This weekend, we decided to stay in Singapore to enjoy the Chingay Parade, which I read on Singapore's website that it a world famous parade holding over 200,000 people. This parade celebrates the ending of CNY, which is celebrated for 15 days (I realize that 15 days hasn't happened yet, but they wanted the parade to be on a weekend I'm assuming...). Last night and maybe tonight if we are up to it, we went out to the city center underneath the big ferris wheel to watch the parade. I found it a little disappointing. I Think it was because I was expecting a grand parade with huge floats and decorationg running around the whole city. Intstead, smaller groups and businesses had dancers and usualy one huge float, and they walked along a small semi-circle under the ferris wheel. It was still beautiful though, very colorful!
There were floats from the zoo, embassies, government groups, society groups, dance groups, schools, everything. The zoo was my favorite, as they handed out cute fans with bird facts and had these adorible giraffe costumes where they had a 7ft tall giraffe head attached to their waist, and would stick the head/neck into the crowd to be pet. We arrived a tad late because we mistaked where we were going. When Alma nad I got off the MRT station, we ran into a small fair near the marina. There were typical fair rides, food stations, and a huge floating dock with various CNY animals on the dock. We over head a lady at he information say that "the Chingay Parade was overthere". We had stumbled upon the RIver Hongboa 2011, which runs from Feb 1-13th. I asked the lady what it was, and she just kind of brushed me off, she looked like she didn't enjoy her job....
Well when we found the parade, we caught the tail end. The multiple groups would stop and perform, then continue on around the bend where they disappeared. At the end, all the groups lined back up, humans only (no floats) and all danced to this one song they played over and over and over again. I couldn't definatly beloeve there were 200,000 performing at this parade. There was one group that was trying ot beat the World Record for the longest parade dance group.
Tonight, the parade comes back out for another performance. We also say signs for this thing called CityWalk or CityTour, or something that was called "Singapore's biggest street dance party". I think we are going to check it out and see what in the world it is. Because I love Alma and want to embarass her (<3 haha), I will tell you about the ride back on the MRT. So we are fortunate enough to be at the end station of one of the 5 MRT lines near campus. This means when we go anywhere, we always get seats. Since it takes 30 min to get into the city JUST on the MRT alone, sitting is important. This also means that anywhere else we get on, there are no seats. Our feet were killing us from walking and standing for the parade, so one thing we and a few other people like to do it find where the cars connect and sit on the floor. Noone cares, its no big deal. Well Alma wore her dry-clean white pants last night. She hapened to sit near a moving part, meaning she got a huge black grease mark on her pants!!!! (She did manage to get it out later). I was trying to take a picture of it to show her how bad it was since it was on her butt, but we kept getting really weird and concerning stares so we stopped. Too funny!
It has gotten So hot here. HOTTTTT. Think like July in Florida, well maybe May because its not in the 100s, just the high 80s low 90s, and 100% humidity. But, everything is outside. I don't use the AC in my room, because its expensive. Nothing is super ACed like in FL because its expensive, and all the walkways, bathroms, etc are outside. Theres no breeze, apparently when I got here it was the end of the breeze. Great.
So today I went to the Asian Civilisations Museum (they did spell it with an 's', not 'z') because I have to do a museum response on the West Asia (Islam) exhibit for class. It was free students, which was great, and I came in just in time for the free volunteer-lead English tour of the museum, which I took. I Took notes, and I'll talk about the findings in the blog after this. I had an interesting run in on my way to the museum. I was listening to my ipod, walking across one of the beautiful bridges over the Singapore River, when this nicely dressed Asian in his late 20s started talking to me. I was like great, I don't want to buy anything from you, go away, but then he said, pointing to my forehead, you are happy, aren't you? I can tell by this. Yeah, it caught my attention. He started telling me how I am happy, and a month from now I will be receiving great news. He said I have a tendency to think too much, again pointing to my forehead. He said you think too much, you need to let your brain sleep. You can only get 50% done when you do this, letting your brain sleep will let you do 100%. He then went to talk about something like (he had a very think Indian accent) a women he knew who was like me (pointing to forehead and my legs/posture) who did something 5 year and 1 year ago, it was hard to understand his English. After this, we had crossed the bridge, and he said, I have never met you, we have never talked, but I can tell you this. I am studying Astronomy, and he shook my hand and said God Bless. Cool!
