Kuala Lumpur

I flew from Langkawi back to KL for a few days to take care of some errands, the most important of which was getting a 60-day tourist visa for Thailand. I slightly fouled up the application process my first time at the Thai embassy – I didn’t have a photocopy of my passport – and the embassy was closed the following day because of a national holiday, so I stayed in Malaysia for a couple days longer than I had intended. I ended up doing a little shopping and enjoying the nightlife a bit more to fill the time, including a pretty fun rap and hip-hop party called “Ghetto Heaven” that happens every Tuesday night at Zouk. Tough life, I know.

I thought I needed a second Japanese Encephalitis shot, since that’s what I was told when I received the first shot a month ago. However, after some confusion, paper rustling, and a phone call to who knows, the doctor at the clinic informed me that the shot I had already received was of the 1-shot variety, not the 2-shot variety, so I didn’t need a second shot. I’m still a bit concerned that there was so much uncertainty regarding what shot I had actually received. On the outside, I was nodding and listening, but on the inside, I was wondering: “What the hell did you inject me with lady?!”

Also, given that I had some free time and access to an extremely fast and stable Internet connection (a rarity in these parts), I overhauled my online photo portfolio. I pruned the collection a bit, added the online-worthy photos that I’ve taken on this Asia trip, re-edited some of the older photos now that my Lightroom skills are a bit better, and, most importantly, migrated everything to a proper 500px account. I feel like a real photographer now!

Here’s the link: 500px.com/kylegetz

Phuket

Upon flying to Phuket, I met up with Omar, a friend from San Francisco, who is on holiday in Southeast Asia. We spent the weekend in Patong, mostly to enjoy the city’s world-famous (read: infamous) nightlife. I’m not going to transcribe anything that happened that weekend; you’ll just have to use your imagination.

After the weekend in Patong, we took a boat to Koh Yao, a pair of small islands about halfway between Phuket and Krabi that are known for being very quiet and peaceful. It’s a good thing this was the plan all along because I came down with some kind of illness and spent the next three days almost entirely in bed with a high fever. Koh Yao is a great place to do nothing though, so while I’m bummed that I didn’t get to go cycling or kayaking or see James Bond Island, I’m grateful I had the time to rest before Chiang Mai. I may try to make it back to Koh Yao at some point for a do-over.

Chiang Mai

Some backstory is necessary for the Chiang Mai trip. For some time now, I’ve been planning to go to Chiang Mai in November to experience the two lantern festivals, so I also started researching volunteer opportunities there (of which there are many). I settled on a volunteer organization called Friends For Asia, which runs volunteer projects in several countries, including Thailand. They have a lot of great projects and I applied to a few, eventually getting accepted to be an intern at Citylife, the premiere English-language magazine of northern Thailand. My job responsibilities may include web design, graphic design, photography, layout, and writing.

Seeking out an unpaid internship in the middle of a holiday may seem borderline crazy, but I have my reasons:

• After a few months of very free-form, unscheduled living, I was craving some structure/routine.
• Some of the job responsibilities (i.e. web development) match up with my professional experience and some (i.e. photography) match up with my personal interests.
• This is a perfect opportunity to try a different and more creative career without actually committing to it. I can extend the internship on a week-by-week basis if I want; otherwise, it’s over after one month, which is enough time to develop an opinion on whether this kind of work could pan out long-term.
• This is also a perfect chance to get some insights and exposure to a foreign culture that wouldn’t normally be available to a tourist. I will have a commute, coworkers, a boss, meetings, business lunches, happy hours, and all the other normal things that working folks around the world have. I’m really interested in the prospect of having those things in a foreign culture.

I’m actually writing all of this at my desk on my first day here since there isn’t much for me to do yet, which goes to show that first days everywhere are sort of the same. I’m heading out tomorrow to take photos of a new art gallery and a new shopping mall for a couple spreads in the next issue of the magazine, so I think that things will be ramping up very quickly.

The orientation activities for all the new volunteers this past weekend included a tour of a couple temples in the city, so in the interest of not having a picture-less post, I’ll include some photos:

More on the lantern festivals later.

