The Tyranny of Distance

Update from Malaysia & New Pictures!!!

Malaysia: Day 1

Malaysia is both the geographic and cultural stepping-stone of our journey in that it that has strong southern Indian and Chinese influences, both of which I saw much on the first day. A few friends and I did not have any trips planned, so we decided to spend the morning walking around Penang. Unlike at every other port we have been to so far, we couldn’t dock normally. For whatever reason (water depth or lack of infrastructure maybe?) we had to anchor out in the middle of the bay and take the lifeboats back and forth. During the day, the tender boats come and go about every half-hour, but after midnight they only come ever hour. This process, while cool the first time, is quickly becoming annoying and difficult. At least I get to ride inside the lifeboat! (something I’ve always wanted to try, but not under the normal circumstances in which one rides them)
We wandered around Penang for a while in the heat for a while until we found an Internet café. There I tried making a few phone calls home (that didn’t work) so I spent the next hour online, which cost less than a dollar! (Sure beats the $0.40 a minute on the ship!) After the Internet café, we found a Chinese restaurant (since we were in the Chinese district) across the street, which was amazing. I got ginger chicken with rice, which was so delicious. By far the best food I have had in any port so far. After a long lunch, we went for another walk through town when we ran into the Indian district. Within two blocks it felt like we entered a completely different country. I tried buying a few Bollywood films, since the ones I actually bought in India didn’t work, but neither did these! We then decided to try to make our way back to the ship to get ready for the Welcome reception and Shadow Puppet performance later that night. While we thought we were lost at first and were looking forward to an adventure getting back to the ship, we came to realize that we were actually no more than 2 blocks away from the MV Explorer. We missed a tender boat by only a few minutes so we had to wait about 20 minute before being picked up to be taken back to the ship.
After dinner on the ship, I went to the Welcome Reception at the University of Malaysia, which was amazing! There have been two welcome receptions so far (Puerto Rico & India) and they have never been anything short of great. We were about an hour late due to complications with the tender boats (they wanted to fill our bus, which had four open seats, so they waited for the boat to go back, pick people up, and drop them off). We finally made it to the University, where some of the students performed a shadow puppet show!!! Following the performance, that lasted about 45 minutes, we were invited on stage where the students showed us the “behind the scenes” of the puppets and instruments. I was taught how to be a shadow puppeteer!! I don’t want to say that I put the Malay students to shame but…I was a pretty awesome shadow puppeteer! We were then led outside for amazing food & tea, and we were able to talk with the students some more, each of which was extremely nice and spoke English incredibly well. We then took the bus back to the ship…
But the night did not end there unfortunately. They filled up one of the tender boats literally right before I got there, so I had to wait around for about an hour for the boat to come back for some reason. My friends and I passed the time by playing Frisbee in pitch-black. Finally the tender boat came, but instead of taking us to the ship, the crew decided to wait another 30-45 minutes just to see if any other students would come (which they didn’t!) So almost two hours after first getting to the dock I finally made it to the ship. One day down and I already hated those tender boats!

