Malaysia

If you're going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill

"Peace to the country and the people."

Since our last entry, Nadine and I have crossed the middle of peninsular Malaysia going south and then turned around and went north up the western coast to Penang, just south of the Thai border. Tomorrow we are going to head to the beaches of Thailand and Krabi. A lot has happened since our last entry.

Today's title to the blog entry, with much effort and coercing, was courteous of Matthew Pepper. He correctly answered the question that "lima" is the number "5" in Malay as well as the capital of Peru. All those degrees are paying off.

How about a strawberry shake and strawberries and whip cream with your strawberries?

Upon our arrival in Tarah Rata in the Cameron Highlands, we were welcomed with cool temperatures. We took this time to clean our grungy clothes and enjoy the cool weather. The third day arrived, and we decided we should actually see part of the Cameron Highlands area other than the hostel and the main road. We joined a morning tour of the area. First stop was a Buddhist Temple and then the Rose Centre. Ahhh, the Rose Centre, how much fun can a bunch of flowers be? Well, the Rose Centre was actually worth the visit. It was a multi-leveled terrace with views of the underlying valley, thousands of roses and non-roses, and random Disney characters standing among the vegetation. Who would have imagined Snow White and the Seven Dwarves waiting for us, the White family?

Chillin' on my broken Disney bike.

We followed the Rose Centre with another masculine spot, the Butterfly Farm. Did we sign up for the sissy New Mexican tour? The Butterfly Farm did have some redeeming qualities, snakes, lizards, large black scorpions, turtles, toads, and, yeah, a few thousand butterflies. I went into it apprehensive, but the chance to have all of these nasty animals crawl over my body made it well worth the 3 ringgit entry fee. The final stop of any importance was a tea plantation which rendered some amazing views of all the tea plantations below. I also took advantage to taste all of the free sweet peach tea in the BOH gift shop.

That's where tea comes from?

From the highlands, we took the curvy and swaying bus down the highlands to Kuala Lumpur, and Nadine's stomach did return to normal. In Kuala Lumpur, we had an interesting time. First day, we made our way around, near, close to, but not quite to the fourth largest tower in the world, the K.L. Tower. You would think with all of our travel experience, that making our way to the fourth largest tower in the world would be easy, towering over the city. It took us a little over an hour to reach it. We could have walked to it in 40 minutes easily. And we never actually walked to the tower. Finally, a guy asked us if we would like to have a ride to the base of it. Sure!!! From the top, you could make out the hazy outlines of a building, a bridge, and something else. There was a combo of haze, clouds, and pollution blocking our panoramic view.

Second day in Kuala Lumpur, K.L. to locals, we got out early and headed towards the largest set of twin towers in the world, the Petronas Towers. To visit the towers, you get in line in the morning and you are given a time in which you can climb 41 stories to the bridge connecting the towers. In high season, it can be tough to get these free tickets, but since we are here in the shoulder season, it wasn't tough at all. Once on the bridge, we could see more clearly the area surrounding us, compared to K.L. Tower. Better look quick though, to keep the flow of people moving, you only have 10 minutes. Fine with us. Back on level ground, we obtained two more tickets for the afternoon. Hey, it's free, great view, and it's quite popular.

But what is it that they really know?

As any good traveller knows, you need to have a roll of toilet paper with you at all times in case the situation arises that you have to go, confronted with a squat toilet, and have no t.p. We went to a local store to purchase a roll or two, but the smallest package available was only with 10 rolls. What are you going to do, go without? No way, we walked out with the 10 roll package. Now we have to find somewhere to put it in our bags.

To complete the day, we headed to Chinatown and the festivities there. Walking around among stiffling heat and the constant requests to buy a watch, haven't bought one in a decade, we decided to hide in a t-shirt store. It was here that I saw the absolute best t-shirt that I have seen on the entire trip. Up on the wall was a yellow shirt in light brown print, Oklahoma. That's not so great until you know what was on the shirt with Oklahoma. It was their picturesque ideal of Oklahoma, sunsets over a secluded beach and palm trees everywhere! Ha, that was great. In my five years living there, I can't recall a single spot of land that was directly by the ocean lined with palm trees, but I guess that must be the image of Oklahoma by Malaysians. I would have bought several of these shirts, but there was only one left, and it was a small. Must be a popular choice. I know I loved it.

