Melaka

Melaka was a hoot. It's a very touristy place, in sharp contrast to Ipoh, which was just a back-water town. In Ipoh, my friends dragged me around to all their favorite haunts and tried to pass me off as just another friend. Nobody was fooled. My whiteness shines like a the thousand candlepower lighthouse on a moonless night, even notwithstanding the shiney bald head I have.

But we were talking about Melaka. In Melaka, I got to join the hordes of tourists scampering through the streets and crawling all over the town. It was fun.

Right down the street from our hotel was this old temple that had been converted to a Temple of Holy Desserts. I think I laughed for a whole block. Then I noticed some flowers and had to take another picture.

The streets in the inner town part of Melaka don't even bother with lanes. But they decorate nicely. There are trishaws all over the place. Most of them have nice plump white folk on the cushey seat and some skinny baba leaning into the pedals like they were a harsh winter wind.

Walking along the touristy street, there were a whole swarm of shops, all selling touristy junk. They had various clever things out in the fronts of their establishments to lure people in. There were also several temples. They all had these beautiful ornate carvings and inlays all over their fronts. I only went inside one. It was basically a house with a big fat alter in the front room.

As we were walking up and down this touristy strip, I noticed a little alleyway snugged between a couple of well-decorated shops. The whole scene completely entranced me for a moment. I swam in my head off to some science fiction world where the entire community of Asian cultures was just a big production, a lot like Westworld. But I got hungry, so I came back to this world.

We went and found a little resturaunt that served rice balls and fish balls and beef balls and nice cold drinks to go with them all. (I know, I know, you didn't know rice had balls, har har.) There was this one old guy behind the counter who was taking whole roasted chickens and a big huge knife and chopping them up. It was cool to watch him. And a little freaky, in a horror movie sorta way.

That resturant had a hole in the ground for a toilet. Granted, the hole in the ground was tiled, but it was still a hole in the ground. With a hose. Don't forget the hose.

By the time we were done munching on all those balls, the touristy strip had magically transformed itself into a night market. So of course, we had to trapse up and down the same strip a few more times. Oddly, it was fun.

The next day we went to another touristy place. It was a famous place. I know this because it was called "A Famosa." There was a canon. Yeap. Couldn't resist.

And that was my trip to Melaka.

. Topher

Ipoh (Part 3)

We went and crawled around in some caves just outside of Ipoh. As we walked up to the caves, the tour guide guy gestured towards me and said to my companions, "I don't speak English, so you have to translate." Then he proceeded to give the entire tour in English.

The hills the caves were in were gorgeous! Nicely rounded mounds of earth covered in greenness.

After we went to a "drive-through drink stall." We got sugar-cane juice. In a bag. YUM!

We went and played in the gardens of Mun Ling's parent's house. And the gardens played with us. By the time we left, we all felt a little greener.

Then we left.

. Topher

Ipoh (Part 2) Revisited

It has been mentioned to me that my recent posts have not been as entertaining as my earlier posts. Yeah, I know. I'll endeaver to embue a significant amount of condensed entertainment into my future posts...

HOWEVER -- I would like to point out a few rather entertaining moments in the most recent post, moments that still render me unable to stop myself from distorting my face into strange monstrous contortions depicting extreme pleasure (not that kind of pleasure), or nearly so anyhow.

1) The hotel was the PINK house... the PINK HOUSE! Gah! That kills me!

2) The "sexy" temple was sexy because it was phallic. Juvenile, I know, but combined with the pink house, it just keeps me going right through the middle of the post.

3) The guy in the kitchen making the food with the hat... The kitchen (and indeed, the whole resturaunt) is not exactly up to US health-code standards, but the guy wears a hat, by jove! That's hilarious!

(gasp)! Yeah... that was a funny post. You should go re-read it.

. Topher

Ipoh (Part 2)

It rained in Ipoh. No, no, no... I mean it RAINED in Ipoh. We were standing there sweating in the heat. It started raining. "Bah!" I said, "It's just rain. I've seen rain." 15 minutes later the waters were up to the doors of the cars driving by in the street, those that weren't stalled out. It rained for about 30 minutes more. And 15 minutes after that, the streets were clear again.

