Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Daily Dose
Another trip to visit my neighborhood doctor. No, really I'm not a hypochondriac. Bronchitis this time. cough cough. Bummer, because I'd been planning a pre-Ramadan trip to a Malay friend's house near Penang tomorrow. Ramadan starts on the 15th (most likely, have to wait for the moon).
I've got less than three weeks left in Malaysia. Trying to get all those "one last time" things done now, buy things, see people, etc. so I'm not super stressed and rushed at the end, though I'm fairly convinced it'll still be that way no matter what. The only thing I really want to do that I haven't done yet is go see the synchronized flashing of fireflies in Kuala Selangor, about an hour and a half outside KL.
I submitted my Peace Corps application Monday---only four days after I decided I was going to apply. Seems like it'll take a few weeks to hear back anything, but glad to have that in the works.
Took my absentee ballot to the Embassy today! Yea!
Backup
A few weeks ago I had an interview in Melaka, then headed down to Singapore to meet up with Terri. We stayed with her Korean friends in Holland Village, an expensive, trendy neighborhood with lots of nice, ethnic restaurants (we had Mexican!!) and so many ex-pats. The place kind of gave me the creeps. Sure Sing is nice, but...nice isn't enough. I confirm the 'no need to go back' analysis. (Though Terri was mentioning some interesting urban planning there, something I never give much thought to.)
The next day, we took a bus to Johor Bahru, I got my visa extension no problem, then we hopped on a bus to Mersing, grabbed lunch, and hippity hopped on a ferry to Tioman Island in the South China Sea. It was amazingly easy and we never had to wait for too long for any connection (we were flying by the seat of our pants, not sure of bus/ferry times, but lucked out).
Tioman Island, September 2004
Our Lonely Planet (burn that book!) lead us to ABC Beach (the ferry stops at several different points). In between the sporadic clusters of chalets and restaurants, there are rundown, abandoned ones and piles of trash...Not so nice. Of course, I didn't take pictures of that part. I thought about it, but realized that I usually try to sterilize pictures to show only the good, pretty things...
Chalet at Mohktar's Place. 20 RM/night.
We arrived on a Tuesday and stayed till Saturday. Twice we smeared on the sunscreen---but then it wasn't even sunny! It rained a bit each day, as monsoon season is starting. One morning we hiked to the other side of the island, Juara, in about two hours. That beach is so much nicer. It's a shorter beacher, cleaner, and more quiet. The problem is getting there. You have to pretty much hire a private boat to get dropped there, as the ferry evidentially doesn't go and the trek is too much to do with all your belongings.
Half an hour after arriving, it started to rain. A man was just coming out of the water and headed to a seemingly closed restaurant, but he told us it was open. We waited while he showered. Samad reappeared and basically only gave us the option of french fries, since he hadn't been to the market yet and his bread was baking in the oven. Who makes their own bread?!?! Amazing.
And those French fries were the best. Terri was loving the sandwich we finally got (I wasn't such a fan since there was mayo on it).
We began deliberating whether or not we should go back, not sure if/when the rain would let up. There's a road, but the cars weren't going because it was slippery and most of the road was dirt...And I only had my flip flops, so was also worried about falling if we walked back. I had randomly picked up a book from Samad's bookshelf that I was getting into, Oranges are not the only fruit, and wanted to finish it (first half much better than the second). We had only what we were wearing, but that didn't seem like such an obstacle. Samad offered us his own shirts to wear and the cabin next to the restaurant for 20 RM. It was much bigger than our other one and immaculately clean. We made a list of pros and cons and the pros totally outweighed the cons for staying, but we seemed paralyzed in our decision making for a long time.
We stayed. And didn't leave a 50 foot radius till the next day.
Terri also found a book on the shelf and we read while good tunes played and the rain fell.
That night Samad's Swiss friends/business partners for his dive school came for a dinner party. There was a 30-something couple, her 68 year old father, his 61 year old girlfriend (who, for her birthday, went diving for the first time!), and another 40-something Swiss woman. Plus Samad.
Dinner was like a banquet. Terri, fortunately, knew some French. That might be the first time where I wish I did. After dinner, the father wanted to sing some songs in honor of his older brother, who he found out had died that day. (He was from a family of 18 kids!) The daughter, girlfriend, and father sang traditional Swiss songs in French and it was beautiful, with harmonization. I especially loved how the father would look into the eyes of his girlfriend or daughter and hold their gaze as he sang. They were like the von Trapp family. The daughter even admitted that she used to play the accordion, until people made fun of her in her teens and she gave it up out of embarrassment. Her husband never sang, but watched as she did with admiration and pure love that I doubt I've seen before.
