Cambodia - Siem Reap - Angkor Wat, Angkor What?!

So we journeyed across this land of rice paddies, clay dirt and deltas north to Siem Reap, the gateway city to Angkor Wat, where the food is amazing, the people are beautiful, the bargains are cheap and the temples are astounding.

We could have stayed and just eaten our way through Siem Reap, which has a limited number of activities once you've explored Angkor Wat. Just a sampling of the culinary feast to be had includes lok luk beef, Angkor chicken stew, Angkor palm platter with curry, mango salad, fresh spring rolls, and so much more. More importantly, they can correctly produce french baguettes, which have generally been subpar everywhere I've been so far. My theory is the farther away you get from the bastions of France and her former colonies, the crappier the baguettes (kind of like the quality of bagels in relation to their distance from Montreal).



Now the star attraction is of course Angkor Wat, which is both a specific city ruin and the collective name for the area of fortified cities and temples/ruins north of Siem Reap which are (like many other cool monuments) described as the eighth wonder of the world. I can see why. We pried ourselves out of bed at 4:30am to take our 5am tuk tuk to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise over the main city ruins. By the way, I haven't been reading the news, but if the entire population of Ireland has mysteriously disappeared recently, you'll be relieved to know that I found them - they're all in Cambodia.

And Angkor Wat more than meets its hype, with intricate apsara (celestial spirit dancers) and naga (cobra) engravings.



I was totally blown away. My favourite was Bayon near Angkor Thom, a massive temple with thousands of Buddha faces carved into every surface so it looks like you're being watched by millions of eyes. Baphuon was also impressive, as it is still being put back together after being taken apart piece by piece for study, a giant jigsaw puzzle. I was also suitably impressed with the Terrace of Elephants, which no surprise, is engraved with tons of elephants, as well as garuda, half-men half-bird creatures that hold it up. The warrior carvings in the Terrace of the Leper King were also very cool.



Ta Kao, an incredibly high temple (you can see Angkor Wat from the top in the distance), was never completed because it was struck by lightning.



I never completed climbing it because it is incredibly high with incredibly steep steps and no railings that made me incredibly paralyzed with fear when I looked down. Ta Prohm was used in the filming of Tomb Raider and is famous for being overgrown. Massive trees have sprung up through the gates and the buildings, poignantly demonstrating that civilization can't withstand time and nature.



At each stop we were besieged by adorable Khmer children trying to sell either one of the following: ten bamboo bracelets, ten postcards of Cambodia or two drinks (one for me, one for my driver). I was lucky to have escaped with only 15 bracelets, 2 bottles of water and 5 postcards. Their sales pitch was impressive though. After you say no thank you to start with, they ask where you are from and then show off how much they know about your country. They knew more facts about Canada than I did. Capital Ottawa. Speak two languages, French and English. Comment ca va? Toronto biggest city. Quebec French. Population 32 million. Etc. All the hawkers would leave off once you entered the actual temples though so you could enjoy the ruins in peace.

We refreshed ourselves from our 7 hour day at Angkor Wat with beer o'clock on Bar Alley (actual street name) at a pub geniusly named Angkor What?! Would have got the t-shirt but their slogan also refers to encouraging irresponsible drinking, which we were hard pressed to find funny in light of the problem of drunk driving and alcoholism.

Another treasure in Siem Reap was the craft collective Artisans D'Angkor, a nonprofit project for job traineeships and employment in stonemasonry, carving, silk painting and silk weaving for disadvantaged Cambodians and deaf mutes. The arts centre in the city was impressive, as was the silk farm just outside town where we watched the dead silkworms being boiled and strung. It takes 3 days to weave a single scarf because they still work the looms by hand in Cambodia (mechanized in Vietnam).



The tour ended of course in the gift shop, where we were lucky to escape without spending the rest of our travel funds. So many beautiful fair trade things, so little budget for shopping!

Quote of the Day: "There are a lot of Asians in there." -American man exiting bathroom, Bangkok Airport

Cambodia - Phnom Penh - Defiance of Expectations

In response to some constructive criticism from an avid follower of this blog, it has been requested that I present a more balanced perspective on our travels, since I apparently am favouring the incredible fun stuff and leaving out the hassles and challenges.

