Notes from Kuala Lumpur
Thursday: The Monorail is the best way to see the city at night.
Friday: I'm watching a Magic show in a Chinese Temple.
New Tang Dynasty TV interviewed me about the Mooncake Festival and lantern and Dragon parade. I'm big in the PRC
"NTDTV, Jong Ju Chie Qwy Law* from Kuala Lumpur!"
*Happy mooncake Festival!
I'm crap at Mandarin tones.
In the market I feel so wanted and popular. Everyone wants to be my friend...
Saturday Night: "You have beautiful Blue eyes".
And you have a beautiful Adam's Apple.
Should have guessed from the name "Thai Bar".
Sunday: I don't need a laptop, I don't I don't!
I already have a laptop, I do I do!
Couchsurfing is great. If I hadn't met met Tj, Celine, Frank and Shah, Kuala Lumpur would not be nearly as good.
Must NOT buy any ridiculously cheap VERY shiny electronics!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Kuching
Monday 17th to Thursday 20th September 2007
They take the "Cat City" thing pretty seriously in Kuching. All of the roundabouts have statues of Giant Cats, that look like they are about to jump out and try to take over the city. And a lot of people don't even think that's how it's supposed to be translated!
Apart from the cats, there were two main attractions to keep me busy while I waited to fly to Kuala Lumpur. One was the largest flower in the world.
Monday 17th to Thursday 20th September 2007
They take the "Cat City" thing pretty seriously in Kuching. All of the roundabouts have statues of Giant Cats, that look like they are about to jump out and try to take over the city. And a lot of people don't even think that's how it's supposed to be translated!
Apart from the cats, there were two main attractions to keep me busy while I waited to fly to Kuala Lumpur. One was the largest flower in the world.
it's supposed to smell like a decomposing corpse to attract flies...
The other was an Orang Utang Rehabilitation centre
I'd been to the larger one in Sabah with Erin, but was happy to go to and support this one with my entrance fee.
There wouldn't have been that much else to see there, but I happened to arrive at the beginning of the Chinese Moon Cake Festival.
Good stuff lads! Thanks for timing it so well.
More photos can be found here
Monday, September 17, 2007
Brunei
Brunei really is quite boring, but watching the Bourne Ultimatum with my host, and drinking fabulous red wine, made it worth while. Oh yeah, and the hitchhiking
"This is my Mom, she doesn't speak any English."
"Oh okay."
"Do you have a girlfriend in Brunei?"
"Em, no, I don't..."
"I could be your girlfriend in Brunei"
Eye opening.
For some more photos, click here.
Friday 14th to Monday 17th September 2007
Rhokia and Charles had warned me: Brunei is incredibly dull. Luckily for me though, I wasn't there alone. Casey reminded me of couchsurfing.
I was back in Miri, and not feeling the best. Spending a month traveling with Erin had done it. It was the first time I had traveled with someone full time, instead of just meeting people for some of the way, and it had been AMAZING. So good in fact, that I wondered if I really wanted to keep going on my own. I would have seriously considered going home were it not for a phone call to a fellow Jet. It was the kick I needed. The next day I crossed the border into Brunei, met up with another couchsurfer, and had an absolute blast.
Brunei really is quite boring, but watching the Bourne Ultimatum with my host, and drinking fabulous red wine, made it worth while. Oh yeah, and the hitchhiking
"This is my Mom, she doesn't speak any English."
"Oh okay."
"Do you have a girlfriend in Brunei?"
"Em, no, I don't..."
"I could be your girlfriend in Brunei"
Eye opening.
For some more photos, click here.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Bario
2nd to the 12th September 2007
I met Nancy at the airport with a young French couple and Dutch girl. I’d forgotten that she had said she’d be on the flight when I met her a few days before. The others hadn’t really organised accommodation, so we all decided to stay at her place. We got on the tiny plane, and Sebastien immediately started to sweat. He doesn’t like small planes, and the sight of Nancy opening a Bible for some light reading just as the turbulence was at its worst did not help!
I was enjoying the view, when it happened. I had my camera ready, had the view in sight, and then nothing.
The top of the camera just flashed Err99.