Our first night in K.L., we stayed at a hostel that was a little shabby. At night, we saw several cockroaches scurrying across the floor in the hallways. One night was enough there. After our next night, maybe we should have stayed there. Second night in K.L., we moved to Le Village, a hostel with good reviews in our guidebook. We arrived and thought this place was going to be nice. That was during the day, at night completely different story. At night, the bed bugs came out to play and feast on all of the residents. As we attempted to sleep with loud noise coming from our deaf Japanese neighbors packing, we felt crawling on our legs. All of that was enough to wake us up and do a proper search of the place. It was then that we found these small bed bugs all over. From then on, Nadine didn't sleep and spent the night in the lounge area with a fellow female traveler who also couldn't sleep due to the bed bugs. This was all after an exhausting day in the heat of K.L. I showered, sprayed bug spray on my body, and jumped in my sleep sheet and got 4 hours of disturbed sleep. Promptly at 6 a.m., waking up a 6 a.m. on this trip!, we were out the door and finding a bus to Melaka. While in Melaka, we discovered the damage from the bed bugs, both of our backsides were covered in bites. We'll bring them with us to Thailand tomorrow.

After two horrendous nights of sleep in K.L. and 3 months of hostels, we decided we were going to stay in an actual hotel! We found a three star hotel on sale for 90 ringgits, $27 U.S., and stayed three nights. As a result, we loved Melaka. The highlight of Melaka, outside of the Emperor Hotel, was the night market in Chinatown. We strolled the market trying chocolate covered strawberries, pastries filled with exotic fillings, hopefully not too exotic, and some Tiger beer sitted by a road vendor. In all of our travels, we haven't bought any real souvenirs other than postcards and spoons for my mom. Here, we went crazy. We bought three things. A painting, a nightlite, and some placemats. They should now be on their way to the States via a very slow ship. Let's hope that they beat us home. Amongst our walking, food, and shopping, we stumbled on to the area where locals can try their best at kareokee. We pulled up a chair and witnessed a lady singing in Chinese in a very high screechy voice and an elderly man danced around with a red fan in his hand all while passerbys plugged their ears staring at the stage. This was hilarious. Too bad we forgot our camera.

The second time was just as good as the first free visit.

From Melaka, we have made our way to the busy and dirty city of Penang. We have met some interesting people. A couple who left England with plans to travel for 3 years around the world, but changed their minds and extended it to 5 years. Another pair of friends who are biking from Australia to Swizterland. It should be some rough going over water. Bonded and ran into randomly with the Dutch couple from the horrible hostel in K.L.

Life is good. We will go to Thailand tomorrow and the town of Krabi. I am feeling well, but Nadine has a head cold right now. She is getting some rest in a bed bug free, air conditioner colded room as I write.

If anyone would like to spend a carpe diemish Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years break in South East Asia with some cool folks, you are invited to join us for a bit. Even if you don't think we are cool, you're still invited. We have a pretty relaxed schedule in that we don't have to be anywhere until Valentine's Day in Hong Kong, China, so we could meet up with yall anywhere.

Peace
JW

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
- Vincent Van Gogh

Greetings fellow bloggers! Nadine and I are currently here in Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands after a day of travel. What better to do at the end of a day than update our blog.

After our brief stint in Singapore, we quickly ventured over the northern border to Malaysia. I didn't know what to expect with Malaysia, other than the fact that the country is Muslim. What is unique about Malaysia is that it is a country that is able to successfully, and more importantly, coexist with THREE major religions living in close proximity, Islam, Christianity, and the Hindu religions. The 3 religions respect each other and acknowledge the others right to exist. Uncommon in our current times. In addition to that, I would never consider Malaysia a third world country. It is clean, efficient, orderly, people are very helpful and polite. I would rate it as a second world country if anything else. The underlying fact is that I would recommend Malaysia to anyone, as long as you are ready for a little heat and humidity.