The father wanted Terri and I to sing something, but we failed miserably as dinner guests in that respect. We can't remember lyrics and can't carry a tune. We made it our goal to come back to KL and memorize at least one song for the next time we were in that situation. (With Apit's help, we had a jam session our first night back in KL, singing some Bob Marley, but...definitely didn't memorize anything and I definitely still can't carry a tune.)
Our bill for everything: lunch, dinner, drinks, cabin, snorkel gear (10 RM each, we didn't end up going because it was too cold in the AM), was 68 RM. That's less than $9 a person!
Tioman is cheaper than Perhentian for food and accommodation (and has duty-free), but the beach at Perhentian is nicer than ABC's. Juara's beach is comparable, but much, much more quiet and harder to get to.
Korean sunscreen.
We couldn't go for a snorkel trip to Coral Island because of the weather. Towards the south end of ABC there is less rocky beach and you can swim out to go snorkeling. We swam with a turtle and Terri spotted these BIG fish that a local later said was probably a Napoleon fish. They were ramming at the coral with their big teeth and let us get close. That's when I freaked myself out and started imagining them turning to eat ME.
Napoleon fish
From Tioman, we took a boat back to Mersing and caught a bus an hour later to get to Cherating. We actually only bought tickets to Kuantan, but then paid (bribed) the bus driver 6 RM each to get dropped at Cherating, rather than get another local bus. It was his idea and the bus was going right by...
Cherating was a cute little village, but definitely felt like a tourist spot. I guess some British woman opened a B&B there awhile back and since then it's became a popular spot, though it doesn't seem any better than any other part of the coast...There were a lot of locals there, holidaying the weekend away, which makes the touristy feel not so negative. At least you're with locals... With a new east-west highway cutting travel time from KL from 5 hours to 3, it's an easy getaway.
We decided to stay at one of the more expensive (60 RM/night) cabins right on the beach, rather than drag our bags around looking for something else. Plus, the skies were threatening to dump on us.
The beach was really wide and the water very shallow. Of course it rained...but apa boleh buat? What can you do?
At Cherating
We went to check out the restaurant attached to some chalets called Shadow of the Moon at Half Past Four. I love that name. It was a bit eccentric (which is what it was going for) and the owner offered me some wild boar. It was pretty tasty, but seemed to be dark meat. Isn't pork supposed to be the other white meat? Is boar different? The owner said he used to go hunting himself, but stopped after mistakenly killing a mother boar. They killed Bambi's mother and that made a good movie...
We played pool with some rather sketchy drunk locals and called it a night kind of early, after rumors of a trannie show seemed unlikely to materialize.
Maverick
There were no bus tickets left from Kuantan to KL on Sunday and Terri needed to get back by Monday to get a visa for Vietnam, so we decided to fork over the big bucks to share a service taxi. (56 RM each rather than a 20 RM bus ticket).
A Malay guy in a bomber jacket (despite the heat) searched for another passenger to share the taxi with us (unsuccessfully) while Terri and I lunched. We decided to call him Maverick. He had to get to KL that night and I envisioned a dying relative or a wife in labour awaiting his return. Turns out he was the captain of the Air Force squash team and Monday was the annual Army-Navy-Air Force competition and he needed to be in KL earlyish Sunday night so that he could go out partying. Oh brother.
Maverick admitted that he'd decided to become a pilot because he saw Top Gun when he was a teenager. So Terri decided to quiz him. She'd say a line from the movie and he'd say the next. It was eerie and warped. I've only seen the movie once, but these two knew it cold. Kin, the Canadian pilot Erika and I traveled with in Penang, also knew the movie backwards and forwards.
Mav was pretty much your stereotypical pilot: cocky, full of himself, a braggart about womanizing and drinking. Russia will be training four Malaysian pilots to become astronauts and he's been shortlisted (4 out of the 10 candidates will become national heroes!).
It wasn't until well into our journey--at least 2 hours--that we discovered he had a wife and two daughters. This is where things got interesting.
He makes his wife wear tudung (the Malay word for the Islamic headscarf). He said that if he didn't, he'd be held responsible on the Day of Judgment. He believes that now that his daughter is 7, the obligatory age to pray, it is his right to beat her if she doesn't pray.
This infuriates me. How can he NOT see the hypocrisy?! He's worried about being judged for his wife not wearing the scarf, but he drinks and womanizes. What about personal responsibility for your own actions, buddy?!
Fortunate for him, he had to direct the taxi driver so that I couldn't grill him. There was just enough time before we got out of the car, after directions were given, for him to tell us a dirty joke. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Another trip to visit my neighborhood doctor. No, really I'm not a hypochondriac. Bronchitis this time. cough cough. Bummer, because I'd been planning a pre-Ramadan trip to a Malay friend's house near Penang tomorrow. Ramadan starts on the 15th (most likely, have to wait for the moon).