The museum was pretty much South East Asian-inspired exhibits, meaning China, Malay, Indonesia, and India. There was the Islamic (west asia) section. It mostly focused on influencial factors to Singapore's culture, such as religeon, thought, and art. Not history. Back in the day, South east asia was one big plot of land, not islands. Singapore was the tip of a mountain. Overtime, the land flooded, allowing Sinapore to stay above the waterlevel. This is why there was no "SIngapore" civilizations specifically from a long time ago. People wanted fertile land, near the water, better for living, eating, and trade. Who wants to live on top of a mountain? That is also why there aren't many ancient artifacts around S.E. ASia, it is too hot and humid and wet. The few that we have are from burials that were done to preserve artifacts and on dry land.
After the museum, I went to a coffee shop on the water for some over prices lattes and dessert. I ordered blue berry cheesecake. It came with a side of peanuts, drizzled in raspberry sauce. I still don't know what to think of that.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Vietnam Embassy
Not too much has been happening since I've got back into Singapore from CNY. I am starting to finalize everything to Vietnam and we booked a small ferry trip to Indonesia next weekend.
Indonesia is close enough to see here. There are many large and small island you can get to from Singapore via ferry. The beaches are beautiful and there are small and big towns, so whatever kind of beach vacation you can have its there. We are staying in a very rural-type beach area in Bintan Island, Indonesia the weekend of the 18th of Feb. Just Alma and I, relax in the water, snorkle, see local culture, etc.
I've been looking at Vietnam hotels, nice 3 star hotels run from 5-20 USD /night. Wow. So cheap! There are many hotesl to chose from in Hue, which is surprising because it is not THAT Big of a city, but you are close to the river, the bridge, and all the main sights. Got the DMZ and city tour booked, and we are taking the city tour on motorbikes! We keep hearing thats apart of the Vietnam experiance, the motor bike haha. So I went to the embassy on Wednesday to get my via. Online, they said it cost 25USD (like high 30's Sing $$).They are only opened from 9-12 every morning. I had class, so I got off the MRT/bus at 1130. It seemed like an easy walk down a side road, however there was construction going on and all of the street signs were covered. I decided to grab a cab because I was scared I wouldn't be able to make it in the 30 min that I had. He drove 1km down the road hahaha. But the embassy was located a short distance off the main road in the millionaires neighborhood. MAN, these were some huge houses! Multiple tories with large grecian collums near the front, water fountains the the round-a-bout driveways, all complete with entry gates. Then you come upon this not so nice looking building with a tiny gate and the smallest "Vietnam EMbassy" sign. I walked up, there were people otu from just hanging out. IT looked like someones house. Now I've never been in an embassy before, but this was not that I expected. You walk into a room and there were two open rooms off to the side and that was it. No welcome desk, no visitors only, no signs. I stood and looked around and a guy called me in to the room. He was standing in from of a shelf, no desk, no uniform, and asked me what I wanted. I told a visa and handed him my paperwork. He said it cost 84 Sing$ for a single entry. Well, thanks for the bad webs site info! I handed him my stuff and he said it would take 1 week, handed me a reciept, and that was that. Took 3 seconds.
I'm starting to miss food. Now, at first I thought it was that I missed American food, but its not. Since I havent lived in the dorms for a long time, and that time was short, I cooked all my meals all the time, for Townsend and I especially. I'm so used to eating what I want, when I want, and cooking it. I'm sick of this food more because I get the same choice everyday all the time and that is it. No variety. And its ALLL rice + meat. Maybe they'lll have veggies that I can recognize every now and then. The "western" food is stuff like chicken and spagetti, very odd. And they have chicken fingers, and that's pretty much it. There is a subway, which is good. Canadian Pizza, which is NOT a Canadian fast food joint as I've asked my Canadian friends who live in West Canada. Its not good anyway, there is no cheese, its all veggie, meat, or Hawaiian. All over town, what choices..... McD's is here too. You can get an ice cream cone for 40 cents US. Now, I don't eat this at home, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I ordered a spicy chicken sandwhich. I took a bite, and it was the bad meat. I mean, I know its McD's, but when you order chicken from a fast food place, it atleast looks white. This was the bad gross dark brown/grey slimy meat, it was so gross..... I didn't finish it.