It had been working perfectly that morning, and now, as soon as I had left the tiny city of Miri, with it’s malls, and camera shops, it stopped working. Actually, not only had it stopped working, but I had just received the Canon version of the "Blue Screen of Death".
I spent a day trying to figure it out, swopping parts back and forth with the Dutch girl who had just bought a smaller Canon. It was the lens. Using the one payphone (A satellite phone it turns out) I called the Canon agents, and realised I had to wait until I got to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore before I could get it checked out. I got it to work on some of the fully manual settings, but the aperture is now locked in place at the highest degree, so enough light is only reaching the sensor on the brightest of days. Even then, sometimes it just doesn't work.
Luckily I had a two year old disposable camera with me as a back up. Apart from that mini personal disaster, Bario was great. The four of us went by the “road” during the day to another village, stayed at a homestay, where the Diesel generator seemed to be switched on more for the personal karaoke machine that the lights. A load of people from the other houses came around after dinner. Not to see us though, but to watch Pirates of the Carribbean 3.
Sebastien didn’t feel comfortable with English, which was great practice for me! We had an English-free zone for a few days with French and some very feeble attempts to speak the local Kelabit language.
The way back to Bario was through the jungle proper with the son of our host as our guide. Leeches suck. And there were lots of them. And cursing in French at the blood sucking bastards is entirely more satisfying. The French couple and Dutch girl left, and I stayed close to Barrio for a while, trying to sort out the camera, wandering around the area, and hiding from the rain in a shed with the migrant rice pickers from Indonesia
Then on to Indonesia!
You probably can't make it out, but that's the border marker there between Petrus and I.
I wasn't going to do it. I was cursing my decision not to bring my boots (The ones I "borrowed from Dad 5 years ago") but there was only one way to find out if it would be possible with runners, and within an hour of setting out it didn't matter anymore.
I met Petrus at Nancy's house, when we got back form the other village. It was his house we had stayed in, and he had recently just brought a group of English Gap year kids to Kalimantan, the Indonesian state on Borneo, so I asked him if he'd like to go again. We had just left his village when we reached the first stream, and the water came up to my knees. I looked down at my shoes, at the water above where the top of my boots would have been, and sighed.
We met two teachers from Brunei, and Englishman named Charles and a local named Rhokia, and got them to join us when their own plans were washed out by the rain, camped out in the jungle one night, and spent another above a shop in Kalimantan. Then back across the border,
and on to Ba Kelalan, where I thought I would be heading back to Miri right away.
Instead, I got to talking with some people on a confidence building mission with the International Tropical Timber Organisation. When they saw how interested I was, they invited me to join them back in Bario, and when we arrived, everyone thought I was a member of the NGO. There was a reception, Pineapples, flowers, dancing, music, the works!
I seem to have shown some knowledge in Micro-hydro power, so now I have to see how feasible 14 generators would be for the outlying villages. It's all part of their confidence building measures. The logging company is promising a road to this isolated community. That would greatly reduce the price of everything that is now currently flown in. The community is split 50 50 on whether to allow the logging. A couple of generators might tip it the right way.
For loads more photos, Click here.
2nd to the 12th September 2007
I met Nancy at the airport with a young French couple and Dutch girl. I’d forgotten that she had said she’d be on the flight when I met her a few days before. The others hadn’t really organised accommodation, so we all decided to stay at her place. We got on the tiny plane, and Sebastien immediately started to sweat. He doesn’t like small planes, and the sight of Nancy opening a Bible for some light reading just as the turbulence was at its worst did not help!
I was enjoying the view, when it happened. I had my camera ready, had the view in sight, and then nothing.
The top of the camera just flashed Err99.
It had been working perfectly that morning, and now, as soon as I had left the tiny city of Miri, with it’s malls, and camera shops, it stopped working. Actually, not only had it stopped working, but I had just received the Canon version of the "Blue Screen of Death".
I spent a day trying to figure it out, swopping parts back and forth with the Dutch girl who had just bought a smaller Canon. It was the lens. Using the one payphone (A satellite phone it turns out) I called the Canon agents, and realised I had to wait until I got to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore before I could get it checked out. I got it to work on some of the fully manual settings, but the aperture is now locked in place at the highest degree, so enough light is only reaching the sensor on the brightest of days. Even then, sometimes it just doesn't work.