As we left Penang and accelerated to full speed, the bluish skies turned a dark, ominous grey and storm clouds extended in every direction as far as the eye could see. The sea, though still a very pretty shade of teal, grew choppy and the waves increased in size, replacing the smooth ride out of the dock with rolling, swaying, bucking, and jumping, for lack of proper nautical terms. Within twenty minutes, everyone’s good spirits and smiles had faded into pale, sweaty expressions of worry as the gentle, sleep-inducing rocking we experienced at the outset transitioned into a stomach-churning aquatic roller coaster. The giggling of tourists snapping photos of the harbor turned into barely-stifled screams as the boat repeatedly launched off the waves and violently slammed back into the water.

Did I mention this ride is three hours? Yup, and that’s on a good weather day.

The captain kept the boat moving forward as fast as it would go and the crew seemed unfazed by it all, which isn’t a surprise since they probably make this trip a dozen times a week. The crewmembers tried to smile and joke and generally lighten the mood as they offered some kind of menthol-smelling chest rub to those passengers already feeling queasy. This rub was used in vain by an increasing number of folks until they started grabbing at the barf bags hand over fist. At about this time, I popped my earbuds in and cranked up some recently downloaded Moby tunes as loud as I could to block out the symphony of hacking, dry heaving, and vomiting that was playing in glorious surround sound in the cabin.

Did I mention this particular ferry ride is known as the “vomit comet”? Yup, and this ride wasn’t even during monsoon season.

I have to hand it to my stomach; it did very, very well for me that day. I was more anxious than anything else as recollections of news stories of Southeast Asian ferry disasters bubbled up through my thoughts and my imagination constructed a chaotic, terror-filled drowning scenario set to a beautiful and moving Moby score. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that coffee just before getting on the boat; I blame the caffeine for my anxiety. In the end, I closed my eyes and practiced my yoga breathing for three hours and made it through just fine. But holy shit, what a way to start the trip to Langkawi! I’m very happy that my next transportation adventure will be a flight to Thailand rather than a boat ride.

Once in Pantai Cenang, the main beach on the island, I walked around for a while to get the lay of the land (after the rain stopped, of course). The area has a really nice feel to it, like a small tourist town with a sprinkling of beach culture, though this feeling is admittedly a bit diluted because of the ominous clouds that appear on the horizon every day. Daily rain is pretty much guaranteed; sometimes it’s a drizzle, sometimes it’s a violent storm. Looking at the weather forecast for this part of the world is a waste of time as it always says “chance of thunderstorms” for every hour of every day. But when it’s not raining, the weather here is really pleasant: perfect ambient temperature, sunny, and partly cloudy. The “partly cloudy” part isn’t great for sunbathing, but it’s perfect for outdoor activities in a place where you break a sweat simply getting out of the taxi.

Being an increasingly popular tourist destination, there is the usual smattering of restaurants, bars, shops, massage places, and tour agencies. If you can believe it, the diversity in Langkawi is even greater than the rest of Malaysia, as there are more European and Middle Eastern tourists than elsewhere in the country. Clearly catering to the latter, there are quite a few Arabic/Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/Iranian restaurants, which brings the overall restaurant variety up to a fairly impressive level. I will need to be incredibly active here just to make sure I don’t gain any weight from all the delicious food I will be shoving into my face. The food options here definitely rival George Town. And since Langkawi is duty-free, alcohol is significantly cheaper here than the rest of the country. Beers at some of the beach bars are less than $2.

Sidebar about the international tourists: After traveling to many Malaysian tourist destinations over the last month, I’ve noticed that every group of Asian tourists falls into one of these categories: a couple, a group of couples, a group of girls, or the occasional family. I’ve never seen a solo Asian traveler, which I don’t find that unusual, but I’ve also never seen a group of guys, which I find really odd. Don’t Asian guys ever get together with their buddies and plan a trip? I have no explanation or theory for this; it’s just an observation. Feel free to educate me in the comments section.

After a day of rest and research, I booked a few activities through Dev’s Adventure Tours: a kayaking tour through the mangrove forest, a cycling tour through the countryside, and a guided trek through the rainforest.

Though I had never been in a kayak before (just canoes and rowboats), the kayaking tour was really spectacular and easily my favorite activity of the three. For about three or four hours, we rowed the river and carefully navigated the tributaries snaking through the mangrove forest. Once we entered the tributaries from the main river, our surroundings became very quiet; the only sounds were our paddles in the water. The water, forest, and limestone cliffs were beautiful and we saw a variety of birds, monkeys (including one that fell out of a tree and into the water), and even a viper coiled on a tree branch. The coolest moment by far though was watching some of the boat operators feed Brahminy Kites (very similar to eagles) by throwing chicken and chicken fat out into the water from the boats. After the boats left and a gentle drizzle started coming down, I slowly rowed up to the feeding area and floated for a while, watching the kites circle overhead, swoop down, skim the water, and grab at the food with their talons. Some of them were coming down maybe only fifteen or twenty feet away; it was a really cool, peaceful moment, especially with the sounds of the rain on the river.