Speaking of food, there are two Muslim girls in my Islam class that I have befriended. They were talking to me about the variety of food in Singapore, as thye are both locals. They were also very excited to hear about my trip to KL, because there was a lot of halal food. So, Muslims have to eat halal-approved food. So there are halal-approved resteraunts here. Apparently, there are not very many in Singapore, but KL is the place to be for food fodr them, as they have a huge population. It made sense, as I was remembering there was no pork on my TGI Fridays menu. There were beef sprinkles (bacon), beef ribs, etc.
Alma and I also noticed something else in KL, the variety of coverings for a Muslim women. It all depends on which school of law the family follows; there were burkas, the complete covering of everything except the eyes, we saw a good handful of that around KL. The majority of women there, as well as Singapore, cover everythign but that face. This means shoes, pants, long sleeves, and head wraps. Sometimes they wear sandels. In KL, we also saw some Muslims women who had their arms exposed, wearing short sleeve clothing. I cound't find online why this is it. I also learned that in places like Turkey and France, it is illegal for Muslims to Hajib (this covering) in public and private schools.
Just something I noticed the other day. So unlike China, were people constantly wanted to take photos of us, Singaporeans see Caucasian everyday, or atleast a couple times in their life. There have been a handful of tourists that will stop us to take photos with us, which is slightly odd, but no harm done. But, there are still a good number of folk, usually away from NTU, like in Little India or on public transportation that like to stare. Most of them will continue to stare when we catch them glaring, its quite off. I was in line waiting for the bus the other day getting my visa, and a Caucasian lady got off the bus. As I watched her, she did a double take at me. I kind of laughed, I wasn't wearing everything out of the ordinary. After she left, another Caucasian lady came to wait at the bus stop. I looked at her. Then I did again to check out her purse (it was cute). I realized, even we do double takes at Caucasian ! They are such a rarity, considering how used to it we are at home, that Indians and Chinese people here in Singapore aren't the only ones double looking at us.
Indonesia is close enough to see here. There are many large and small island you can get to from Singapore via ferry. The beaches are beautiful and there are small and big towns, so whatever kind of beach vacation you can have its there. We are staying in a very rural-type beach area in Bintan Island, Indonesia the weekend of the 18th of Feb. Just Alma and I, relax in the water, snorkle, see local culture, etc.
I've been looking at Vietnam hotels, nice 3 star hotels run from 5-20 USD /night. Wow. So cheap! There are many hotesl to chose from in Hue, which is surprising because it is not THAT Big of a city, but you are close to the river, the bridge, and all the main sights. Got the DMZ and city tour booked, and we are taking the city tour on motorbikes! We keep hearing thats apart of the Vietnam experiance, the motor bike haha. So I went to the embassy on Wednesday to get my via. Online, they said it cost 25USD (like high 30's Sing $$).They are only opened from 9-12 every morning. I had class, so I got off the MRT/bus at 1130. It seemed like an easy walk down a side road, however there was construction going on and all of the street signs were covered. I decided to grab a cab because I was scared I wouldn't be able to make it in the 30 min that I had. He drove 1km down the road hahaha. But the embassy was located a short distance off the main road in the millionaires neighborhood. MAN, these were some huge houses! Multiple tories with large grecian collums near the front, water fountains the the round-a-bout driveways, all complete with entry gates. Then you come upon this not so nice looking building with a tiny gate and the smallest "Vietnam EMbassy" sign. I walked up, there were people otu from just hanging out. IT looked like someones house. Now I've never been in an embassy before, but this was not that I expected. You walk into a room and there were two open rooms off to the side and that was it. No welcome desk, no visitors only, no signs. I stood and looked around and a guy called me in to the room. He was standing in from of a shelf, no desk, no uniform, and asked me what I wanted. I told a visa and handed him my paperwork. He said it cost 84 Sing$ for a single entry. Well, thanks for the bad webs site info! I handed him my stuff and he said it would take 1 week, handed me a reciept, and that was that. Took 3 seconds.
