The Global Guy

I left the highlands early this morning, and took a bus to the east coast and the island of Penang. The island has one town called Georgetown which was the country’s first major port founded by the British East India company as a trading crossroads between China and India. It’s an interesting montage of Asian and European cultures all swirled together. There is still an old British Naval fort in town, and the local museum talks almost more about the British history than the local Malay past.

On the bus down here I met two other Americans, and we decided to all grab a room somewhere. The main backpacker area is called Chulua street, and it’s just one guest house after another, most with identical looking restaurants serving a mixture of western and Asian food. Most of them have huge big screen televisions showing different pirated movies every night. During the day they’re all playing some combination of Bob Marley, bad techno, or 80s music.

The guys and I decided to take a trip up to Penang hill, where there are several temples from different faiths on the top. To get to the top you’ve got to take a funicular railway that goes up quite a steep slope. On the way over there I recognized Meg, a girl I’d met in the Cameron Highlands. She was hanging out with a friend of hers, so we decided to combine groups. We saw all the tourist sights at the top, and stopped to sample a local desert speciality. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had. Imagine soft serve vanilla ice cream with kidney beans, jelly beans, corn and some kind of sticky syrup poured all over it. It looked great on the menu, but none of us could take more than a bite or two. We decided to hike down the hill, but one of the guys accidentally slipped and cut his leg pretty badly. We helped him about halfway down, and then flagged the train at the midpoint. The conductor looked pretty puzzled about the situation, but did allow us to board…as long as we made sure to pay full fare at the bottom!

That night I got my first real experience with Asian beer. The five of us went out drinking at some local hole in the wall away from the tourist area. We ended up laughing and drinking with some locals who didn’t seem like they saw a lot of foreigners. I’m not sure who had the better time, us or them!

1800 meters above sea level, the Cameron Highlands provide a nice cool environment in contrast to the hot humid air of the coast and cities. I’ve arrived here with four English girls I met in KL. The main activities here are jungle hiking, and touring the various tea plantations and farms of the region. The area is absolutely specatcular…nothing but rolling hills covered with green tea leaves, flower farms and rain-forests. It’s cloudy unfortunately, but I’m told that this helps keep the temperatures down.

The first day I toured a tea plantation and butterfly zoo with a group from our guest house. It was my first experience with tea in any form other than a Lipton box. The butterfly zoo was amazing as well…tons of species flying around you that normally you’d only see mounted on a tray in a museum.

The last night that I was there I went down to the local town for the Thaipusam festival. This is a Hindu festival celebrating the life of the deity, Lord Subramanian. If I’d stayed in KL, I could have seen the most impressive example of devotion, with over a million people descending on a local cave, and piercing their cheeks and bodies as a sign of devotion. Unfortunately due to the Larium lethargy, I just wasn’t feeling up to it. Instead, several of us saw a smaller version with colorful floats, offerings of milk and honey, and for some reason, lots of smashing of coconuts. It was a lot of fun, and we were all invited to participate in the ceremony. It was absolutely the highlight of Malaysia!

KL is another huge Asian city that’s a mix of both the ultra-modern and the old traditional lifestyle. It’s home to the world’s tallest buildings, the Petronas towers, made famous in the movie "Entrapment." The general public can’t go all the way to the top, but there are tours every hour on the sky bridge connecting the two buildings.

I didn’t spend much time in the city…just enough to see the towers, book transport to the Cameron Highlands, and then to wander around the night market’s in Chinatown. It’s getting close to Chinese New Year, so the area is decked out in all sorts of festive decorations.

While I’m sure that there are all sorts of other things to do in town, I’m headed out of here as soon as possible. So far all I’ve seen in Asia is large cities, and that’s not what I’m here for at all! Besides, I’m feeling a little off…I tried taking the anti-malarial drug Larium, but it is reacting very badly with me. I feel like I’m wandering around in a foggy haze, and can’t think straight. I’d read that it doesn’t work with everyone, so I’m guessing I’m one of the few that is true of. It’s a once a week pill, so hopefully the effects will fade quickly.