So let me tell you the travails and ordeals of our commute from Chiang Mai to Phnom Penh. We boarded yet another night bus (they never seem to travel during the day for long hauls...) for Bangkok at 10:30pm. Wait, that's a lie. We entered the tiny waiting room to board our bus at 10:30pm. Actual bus boarding did not occur until 11:00pm, with bus leaving by 11:30pm. We had splurged to make the ride more enjoyable - VIP including individual televisions, snacks, on bus toilet and extra leg room. These perks totally fell through. My free juice was vegetable. Bleh. And the AC was a solid 28 degrees, a mere 3 degrees difference from being outdoors and at least with the window open we'd have had a breeze. Our English movie selection was dreadful: I Know Who Killed Me, Apocalypto, Flood and Red Line. And made worse by the fact that these movies were in fact only intermittently in English. Apocalypto was in fact in ancient Maya with Thai subtitles. Then Mehr started feeling carsick and spent the subsequent ten hours all queasy and nauseous.

Our bedraggled selves emerged from the bus at 7am in Bangkok and proceeded directly to the airport to pass away the six hours until our flight to Cambodia at 2:30pm (which of course was delayed until 3:30pm once we arrived at the airport. Even my spirited narration of the adventures of Cu Culann, the Irish boy wonder, were insufficient to cure Mehr's nausea, so her wait was far more tortuous than mine. We were fairly ravenous and were rewarded with the worst airport meal I've ever eaten. In fact, it was the third worst meal of my trip after the raw chicken in Cusco and the rooftop meat in Bolivia. My Tom Yam Soup was a puddle of mushrooms (I do not care for mushrooms) and Mehr's noodle soup was the saddest spiciest thing I've ever seen ladled into a bowl. Even treating myself to a DQ blizzard afterwards didn't improve my mood. In fact, it made things worse, since I've had a cold and it drastically increased congestion levels. Curses! But once we made it onto our flight, all was well again (we bounce back quickly) because we were going to the kingdom of wonder, Cambodia!

We had no idea what to expect of Cambodia. We've heard both rants and raves from different sources and of course, it was nothing like whatever we might have expected. I had envisioned something similar to Thailand, maybe lots of hilly jungle forests and lots of knock off goods. What we encountered was an incredibly flat land of deltas and bayous and clay dirt, with a population full of smiles that belies a recent tragic past.





Phnom Penh is accurately described as the tarnished pearl of Asia. It shows all the traces of a major hub of civilizations that has fallen into disuse. It is a vivid city, with no skyscraper-plastered financial district to speak of, where families travel four to a motorbike and smells of every cuisine in the world and every garbage you can think of mingle in the streets.



The nicest area for strolling is the Riverside and the only areas you'll really see significant numbers of other tourists are the main sites: the Palace, the Independence Monument, the temples, and the bars. Though there are more than enough NGOs and NGO expats to be found - everywhere here lists prices in US dollars! We couldn't even withdraw Cambodian riel from the bank, so it's been a bit more expensive than anticipated because we get dinged on the exchange rate!

The other major sites are the memorials commemorating the Khmer Rouge genocide. For those who don't know, the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot kidnapped, tortured and executed as many as two million of their own people during the 1960s and 1970s. Tuol Sleng, the genocide museum, is housed on the site of detention center S-21 in the middle of Phnom Penh.



It was formerly a high school but was converted into a prison and interrogation center during the genocide. The other major site is the Killing Fields which are just south of the city. Mehr and I were undecided on whether or not to see these, since it seems wrong in some ways to have places where so many murders occurred as tourist attractions. Tuol Sleng was a haunting experience. You could walk into the cell blocks. There was also a video detailing two prisoners' experiences. We also met the only living survivor of S-21 (only 8 were alive when it was closed), and walked through the galleries of victims' photos and paintings. It gives one chills.

The Killing Fields were more problematic. They have recently been bought by Japan which is unfathomable... Can you imagine if Poland needed money and some country offered to buy a concentration camp from the Holocaust? There is a massive charnel with over 8000 skulls inside as a memorial to the victims and you can wander around but it felt like a violation of a terrible graveyard.



Just when we started to get antsy on our tour, we were besieged by local children and their flock of roosters who asked for candy and then serenaded us with "Beautiful Girl" by Sean Kingston, which was both funny and absurd in the moment, but gave us a bit of relief from all the trauma of the day. But I think what bothered us most were the gift shops. GENOCIDE GIFT SHOPS. That was really not okay.