I'm starting to miss food. Now, at first I thought it was that I missed American food, but its not. Since I havent lived in the dorms for a long time, and that time was short, I cooked all my meals all the time, for Townsend and I especially. I'm so used to eating what I want, when I want, and cooking it. I'm sick of this food more because I get the same choice everyday all the time and that is it. No variety. And its ALLL rice + meat. Maybe they'lll have veggies that I can recognize every now and then. The "western" food is stuff like chicken and spagetti, very odd. And they have chicken fingers, and that's pretty much it. There is a subway, which is good. Canadian Pizza, which is NOT a Canadian fast food joint as I've asked my Canadian friends who live in West Canada. Its not good anyway, there is no cheese, its all veggie, meat, or Hawaiian. All over town, what choices..... McD's is here too. You can get an ice cream cone for 40 cents US. Now, I don't eat this at home, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I ordered a spicy chicken sandwhich. I took a bite, and it was the bad meat. I mean, I know its McD's, but when you order chicken from a fast food place, it atleast looks white. This was the bad gross dark brown/grey slimy meat, it was so gross..... I didn't finish it.
Speaking of food, there are two Muslim girls in my Islam class that I have befriended. They were talking to me about the variety of food in Singapore, as thye are both locals. They were also very excited to hear about my trip to KL, because there was a lot of halal food. So, Muslims have to eat halal-approved food. So there are halal-approved resteraunts here. Apparently, there are not very many in Singapore, but KL is the place to be for food fodr them, as they have a huge population. It made sense, as I was remembering there was no pork on my TGI Fridays menu. There were beef sprinkles (bacon), beef ribs, etc.
Alma and I also noticed something else in KL, the variety of coverings for a Muslim women. It all depends on which school of law the family follows; there were burkas, the complete covering of everything except the eyes, we saw a good handful of that around KL. The majority of women there, as well as Singapore, cover everythign but that face. This means shoes, pants, long sleeves, and head wraps. Sometimes they wear sandels. In KL, we also saw some Muslims women who had their arms exposed, wearing short sleeve clothing. I cound't find online why this is it. I also learned that in places like Turkey and France, it is illegal for Muslims to Hajib (this covering) in public and private schools.
Just something I noticed the other day. So unlike China, were people constantly wanted to take photos of us, Singaporeans see Caucasian everyday, or atleast a couple times in their life. There have been a handful of tourists that will stop us to take photos with us, which is slightly odd, but no harm done. But, there are still a good number of folk, usually away from NTU, like in Little India or on public transportation that like to stare. Most of them will continue to stare when we catch them glaring, its quite off. I was in line waiting for the bus the other day getting my visa, and a Caucasian lady got off the bus. As I watched her, she did a double take at me. I kind of laughed, I wasn't wearing everything out of the ordinary. After she left, another Caucasian lady came to wait at the bus stop. I looked at her. Then I did again to check out her purse (it was cute). I realized, even we do double takes at Caucasian ! They are such a rarity, considering how used to it we are at home, that Indians and Chinese people here in Singapore aren't the only ones double looking at us.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
KL Day 4; History of Malaysia
As I have been forgetting to mention, it has been tremendously hot since we have been here, hotter than Singapore and just as humid. Students back at NTU said its been getting hotter there, so I think we are exiting "winter season" and getting into an even hotter one. The temperature range in Singapore throughout the year during the day I don't believe ranges more than 10 degrees F (highest EVER recorded being around 92 and lowest EVER recorded around 71), but its just so hot here. This meant we decided to keep the day somewhat short and spend most of the day in the National Museum.
