Kuala Lumpur

It seemed odd to have to take the train from the bus station to get in the city, but this was the reality. We were 40 km away from the capital of Malaysia. Mihai managed to choose between the three different kind of networks, buy tickets and get us on the right platform. Then we just walked around with our heavy backpacks trying to find the needle in the haystack. We thought it would be easy to find the address, but there was no map... We chose a corner, stayed put with the bags and left Mihai to wander around. After half an hour of walking round and round, he found the hotel. It was there all along!

A multileveled guesthouse, with shared bathrooms and plenty of stairs, it offered us a quiet family room. During the day, it gave a wonderful feeling that it was just for us. Come night time and it suddenly became alive, people eating in the kitchen, smoking and listening to music loudly on their phones. Fortunately for us, around midnight they would go to sleep. We would be awakened by “Jar of hearts” by Christina Perry played continuously, until we were sick of it. Still, we didn’t move; it had good internet, and that’s a rarity.

Our main raison d’etre here was to obtain visas for South Africa. Mihai looked over the requirements before leaving and decided to obtain them from Singapore or Malaysia. Trying to fill out the papers on internet, he read: apply in the native country or country of residence. This was not possible for us. He tried his luck in Singapore, but got a categorical refusal. Now we tried it again in Kuala Lumpur.

Wonderful Malaysia

Like many countries, Malaysia is trying to promote tourism and in the process is using various slogans. Wonderful Malaysia. Malaysia, truly Asia. Amazing Malaysia. Occasionally slogans have some truth in them. For us Malaysia has been wonderful.

Malaysia is wonderful

We've been in the country enough times that we

A Whiz Through Malaysia

Please get ready to hop into a vehicle that will whiz you through most everything we did in Malaysia at record speed. Please keep hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and make sure to close your eyes if you start getting dizzy.

…  ready?

Melaka

Selamat datang! (seh-lah-mat dah-tong) Welcome to Malaysia!

It is a cloudy day and we’re looking for our bus to Melaka. The bus station is huge with at least 100 different parking spots for different buses. Inside there are food courts, bazaars and people, moving in all directions. We board our bus toward Melaka and nap almost all the way. Why are we here? Melaka is a World Heritage Site and we don’t need to be in Kuala Lumpur until Monday.

Asia Wrap

We finished the first big part of our trip. We spent 137 days in Asia, visiting Japan, China (twice), Nepal, India, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia. If I would be set to collect records I could count 10 countries, adding Tibet, Macau and Hong Kong. We crossed several borders, going through immigration 24 times. A big number, but it pales in comparison to the number of times we had our passports checked in Tibet. We passed through Malaysia three times, but mostly in transit. The last visit was longer, 24 hours in George Town, Penang.

Penang

The first idea in coming here was spending a week. Most people seem to like it in Penang.

But really, for us, there was nothing to see. We checked into what I think was a Star hotel type thing, I grabbed a book from the book exchange downstairs, and started reading. We leave tomorrow, early, but that's enough time to finish the Nora Roberts book.

We rest a while and then head out to see Penang. For a moment it's fantastic to be actually walking, without having to look at a beach. We're actually walking in the same formation we've been walking in for four months, and it's fantastic to get to something somewhat normal. I'm actually skipping down the street as I carry the Nora Roberts book.

This might sound strange until you consider that we have to stop every once in a while— to take pictures, to decide where we're going next, to look around… by the time we reach home I've located a book store and I've read 90 pages.

Penang is an amalgamation of Chinese, Indian, and Malaysians. You can walk down a street listening to Bollywood music, seeing just Indian faces, and then you can turn into another street and suddenly be confronted with Chinese. We manage to locate the restaurant mentioned as 'the best in Penang.'

It's a sort of self-serve one-time-only buffet. It's not Chinese food, exactly, because there is much more seafood than in the traditional Chinese cuisine. It's a bit like a mix of Indian and Chinese— there's curried chicken and a great deal of other foods which we eat because we need to eat something.

We head back to the hotel, shower, pack what we can into our bags so that we have that much less to worry about tomorrow. I stay up late to make a bit more headway into the Nora Roberts book, fall asleep at about midnight, set the alarm for six (because naturally I want to be able to finish another book before we leave so that we can exchange it at the Book Exchange store… full of shelves of books). I wake up at ten, finish the Nora Roberts novel, and we eat very quickly at a Chinese-style buffet in the opposite direction from the book exchange.

With only ten minutes to spare before we have to walk to the bus station, Ileana, Ioan and I head toward the book exchange, spend as little time as possible finding books, and neglect to haggle over the price we should receive for Ice Station, the only book we're actually exchanging.

The reapings?

The Language of Stones, Ioan's choice

Getting Rid of Matthew, Ileana's and my choice, because it's a hilarious title. Not such a good book, though, as Matthew was quite possibly more infuriating than anyone should ever be.

But already, we're on the bus, and we're reading, and life feels much better now that we're leaving Penang behind.