After such a traumatic morning, we spent the afternoon relaxing and wandering around the city. We then spent our evening on a corner restaurant where two eighteen year old girls whomped us both at Connect Four and pool. Multiple times. But they never tired of playing us, so we kept on. We even went back the next day for rematches. And were creamed again. Oh well. Better luck next time.

Thailand - Chiang Mai - Something for Everyone

It is no exaggeration to say that there is something for everyone in Chiang Mai. We were nervous that nothing could follow up our time in Malaysia and Borneo without suffering in comparison, but Chiang Mai in Thailand blew us away. It has so much going on! Sample of activities: meditation retreats, language classes, spas and massages, cooking classes, elephant training/riding, trekking, boat trips to Laos, tiger and panda parks, custom tailor shops, night markets and more!



This is possibly the longest Mehr and I have stayed in one city in our travels together so far, and with so much to do and our favourite hostel so far (Green Tulip - amazing owners, spotlessly clean and cheap!) it's no surprise. We checked out the Chiang Mai Zoo, its newly born panda baby and the greatest use of parrots I've ever seen:



We climbed the 306 step staircase (they like to brag about the obscene number of stairs they have) to Wat Doi Suthep which overlooks the city - beautiful. And less physically demanding than the 272 steps at the Batu Caves in Malaysia.



And we took full advantage of the cheap spas, doing a 3 hour package our first afternoon here that involved Thai massage, hot compress herbal treatment, facials, foot reflexology and more. We also went again for manicures and pedicures later in the week, all at a fraction of the prices in North America.



We then indulged in an all day cooking class in Thai food and learned how to make: pad thai, spring rolls, green and red curry, cashew chicken stirfry, sweet and sour stirfry, papaya salad, spicy glass noodle salad, sticky rice with mango and bananas in coconut milk. Delicious! Sadly, I still haven't learned to make banana honey roti, which is our current favourite street food.



We also had three piece suits and dresses custom made at a local tailor's over the past two days, which took about two days and three fittings to get right, but wow! We feel like high rollers wearing them! And I found my own slice of heaven - a whole street alley of second hand bookstores and the selection is amazing. I'm hard pressed to keep to my rule of traveling with just one book at a time when the getting's this good.

We found there are way more tourists here than Malaysia, although we've been told it's frighteningly low compared to how many would usually be here. Right now, even though it's high season, the number of tourists is more like lowest of low season. The political unrest has diverted all of them to neighbouring countries apparently, which is a shame because it's the usual case of 5% of malcontents ruining things for 95% of the population.

We can add Chiang Mai to the list of places I would go to again - I feel like I could easily spend another week here exploring, but Cambodia's a-callin'...

Malaysian Borneo - Sarawak - The Long Hot Road from Miri to Kuching

Our bus out of BSB landed us promptly in the city of Miri in Sarawak, a semi-autonomous province of Malaysia's part of Borneo. Miri is the access point for three major fabulous national parks, Limbir Hills, Niah Caves and Mulu. We had been hoping to squeeze in a half day checking out Niah's famous caves, which are supposed to be amazing. No such luck - the buses and timing were totally against us. Our Brunei bus actually dropped us off in the middle of nowhere - the new long distance bus terminal was completely deserted. No ticket counters, no touts, no taxis, nada. We did eventually grab a desolate city bus and an hour later found ourselves in the city center.

Now, as previously mentioned, I haven't disliked many places on this trip (Auckland grrr). I did not like Miri. First instinct reaction was to look for buses out of there. I don't know why. Mehr was also melting - it was very hot. So she was up for fleeing the city as well. We were directed to a third bus terminal for a 4:30pm overnight 14 hour bus ride to Kuching, the provincial capital of Sarawak, where our flight would be leaving from in two days time. We signed on with no hesitation. And the bus wasn't bad, but the passing of time was pretty slow.



We read aloud to each other about etiquette pointers for Renaissance gentlemen and ancient Celtic myths about boy-wonders (English title selection was limited in Brunei). To drown out the awful video games seated behind us, I burned through two sets of AA batteries in my Discman. And when we finally arrived all bedraggled in Kuching at 6am, I felt like I'd been kicked in the neck.