We decided to sleep in a little, since I have been staying up until 2am Skyping and writing blogs, and the others decided to go out at 11pm last night and explore until wee- hours of the night. Our first stop of the day was the National Museum of Malaysia (not the Malaysian Museum, which was right beside it, which was slightly confusing). It was actually a small museum, with 4 rooms in 2 stories going from pre-historic peoples through colonialism to present day. Here is what I learned:
There are many ancient (very ancient) burials and artifacts that have been discovered in the Malaysian peninsula. One of the most famous burial ruins, housing 35 bodies, is Gua Cha which is in Malaysia. It is 8,000 years old. This room featured what southeast Asia was like back in 225 million years ago during the age of Pangaea, and went through pre-human civilizations, burials, and artifacts that have been found in the region.
The next exhibit was the history of the kingdoms of Malaysia. There has been evidence showing the earliest kingdoms went back to the 2nd century AD. Power was exchanged through birth and different families had power, just like what you would think. Even through the years of different occupations (see more later), the kingdom was prevalent in Malaysia. This has always been one of the earliest ports of trade, coming from the Middle east and other parts of Asia. There have been many findings from sunken ships and looking at underwater artifacts to tell about the history. There have been hand-written Qurans discovered here from the kingdoms. This room also held about 200 years worth of maps from 1694-1830's. Most of the coastlines were similar, but some where not, kind of cool to look at. I learned Brunei (its one of the countries on the island of Borneo) originally had the whole Borneo island and parts of Indonesia in its kingdom, but it lost power in the 19th century and then the British came. Now its the tiny little city-state-like country it is today.
The third exhibit housed the colonial era. In 1511, the Portuguese sent explorers to the east. Some entered the hands of the Malacca's (Big Malaysian city), and some lower level people of importance were killed. Portugal got upset and sent an armada to take over. After 2 tries, the had occupied and controlled the Malacca's. The Malacca's fought back with an army said to be 20,000 people with 20 elephants (can you imagine, elephants in the army!). For over 150 years, Portugal rules Malaysia who continuously tried to fight back. They managed to stop the spread of Portugal into Bintan (Indonesia). The Dutch, who hated the Protugese, decided they wanted to try for the great Malaysia trade, and beat the Portuguese and claimed the land. Many from the north and east came to help fight back, but the Dutch won. A treaty much later on gave Malacca to the British, where they occupied the majority of the country. On Penang Island (I will visit here sometime), the UNESCO world heritage site of the town of Georgetown still stands, where the British occupation began and they built this colonial city which still stands alongside their defensive position at Fort Cornwalis. Malaysia was a great place for many goods, still today 20% of the world's natural rubber comes from here, as well as rice fields and coffee fields. The government, during the colonial days, offered 3 years of waved taxes for any farmer who planted coffee, a non-native plant brought it from Sri Lanka at the time. There was a brief blurb about the ~6 years occupation by Japan, which led you to believe it wasn't this long.
The next and final room started from the early 50's when Malaysia finally was by itself and trying to make a constitution. It was a little odd that the 40s were completely skipped, there was no mention about the resistance movements towards Japan, or the fact that the Malaysia's tried to help protect Singapore from Japan but lost. Nothing. Anyway, in the early 50's, the king chose some top men to be his ad visors and they had a few years worth of meetings with surrounding countries for help on choosing a system of government and witting a constitution. There was so much influence from the Islamic world, local South east Asia, and the British that it took a long time for the constitution to be written. Finally, in March of 1957, the Prime Minister came out to the country and to the world with the constitution and the official beginning of the country of Malaysia under their own government rule. They have the table the papers were presented on in the museum. Also during this time, was the State of Emergency. This started in 1950, when the Malaysian Communist party (MCP) formed, a communist group influenced by WWII. The MCP killed 3 British men, their first terrorist attack on the country. After the country was put into the emergency state, the MCPdisban until 1989.
The first Malaysia military was gathered together in March of 1933, where a group of 25 men from the "Experimental Malaysian Company" were sent to help fight against the Japanese. By 1950, there had been 7 Battalions formed. Now, at the age of 18 men are required to go through 3 months of boot camp (bonding as the poster called it) and they are picked by a draft system.