I've got less than three weeks left in Malaysia. Trying to get all those "one last time" things done now, buy things, see people, etc. so I'm not super stressed and rushed at the end, though I'm fairly convinced it'll still be that way no matter what. The only thing I really want to do that I haven't done yet is go see the synchronized flashing of fireflies in Kuala Selangor, about an hour and a half outside KL.
I submitted my Peace Corps application Monday---only four days after I decided I was going to apply. Seems like it'll take a few weeks to hear back anything, but glad to have that in the works.
Took my absentee ballot to the Embassy today! Yea!
Backup
A few weeks ago I had an interview in Melaka, then headed down to Singapore to meet up with Terri. We stayed with her Korean friends in Holland Village, an expensive, trendy neighborhood with lots of nice, ethnic restaurants (we had Mexican!!) and so many ex-pats. The place kind of gave me the creeps. Sure Sing is nice, but...nice isn't enough. I confirm the 'no need to go back' analysis. (Though Terri was mentioning some interesting urban planning there, something I never give much thought to.)
The next day, we took a bus to Johor Bahru, I got my visa extension no problem, then we hopped on a bus to Mersing, grabbed lunch, and hippity hopped on a ferry to Tioman Island in the South China Sea. It was amazingly easy and we never had to wait for too long for any connection (we were flying by the seat of our pants, not sure of bus/ferry times, but lucked out).
Tioman Island, September 2004
Our Lonely Planet (burn that book!) lead us to ABC Beach (the ferry stops at several different points). In between the sporadic clusters of chalets and restaurants, there are rundown, abandoned ones and piles of trash...Not so nice. Of course, I didn't take pictures of that part. I thought about it, but realized that I usually try to sterilize pictures to show only the good, pretty things...
Chalet at Mohktar's Place. 20 RM/night.
We arrived on a Tuesday and stayed till Saturday. Twice we smeared on the sunscreen---but then it wasn't even sunny! It rained a bit each day, as monsoon season is starting. One morning we hiked to the other side of the island, Juara, in about two hours. That beach is so much nicer. It's a shorter beacher, cleaner, and more quiet. The problem is getting there. You have to pretty much hire a private boat to get dropped there, as the ferry evidentially doesn't go and the trek is too much to do with all your belongings.
Half an hour after arriving, it started to rain. A man was just coming out of the water and headed to a seemingly closed restaurant, but he told us it was open. We waited while he showered. Samad reappeared and basically only gave us the option of french fries, since he hadn't been to the market yet and his bread was baking in the oven. Who makes their own bread?!?! Amazing.
And those French fries were the best. Terri was loving the sandwich we finally got (I wasn't such a fan since there was mayo on it).
We began deliberating whether or not we should go back, not sure if/when the rain would let up. There's a road, but the cars weren't going because it was slippery and most of the road was dirt...And I only had my flip flops, so was also worried about falling if we walked back. I had randomly picked up a book from Samad's bookshelf that I was getting into, Oranges are not the only fruit, and wanted to finish it (first half much better than the second). We had only what we were wearing, but that didn't seem like such an obstacle. Samad offered us his own shirts to wear and the cabin next to the restaurant for 20 RM. It was much bigger than our other one and immaculately clean. We made a list of pros and cons and the pros totally outweighed the cons for staying, but we seemed paralyzed in our decision making for a long time.
We stayed. And didn't leave a 50 foot radius till the next day.
Terri also found a book on the shelf and we read while good tunes played and the rain fell.
That night Samad's Swiss friends/business partners for his dive school came for a dinner party. There was a 30-something couple, her 68 year old father, his 61 year old girlfriend (who, for her birthday, went diving for the first time!), and another 40-something Swiss woman. Plus Samad.
Dinner was like a banquet. Terri, fortunately, knew some French. That might be the first time where I wish I did. After dinner, the father wanted to sing some songs in honor of his older brother, who he found out had died that day. (He was from a family of 18 kids!) The daughter, girlfriend, and father sang traditional Swiss songs in French and it was beautiful, with harmonization. I especially loved how the father would look into the eyes of his girlfriend or daughter and hold their gaze as he sang. They were like the von Trapp family. The daughter even admitted that she used to play the accordion, until people made fun of her in her teens and she gave it up out of embarrassment. Her husband never sang, but watched as she did with admiration and pure love that I doubt I've seen before.
The father wanted Terri and I to sing something, but we failed miserably as dinner guests in that respect. We can't remember lyrics and can't carry a tune. We made it our goal to come back to KL and memorize at least one song for the next time we were in that situation. (With Apit's help, we had a jam session our first night back in KL, singing some Bob Marley, but...definitely didn't memorize anything and I definitely still can't carry a tune.)