Kuching is totally charming though and the food is heavenly. We tried pansoh manok (chicken chilli cooked in bamboo) and it just melted in your mouth. We also finally had some laksa soup, which tastes a bit like Singapore noodles in soup form. Very tasty. I'm also a big fan of honey popcorn... perfect bus snack food. Also, Kuching means 'cat' in Malay and they are obsessed. We have no idea why and sadly don't have time to trek out to the Cat Museum to find out. There are cat monuments all over town too.



The one other thing that has stood out for us on Borneo as a whole is how much attention we draw. Not bad attention, just lots of it. We can't quite decide what's the cause. In Brunei, there were few foreigners, so that was a given. They kept asking us what race we were, which we found to be a very confusing question. It was even on the immigration cards, which we left blank. They were confused that we don't racially identify in Canada. They also were confused that we're both from Canada. They inevitably ask where the other person is from assuming it's a different place than whoever answered first.

We figure it is one of the following:

1) We don't match. I am very tall and very white. Mehr is very less tall and darker. We've noticed that white people tend to travel in herds here, so me being a loner might be a factor.
2) We laugh a lot, which makes us noisy.
3) We wear appropriate clothing and eat in local restaurants, unlike a lot of the other short-sporting tourists frequenting McDonald's and KFC. Hello, Muslim country... put some clothes on kiddo.

Brunei Darussalam - Bandar Seri Begawan - What?!

"Mehron, we're in Brunei... what?!"

Ever since I have known her, Mehron has had a tiny obsession with a tiny Islamic sultanate located on the island of Borneo named Brunei Darussalam. This "Abode of Peace" is the kingdom of the Sultan of Brunei, who in the past five days has become my favourite international political leader and has already been Mehr's for several years. When we met up, it was hardly a week into our traveling together that Mehr popped the question. "Hey, can we go to Brunei?" I replied "Um, sure."

Here's what we knew before we landed in this country... it has been ruled by Sultans for over six hundred years. Its current Sultan used to be the wealthiest man in the world until his brother blew $16B of his money, $25m in one night's gambling alone.

Yeah, that's it.

Here's what we know now... Brunei is home to 385,000 people. It is wedged in between the two Malaysian provinces of Sabah and Sarawak on the third largest island in the world, Borneo. The population is Malay, Chinese, Indian and Borneon indigenous. Their top three pastimes are kite flying, top spinning and grass sledding. All of the country's wealth is generated by the vast oil reserves in the town of Seria near the capital. The Sultan gives out 300 new houses to his subjects on his birthday every year. He also pays child allowances, health care bills and renovation costs on the 3-5 bedroom houses that Bruneians rent for only $30-50/month. He employs 80% of the population.



And they LOVE him. I get it. If you are now thinking about emigrating here, I should warn you that you'd have to live here twenty years before you can even apply for citizenship, and you'd still have to pass several tests including Bruneian history and high Malay (the Court language).

We were hoping to attend his 63rd birthday celebrations, one of the biggest national holidays in the country on the 15th, but due to an outbreak of swine flu, he postponed the party until further notice. That didn't stop the locals from decorating though, and BSB the capital was bedecked in Christmas lights and massive banners with his pictures and birthday greetings.



In lieu of what would have been a fabulous birthday party, we spent our time around BSB and in the rainforest. BSB is home to the floating mosque (Omar Ali Saiffuddien), which was stunning to see at nighttime with the reflection in the artifical lagoon, and to the world's oldest water village, the Kampung Ayer.



We took half a day to check out the infamous Empire Hotel and Country Club, a project of his brother's that cost $1.1B to build (most expensive in the world!), and it was HUGE.



The money was poured into the details though, like the mother of pearl inlay on the mosaics on the staircase bannisters. We also paid $5 to see Transformers 2 in the hotel's cinema complex and had the theater pretty much to ourselves. Wicked.

The most impressive site was the Royal Regalia Exhibition Hall, a sprawling complex that houses the man-pulled carriage and uniforms and flags used for coronation and jubilee celebrations, as well as priceless gifts from other countries such as a glass replica of Mecca with emerald minarets, diamond studded daggers and heaps of golden treasures. Canada gave him a soapstone walrus in case you were curious and I have to say, we kind of come off as cheap misers next to the massive elephant tusks from Thailand. And to think, this is the man's closet space... imagine what he keeps in his solid gold domed palace! Money.

We also took in a day trip to Ulu Temburong National Park to see the Bruneian rainforest. It involved a number of cool moments that are easily brag-able to your friends at home at a later date.