The government is said to be a "constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy". This means there is a king and queen, who are the military leaders and head. His first advisor is the prime minister, who also is in charge of Parliament. There are also sultans, who are relatives of the king, who lead the 13 states of Malaysia, and are only allowed to keep 5 years in power at one time.
I also learned the Petronas buildings were finished in 1999 and designed by an American architect. They sent their first astronaut into space in 2007.
One our way to the museum, we were trying to find a taxi and stumbled upon another Hindu temple. There was a ceremony inside, and we stood outside and watched for a bit. Chin May explained that the temples are for one person (their name is in the temple name), but as all gods, good and bad, are in a place together (like heaven), all temples have many of the gods in them to worship. He also told me the meaning of "sri", which is in front of all the temple names. It is the equivalent of a formal male title, like Lord. So when you refer to the gods, this name is in front. I asked him if that is where Sri Lanka got its name and he said yes. A while back, a very bad unpopular ruler worshiped the god Lanka and decided to name the country and capital city Lanka and Sri Lanka. As he was a bad guy, the name was changed after a while when he was gone, but was changed back to Sri Lanka, as that is how everyone knows it by.
We went to the National Mosque next. we had to wait around for prayer to end, and we were given robes to cover ourselves and our heads. It wasn't very interesting, as you cannot go into any prayer rooms since we aren't Muslim. They had a cemetery there, just a small one for "VIP's", like the prime minister and government officials. We stopped by the National Palace, which is the ceremonial palace for the king. (he doesn't live there). You cannot enter the grounds, so everyone stands outside the main gate and takes pictures. ,You can only see the driveway, one of the parade grounds, and the tip tops of the dome toppings of the buildings. There are 2 ceremonial guards out front "guarding" it. I believe they are positioned after the guards places outside the palace in Britain, they stand there and do nothing and people take pictures around them. We saw a police escorted caravan guarding one expensive vehicle and we were all hopping it pulled into the palace, but of course it didn't. The history of the palace was in front, which is quite unusual. in 1928, the palace was built by a very rich man as his house. When the Japanese took over, the converted the house into the officer's mess hall. When the British came to help run out the Japanese during WWI/II, the Royal Air Force used this as their HQ. Finally, in 1957 when the country declared its Independence, the palace became the house of the king.
We had issues getting a taxi home, since we were next to a highway, but we got back to the hostel which is where I am typing now. We do not leave until midnight, but we have nowhere else to go so we are just hanging here!
We decided to sleep in a little, since I have been staying up until 2am Skyping and writing blogs, and the others decided to go out at 11pm last night and explore until wee- hours of the night. Our first stop of the day was the National Museum of Malaysia (not the Malaysian Museum, which was right beside it, which was slightly confusing). It was actually a small museum, with 4 rooms in 2 stories going from pre-historic peoples through colonialism to present day. Here is what I learned:
There are many ancient (very ancient) burials and artifacts that have been discovered in the Malaysian peninsula. One of the most famous burial ruins, housing 35 bodies, is Gua Cha which is in Malaysia. It is 8,000 years old. This room featured what southeast Asia was like back in 225 million years ago during the age of Pangaea, and went through pre-human civilizations, burials, and artifacts that have been found in the region.
The next exhibit was the history of the kingdoms of Malaysia. There has been evidence showing the earliest kingdoms went back to the 2nd century AD. Power was exchanged through birth and different families had power, just like what you would think. Even through the years of different occupations (see more later), the kingdom was prevalent in Malaysia. This has always been one of the earliest ports of trade, coming from the Middle east and other parts of Asia. There have been many findings from sunken ships and looking at underwater artifacts to tell about the history. There have been hand-written Qurans discovered here from the kingdoms. This room also held about 200 years worth of maps from 1694-1830's. Most of the coastlines were similar, but some where not, kind of cool to look at. I learned Brunei (its one of the countries on the island of Borneo) originally had the whole Borneo island and parts of Indonesia in its kingdom, but it lost power in the 19th century and then the British came. Now its the tiny little city-state-like country it is today.