Our bill for everything: lunch, dinner, drinks, cabin, snorkel gear (10 RM each, we didn't end up going because it was too cold in the AM), was 68 RM. That's less than $9 a person!
Tioman is cheaper than Perhentian for food and accommodation (and has duty-free), but the beach at Perhentian is nicer than ABC's. Juara's beach is comparable, but much, much more quiet and harder to get to.
Korean sunscreen.
We couldn't go for a snorkel trip to Coral Island because of the weather. Towards the south end of ABC there is less rocky beach and you can swim out to go snorkeling. We swam with a turtle and Terri spotted these BIG fish that a local later said was probably a Napoleon fish. They were ramming at the coral with their big teeth and let us get close. That's when I freaked myself out and started imagining them turning to eat ME.
Napoleon fish
From Tioman, we took a boat back to Mersing and caught a bus an hour later to get to Cherating. We actually only bought tickets to Kuantan, but then paid (bribed) the bus driver 6 RM each to get dropped at Cherating, rather than get another local bus. It was his idea and the bus was going right by...
Cherating was a cute little village, but definitely felt like a tourist spot. I guess some British woman opened a B&B there awhile back and since then it's became a popular spot, though it doesn't seem any better than any other part of the coast...There were a lot of locals there, holidaying the weekend away, which makes the touristy feel not so negative. At least you're with locals... With a new east-west highway cutting travel time from KL from 5 hours to 3, it's an easy getaway.
We decided to stay at one of the more expensive (60 RM/night) cabins right on the beach, rather than drag our bags around looking for something else. Plus, the skies were threatening to dump on us.
The beach was really wide and the water very shallow. Of course it rained...but apa boleh buat? What can you do?
At Cherating
We went to check out the restaurant attached to some chalets called Shadow of the Moon at Half Past Four. I love that name. It was a bit eccentric (which is what it was going for) and the owner offered me some wild boar. It was pretty tasty, but seemed to be dark meat. Isn't pork supposed to be the other white meat? Is boar different? The owner said he used to go hunting himself, but stopped after mistakenly killing a mother boar. They killed Bambi's mother and that made a good movie...
We played pool with some rather sketchy drunk locals and called it a night kind of early, after rumors of a trannie show seemed unlikely to materialize.
Maverick
There were no bus tickets left from Kuantan to KL on Sunday and Terri needed to get back by Monday to get a visa for Vietnam, so we decided to fork over the big bucks to share a service taxi. (56 RM each rather than a 20 RM bus ticket).
A Malay guy in a bomber jacket (despite the heat) searched for another passenger to share the taxi with us (unsuccessfully) while Terri and I lunched. We decided to call him Maverick. He had to get to KL that night and I envisioned a dying relative or a wife in labour awaiting his return. Turns out he was the captain of the Air Force squash team and Monday was the annual Army-Navy-Air Force competition and he needed to be in KL earlyish Sunday night so that he could go out partying. Oh brother.
Maverick admitted that he'd decided to become a pilot because he saw Top Gun when he was a teenager. So Terri decided to quiz him. She'd say a line from the movie and he'd say the next. It was eerie and warped. I've only seen the movie once, but these two knew it cold. Kin, the Canadian pilot Erika and I traveled with in Penang, also knew the movie backwards and forwards.
Mav was pretty much your stereotypical pilot: cocky, full of himself, a braggart about womanizing and drinking. Russia will be training four Malaysian pilots to become astronauts and he's been shortlisted (4 out of the 10 candidates will become national heroes!).
It wasn't until well into our journey--at least 2 hours--that we discovered he had a wife and two daughters. This is where things got interesting.
He makes his wife wear tudung (the Malay word for the Islamic headscarf). He said that if he didn't, he'd be held responsible on the Day of Judgment. He believes that now that his daughter is 7, the obligatory age to pray, it is his right to beat her if she doesn't pray.
This infuriates me. How can he NOT see the hypocrisy?! He's worried about being judged for his wife not wearing the scarf, but he drinks and womanizes. What about personal responsibility for your own actions, buddy?!
Fortunate for him, he had to direct the taxi driver so that I couldn't grill him. There was just enough time before we got out of the car, after directions were given, for him to tell us a dirty joke. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
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Oh, and I forgot to mention: he also believes it's not POSSIBLE for a man to rape his wife (a recent debate in Malaysian law).
Pu-Yi: thanks for reading and posting a comment! I wish more people would! :D
Pu-Yi: thanks for reading and posting a comment! I wish more people would! :D
Maverick's sort makes me soooo upset. Argh. And I'm too hungry to get upset over idiots like that.
I'm glad you're enjoying your days in Malaysia! I hope you keep doing so, despite idiot people of my race.
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I'm glad you're enjoying your days in Malaysia! I hope you keep doing so, despite idiot people of my race.
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