Like "oh, and then we traveled by longboat into the Borneon jungle!"


and "we were swarmed by honey bees while on the rainforest Canopy walkway!"


and "we stood in the pool of a rainforest waterfall where the fish gave us a pedicure. It really tickled."

There are more but those are some of the highlights. We also saw a modern longhouse, where the women were weaving basket handicrafts and brewing rice wine, but all their kids are living and working in the city or are at the Arabic school down the street.



Brunei has definitely won our hearts, small prosperous little nation that it is. And our parting moment at the departure immigration centre on the border with Sarawak was the surprise drive-by of none other than the Sultan's motorcade! It's just as well we didn't see or meet him. I honestly would have been completely starstruck.

Malaysia - Melaka - Lesson on the Importance of Knowing the Days of the Week

Guess who forgot and did not plan for weekend traffic again?

We took a day trip to the historic city of Melaka on Friday. Even though Lonely Planet had cautioned us that on weekends, the bus to KL sells out, we somehow did not put two and two together. We ended up with heaps more time in Melaka than we had originally planned since we had aimed to be on a bus back to KL by six and we just got lucky landing tickets for the 10pm bus. Yay four hours at Melaka Sentral station!



Melaka itself was pretty cool. Over the past thousand years it has been under the control of the Malays, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Brits which makes for a big cultural melange. It was a lively port throughout the ages and all the influences from other countries appears everywhere. For instance, from Portugal they have a love of desserts; there are sweet shops everywhere. And the Dutch put up a windmill, which is kind of a "Holland was here" tag on the city. There was also a sweet old school ship in the Maritime Museum and tragically we missed the sleepover on the ship by one lousy night! Chinatown had the most personality, being full of antique shops and laneways and delicious Baba Nonya cuisine (mix of Chinese and Malay heritage). Not a bad place to hang out for the day, even if it was even hotter than KL.



To escape the monstrous heat, we ducked into the People and Beauty Museum to check out how different people around the world have warped their bodies in aesthetic deformation practices.



These are the regional tuk-tuk equivalents. They are bedecked in flowers and pump loud Eurotechno as they stalk you down the sidewalk beckoning you to ride along.
P.S. We're now on our way to Brunei. No, it is not in the Middle East.

Malaysia - Pulau Perhentian - Paradise and Purple Pants

Shhh, don't tell. We have found the only islands on the Gulf of Thailand that aren't plagued with touts or absurdly inflated tourist prices. They are called Pulau Perhentian (Stopover Islands; once inhabited by pirates!) and they are heaven.



Tucked away in the northeast of Malaysia, the two main islands PP Kecil and PP Besar (Little and Big Island) are postcard beach island destinations in southeast Asia.

After a very extended match of "This would be worse if...", our favourite travel game, in the cramped and under air conditioned minibus to the ferry (which we thought we had played very quietly until the Aussie girls next to us commented that their favourite was "if we were riding sneezing donkeys the whole way"), we were ecstatic to arrive on the islands. We were told there are no phones on the islands and no banks so we had cash and energy to go hostel to hostel until we found accommodation. What we forgot was that it was Friday, and literally every place at Long Beach, the main accommodation drag on Little Island, was full. Everyone kept asking why we hadn't made reservations like we were idiots. We would love to know HOW we were supposed to do this when there are no phones or email addresses for the hotels. Turns out everyone has a phone; they're just secret phones to discourage guests from asking to use them. Sigh.

I parked it with the packs on Long Beach while Mehr went door to door to prevent us from being homeless that night. She had been gone a REALLY long time and as the sun set I was getting concerned. Had she fallen down a hole? Had she had an asthma attack? A number of terrible possibilities flew through my mind. Nope, she was fine, just really winded from trekking across the island to Coral Beach on the other side, where she had triumphed and found us nothing less than a treehouse chalet! Sweet.

Not so sweet were the 77 creaky wood plank stairs that were a one way trip between the beach and our digs. Super sweet was the wicked views of the sun setting on the ocean. We weren't told in advance that our treehouse (so named because of its backwoods location and height off the ground) came with roommates. Sultan the Spider (maybe a Huntsman... not too sure) lived on our door. Gilbert the Gecko was on mosquito patrol on the porch.



Andre the Giant and the twins were the huge monitor lizards rustling about below the verandah (Andre was over 1m long and definitely large enough to eat Mehron, hence I maintain that he was a dragon, not a lizard).



