Kuala Lumpur

After an uneventful layover in Miri, we left Borneo for Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Our hostel was sweet, and the lady who works there was really nice. The AC was a wonderful change as well. We had about a day there so we saw the Petronas Twin Towers, which used to be the tallest buildings in the world before the Taipei 101. They are pretty awesome buildings with a suspension bridge in between them for viewing the city. I think they’re in the movie Entrapment or something. 

Not a whole lot happened that day actually; we walked all over town and saw some really nice architecture and the world’s tallest flagpole which we learned about in a video we watched for our Asian Business class! It’s not supposed to be a very good thing because the video was about how a lot of Asian countries wasted money when they could have been helping their people, but nevertheless it was fun to see. We went to an indoor market that I actually found interesting. Kind of overdid it with the tribal / jungle appeal though, and overpriced too, so we left.

KL has a definite feel to it which kind of comes out at night. It looks almost like Vegas without the casinos: big flashy buildings on a long road with palm trees. They had the biggest golden”M” I’ve ever seen so I decided it was time for Spicy Beef Foldover.

Okay I have to talk about this thing for a minute because it was so good. It was big and surprisingly spicy, more spicy than you’d expect from McDonald’s. Tasted like Taco Bell smothered with Fire Sauce. And it was packed with vegetables of a higher caliber than I’m used to here, like red onions and carrots and stuff. Damn it was good. Maybe the best McDonald’s I’ve ever had.

It doesn’t look like much but trust me it was good.

Now the Malaysians in Borneo are probably the chillest people I’ve ever met, and they don’t annoy foreigners at all, probably because tourism isn’t as huge there. Not so in Kuala Lumpur though. The bus station in particular felt almost like Shenzhen, with people jumping in your face and tugging your arm to try to get your business. I didn’t like it, but we had to get bus tickets.

That night we went to some club. Again all the clubs here happen to be jungle themed. It was all right, but nothing special. Too hot.

Mulu

So Monday morning we took a tiny plane with propellers to Mulu, Sarawak. We touched down on a little landing strip surrounded by a fence and a little building and definitely no airport. It was very Jurassic Park 3, minus William H. Macy.

Mulu is famous for its caves, so we hiked to a few that day. Henry, our tour guide, pointed out some cool things about the jungle like this plant that had ants inside that would rattle madly if someone poked the plant, and then pour out to attack whoever was disturbing them. Symbiosis again! One thing that was pretty amazing about the jungle was how loud it was all the time. There was a constant roar of birds and insects and whatever else all around you. We saw some pretty butterflies drinking water off the floor after it stopped raining.

It definitely rained every day we were in Malaysia, but most definitely in Mulu. We walked in and out of the rain and finally got to the caves, which were huge and eerie. You could hear bats above you and smell their lovely guano but we couldn’t see any of them in the darkness. At it’s opposite end was a place called the Garden of Eden, where there was soft light and beautiful trees and rainwater flowing off the mouth of the cave. It was unreal, and they told us people used to be able to get to it, but not anymore because the path to it is blocked. Kind of sucked but I think there’s an old story about that…

The other cave had a crazy set of stalagmites and stalactites, which I learned about when I was probably 7 but it was cool seeing them in person. Afterwards we waited outside the entrance to the caves for the bats to come out to feed, but they didn’t come because it was too rainy. Bummer!

We walked back in the pouring night and saw some crazy-looking jungle bugs. Frogs here go woot woot woot and sound like birds.

There was more cave-walking the next day. On our way to a few caves we passed through one pitch-black cave where I took a picture of a bat, although you can’t really tell it’s a bat. But it’s a bat. We reached one cave with a giant river flowing through it and another with more huge stalactites.

There was also a lot of sleeping because it was so hot and wet, although maybe not as hot as Thailand. Mulu has the kind of humidity that would have me soaking wet after a 5 minute walk at night, and I’m the least sweaty guy I know. The food there was terrible too, there was really only one cafe and it was overpriced. Street food had spoiled us.

In the morning we went on a long canopy walk that takes you to the top of the trees on a wobbly plank bridge. We didn’t see any monkeys but it was a pretty fun walk.

We head out!

Kota Kinabalu

I’ve posted selected pictures from my trip, as well as from the rest of the year, which you can find here or on my sidebar.

The geography of Malaysia is kind of confusing, but here goes. Malaysia itself is divided into Peninsular Malaysia, which is south of Thailand, and Borneo Malaysia, which is on the island of Borneo. Borneo Malaysia is made up of two Malaysian states, Sarawak and Sabah. Kota Kinabalu, or KK as it’s commonly called, is the capital of Sabah. Here’s a map.

We were picked up at KK Airport on Friday and dropped off at our backpacker’s hostel, where we stayed in a comfy fan-cooled dorm room. We met a couple of Swedish students who are on a one-year social anthropology program from their university. It basically means they travel the world to anywhere where there’s indigenous people and study them for a few months at a time, but all they did while we were there was go to the beach. Sounds like fun, yes?

That night we went to town to eat Indian food. I checked out the McDonald’s local menu, where they have a Spicy Beef Foldover which looks like a deliciously giant beef pita.

The upstairs area of the hostel where our rooms are has a big open window, so during the night we saw a good number of lizards or geckos hanging out on the ceiling. While I was showering in the shared bathroom a gecko ran across the wall and spooked me. But then I thought it was a cute little gecko, like the one from the Geico commercials.

In the morning we ate at this Indian place nearby that the Swedes recommended us. It’s open 24 hours and has egg roti and fresh juice for about 2 ringgits, or 60 US cents each. It would become our default food stop for the weekend.