Luckily I had a two year old disposable camera with me as a back up. Apart from that mini personal disaster, Bario was great. The four of us went by the “road” during the day to another village, stayed at a homestay, where the Diesel generator seemed to be switched on more for the personal karaoke machine that the lights. A load of people from the other houses came around after dinner. Not to see us though, but to watch Pirates of the Carribbean 3.
Sebastien didn’t feel comfortable with English, which was great practice for me! We had an English-free zone for a few days with French and some very feeble attempts to speak the local Kelabit language.
The way back to Bario was through the jungle proper with the son of our host as our guide. Leeches suck. And there were lots of them. And cursing in French at the blood sucking bastards is entirely more satisfying. The French couple and Dutch girl left, and I stayed close to Barrio for a while, trying to sort out the camera, wandering around the area, and hiding from the rain in a shed with the migrant rice pickers from Indonesia
Then on to Indonesia!You probably can't make it out, but that's the border marker there between Petrus and I.
I wasn't going to do it. I was cursing my decision not to bring my boots (The ones I "borrowed from Dad 5 years ago") but there was only one way to find out if it would be possible with runners, and within an hour of setting out it didn't matter anymore.
I met Petrus at Nancy's house, when we got back form the other village. It was his house we had stayed in, and he had recently just brought a group of English Gap year kids to Kalimantan, the Indonesian state on Borneo, so I asked him if he'd like to go again. We had just left his village when we reached the first stream, and the water came up to my knees. I looked down at my shoes, at the water above where the top of my boots would have been, and sighed.
We met two teachers from Brunei, and Englishman named Charles and a local named Rhokia, and got them to join us when their own plans were washed out by the rain, camped out in the jungle one night, and spent another above a shop in Kalimantan. Then back across the border,
and on to Ba Kelalan, where I thought I would be heading back to Miri right away.
Instead, I got to talking with some people on a confidence building mission with the International Tropical Timber Organisation. When they saw how interested I was, they invited me to join them back in Bario, and when we arrived, everyone thought I was a member of the NGO. There was a reception, Pineapples, flowers, dancing, music, the works!
I seem to have shown some knowledge in Micro-hydro power, so now I have to see how feasible 14 generators would be for the outlying villages. It's all part of their confidence building measures. The logging company is promising a road to this isolated community. That would greatly reduce the price of everything that is now currently flown in. The community is split 50 50 on whether to allow the logging. A couple of generators might tip it the right way.
For loads more photos, Click here.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Miri
I'm in Miri for now waiting for one of the semi-regular flights in tiny twin otter planes, that frequently get cancelled due to the weather: Apparently it rains quite often, and heavily, in the rainforest. Or so they claim...
After Erin left Kota Kinabalu, it became clear that if I wanted to get to Bario any time soon, I would have to go from Miri in Sarawak. The flights from Kota Kinabalu are even less reliable. So onward to Miri, just on the other side of Brunei from KK. Malaysia was celebrating it’s 50th year of Independence (One Brit commented “It doesn’t count if we gave it back without a fight”) and Miri was to be the focal point of celebrations in the State of Sarawak, so I didn’t mind so much that I would have to stay there for a few days waiting for my flight.
I was very curious about what the party would be like. In Sabah, there was a suspiciously large number of flags everywhere. It seemed that they were the result of a government campaign, rather than an outpouring of nationalistic fervour. This seemed more plausible after conversations with the locals, all of whom were unhappy with the way the government operated, and many of whom felt there was nothing to celebrate: being a part of Malaysia was not what the people in Sabah I spoke with considered “independence”. Culturally, they felt very distant from their Muslim King.
In Miri then by contrast, I first noticed the relative lack of flags. But the boys going around town on their scooters, horns blaring out tunes, made me hopeful for some kind of party atmosphere. So as the clock counted down the hours to midnight, I joined the crowds gathering at the town's open air amphitheatre where a stage was set up.