After finishing the kayaking tour, we all went back to the dock at the floating restaurant, had a Thai-style lunch, and briefly visited the fish farm, where they breed some massive, aggressive fish. The real highlight was petting the sting rays, which I didn’t realize are actually docile, curious creatures. Their tops are a little rough, almost like a cat’s tongue, but their undersides are silky smooth.

Both the cycling tour and the jungle tour were the next day and, like the kayaking tour, had an emphasis on discovering the local flora and fauna while being moderately active. Unlike the cycling tour I went on in Bali, which was all downhill, this cycling tour required actual effort, though still not as much as I would have preferred. The tour took us through the countryside and small villages, including stops at a rubber tree farm, a buffalo park, where we ate buffalo ice cream and buffalo mozzarella, and a local market where we bought some fruit (but nothing very exotic).

The jungle tour was in the evening and included sea cucumbers, bats, various trees (and their culinary or medicinal properties), and the occasional “Move quickly up here, there are black termites everywhere!” warning from our tour guide. We saw a lot of black termites (which can sting you with their acid) and decent-sized termite mounds. After emerging from the jungle a bit after twilight, we walked around the neighboring resort, watching flying squirrels and flying lemurs climb and glide from tree to tree, including one that flew right over all our heads. If those animals weren’t cool enough, check this: they don’t have eyelids (which means their eyes are always open to watch for predators), so they clean their eyes by licking them with their tongues. How cool is that?

After a day of rest and a day of rain, I ventured out to two of the more popular sites on the island: Panorama Langkawi (a.k.a. the cable car) and Telaga Tujuh, a series of connected pools at the top of a waterfall. Telaga Tujuh was significantly less crowded, probably because of the 300-step climb that is enough of an obstacle for out-of-shape tourists. The views were really nice and the pools were pretty peaceful, which was certainly not the case at Panorama Langkawi, as I learned later. The cable car is part of the “Oriental Village”, a sort of mini-Disneyland with lots of annoying rides and shops and other methods to separate tourists from their money. Large coaches came through constantly and the place was overrun with Muslim schoolchildren. Just my luck that I picked the same day to go as schools in the area, though I have a suspicion that it’s like that everyday there. The cable car ride was fun and there are great views of the mountains and valleys below, but once I made it to the top and snapped a few photos (none of which I even kept), I wanted out as quickly as possible. In hindsight, I should have spent twice as much time at the falls and avoided the cable car altogether. On the plus side, the absence of people at Telaga Tujuh offered me the opportunity to start messing around with HDR photography.

The following day I rented a bike from the hotel across the street and went for a 20-mile ride around the southwestern part of the island. I might have gone further had my bike not been a rusty heap with gears that slipped and barely worked to begin with. I was so drenched in sweat after cycling in the heat and the humidity that when my shorts dried later in the afternoon, they were covered in white salt stains. (Yeah, yeah, insert crude joke here.)

I think this photo sums up the internal part of the island very well: bright green rice paddies and massive storm clouds.

The next morning was a four-hour, island-hopping jet ski tour around a popular portion of the Langkawi archipelago. It should go without saying that four hours of jet skiing around tropical islands is nothing short of incredible and awesome and every other positive adjective you can think of. As I posted on Facebook immediately after I got home, that $200 expense was one of the most sound financial decisions I’ve ever made.

It was a bit of an off-week for the company, so I was the only one on the tour. My guide, Isha, and I cruised around the islands, drifted under limestone cliff overhangs, watched eagles feed, shouted at the “fjords” to hear the echo, swam and snorkeled at an empty beach, and enjoyed some 40-mph “play time” on the open water with no boats around. In some places, the water was so calm and the surface was so glassy and smooth that it felt like we were flying across a massive mirror. The waters were pretty tame for most of the tour, but we encountered just enough choppiness towards the end to launch off the waves and get some airtime. This was actually my first time on a jet ski and now I totally get it. Those things are fucking fun!