We went to find our hotel later. We drove around and around, looking for something that looked like the hotel, a sign or something. Finally we called the place. They said, "Look for the pink house." Yeah. That's it. Pink.

Our hotel was an unmarked pink house, completely indistinguishable from every other house around it (except for it's severe pinkness, of course).

The rate worked out to about $12 USD a night. Surprisingly, it was rather nice.

There was this sexy temple across the street. That's as close as I got to it.

The next morning, I got my first taste of Dim Sum! Once again, I was the token white boy in the place. Once again, I couldn't order for myself. But my companions took care of me. And the food was fantastic! The guy in the kitchen wears a hat. Heh heh.

So then we had to kill time till lunch...

. Topher

Ipoh (Part 1)

My first weekend side-trip was to Ipoh. Ipoh is a smallish town north of Kuala Lumpur by about two hours. Three of us drove up on Saturday morning.

Since this was my first trip out of the city, it was also my first glimpse at rural life in Malaysia. Once we were out of the city, there wasn't much. Well, unless you count palm oil and rubber tree plantations.

The first thing we did when we got into town was stop at a resturant and eat. I'm told there are two things to do in Ipoh; one of them is eat. Heh heh. Oh, but the food is so good!

I got my first taste of Char Kway Teow that day. Nope, it's not a girl. It's this certain type of noodle (a flat hand-made rice noodle a bit like fettucini) with a few veggies and meat chunks (usually prawns or chicken), an egg and some soyish type sauce all fried together. Yum. Instant favorite for this fried-food white-boy. (Though a girl would have been an instant favorite, too.)

I also tasted another something which has a name I don't remember. It was chunks of fruit and crispy pastry-type stuff smothered in a slightly bitter black sauce and bits of nuts. It was good, but it made me uncomfortable to eat it. It took me a long time to figure out why. Weeks of that discomfort niggling at the back of my brain like a little insect... Then I had that same black sauce on something else (not in Ipoh) and actually found an insect crawling in it. Yeah. It's just way too easy to hide nastiness in bitter blackness. Sometimes I feel dense.

I think this was also the first resturant I ate at that was decidedly dirty by American standards. There weren't any insects in this food -- in fact the food was pretty clean. But it turns out that building cleanliness is a bit of a dunbother in Malaysia -- they dun bother with it. When I sat down, I layed my hands on the table in a typical caucasian waiting-boy manner. "Don't do that," they said. "Why?" I asked. "Dirty," they said. I thought, Did I accidentally flip them off?

The plates and food are clean, as are the utensiles, but the tables, chairs, floor, etc -- basically everything you're not eating or eating with -- are all not-so-clean. If you drop your spoon on the table, you don't keep using it; you go clean it or get a new one. Also, you don't get napkins. Everybody brings their own little packs of tissue and they use that if they need a napkin.

I was the only white-boy in the place. And apparently the people around us were surprised that I knew how to use chop-sticks. Heh heh. Maybe they wanna see what else I can do with chopsticks?

. Topher

Jalan Petaling

One evening Serene took me to Petaling Street. I only took one picture before I actually got there. I was concerned for the wholistic well-being of my camera.

Petaling Street is a street market. The side streets are closed off to cars and set up with stalls for foot-traffic. There you can buy all the crappy shiney stuff you can carry. Watches, sunglasses, T-Shirts and Pirated DVD's seem to be the biggest sellers. I was astounded at how many different stalls were filled with watches. How can they sell so many watches?

It was quite an experience, though, just walking through the street. Since I'm a white boy with a nice shiney head, I am a hawker magnet. Everywhere I went they all started yelling at me, "Sir! Sir! Hello! Hello! Sir!" They basically ignored Serene. (Rather the opposite of what I'm used to. Heh.) At first all that direct attention was kinda fun, like a carnival or something, but it got very old very fast. Grrr.

A few had more original lines. They said stuff like, "A watch for you sir! Hello!" Or, "Best watches! Best Value! Sir! Hello!" And one guy even ventured an, "Hello! Sir! You are so handom! Sir!" I replied with, "Oh! So are you!" which sent all the hawkers in that stall laughing. Heh heh.