We parked it there for 5 days and were even debating jumping the ferry to swim back upon our departure. We spent our days snorkeling in turquoise waters with black tipped reef sharks, giant sea turtles, baby squids, parrot fish, jellyfish and sea cucumbers (which really do feel like soggy cucumbers!). We devoured roti canai and coconut lassi and iced watermelon drinks. In case you think that lacks excitement, we also braved the invisible baby jellyfish that stung us in the water regularly, which was like being pinched with tiny elastics while swimming. Uncomfortable but not agonizing. And we risked our lives sitting in the coconut drop zone, where a coconut slamming into your head would easily give a concussion. However, I don't last long in beach sunshine and I had to risk my head for my skin and sit in the palm tree's shade.

When we weren't frolicking outside, Mehr indulged herself and finally bought a second pair of pants, which turned out to be a constant source of entertainment.



Firstly, they're one size fits all and that size is enormous. Secondly, they're bright purple. Thirdly, we're still not sure how to tie them up. We were in stitches for almost an hour trying to work out how the purple pants are supposed to work.

Malaysia - Cameron Highlands - Tea, Strawberries and Revenge of the Tiger

Clever girls that we are, we booked ourselves onto the 8am bus to the famously beautiful Cameron Highlands the morning after Canada Day. While we realized that hauling our packs for the fifteen minute walk to the bus station at that early hour was less than ideal, we had failed to consider the further impacts of our Canada Day celebrations the next morning. Since we went to bed at about 3am and had to wake up at 7am to check out and get to Puduraya Bus Station, we were in somewhat rough shape and as I watched Mehron pack her bags in what looked like slow motion, I started tallying just how many Tiger beers we had consumed the night before. We had had at least five of the giant pints each, which is WAY more beer than either of us would usually imbibe. Hence the slow motion. And the feeling that we had been mauled by an actual tiger.

Know what really cheered us up? When it started pouring rain on us half way on our walk to the bus station. That was really special. Nothing like being soaked on a four hour Arctic A/C bus ride.

I made a Herculean effort to stay awake on the ride to check out the landscapes outside KL, but my body was protesting too hard so I konked right out. So did Mehr. When I woke up we were a mere 40km from Tanah Rata, the Cameron Highlands town we'd be staying in. I was bummed I'd only get to see a little bit of the scenery, until I realized that with the curves in the steep hillside roads, we in fact still had at least an hour of the drive to go. Good thing Cameron Highlands is stunning old growth forest on undulating hills with sweeping vistas, or we'd have been pretty bored.



Cameron Highlands is known for two main exports: tea and strawberries. There are several massive tea estates in the area, including Sengai Palas estates which produces BOH tea. After an hour of wandering the grounds and taking the factory tour, we still had to actually ask someone what BOH stood for, since this information was nowhere to be found in the displays. "Best of Highlands" was the answer. Go figure. BOH produces 600,000 kg of tea per year from its estates. Our favourite at the tea shop was the Earl Grey with Tangerine. Yum.





Although we didn't make it to the strawberry farm tours, we did see all the strawberry shop outlets, which sold strawberry everything (hats, clothes, pillows, calculators, etc.) But no actual strawberries, strangely enough.



It was also at Cameron Highlands that our run-in friend Brendan had a brilliant idea for a prank. We have a mutual friend (who shall remain nameless) who is quite good friends with both of us who we knew would be stoked that we'd met up in Malaysia. Brendan thought it would be hilarious to pretend that we hadn't gotten along at all. I wrote an email to said person pointing out that Brendan was annoying, a major complainer and a semi-stalker. Brendan wrote a separate email to the same person describing me as rude and mean and noting I tried to ditch him at every given opportunity. Said person was very confused upon receiving these emails. Operation Fake Out was a complete success. So, dear nameless friend, just to clarify, we got along just fine... so well in fact, that he joined Mehr and I on the trip to the Cameron Highlands for the day before he had to get back to Thailand for his summer job. Tres fun, I promise.

Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur - Selamat Datang

Mehr and I flew separately to Kuala Lumpur (which I will definitely refer to as KL from here on in). I was concerned Mehr's flight might not get out after mine, since Perth was looking like a typhoon might be coming through the city. The sky was black and the rain was diagonal and torrential as my flight took off at noon, and she wasn't going to leave until four pm. Luckily, the natural disaster held off until her plane escaped W.A. and we met up as planned at customs in KL airport (which is fantastic by the way).

