I realize that this I am way past due for writing about my 2-month Southeast Asia trip, but I finally have my computer with me again and plenty of time on my hands as we (Amy, Nathan, Josh, and I) drive our campervan from Perth in Western Australia all the way up to Darwin in the Northern Territory. We have a lot of ground to cover and a month to do it in, but enough about that now... I will write about this trip in a later entry. Southeast Asia is what I am here to talk about now, and I can honestly say that that trip has changed my life. I have new friends, scars, and memories that I will never forget and had the opportunity to see and do things that I never imagined I would do in my wildest dreams.
Our trip started in Melbourne and we flew first to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to begin our journey. I actually left Julia at my apartment in Melbourne for my trip, but she was very helpful in packing my bag for me before I left. I had bought a backpack, so now I was going to be an official backpacker! And she gave me advice I would be grateful for the rest of the trip: always make sure to have a roll of toilet paper with you at all times haha!
Neither Nashy nor I had any idea what to expect, and to be honest, we were nervous but excited. Right away at the airport in KL, there were familiar things that I had not even seen in Australia (like Coffee Bean!) but there was also the feeling that this place was different from anywhere I had ever been. For example, there was a McDonald’s standalone store at the train station that just sold ice cream cones, amazing! And McDonald’s delivers, 24 hours a day! What is this place?
As soon as we left the terminal at the airport, we got our first real taste of Southeast Asia (SEA) when about 20 people began trying to woo us to choose their bus company over the others. We chose the cheapest one and were soon introduced to the way that buses work here. In Malaysia, it does not matter what time the bus is actually supposed to leave or how often they run. Instead, the buses will not run until every single seat is filled (and even some people are standing) even if it means waiting for an hour. And the funny thing is that no one even gets annoyed! People just sit in their seats patiently waiting as if they have nowhere important to be.
We arrived in the city centre after dark (probably because we were waiting for the bus to leave) and we were starving! We had booked our hostel ahead of time in the Chinatown area of KL, so we decided to go eat at one of the many restaurants within walking distance of our hostel. We thought the prices seemed cheap (anything seems cheap compared to Australia!) so we ordered plenty of food off of the menu and had our first taste of Asian beer with some large Tiger beer bottles. Sitting outside the restaurant was a good idea we thought (because it was good people watching), until people kept coming to sell us bootleg DVD’s and it started to rain. And then I do not think we saw the sun for about the next week or so...
The first hostel that we stayed at in Malaysia was another good introduction to how traveling would be in SEA. We had to take off our shoes as soon as we entered (and about 1,000 times after that!) and there were people working at the hostel whose sole job was just to clean up after us - they even washed our dishes for us after we ate breakfast! The people staying at the hostel ranged in age from teenage to weird, older travelers, and everyone had a hippie vibe about them, with many of them rocking dreadlocks and wearing those pants that sag in the crotch. Most of the backpackers were either Australian or British, and eventually I would meet even more Australians in SEA than I had in Australia!
After dinner, Nashy and I decided to buy statement sunglasses from the market in Chinatown that only sold “designer brands.” I got pink and white Ray-bans and Nashy got bright yellow ones. On the walk home from the bar that night, we realized that the street our hostel was on constantly smelled like fish and there were cats everywhere but they didn’t have any tails, why? I don’t think we really want to know!
On our second day in Malaysia, we decided to take a 2-hour bus trip down south to Melaka at the recommendation of one of Nashy’s friends that lives in KL. It was a very cute city that has a lot of Dutch and Portuguese influence and lots of pink buildings. We walked around and saw the sights for the day then when it started to rain, we did a revolving tower ride that gives you panoramic views of Melaka, and we got to see everything that we had not seen walking. It was a really nice day - we got to sample pineapple tarts, chicken rice balls (not sure I recommend?), bubble tea, and Malaysian snacks like bbq curry dude twisties. We also saw our first trishaws and I had my first (of many!!) squatting toilet experiences. And I was so glad I had brought toilet paper - they use spray nozzles instead or just a scoop with a bucket of water, ew so unsanitary!
While in KL, we knew we wanted to make the most of our few days there, so we apparently decided to see everything up high and from a distance. First, we went up to the skybridge in the Petronas Towers which was an interesting experience in itself. We got in line early in the morning to get tickets, because we had heard that they give away 600 free tickets each day. It turns out that the tickets are not actually free, and after we had waited in line for over an hour, we learned that we would still have to come back later that afternoon to even go up and see anything! And the entire experience was so heavily sponsored by Petronas (oil company) - we even had to watch a 7-minute video touting the company before we could go. And when we were on the skybridge, it was pretty disappointing. The view from the 41st floor of the towers is actually restricted and you cannot even see much, oh well.
We were disappointed with the Petronas Towers, so we decided to also go to the viewing tower at the top of KL Tower, and this experience was much better! We walked up to KL Tower through this wilderness path - we were actually the only ones who decided to do this instead of lazily taking the “free” shuttle to the base of the tower. As part of the tour, you went to the top (where the view was much better than Petronas!) and got a free audio guide that pointed out interesting parts of the city. In hindsight, this would probably have been the best thing to have done first upon arriving into KL. Also included in the ticket, we got to go to this animal sanctuary (they had an albino monkey!), and we even got to do a Formula-1 simulation ride.