Selling pirated DVD's is illegal. So there aren't any DVD's at stalls. Instead, the DVD hawkers walk around with booklets of DVD's in their hands (no jewel cases -- they are pirated, after all). What's interesting is that they hawk the DVD's right in front of the police patrols. Apparently they have "an arrangement." (winkyface)

Selling porn DVD's is also illegal. But apparently, that's more illegal than selling pirated DVD's. While the hawkers would yell out the that they were selling DVD's and some of their top titles, they would wisper in my ear as I was passing, "Porn, Sir?" and "Do you take porn, Sir?" Serene, who was right next to me the entire time, only heard 2 of the 6 porn hawkers who approached me.

At one point as I was walking past a food stall with some seating, the stall hawker stepped in front of me and placed a menu in front of my face so that I couldn't move without walking into him and the menu. I almost punched him, but managed to refrain from that. Instead I did a rising block to get the menu out of my face and then shouldered into him and past.

I sampled my first stall food that eve. It was "apam malek," which is this bread stuff filled with a sweet peanut sauce. It was tasty.

All in all, quite a memorable experience.

. Topher

Water Maker

When I read on the Malaysian advisory website that you had to boil all your water before you could drink it, I had a nightmarish vision of laboring to lug around these big huge unwieldy pots of water, waiting for them to boil, wondering how long was long enough, boiling them for 30 minutes just to be sure, trying to pour little glass size portions out of this beast of a pot and dribbling water all over the place in the process... Oh the pain! The pain!

Yeah, it turns out they have these cool little pitchers that you plug in and fill up with water and push the little button on top -- and they do it all for you. I should have known.

Heh heh. Silly me.

. Topher

A Hose?!

My first trip to a bathroom in Malaysia was a bit of an education for me. It was a public stall. It was an enclosed room (not like our flimsy "cubical" stalls in the States). There was water all over the floor and toilet seat. And I discovered a hose hooked next to the toilet.

I had to wipe down the seat with a wad of TP before I could even start. It's a sensitive operation, you know. When I finished my business curiousity got the better of me. I grabbed the hose, pointed it at the toilet and turned the valve. It sprayed and splattered water all over the stall. I was glad I hadn't tried to "go native" right off the bat. I'd be wearing a soaked pair of pants and a blush up to the top of my bald head.

I'm sure this must be a solution to the Beauty and the Stink problem, but I haven't yet figured out how to make effective use of this hose without taking a towel into the stall with you and stripping down. And nobody does that. So I must be missing something.

Got any ideas?

. Topher

Traffic

One of the first things I noticed about Malaysia when I got here was that the drivers here seem to have a very different understanding of what a lane is.

In the US, a lane is a rule; you stay in your lane. Not only that, but you stay within in enough that you have a buffer on either side of you. If you drift too close to one side or the other of your lane, you're liable to get honked at, or maybe even pulled over for chaotic driving (if a bored cop happens to be behind you).

In Malaysia, the lane lines are really only a slight suggestion. A car might be driving down the middle of a lane, or it might be straddling the lane line. Other cars will go around it as needed, squeezing if neccessary.

In the US, I ride a motorcycle. When traffic is tight, I often drive between the lanes, between the cars. In Malaysia, cars do that too.

In Malaysia there are scooters all over the place. Small 90-150cc bikes. They ride anywhere they can: on the shoulder, between cars, on the sidewalks, anywhere. And there are swarms of them. They're everywhere.

The drivers have a totally different etiquette than in the US as well. If there's room for a car, there's room and it's ok to move. That's not limitted to changing lanes. Pulling out from a driveway or side-street can also be done if there's room. The oncoming cars just have to slow down. There's no "cutting off" people here. It's just part of driving.

At first I thought this was very dangerous. I mean, what if the oncoming cars can't stop in time? But then I realized that on the surface streets the speed limit is never more than about 50 KPH. That's only about 30 MPH. Suddenly it seems much less dangerous.

Add into all of that the whole driving on the wrong side of the road and it seems rather chaotic to a honkey white boy fresh off the plane. But I'm getting used to it.

. Topher