Our first stop of our visit in penisular Malaysia was Pulau Tioman. Pulau Tioman is an island off of the south western coast. After a ferry ride across bumpy waters, we set foot on ABC beach. Yes, in order to stay there, you must be able to say your ABC's. New Mexicans are automatically excluded from this beach. They are allowed on Green Chile beach.

Pulau Tioman gave us a chance to sit on a beach and watch the monkeys, monitor lizards, and bats play. We stayed there 3 nights. What made it interesting was that every morning, we would stick our heads out, and find monkeys running around the grounds of our little bungalow. Beside them would be monitor lizards of varying sizes slowly walking across the grass. At night, bats were flying by our heads eating all of the bothersome mosquitos flying around our legs. It was all fun and games until one afternoon. Before our departure for the island, we purchased a bag of fruit. By the time the second afternoon arrived, we had consumed all of the bananas, oranges, and apples. The lone fruit was a large mango that Nadine had her beautiful blue eyes on for a few days. This afternoon, we went and had some lunch with mango being our dessert. Walking back from lunch, we approached our bungalow to find everything just like we had found it, EXCEPT, the mango was missing from the plastic bag. A monkey came by and swiped our mango while we were gone. If you find a monkey with mango chunks around its mouth, know that they ate our mango and they owe us one.

In addition to interesting monkeys, Pulau Tioman introduced us to new drinks. We're adventerous in trying new foods and drinks. Malaysia hasn't proved to be any different. Walking along the sidewalk one day, also is the major thoroughway between all beaches, thus has scooters, trucks, and people sharing the same road, we came upon a stall with a large list of drinks that we had never heard of. We tried some soy milk (good), 100 Plus (a type of Sprite), but the most unique was Grass Jelly soda. It's a drink with regular soda infused with small capsules of foul tasting grass jelly. Whew that was nasty! Just the sensation of having several pieces of jelly sliding through your straw just doesn't work for me. It was like eating dozens of jelly fish at once. Don't let me put you off, try it at least once, then move over to the apple juice with aloe bits. That tastes a little better.

I also took the chance to run, and run off that darned grass jelly drink. It was the first time to run since the Cook Islands. Combine that with the intense humidity, you'll never find that in Odessa, and proved to be a challenging run.

Leaving Pulau Tioman, we headed up the eastern coast to Kuantan, a stop on our way up a little village called Chetaring. But in Kuantan, is where we had some great travel tales. Being in a place we weren't going to stay long enough to catch the next bus, we didn't think much of our time there. Jumping off the bus, we walked through stalls of food being served. This was an authentic experience. No tourists, no backpackers, just Malays and their food. We settled up to the table at one stall, fumbled through our guidebook looking for the correct phrases to say, "we want good food, won't make us sick, and no chicken feet." It worked, we had a great little lunch with a bunch of Malaysian ladies giggling at us as we ate.

Completing lunch, we walked to the spot where the public bus leaves for Chetaring. Along the way, we ran into some local kids, trying our Malay, they tried their English, and we laughed. At the same time, we were passing in front of a huge blue mosque. Great photo.

On the bus, I was in a seat without a back cushion, just a metal skeleton to my seat, while Nadine was chatting it up with a local girl on the bus, acquiring about the one Malay food we have to try, and about life in general. Great interactions in Kuantan.