The third exhibit housed the colonial era. In 1511, the Portuguese sent explorers to the east. Some entered the hands of the Malacca's (Big Malaysian city), and some lower level people of importance were killed. Portugal got upset and sent an armada to take over. After 2 tries, the had occupied and controlled the Malacca's. The Malacca's fought back with an army said to be 20,000 people with 20 elephants (can you imagine, elephants in the army!). For over 150 years, Portugal rules Malaysia who continuously tried to fight back. They managed to stop the spread of Portugal into Bintan (Indonesia). The Dutch, who hated the Protugese, decided they wanted to try for the great Malaysia trade, and beat the Portuguese and claimed the land. Many from the north and east came to help fight back, but the Dutch won. A treaty much later on gave Malacca to the British, where they occupied the majority of the country. On Penang Island (I will visit here sometime), the UNESCO world heritage site of the town of Georgetown still stands, where the British occupation began and they built this colonial city which still stands alongside their defensive position at Fort Cornwalis. Malaysia was a great place for many goods, still today 20% of the world's natural rubber comes from here, as well as rice fields and coffee fields. The government, during the colonial days, offered 3 years of waved taxes for any farmer who planted coffee, a non-native plant brought it from Sri Lanka at the time. There was a brief blurb about the ~6 years occupation by Japan, which led you to believe it wasn't this long.
The next and final room started from the early 50's when Malaysia finally was by itself and trying to make a constitution. It was a little odd that the 40s were completely skipped, there was no mention about the resistance movements towards Japan, or the fact that the Malaysia's tried to help protect Singapore from Japan but lost. Nothing. Anyway, in the early 50's, the king chose some top men to be his ad visors and they had a few years worth of meetings with surrounding countries for help on choosing a system of government and witting a constitution. There was so much influence from the Islamic world, local South east Asia, and the British that it took a long time for the constitution to be written. Finally, in March of 1957, the Prime Minister came out to the country and to the world with the constitution and the official beginning of the country of Malaysia under their own government rule. They have the table the papers were presented on in the museum. Also during this time, was the State of Emergency. This started in 1950, when the Malaysian Communist party (MCP) formed, a communist group influenced by WWII. The MCP killed 3 British men, their first terrorist attack on the country. After the country was put into the emergency state, the MCPdisban until 1989.
The first Malaysia military was gathered together in March of 1933, where a group of 25 men from the "Experimental Malaysian Company" were sent to help fight against the Japanese. By 1950, there had been 7 Battalions formed. Now, at the age of 18 men are required to go through 3 months of boot camp (bonding as the poster called it) and they are picked by a draft system.
The government is said to be a "constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy". This means there is a king and queen, who are the military leaders and head. His first advisor is the prime minister, who also is in charge of Parliament. There are also sultans, who are relatives of the king, who lead the 13 states of Malaysia, and are only allowed to keep 5 years in power at one time.
I also learned the Petronas buildings were finished in 1999 and designed by an American architect. They sent their first astronaut into space in 2007.
One our way to the museum, we were trying to find a taxi and stumbled upon another Hindu temple. There was a ceremony inside, and we stood outside and watched for a bit. Chin May explained that the temples are for one person (their name is in the temple name), but as all gods, good and bad, are in a place together (like heaven), all temples have many of the gods in them to worship. He also told me the meaning of "sri", which is in front of all the temple names. It is the equivalent of a formal male title, like Lord. So when you refer to the gods, this name is in front. I asked him if that is where Sri Lanka got its name and he said yes. A while back, a very bad unpopular ruler worshiped the god Lanka and decided to name the country and capital city Lanka and Sri Lanka. As he was a bad guy, the name was changed after a while when he was gone, but was changed back to Sri Lanka, as that is how everyone knows it by.