On one of our nights out in KL, we met these two British guys when we asked if we could sit at their table at a bar. We ended up becoming fast friends and convinced them to come eat a second dinner with us at 10:30PM when Nashy’s friend ditched us (again!). While we were sitting at the bar, we all started noticing that the crowd was starting to look a little young (or we were just getting old?). Deciding that the teenagers being dropped off in skimpy clothes who were drinking and smoking up a storm were a weird sight to all of us, I decided to pull one aside and question him about his situation. It turns out that there is a huge expat community in KL of people working for the oil companies, and this kid in particular was 16, French, and his dad worked for Totale. As we continued to watch in awe, their parents (or their drivers) came and collected their drunk teenagers - it was all quite amusing!
At our late-night dinner, we went back to a restaurant in Chinatown, but we were only given a limited menu since it was so late. We ended up ordering a #1 and a #2 having no idea what either was, and we ended up getting noodles in some black sauce and some eggy, noodle mixture. I am not sure if either could actually be classified as food, but we were hungry and enjoying our new friends’ company, and we actually ate most of it.
On another night, we decided to walk around the city and stumbled upon KL’s version of Time Square. There were guys busking in painted suits, and there was a Christian band playing that had a huge crowd...I had to join in! (The guys in the band were wearing shirts that said “ God is better than sex”).
For our last full day in KL, we actually decided to leave for the morning and take the train to nearby Batu Caves. The first thing we saw when approaching the caves was this large Hindu statue, but it would be nothing in comparison to the golden statue that is the icon of Batu Caves. In either January or February, there is actually a Hindu festival called Thaipusam where 1.5 million people devotees walk from KL and climb the 272 stairs at Batu Caves. From looking at pictures from the festival, many of them have crazy weird piercings or painful-looking medal bars through their skin. Nashy and I also climbed the stairs, but we took our time looking at all of the monkeys playing. While in the caves, I was feeling brave and decided to hold an albino python around my neck. Nashy is afraid of snakes, but I even convinced him to join me for a picture!
When we got back to KL city, we were hungry and decided to go to Little India for lunch. We definitely got more than we bargained for. Little India is home to all of the shops where the Muslim women can buy their head scarves, and there were people on microphones outside of each shop touting the specials of the day, it was really bizarre. Then when we walked through the market looking for lunch, we chose a place where you had no idea what you were actually eating. You just pointed at things and a woman mixed it all together with rice in a box. When we went to sit and eat, we noticed that no one else had any cutlery, so we decided to also eat with our hands. We made such a mess, but not to worry, there was toilet paper hanging that we could use to wipe our hands. It was not until after we were finished eating that we realized that there were plastic forks that we could have used!
While still in Little India, we decided to try this drink that we had seen a lot of people walking around with. It looked disgusting - it was a cloudy brown color with these green worm-looking things on the bottom. We figured it must be one of those things that just looks gross but is actually delicious, but we could not have been more wrong. We instantly regretted trying it, it was just as disgusting as it looked!
And as always, before I end this entry, I have to add my interesting observations about Malaysia... The first has to do with American fast food actually. Nashy and I started noticing that a lot of cars had stickers in their windshield with those famous golden arches and the colonel from KFC. On closer observation, the McDonald’s one was for Drive-Thru VIP’s and the KFC one was for Drive-Thru CEO’s. I decided to ask someone what they were for and if they got any special benefits for putting them in their windshield. With enthusiasm, he told me that his KFC sticker stood for Chicken Enjoyment Officer and that he just really like KFC chicken which is why he drives around with the sticker on his car!
My next observation has to do with the country’s religion. I had never been to a Muslim country before, so it was new to see nearly every woman with their head covered. It must start at a teen age, because young children are not covered and actually dress like children in America would. However, past a certain age, women cover nearly all of their bodies and carry a modesty and shyness about them. I noticed that a lot of men would not even address me directly, and one of the men at our hostel never even talked or looked at me. Instead, he dealt with Nashy directly and completely ignored the fact that I was there. There was even a women only car on the train! Nashy and I went to visit the National Mosque, but we were told to come back later if we actually wanted to get close because it was closed for non-Muslim tourists while we were there. I wanted to respect the Muslim ways of the country, so I made sure to always carry a cover-up with me and wore it when I felt I should (even though it was incredibly warm and humid!). I have no idea how those women walk around in that weather covered head to toe, mostly in black.
Even though Malaysia felt like a foreign place to me, it was probably a good place to start our SEA because it turns out to be quite Westernized. You can easily find the comforts of back home - we found a mall that had literally every store I could imagine and also a strip of restaurants that had Mexican food and Irish pubs. We found the most common beer to not be an Asian beer, but actually Carlsberg (weirdly heavily marketed in KL). Also, most signs were either in English or had the English translation below and nearly everywhere we went, we heard English being spoken around us.
From KL, we would be flying to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and we originally only planned to spend a few days in Vietnam. Not to give anything away, but we actually stayed longer than planned and loved it - the food, the history, and the new friends that we made.
