be available during the season during low tide.

At anyrate. I met Alicia at a great little budget guesthouse where we had our own room with bathroom and air conditioning (YES!). We spent the next three days sunning ourselves, reading, talking with the locals, admiring the local animals. On the 11th, we decided to take a hike over to the eastern side of the island to the village of Juara. After 2 1/2 hours on a path, we made it to town. (I should mention that it is monsoon season here in Malaysia. Although there was little to no rain in KL during my stay, we did encounter a heavy downpour during our hike. Just another thing to add to the adventure!) Juara was deserted. There was only one guest staying there and the other 5 people milling around were from the other side of the island like us. The beach was magnificent. I couldn't keep myself out of the water. The South China Sea is green and warm and irresistible. Ahh, I would spend months there in a heartbeat!

The guidebook suggested that we head back before 4pm as the jungle tends to get dark much sooner. So we came back to Air Batang (ABC as it's known to the locals) and had showers, dinner and some internet time before heading to bed.

To be continued in a new post . . .

Sai Gon and the Mekong Delta

After a long 12 hour layover in Delhi, I made my way to Ho Chi Minh City (or Sai Gon - "same same" as they say here). My first day there I explored the city and booked a 4 day trip on the Mekong Delta. It's an amazing city. Not only are there over 12 million motor bikes and scooters, but there are very few traffic lights and when there are, they are only a suggestion.
The city retains so much of it's French influence after nearly 100 years of colonialism. The city center is constructed like a European city with several traffic circles and parks. It was in one of the many green squares that I started being approached by young Vietnamese men. No they did not want my company at dinner, but rather, only wanted to use me for my native English skills. At one point, there were 5 of them sitting around listening to me. I felt like a guru.
I left on my Mekong Delta cruise on the morning of the 31 of January. The first day involved few activities (we went to an island where they made coconut candy via boat and had lunch) and then spent the afternoon travelling on the canals to my "homestay" with two Americans I met earlier in the day - Shuge and Amit. We expected to be dropped off at various family households and experience a night with the "real" people of the delta. We were sadly disappointed when we, all three of us, we dropped off at one location. It was basically a hostel on stilts. Our dorm room had canvas-sling beds and thin blankets. Food was included, so we had a decent meal of Elephant Ear Fish and rice before we were forced to bed due to the lack of electricity.
The following morning we went to the Cai Be floating market and went for a long bike ride through the small village towns on the island. After lunch I joined a new group of tourist and we made our way via bus and boat to Can Tho - the largest city in the Delta. My group was full of great people, mostly couples, but also a group of older (mid 40s to late 60s) Aussie men and another female solo traveller from Sweden.
Day 3 took us to the Can Tho floating market where hundreds of merchants and buyers congregate to buy and sell their goods. Most of the people involved live on their boats as well, so in addition to commerce, this is a grand social occasion. We spent the majority of the day in transit to Chau Doc, close to the Cambodian boarder.
We woke up early in the morning to visit a Buddhist temple built into a mountain (it also had a great view of the boarder). We then took 3 person row boats through a floating village, fish farm, and to the Muslim enclave of the delta. Once again we spent the rest of the day on the bus and boat on our way back to Sai Gon.
That night I was greeted by great news - Barak got a great (unofficial) offer from Haverford College outside of Philly. We're still keeping our fingers crossed that everything will work out well and that soon he will have an official offer from the dean.
The following day, February 4, I took a bus to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh ( I would have taken one from Chau Doc if I knew I would have been so close). On the 5th I flew to Kuala Lumpur and met up with my friend Stefan, who I met earlier in my journey in Istanbul. More great stuff about Malaysia next time. Now I've gotta run and catch a speed boat!