After a couple more days of beach time and cycling and eating, my last adventure was a short ride on a powered parachute (another first for me) above Cenang. To call this thing an “aircraft” is a bit generous and probably offensive to actual aircraft. I believe the official term for this type of conveyance is a “contraption”. I mean, come on, look at this thing:

To complete the look, it really should have a motorized umbrella pumping up and down. And maybe one of those old-school horns that goes aaahhh-wooo-gaaa!!!

To address all of your safety concerns, I will say this: I was wearing a helmet, a life vest, and a parachute. If I had been wearing a condom too, I would have been invincible!

The flight was actually very smooth, very enjoyable, and very safe. Come to think of it, the only scary part was how docile I was with the whole experience. I’m very comfortable with heights, but I don’t think my heartrate even went up at all when we took off. Either I’m developing a tolerance to adventures (I better not be!) or, rather, that speaks volumes for how effortless and smooth a powered parachute ride is when it’s done correctly.

After about two weeks – wow, was I really there that long? – it was time to move on. Langkawi is a spectacular tourist destination and it’s no wonder that it’s gotten so popular in recent years. There’s something for everyone here: beach laziness, swimming/snorkeling/diving, duty-free shopping, eating, drinking, nature tours, culture tours, and outdoor activities. One of the benefits of staying in Pantai Cenang is the location on the western coast of the island: sunsets every day. In fact, Langkawi has some of the most consistently beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen; the sky lights up tangerine, pink, and eventually a fiery red every night. The ever-present smattering of clouds gives the waning light a medium to play off of, enhancing the whole scene.

Speaking of the clouds, I’ve actually enjoyed them a lot. Partly cloudy (bordering on overcast) is my favorite weather and its especially nice here since you’ll get a real beating from the sun without anything to block it. The rains have been nice too: they defuse the humidity, provide some variety to the weather, and force me to go inside for some Internet/blogging/photo editing time, which I need anyway. The storms are rarely full-day or even half-day affairs, so once the rain is done you can go right back outside.

In hindsight, I ended up accidentally picking the best time of the year to come to Langkawi: the weather is improving every day as the monsoon season winds down and the peak tourist season doesn’t start for another few weeks. I wish I could claim 20/20 foresight and careful planning, but it was really just dumb luck.

Up next: back to KL for a few days to take care of a lot of nagging errands and Internet tasks, get my last vaccination (finally!), and get a tourist visa for Thailand. After that, off to Phuket!

The art walk is what turned it around for me. In the past few years, the city has commissioned some specific types of urban art: about fifty steel, two-dimensional sculptures that tell the history of George Town, often humorously (like large one-panel comics), and more than a dozen wall murals of people or animals in everyday activities. With the aid of a really helpful map provided by the tourism center, I wandered the city for hours and hours (over the course of two days), sweating in the damp heat, visiting each piece and duly checking it off the list. The part of me that enjoys crossing things off lists (to completion!) was supremely satisfied by this exercise.

A pleasant side-effect of this journey was that I covered more of the city (the heritage zone, specifically) than I would have ever seen in any guided tour. As a result, I discovered several really great restaurants that weren’t mentioned in any guidebook; the importance of these discoveries became magnified as I slowly realized that eating and drinking were going to be my two main activities during my time in Penang, as it was just too damn hot to summon the energy to do anything else. George Town is known as the foodie capital of Malaysia and it certainly lived up to that; some of the dishes I had here rivaled anything I’ve eaten in Asia. Or ever, for that matter. Case in point: one of the vegetarian places close to Little India (adorably and appropriately named The Leaf) had a pasta dish of spaghetti with vegetables in a pumpkin cream sauce. Sure, it’s not a Malaysian dish by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s fucking pumpkin cream sauce. Game over man, game over. Oh yeah, and it cost all of $3. That’s three, as in the number that comes after two.

On Friday night, I was feeling pretty jazzed about life, thanks in part to this Geographer remix that I’ve been playing on loop for days, so I got dressed up (read: jeans, shoes, and a plaid shirt) and went to Macalister Mansion, which is a vehicle for the swankiest cocktail lounge in all of Penang. Several massive menus of wines, whiskeys, and cigars were placed in front of me as I slid up to the bar. I was feeling pretty happy with my plans for the evening as I sipped on Chilean Carménère and Glenmorangie, two of my favorite drinks in the world.

