Malaysia and Thailand

November 14^th

I'm afraid I haven't kept up with this at all and now we're three countries later and writing about all of them feels rather daunting. OK, Malaysia and Thailand first.

We spent about 2 weeks in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpor really surprised us. I don't know if it was just the pleasure of being in an easy to navigate, clean and calm city (the only hassle -and it was a very minor hassle - were the half hearted attempts to draw us into foot massage parlors around the corner from our hotel), but we really enjoyed our 4 days there. Sparkly buildings, interesting Islamic architecture, Hindu temples with a different style than we'd previously seen (we learned they were following southern Indian traditions), a large park, mind boggling shopping malls, comfortable hotel with free wi-fi, fresh fruit and delicious organic macrobiotic food sums up our experience.

Batu cave/Hindu temple:

mosque Masjid Negara (national mosque):

We headed south to the UNESCO town of Melaka for one night. The trip there was again a pleasant surprise – fancy airconditioned bus which went directly there via a “normal” highway. This is a city that over the course of time from the 14^th century until 1957 has been occupied by Indians, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and British. We enjoyed wandering the ruins of the Portuguese fort, Dutch graveyard and exploring the Chinatown area with fancy house facades, evening karaoke and a road with several Buddhist temples (one contained elements of Buddhism, Confucionism, and Taoism), a Hindu temple and a mosque. Having already tired of the ease of transportation, the bus trip back north was actually boring - the only thing to see out the windows being palm tree plantations (for palm oil) as far as the eye could see.

Very fancy trishaws (at night all lit up and with music):

Community karaoke:

Kampung Kling mosque

We hopped on another bus in Kuala Lumpur and headed towards the island Pangkor which the Lonely Planet describes as “the girl next door island” compared to the other “super model islands”. We're still not sure what that means. As the tourist high season had not quite begun and we were there midweek, we got to enjoy this beautiful island in its low key mode. We tried to have a beach holiday, but the water was too warm to be refreshing and we didn't have beach books to keep us glued to the sand for hours. Instead we spent a day walking nearly all the way around the island in the high heat and humidity. Crazy – and the island turned out to be quite hilly too. But we did enjoy seeing the miniature sand crabs making balls of sand that resulted in snowflake like patterns on the beach, boat builders working on a large wooden fishing boat, and a kingfisher and hornbills close up.

ferry:

 Trawlers every night:

 Big lizard going for a swim:

After 3 days, we headed to Pelau Penang, an island attached to the mainland by a 13.5 km bridge (though we took the quick ferry across instead). We stayed in Georgetown, the main town on the island and another UNESCO site. I quite liked this place as it didn't feel at all touristy, yet there was so much to absorb from quirky signs, horizontal hourglass shaped windows, temples, mysterious food, and people going about their daily life. As the Malaysians put fish and shrimp in almost everything, finding vegetarian food was tricky and we ended up eating Indian food for almost all of our meals. While at first I wasn't very enthusiastic about eating Indian food yet again, the food was southern Indian and better than a lot of the food we ate in India itself.

Kek Lok Si temple ( construction started in 1890 - the tower design is Burmese at the top, Thai in the middle and Chinese on the bottom):

Turtle Liberation pond (a puzzling name as the turtles seemed quite captive to me):

Khoo Kongsi (a Chinese clan house):

Kuan Yin Teng temple (really crowded as it was the birthday of the goddess this temple honors  - goddess of mercy, good fortune, peace and fertility):

Freeing birds in front of the temple:

While there, we found out via email that an acquaintance of my mother was sailing in Malaysia. With some email exchanges over a few days, we found out she was in the same town and we managed to meet up. She and her sailing partner very kindly agreed to take us on board their sailboat for the sail north to another island, Langkawi. A day and a half of sailing brought us there and despite my first experience of seasickness, having other people to get to know and to be free of our usual daily decisions provided us with a vacation from our vacation. There were some amazing jellyfish that floated by as well.

First night in Georgetown harbor:

where we anchored for the second night on the boat (part of Langkawi archipelago):

Upon arrival in Langkawi, we decided to head directly to the ferry terminal to mainland Thailand. For while Langkawi was one of the “supermodel” islands, we'd already proven to ourselves that we aren't beach holiday folks and it had no public transportation making getting around quite expensive. We caught a 1pm ferry and after an hour of watching some kind of kung fu movie, with absolutely no plot as far as we could discern, we were in Thailand.