The goal of our trip into the small village along the coast was to hopefully see large female green turtles trudge up to the beach and lay eggs. Since we were arriving towards the end of the season, odds weren't the best, but heck, let's give it a try anyways. After a great dinner with a French postal worker in a restaurant off the main road, Jacques (his last name wasn't Strap), we jumped in a little van heading to some protected beach where green turtles are known to lay eggs. We sat there close to the beach with Chris, first American encountered in SEA, and played with a styrofoam box full of baby green turtles that had just hatched. Just as their instinct told them to get to the ocean, they were crawling all over each other to get out of the box and to an unknown wet future. They start about the size of your hand, their sex is decided by the temperature of the ground where they are laid, close to a tree, boy, closer to the ocean, girl. A notice came in over the walkie-talkie, there had been a momma turtle spotted up the beach. Like a bunch of ducklings, we followed our guide up the beach in the pitch black dark. You can only imagine him saying, "Guys, I was just joking, there is no stinking turtles out tonight, now you have to find your way back to the van." We knew we hit the spot when we saw huge tracks across the sand that looked like those of a monster truck. That little turtle had grown up into a massive block of turtle. We received another message on the walkie-talkie, there is another turtle up the beach packing the sand around the eggs and now about to make its way back to the South China Sea. We were there just in time to see this green turtle dragging its heavy shell and body 50 yards across the sand. That was a site.

Then it was time to head back to the other turtle. The other turtle was in the process of laying 120 eggs! We sat there guessing how many eggs she was going to drop, and this was around egg 80. By the time she finished up, we were all just like that turtle, a little tired. It was 2 a.m. (1 in the afternoon back in Odessa). This all started at 10, and four hours later, we were back on the road again back to our bungalow.

We continued our track north to the islands of the Perhentians. There are two of them, the smaller Kecil, home for 3 nights, and the larger and quieter Besar, home for 2 nights. We spent our time on these two islands as a chance to relax, read, hike, swim, and do a little bit of snorkelling. We did all of these activities really well. I even think we are getting to the point where we could master them. We've had enough practice. Pulau Perhentian Kecil presented us with a nice little cross island hike among monitor lizards and mosquitoes. Pulau Perhentian Besat allowed us to snorkel among some huge reef and colorful fish. Considering the amount of snorkeling we have done, we should have bought a mask long ago. On Besar, we did just that. It worked perfectly.

We left the beaches and are now sitting here in the cool rainy hills of Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands, home to many tea plantations that are exported all around the world. This is a welcome respite from the heat and humidity that we've encountered for the last two weeks. This will give us the opportunity to do a few travel errands and the most important one is to wash our clothes!!! You can only wash your clothes so many times by hand when they need a good ol' fashioned machine wash to eliminate the stink from three countries. They're downstairs right now as I type. Here is a view of downtown Tanah Rata. If you see a red or blue rainjacket, that would be us running around. http://www.heritage.com.my/cameron/index.htm#

As many of you may have heard, there was a coup d'etat in Thailand several days ago. This has created an interesting dilemma for us, head straight to Thailand or find an alternative route. Here is our conclusion. Other travellers and websites have mentioned that it is fine to travel Thailand, but maybe stay away from the capital for awhile. They will name an interim Prime Minister in a week. Soooo, we are going to head south down the eastern coast until Melaka, home of the once thriving world spice trade, head over into Indonesia and see some orangatans, cross back over to Malaysia and then go to Thailand.

We are enjoying our time traveling, hard to believe that yes, we are already a third of the way done. How time flies.

Some of you may notice that in every entry I write, I always take the chance to take a shot at New Mexico at least once. I do this at the request of 10 fingered Pepper. Honestly, what opportunity would I have to tell a Dutch couple about the education system, green chiles, or those crazy arroyos.

JW: "Yeah Hans, at least the education of this town is much better than that of New Mexico! You wouldn't want any child educated in that state's educational system."

Hans: "What do you have against Mexico?"

JW: "No Hans, its a state to the west of the great state of Texas."

Hans: "I didn't know there was a state called New Mexico."

JW: "Noone really does Hans. Noone."

Life is good. We are healthy. We still love each other. A concern of ours is that my brother, Charlie Ray, is being deployed to Iraq in a week. I definitely don't think he should be going there, but I do hope and pray that he remains safe.

Question #1 - What Malay number for 5 also doubles as the capital of this South American country? First person to get it correct will get there name in the title of the next blog entry.

If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I wouldn't jump with them, I'd be at the bottom to catch them. Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say. We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.
- Tim McGraw

Peace from Malaysia

JW