As the evening wore on, I ended up chatting with one of the bartenders and the sommelier, who introduced me to his group of friends that had shown up at the bar at around 1:00. They immediately treated themselves to bottle service, which is apparently the thing to do in Malaysia, as it’s significantly cheaper than buying drinks individually. Whiskey is also big in Malaysia, so when I say “bottle service”, I’m not talking about Grey Goose or Patron or whatever they push in Vegas. I’m talking freaking Laphroaig single malt. It wasn’t long before they had poured a glass of that delicious, peaty nectar and sent it my way.

Close to 2:00, the group (including Fadlin, the sommelier) decided to head out to one of George Town’s clubs and insisted I join. I was happy to oblige. We drove to a club that was admittedly past its prime for the evening, as only two dozen patrons remained inside, but that didn’t stop the DJ from blasting ear-shattering electro house for the next hour, nor did it stop the tattooed, basketball jersey-clad hype man from yelling and cursing into the microphone every few minutes, nor did it stop my new friends from getting more bottle service (Johnnie Walker Black this time).

Maybe five minutes later, an overanxious (and over-intoxicated) kid sitting at the next table over accidentally knocked the bottle of beer out of my hand, which shattered on the floor, sending glass and mediocre Asian lager in all directions. For the next couple of minutes, there ensued the predictable choreography of us picking up the biggest shards with our hands, a barback swooping in with a broom and dustbin, and the aforementioned lush buying me a new beer. After all was forgiven and things returned to normal – meaning we were each yelling over screeching electronica to the person standing next to us – I told Hakim, one of the guys in the group, that I found it funny that everything I had seen or heard that evening was exactly the same as in the States. The conversations, the drunks, the annoying DJ behavior, the music, the couples making out in the parking lot, even the bottle being knocked out of my hand. Everything. I felt like I was out on the town with my friends back home. After I told him this, he turned away thoughtfully for a minute or so, then turned back to me with this typed on his phone:

And as we’re crossing border after border
We realize that difference is none

He told me those were lyrics from a song and some quick Google sleuthing reveals it’s a song by Gogol Bordello (a Gypsy punk band from New York). The sentiment behind those lyrics is actually something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’d like to defer my thoughts on this until I’m closer to being done with my travels, but for now I’ll just say that I’ve stopped seeing the differences in all the places I’ve been and nowadays I mostly see only the commonalities.

After shutting down the club, the group piled into the cars once more and drove to a random street in who-knows-where (I was many drinks deep by this point), where a lone street vendor had his cart and a few tables set up. Fadlin helped me with my order to make sure my food was vegetarian and a few minutes later I was devouring a pile of delicious, semi-spicy noodles (with a fried egg on top, of course) along with everyone else. A couple other friends of the group showed up and joined in for a while before it was time to head out again, several people on their way to more partying, several on their way home, and me back to my hotel.

The entire evening was random and unplanned and really, really fun. I could tell within a few minutes of meeting Fadlin and his friends that they were solid people. As I got to know them a bit better over the course of the evening, this opinion solidified further. They were incredibly gracious and hospitable and invited me along for all their shenanigans as if I had been part of their clique for years. I really did feel like I was partying with my friends back home, even to the point of noticing that some of these folks reminded me of very specific people I know in San Francisco. To them, it was probably nothing to have me tag along, but for a solo traveler, experiences like this are incredibly meaningful and it’s given me a new perspective on what it means to be hospitable to strangers.

The rest of my time in George Town was mostly uneventful; again, I blame the humidity and daily thunderstorms. Most of my time was spent sleeping, eating, drinking, or pecking away at my laptop in a coffee shop. I did manage to make it out to the only skybar in town for a few drinks and a terrific view from the 360-degree rotating restaurant.

Tomorrow I take an early-morning fast ferry (ominously referred to as the “vomit comet”) to Langkawi for some beach time, jungle trekking, waterfalls, and the like. I’ve read that jellyfish stings are common in the waters there and that you’re supposed to swim fully clothed. I’m not crazy about that requirement, but then again, I haven’t had the best luck with beach-related animal encounters.