We spent the first night in Trang getting our land legs back and adjusting to a new currency and country. Thailand was much easier to find veg. food with yummy green vegetables and plenty of vegetarian fried rice or pad thai.

Supermarket:

Don't know what the occasion was:

Shoes off outside clinic (even food sellers took off their shoes before entering bus):

Inside hotel:

Lottery tickets for sale:

In the morning we headed to Krabi by bus and this was a more interesting ride than the bus rides in Malaysia for although it was air conditioned and with comfortable seats, it did stop along the road to pick up and drop off people and there was plenty to see out the window such as mosques, huge pictures of the royal family, fancy gates over side dirt roads, and different architecture. We spent three days in Krabi, on the south west coast, enjoying exploring the weekend night market, finding beautiful shells at a nearby beach, and going snorkeling for a day at and around Ko Phi Phi (the island where the movie “The Beach” was filmed). This was an area hit badly by the 2004 Tsunami and the evacuation route signs at all of the beaches were a solemn reminder of that tragedy and the possibility of its reoccurance.

Susan Hoi (Fossil shell beach)-snail fossils from 40 million years ago:

Plastic bag on the head to protect from rain (we saw this in India too):

While here we heard about all the terrible flooding that was occurring in the North of Thailand and we were hesitant to head back up into an extended monsoon scenario like we had experienced in India. However, we also knew from our experience in India that the media doesn't portray an accurate picture as they only show the worst hit areas and it is hard to tell, unless you are there, how extensive that area is. On our third day in Krabi it began raining which made it not very inviting to stay longer. So we headed north to Bangkok to see for ourselves how bad the flooding was. After failing to find a bus or train to an intermediary destination we bought tickets for 2^nd class seating on the overnight (17:30-8:30) train to Bangkok. One of the seats partly reclined and we managed to get some sleep though after finding a hotel we spent the greater part of the day sleeping.

Serious line (out the door) for donuts at the shopping mall:

Our primary reason for coming to Bangkok was to pick up the new Steripen (our awesome water sterilization tool which had broken after 8 weeks of intensive use in India) which was being sent to an acquaintance living in Bangkok. Unfortunately when we met her for dinner that first night we found out the Steripen hadn't yet arrived. We spent the next morning visiting incredibly decadent shopping malls where men in fancy crisp white uniforms (including gloves and hats) opened the doors and groups of smartly dressed Thais attended a wine appreciation class at 10 am. Unfortunately the sporting shops in these malls had never heard of a Steripen, so we returned to the hotel and did what we should have done from the beginning and tracked down the phone number of the distributor in Singapore who gave us the Fed Ex tracking number so we could see that our new Steripen was on way to be delivered at that very moment. We'll be returning to Bangkok in January so having gotten the Steripen and ascertained that the flooding had subsided, we headed north to Chiang Mai the next day. Walking to the bus station we passed through a pet market setting up for the day.

Bags of goldfish at pet market:

Chiang Mai felt quite touristy with its center streets full of hotels and restaurants, but the more than 300 temples kept us busy for a day of wandering the streets. To keep up with tradition, we also completely wore ourselves out by walking out of the center to the Tribal Museum (which turned out to be closed for renovation) in the full heat of midday. At least we got to see a bit of non-touristy Chiang Mai. Overall though, while Thailand felt more accessible than Malaysia, I still did not feel like I got a very complete sense of the country and culture. Perhaps it is just because we spent so much longer in India, but both Malaysia and Thailand felt like we were seeing places from an even greater distance than in India. Another factor in this may also be that in both countries we were staying in larger towns and cities, whereas in India we had some experiences of walking and biking in more rural areas where one sees so much more of daily life. We also were staying in places that were more oriented towards tourists in Malaysia and Thailand which adds another layer of distance. And we didn't have any homestays or discussions with Thai or Malaysian people. Perhaps we will seek out such an experience when we return to Thailand in January.

Hot air balloon/lanterns for sale:

Hoola Hoops were everywhere in Thailand:

According to our tentative plan of two weeks in Thailand, three weeks in Laos, two weeks in Cambodia and three weeks in Vietnam, it was time for us to head to Laos. So we took a 6:30 bus to the Thai border - Chiang Khong, took a longboat ferry (less than 5 min.) across the Mekong, and arrived in Huay Xai, Laos by midday. Getting a visa upon arrival was easy and quick. We found a hotel, wandered the town's one main street, visited the temple, gathered some travel tips from other tourists and tried to get our heads around the new currency (1 Thai Baht = Laos Kip).

We're thoroughly enjoying Laos. More on that later!