Malaysia: Day 2

On Tuesday I went on an SAS trip to a tropical fruit farm and a tropical spice garden, which was great! The trip started with about an hour-long bus ride to the fruit farm. Our tour guide was this amazing old Chinese man named Kahl (but he preferred to go by “Paul” since Americans always butcher his name somehow?) Paul was the most hilarious man ever! He know the most random information about the city, including but not limited to the names of owners of almost every building we drove past and the price of the building. Just when I thought we had the craziest tour guide ever we arrived at the fruit farm. Our guide was absolutely insane and kept making inappropriate jokes. It has hilarious. I cannot even begin to explain how crazy (and probably drunk) this guy was. Every few minutes he would make up some absurd story that was clearly not true, such as when Bill Clinton supposedly visited the farm with Monica Lewinski. When we would laugh, he would get angry and tell at us for not believing “the truth.” Either way, he knew a lot about all the fruit on the farm (over 200 different types) and was extremely informative. After the tour through the farm we tried all kinds of different fruits and were given fresh fruit juices. Some of them were absolutely delicious, but some things like the jackfruit were too odd for me to enjoy.
After the fruit farm we took a short drive to the tropical spice garden which was absolutely beautiful. We saw all kinds of herbs and spices including: ginger, pepper, aloe, cinnamon, cardamom, and tons of others. Supposedly they have over 500 different varieties in the garden. We walked through for a little over an hour and then we were fed an incredible lunch at the garden’s restaurant called the Spice Café followed by equally incredible tea. Every meal I have had so far in Malaysia has been so amazing and incredibly cheap. Possibly the best food of all the places I have been so far.
We returned back to the harbor after the spice garden and walked around the city for a while. I was excited to see a tender boat pulling up right to the dock as I was walking up. Not surprisingly, though, they said they weren’t going to go back to the ship for at least 30 minutes (for no real reason). I then returned to the ship for shower and dinner. I stayed on the ship to relax for the rest of the night because the last thing I wanted to do was to deal with those tender boats again…

Malaysia: Day 3

On Wednesday I was planning on going to the Botanical Gardens and the Butterfly Garden in Penang with some friends, but I found a free ticket for an SAS trip called “Religions of Malaysia” (there is a box where people can drop off unwanted tickets if they can’t sell them). The trip went to an Anglican church, a Taoist temple, a Hindu temple, a mosque, and a Buddhist temple, which sounded like it would be a good experience so I decided to go. The church was a church, nothing too special aesthetically, and it was closed so we could not walk around inside. The Taoist temple was pretty, but I had already seen it on the first day while I was walking around the city. The Hindu temple was closed so we could only see it from the outside. Next was the mosque, which was beautiful. We were shown around inside and discussed contemporary issues surrounding Islam with our guide of the mosque, which was great. We were supposed to go to the state-run mosque, but supposedly they wouldn’t let us inside so we just drove by, which was unfortunate. I was excited to go to the state-run mosque since the close relationship between the government and religion is so very different than what we are used to in the States.
After all of those visits, which surprisingly only took about an hour, we went to the Buddhist temple. The temple, Kek Lok Si, is one of the largest Buddhist temples in Southeat Asia, and was truly beautiful. There is a huge pagoda in the center, which is supposedly seven-stories tall. We took a lift to the top of the temple where these was a HUGE statue of a goddess. Easily 100-feet tall made out of brass. It was breath-taking to say the least. The first part of the trip was disappointing (it didn’t help that most things were closed) but the Buddhist temple made up for it by far!
At night, my friends and I found this amazing Thai restaurant where I got the best Pad Thai I have ever had. Food in Malaysia is so cheap, so it only cost about $2 for the entire meal. So awesome. After dinner, we just walked around the Chinese District for a while before heading back to the ship at around midnight. I had an early trip the next day so I needed some sleep!

Malaysia: Day 4

I woke up early for a trip to the Cheshire House, which is a house for the mentally and physically handicapped, with ages ranging from 13-50. It was a really good trip but there were too many SAS kids there, so I feel that the people living there were slightly overwhelmed. I drew with some kids and threw a ball back and forth with this guy for a few hours. It was really great to get out of the city for a little while in the morning for the service project. All-in-all we spent about three hours at the Cheshire House and I think that everyone had a great time!
We went back to the ship only to come right back out to find some lunch. We ended up at the mall and ate AMAZING Sate Chicken, which is a famous Malay dish. I am now sitting in the Starbucks in the mall, using their free wireless internet so I could finally update the blog and post pictures from the past few ports! I will be heading back to the ship later this afternoon, and we set sail for Vietnam by the end of the night!


Check my flickr site to see a few pictures! There should be ones from South Africa, India, and Malaysia up there. I apologize that they aren't too organized. I will work on that sometime...

posted by eric @ 11:58 PM