There was a neighborhood near our hostel that we think might have been project housing. The houses were really short and crowded and there weren’t very good roads. There were a lot of kids playing outside and older people hanging out by the creek. As we walked the kids ran up to see us, some of them speaking to us in broken English or what they guessed might have been our native language. Most of them weren’t shy at all and started doing crazy poses for our cameras and then gathering to look at themselves in the pictures. They kept following us around shouting “one more, one more!” and asking for money. It was fun and a little weird, but they were cool kids.

That afternoon we went into the city center and looked around a mall. The place wasn’t anything special except I did get a waffle with chocolate and kaya (coconut jam) for 60 cents and it was insane.

We walked along the waterfront where there are a lot of nicer restaurants and enjoyed the sunset over the South China Sea. At the main city market there was a huge section for fruit, vegetables and fish, and another that was a barbecue fish and chicken kebabs section, and then another for desserts like fried bananas. We got some kebabs, fried rice and a fantastic bowl of soup, followed by shaved ice, which by the way is the best dessert ever in the heat of Southeast Asia. Fireworks came on, nobody was really sure what for, and most of the people working there stopped for a bit to watch.

We picked up a bunch of tropical fruit and had a fruit party back at the hostel.

After some Indian food in the morning we took a boat from the city to a park on an island nearby. There were a bunch of monitor lizards all over the place and I tried chasing some for a picture but they were shy. We rented snorkels and swam for a bit over some coral reef. There wasn’t a whole lot of reef but I did see some fancy blue fish and a little fish eating things off of the blue fish’s body. I’m a big fan of symbiosis.

We took a walk on an island trail and it started to rain. They told us there were snakes and lizards and pheasants we could see but we didn’t see anything. It just rained a lot and we got to a clearing where there were two very unusual trees growing out of the rocky shore. We walked back in the rain and went back to the market for more food.

I had this great thing where they deep fry a bunch of dough, then put vegetables and egg in the middle, then fold the fried dough over itself like a fried pocket which was chopped into chunks and served with hot sauce. It was so good, and the sunset was beautiful again.

We went back to the same stand as last night and asked for more of their soup. They thought we were weird for wanting just soup and no food. Then somehow we ended up taking pictures in the rain with the ladies who worked there and the guy who cooked our food and some random people who wanted to take pictures with us too. Malaysian people are cool.

I don’t like goodbyes

Does anybody still read this? Well just in case…

I’m done with classes forever, as far as I can tell. I guess I feel good about it but these things take time to sink in for me.

There was a farewell party last Friday; it was nice. Tonight all of us just got together and ordered pizzas and hung out for the last night we’d all be together in Hong Kong. I’ve had a great time with these guys, but all good things come to an end and that’s life.

So, goodbye. You’re an amazing bunch.

I’m not quite done with Asia yet, though. I’ll be back May 8, and will update you then.

Teaching in Shantou

Well the past few weeks have been long, but I made it. Last weekend some of my good friends and I took a bus to Shantou, a city in the southern province of Guangzhou, China.

I don’t think CUHK properly prepared us for this trip. We signed up for a program to teach high school students English, so they put us on a bus and off we went. We arrived at around night time and some guy met us at the bus stop who was like “Hey you guys are from Chinese U right? Right this way to my sketchy looking van with the tinted windows…” Anyways we didn’t die and that’s what matters.

Shantou is a pretty developed city, and we noticed some gorgeous apartment complexes there. The school, however, was outside of town and very poor. When we arrived they made us a really nice, big Chinese dinner. We were fed very well that weekend.

We lived in special rooms in the student dorm area. Nothing too shabby, but the windows wouldn’t close so the mosquitos really had their way with us at night.

Saturday was teaching day. The school has a special program that some kids are in, and it’s kind of like an English major but in high school. The students (mostly girls) were divided into two groups. Group 2 had more developed English skills and we taught them in the morning first. Some of them were quite interested in us and some couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t blame them; it was Saturday. We showed them photos and videos, which they liked, and played some games which were rather hit or miss. Except Telephone, everyone loves Telephone!

During the break I joined a few students for a game like hacky-sack, except it was with a birdie-like thing with feathers.

Group 1 was less responsive, as we expected, and it was after lunch so everyone kind of stopped caring. It wasn’t so bad, and I had some interesting conversations with a few of them. Most of them like to play video games and shop in the city and read. We gave them some magazines from the US but I think they just looked at the pictures. They asked us if we had girlfriends or boyfriends. They also asked us to show them how to dance, which I really hoped Stephanie would but she wimped out. They got bored so I taught them how to play Spoons and I think they had a lot of fun.

So I guess we expected them to be more curious about us and the States, but maybe that was just us being American and thinking everyone cares about us when they really don’t. After all most of them haven’t been outside of Shantou and just wanted to do their thing and hang out with friends. It’s cool that they’re learning English though. By the end of the day they kept calling us “teacher” and wanted to take pictures with us, especially Steve. They liked him.

That evening we were sitting around and a girl working at the school offered us some gong fu cha, which literally translated is Kung Fu tea. It’s a very concentrated tea that is taken from tiny cups. She kept pouring, and we couldn’t say no, and it eventually killed my sleep.

That night I covered myself with the sheets as well as I could, except my hands were really hot and itchy from the bites the night before. So I eventually gave up and stuck my arms out, again at the mercy of the damn bugs. On the way back home the next day I counted 17 bites on my hands and arms. Still, a small price to pay for a fascinating experience.