The flights were refreshingly good after buzzing around Australia on budget airlines. Qantas had a selection of over 20 movies and 30 tv shows to entertain me for four hours. I was out of luck with the apple juice though... the hostess accidentally spilled it on my arm and enough of it fell on me that they couldn't fill my glass and when they went to find more, turns out that was the last carton. Alas. I connected to Japan Airlines in Singapore (free internet kiosks everywhere in the international terminal!). That flight was hilarious. One of the four hostesses spoke a bit of English, but they were prepared. The menu was all pictures so you could point to what you wanted. And they have a live feed camera at the front of the plane so you could watch take-off and landing from the pilot's perspective (he was a little off center to be honest...) And during the flight they played a video with only music showing pictures of what to do when we arrived in KL, such as immigration, customs, etc. I very much enjoyed it. The highlight upon landing in KL was how HOT it was. Usually I'm a bit of a cranky pants in intense humidity and heat but after being constantly cold indoors in Australia, I was too relieved to care.





Malaysia was an excellent choice for us to get our feet wet in Asia. It's a very multicultural country, with the three main demographics being Malays, Chinese and Indians. The country is officially Muslim, although tolerant of other religions (Hinduism is also very big here). We've been erring on the side of conservative dress, but after seeing the range of fashion on the streets of KL, we've relaxed it a bit. It's not uncommon to see a burka, a sari and a miniskirt in just one block of walking. If anything, the hardest part is remembering to leave my shoes at the door before entering buildings.

We wandered around sightseeing our first day, taking in the Petronas Towers (which are just as impressive as you might imagine), the Colonial District and Chinatown.



We discovered a great restaurant in Chinatown where we gorged ourselves on satay chicken and noodles, and where I even tried frog stirfried in green onions and chilli. Taste of chicken, texture of fish, by the way. We've been adventuring a bit in food since we have no idea what most words in Malay mean. A common Malay breakfast dish we tried was Nasi Lemak, a coconut rice served with peanuts, boiled egg, chicken, cucumbers and sambal (spice curry sauce with anchovies?). It was great; will definitely have that one again. Another favourite is Roti Canai, a fried chapati-like dough that you dip in curry dahl sauce.

We also learned after ordering Nasi Ayam that Nasi means 'rice' and Ayam means 'chicken'. Other vocab we've picked up from streets signs:

Selamat Datang: welcome
Pasar Seni: market central
Keluar: exit
Menara: tower
Jalan: we think it's street
Lemak: coconut
Terima Kasih: thank you
Berhenti: stop
Teksi: taxi
Ekspres: express
Muzium: museum

As you can tell by the last few, they enjoy phonetically spelling English words to make them Malay.

We spent Canada Day in search of plans. We kept hoping to bump into some other Canadians, and we were not disappointed.



We went to check out the Batu Caves, these massive Hindu temples in a mountain cave, just outside KL in the afternoon. 272 stairs later (not exaggerating; actual stair tally), we were gazing in awe at the yawning caves. We didn't go into the temple/shrine areas because they were in prayer session.



I should also mention at this point that there were monkeys. Everywhere. We had been warned not to bring food, since they can be aggressive.

You know what? I don't like monkeys. There, I said it. I don't mind the small, not too bright ones that inspire Paul Frank's fashion line, but on the whole, I'm not cool with them. And everyone LOVES monkeys. Oooh, they're so cute. Ooooh, they're so playful. NO. They are nasty-tempered, rude and probably diseased. Especially these ones. Mehr was taking a picture of one from a respectful distance and the monkey's older boyfriend attacked her backpack. I was seriously concerned there might be a monkey swarming. I gave them a lot of evil looks to make it clear that they would get no love from me. Stupid, smelly monkeys.

On a lighter note, while rewarding ourselves with an ice cream after successfully descending all 272 stairs, I ran into Brendan Morrison, who I went to King's with. Yes, this planet is really that small. How random is that? He had also met some other Canadians in KL, so we all went out together to celebrate our fabulous nation at a place called Reggae Bar in Chinatown. After 80s-crazed Australia, the reggae and hiphop tunes were a welcome change for our ears. And the DJ won our eternal affection for playing not one but TWO Sean Paul songs in the course of the evening. Happy Canada Day indeed!!