The minibus ride along the winding highway from KL to Jerantut was pretty uneventful, though I did have an unexpected moment of nostalgia along the way. At one point, I looked up from my book (On The Road, funny enough) to admire the countryside and was greeted by an expanse of rolling hills and valleys covered in dark green trees. A rest stop with a McDonald’s whizzed by, as did a massive billboard for paintball. Involuntarily, I was transported twelve years back in time, sitting on a Greyhound bus making its way along the winding highways in Pennsylvania or New York as I traveled between college and home. In that moment, the two scenes were almost identical, but I snapped back to reality when I noticed the palm trees everywhere and that all the signs were in Malay, not English. Still, it was a funny flashback to have, especially considering I had just read the part in the book where Sal wakes up in a motel room in Iowa and literally has no idea where he is.

Once I reached Jerantut, I took a three-hour boat ride with other backpackers up the river to Kuala Tahan, a small village that is across the river from the entrance to Taman Negara National Park. The boat ride was uneventful but very memorable; even though the wooden seats hurt after a little while, the sights and sounds of speeding along the water through the jungle never got old. As the afternoon wore on, the sun disappeared behind dark clouds, the chatter on the boat faded, and the whole scene felt almost like Rambo or Apocalypse Now as we continued to make our way upstream.

Kuala Tahan is a Malaysian village second and a base camp for adventure travelers first. The vast majority of the village buildings are restaurants or accommodations, mostly guesthouses and hostels. The one distinguishing feature though is that most of the restaurants are floating barges whose entrances are rickety boards of wood slanting up from the rocky shore. When a boat speeds by and its wake hits the barges, you can feel the restaurants bob up and down a little.

Like most visitors to the park, I planned to spend only two nights in the area, so the activities started right away. After a floating dinner, I joined a dozen other travelers for a guided night walk through the jungle to spot nocturnal animals, mostly insects. From that point of view, the tour did not disappoint, as we saw lots of very large bugs; think ants the size of bees and spiders the size of your hand. More interesting to me though was simply the setting: walking through a pitch-black jungle with only flashlights to light the way, listening to all the new and unusual sounds.

I got up early the next morning and hiked to the park’s canopy walk, the largest in Malaysia. Even though half of it is closed for maintenance, it was still worth the trip, especially because I was the first and only one there. The novelty was lost a little bit since I had done the other canopy walk in KL only a couple days before, but it was still undeniably cool and clearly the biggest attraction of the park.

After a strenuous, mostly vertical hike to a small summit and the subsequent exhaustion-induced nap back at my guesthouse, I set out for afternoon activities of visiting a local Malaysian tribe and a boat ride through river rapids. The tribe (Orang Asli) is nomadic and the people are true original Malaysians, complete with their own language and customs independent of everyone else. One of the elders showed us how they make fire and how they make their blowdarts and blowpipes, after which we all got to try our hand at some target practice. Let’s just say I wouldn’t make a very good hunter.

The boat trip through the rapids was a little contrived (most of the reason we all got wet was because the tour guide was intentionally rocking the boat) but still super fun. He stopped the boat at a random spot on the riverbank and we all got to swim in the muddy river for a while. The ominous clouds, eerily quiet jungle, and lurking in the murky water elicited more Rambo sensations. Normally this wouldn’t be worthy of writing, except that it’s the first time I’ve been able to go in the water on this entire trip since my leg wounds are now finally healed. Here’s hoping my new skin is strong enough to keep out Malaysian river bacteria!

That night, I enjoyed a few hours of loud thunderstorms from the relative safety of the floating restaurants. I’ve always loved watching and listening to thunderstorms (from someplace dry) and San Francisco’s unusual geography and climate rudely deny me that joy.

Cameron Highlands

The next day, I took a minibus to Tanah Rata, the most popular city in the Cameron Highlands. Three hours of very winding roads eventually planted me in a surprisingly cool-weather town surrounded by hills and green fields of tea leaves. I saw tourists wearing pants and jackets in the late afternoon and I myself was a little bit cold in just shorts and a t-shirt. I had found some weather relief at last and it was delightful.

The next morning, I set out on a half-day hike led by Jason, a local tour guide and the husband of one of the women who works at my guesthouse. A native of the highlands, Jason studied, lived, and worked abroad for many years before returning home to do what he loves: explore the beauty of the highlands and introduce others to that beauty. He is intelligent, environmentally and politically conscious, and a fluent speaker of English, making him a perfect guide for the day. We had some candid conversations about Malaysia’s struggle to achieve “developed nation” status and how that often involves sacrificing the environment in the name of financial expansion. The topic of conversation migrated to conservation, pollution, recycling, and McDonald’s.