I was very surprised. Everyone seemed to be waiting around, very bored, as different acts took to the stage. I heard the MC starting to chant “Merdeka!” (Independence!) at the top of his lungs, but the response he hoped for never came. The first four rows cried back, and no one else. Maybe everyone else was just trying to act cool.
Then the Prime Minister arrived, apparently. I was told by a local that he was walking beside me, but I couldn’t figure out which of the men in colourful shirts he was supposed to be. A security was, well, they let ME walk beside him. Come on guys! I lived in japan. Clearly I'm a Ninja!
Everyone else from the Hostel decided to call it a night, but I stayed out until the fireworks at midnight, which turned out to be a damp squid. Back to the Hostel I went, a little deflated, and feeling very sorry for the MC.
I'm in Miri for now waiting for one of the semi-regular flights in tiny twin otter planes, that frequently get cancelled due to the weather: Apparently it rains quite often, and heavily, in the rainforest. Or so they claim...
After Erin left Kota Kinabalu, it became clear that if I wanted to get to Bario any time soon, I would have to go from Miri in Sarawak. The flights from Kota Kinabalu are even less reliable. So onward to Miri, just on the other side of Brunei from KK. Malaysia was celebrating it’s 50th year of Independence (One Brit commented “It doesn’t count if we gave it back without a fight”) and Miri was to be the focal point of celebrations in the State of Sarawak, so I didn’t mind so much that I would have to stay there for a few days waiting for my flight.
I was very curious about what the party would be like. In Sabah, there was a suspiciously large number of flags everywhere. It seemed that they were the result of a government campaign, rather than an outpouring of nationalistic fervour. This seemed more plausible after conversations with the locals, all of whom were unhappy with the way the government operated, and many of whom felt there was nothing to celebrate: being a part of Malaysia was not what the people in Sabah I spoke with considered “independence”. Culturally, they felt very distant from their Muslim King.
In Miri then by contrast, I first noticed the relative lack of flags. But the boys going around town on their scooters, horns blaring out tunes, made me hopeful for some kind of party atmosphere. So as the clock counted down the hours to midnight, I joined the crowds gathering at the town's open air amphitheatre where a stage was set up.
I was very surprised. Everyone seemed to be waiting around, very bored, as different acts took to the stage. I heard the MC starting to chant “Merdeka!” (Independence!) at the top of his lungs, but the response he hoped for never came. The first four rows cried back, and no one else. Maybe everyone else was just trying to act cool.
Then the Prime Minister arrived, apparently. I was told by a local that he was walking beside me, but I couldn’t figure out which of the men in colourful shirts he was supposed to be. A security was, well, they let ME walk beside him. Come on guys! I lived in japan. Clearly I'm a Ninja!
Everyone else from the Hostel decided to call it a night, but I stayed out until the fireworks at midnight, which turned out to be a damp squid. Back to the Hostel I went, a little deflated, and feeling very sorry for the MC.
Updates
I think I've finally got this thing up to date. Good thing too, considering that I'm heading to Bario tomorrow. I've booked a one way ticket, adn the date of my return, and thus more updates, depends on the weather. If you're reading this, and think it a bit sparse, I've put comments on most of the photographs here so going through those will probably be more interesting than reading these posts.
And that goes for the older posts such as the Naked man festival and India.
Mom and Dad, You can get to those by clicking "older posts" link at the very bottom of this page. Start at the bottom then and make your way up. Then click back at the top left of the screen. If that doesn't work, click on these links for the main posts.
India1
India2
Naked Man
Fish Market
Nachi Fire festival
or click on this link to see the albums
http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidlMorrison/
I think I've finally got this thing up to date. Good thing too, considering that I'm heading to Bario tomorrow. I've booked a one way ticket, adn the date of my return, and thus more updates, depends on the weather. If you're reading this, and think it a bit sparse, I've put comments on most of the photographs here so going through those will probably be more interesting than reading these posts.
And that goes for the older posts such as the Naked man festival and India.
Mom and Dad, You can get to those by clicking "older posts" link at the very bottom of this page. Start at the bottom then and make your way up. Then click back at the top left of the screen. If that doesn't work, click on these links for the main posts.
India1
India2
Naked Man
Fish Market
Nachi Fire festival
or click on this link to see the albums
http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidlMorrison/
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