As for the trek itself, we spent a couple hours ascending one of the jungle hills, paused a bit for some snacks and photos, then spent almost three hours descending through primary rainforest. The trail was narrow, mostly unmarked, and virtually indistinguishable from other paths through the jungle, so I was extremely happy I hadn’t attempted this hike on my own. The jungle was cool, quiet, and very peaceful as we hopped over fallen trees and slipped through the mud. About halfway through the descent, the nagging clouds finally opened up and it started lightly raining. Surprisingly, this was the first real test of my raingear (even after two and a half months in Southeast Asia) and everything was a-okay. Given that I was dry (from the rain, but not from sweat), hiking through a rainy, peaceful rainforest was a really special memory for me.

Once we reached the end of our descent, we spent some time wandering through the tea fields of the Cameron Valley Tea Plantation, chatting with and watching some of the workers (who work six days a week, rain or shine). After getting a tour from Jason of some of the facilities and a lecture on how tea is harvested, we sat down in the plantation’s restaurant to enjoy some conversation, pastries, and hot tea, all of which were appreciated after a cool and very soggy morning.

After returning to town via an impromptu car ride from Jason’s “big sister” (which had humorous undertones of him being a helpless high school kid), I relaxed for the rest of the day and treated myself to lots of food and drink and laptop time in town. The trek was surprisingly strenuous; I ate two full dinners that night just to get back to normal and my legs are still a little sore (three days later).

Ipoh

The next morning, I hopped on a bus to Ipoh, a mid-sized city about halfway between the highlands and Penang, my next destination. Lonely Planet says that Ipoh is a bit of a foodie destination, though after a few days here, I think that’s a very generous label. Given that I’m a vegetarian and not crazy about Chinese food in general, I found Ipoh to be a little bit lacking in food options. That said, I’ve found a nice Western cafe (with a fantastic name), an upscale Indian restaurant, a Vietnamese place, and a Western-style bar that I’m happy to revisit because they serve up some satisfying meals. For about $6, I had a massive feast at the nice Indian spot, complete with multiple courses, cloth napkins, and even waiters in vests and bow ties.

Besides eating, there isn’t much to do in Ipoh beyond walking around Old Town (the birthplace of Ipoh white coffee) looking at colonial-inspired architecture. The “glory days” referenced by tourist literature and alluded to by the various heritage sites are long gone; these days, the city feels dreary, dingy, and lonely. I ended up spending more time here than I should have, mainly because I needed some rest from the fairly active last two weeks and the mild touch of tummy issues I picked up in the highlands. Feeling much better now after a couple days of playing video games on my laptop in my aircon hotel room, I leave tomorrow for Penang, a far more interesting place and a legitimate foodie destination; in fact, Penang is supposedly the foodie capital of the entire country.

Next post: Penang and George Town!

Random thought of the week: Darlie has been my favorite foreign toothpaste thus far, though it’s funny to note that until 1990, it was incredibly racist: it was actually called Darkie and had a pretty terrible picture on the packaging. Not joking.

Yup, that’s happening. The Petronas Towers are the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen. They’ve got a futuristic look but they still have the classiness of sparkling diamonds. I’m so enraptured by these buildings that they alone could almost convince me to work for Petronas, if only it wasn’t an oil and gas company. Here are some much better photos taken with my camera and tripod:

A quite decent amount of my time in KL has been sightseeing on foot and shopping (out of necessity). I’ve hit all the usual touristy places (KL Tower, Merdeka Square, Central Market), explored a few neighborhoods (Chinatown, Little India, Golden Triangle), and seen my fair share of malls. Good god, the malls here! Evidently Malaysians are serious about their shopping. There are numerous malls that dwarf anything in SF, especially when they’re linked together to create massive labyrinths of consumerism.

Perhaps the most egregious example of business is Low Yat Plaza, a six-story mall dedicated entirely to electronics. If that wasn’t enough, the first three floors are for only mobile phones and service providers. And if that wasn’t excessive, consider that all the dozens (if not hundreds) of stores and kiosks on those three floors sell the exact same phones and plans. I felt like a crazy person seeing the same displays over and over and over. I honestly don’t understand how they stay in business since it’s nearly impossible to differentiate them from each other, except by the level of pushiness they display to potential customers (which is how I made my shopping decisions).

I thought the cell phone culture in America was crazy, but KL takes it to another level. There are ads for phones and providers everywhere and it seems every corner store has a display case of phones and accessories. I found myself begrudgingly dragged into this culture when my phone adapter and my phone stopped working within a week of each other. Truth be told, the phone wasn’t that useful anyway since it wasn’t GSM; I was already thinking of unloading it. My hand forced, I shopped around and picked up one of the cheapest new phones I could find, the Sony Xperia E. It’s simple, has a recent version of Android, and most importantly, can actually work as a phone here. While I was out tech shopping, I picked up a travel mouse – mostly to make photo editing much easier – and a new laptop sleeve as my old one was already falling apart (admittedly because it was incorrectly sized).

The fancy malls in the nicer areas of town stand in stark contrast to places like Chinatown and Little India, which are run down and a little grimy; you can travel from a $$$$-part of town to a $-part of town in just a few LRT stops. But that’s just a manifestation of one of the foundations of KL: diversity. Everywhere you look, you’ll see Chinese, Malaysians, Indians, Muslims, and the occasional Western or Japanese traveler. Women in formless burkas walk alongside their boyfriends or husbands in Tommy Hilfiger shirts. Regardless of your ethnicity or religion, Chinese food hawkers try to convince you to sit down to eat at their stalls.

Coming from America, and San Francisco in particular, this ethnic and religious mixing isn’t new to me, except for the significant Muslim influence. Malaysia is the first Muslim country I’ve been to; I don’t count Indonesia because I spent all my time in Bali, which is Hindu and animist. In fact, KTM Komuter, one of the light rail lines, has multiple cars per train that are designated for women only.

After a few hours here, I became used to all of it. Truth be told, I actually like seeing women wear hijabs; they’re like long hair, but with a lot more variety of colors and patterns. And I find the burkas mysterious and even a bit intimidating, though that illusion is shattered when I hear the women speak (often to ask a mundane question like how much something costs).

In addition to wandering the city, taking lots of public transportation, and going shopping, I got a taste of the local culture (pun intended, you’ll see in a second) by setting up a lunch date via the website Plate Culture, which I read about in AirAsia’s in-flight magazine. It launched a few months ago and is primarily in KL for now, but is starting to expand to other locations in Southeast Asia. It’s basically Airbnb for meals: you look at profiles, sign up for a meal at a host’s house, and enjoy home-cooked food and conversation with your host and other guests. I had a really delicious vegetarian Chinese/Malay lunch and good conversation with Nicole, a twenty-something professional in the city who loves to cook for others. It was really nice to have a deeper conversation with a local and see how they live. And it was also really nice to be able to safely eat Chinese food without fear of consuming some gross animal part.

Outside of the city center, but still technically within the city, I visited Batu Caves and FRIM (Forest Research Institute of Malaysia). Batu Caves has become an important religious site for Hindus, which doesn’t really interest me, but still has actual caves that you can take a guided tour through. My tour group was very mixed – America, Australia, England, Japan, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, with no two tourists coming from the same country – and on our hour-long tour through the “Dark Cave” we saw spiders, long-legged caterpillars (including one that ran pretty quickly by us), other cave bugs, and even a solitary plant. We saw one dead bat and heard hundreds more above our heads, constantly flying around and making noise. Coupling all the creepy crawlers with pitch darkness, this was certainly the place where you need to be comfortable with the levels of your various fears. I didn’t realize how dilated my pupils were until we reached the cave opening again; I haven’t had that much trouble adjusting to sunlight in a long time.

FRIM is a forest area that is sometimes described as man-made, but maybe man-preserved is a better term. There are wetlands, arboretums, nature trails, and lots of research centers, but the main attraction is the canopy walkway above the treetops. After a steep and surprisingly strenuous 500m climb, you walk across 150m of suspended walkways that hang 30m above the forest floor. No one else was there when I went, so I got to enjoy the exciting and slightly terrifying heights without interruption. When those suspensions start moving around and those wooden boards start creaking under your weight, you come to peace pretty quickly with placing all your trust into whoever made those walkways.

Now that I have some semblance of an idea for my itinerary through Malaysia, I’ll be heading out of town tomorrow. The next stop is Taman Negara National Park for a couple days of hiking, but mainly for its canopy walkway, which is the largest in Malaysia. After that, it’s on to the Cameron Highlands, then possibly Ipoh, then to Penang and Langkawi, though I’m not sure in which order yet.