We went to the National Mosque next. we had to wait around for prayer to end, and we were given robes to cover ourselves and our heads. It wasn't very interesting, as you cannot go into any prayer rooms since we aren't Muslim. They had a cemetery there, just a small one for "VIP's", like the prime minister and government officials. We stopped by the National Palace, which is the ceremonial palace for the king. (he doesn't live there). You cannot enter the grounds, so everyone stands outside the main gate and takes pictures. ,You can only see the driveway, one of the parade grounds, and the tip tops of the dome toppings of the buildings. There are 2 ceremonial guards out front "guarding" it. I believe they are positioned after the guards places outside the palace in Britain, they stand there and do nothing and people take pictures around them. We saw a police escorted caravan guarding one expensive vehicle and we were all hopping it pulled into the palace, but of course it didn't. The history of the palace was in front, which is quite unusual. in 1928, the palace was built by a very rich man as his house. When the Japanese took over, the converted the house into the officer's mess hall. When the British came to help run out the Japanese during WWI/II, the Royal Air Force used this as their HQ. Finally, in 1957 when the country declared its Independence, the palace became the house of the king.
We had issues getting a taxi home, since we were next to a highway, but we got back to the hostel which is where I am typing now. We do not leave until midnight, but we have nowhere else to go so we are just hanging here!
KL Day 3; Rained Out
This morning we had a nice plan of the day, which got quickly changed by rain and shopping, but none the less it was a success. We woke up to Traditional Thai massages we booked at a fancy salon in the Golden Triangle, the area where TGI Fridays was. As I found in China, Asian massages are like nothing you would get in the US or in the west on general. Thai was very similar. We were given jasmine tee while they got our room ready. All 3 of us girls went in for Traditional massages. First, the ladies gave us sandals and washed our feet. We all were in the same room with curtains around us, but they just closed them to the outside and not towards each other. We changed into a large shirt and pants and lied down on our backs on a mattress on the floor. The massages were rougher and involved pressure points and pushing rather than rubbing. They would also stretch and twist our body parts and sit on us to apply pressure. I enjoyed it, the other girls (this was their first massage) did not. The ladies did a very good job and the spa was nice, a very enjoyable experience.
We left for a lunch and headed to the other main city-like part of town, this is the part of the city where communities are rather than large buildings and shopping. This is where Chinatown, Little India, famous mosques, etc are. I noticed something on the way in; there are some words in Malay that are spelled like English phonetics. For example, taksi is taxi, muziem is museum, etc. Anyway, we started at the Central Market. We ended up staying here for a lot longer than expected because it was more like a craft market than a tourist facility, lots of locals and tourists were here. The Chinese ran stands were closed, still for CNY. There were trinket shops, clothing, textiles, hand carved wood, silver, antiques, everything. The first shop I enjoyed was this beautiful pottery-like store ran by an Iranian (it was also Iranian goods). Him and I talked about Southeast Asia, where to go and which beaches were the best. He was curious to ask me questions, as an American in Singapore, what it was like to go from a not-so-much-rules country to a strict country like Singapore, as, how he put it, he enjoyed going from rules-Iran to no-rules-Malaysia but missed the order sometimes. I asked him to tell me about his pottery, since I obviously couldn't afford the 150$ USD+ goods, I just wanted to know about it and he told me about it. It was actually copper, which amazed me because it looked like ceramics until you picked it up. It was painted white in the background, then with hand painted blue designs. It was scratch proof, fire proof, and shatter proof. He also pulled out a box made out of camel bone, which smelled like camel butt. I bought a barrette, which is inlaid wood with enamel and camel bone.
The next place I went to wasn't such a positive experience. It was a stall with brass inlaid wood and I found a tray I liked. I was talking to the guy for a while, he was Pakistani. I was trying to barter and I told him I was from the US. He started off with I don't mean to offend you, a bad sign right there, and went into this speech about how he believed most Pakistani's felt about the US as we left their country in shambles after helping them and this and that and we only help out countries of natural disasters to get our image up the world. But please, I don't mean to offend you. I just said I don't want the tray and I left.
I ended up buying a Turkish rug, a tad bigger than a welcome mat for 10$ USD and I also found an antique rummage-through kind of shop with clearance dishes. I bartered down to about $15 USD for a set of three large green Japanese bowls with a gold leaf pattern. Very pretty, and they're antiques :) Some thing we had also planned on trying, we found in the market, the massage fish! "Hello my name is doctor fish and i do not have teeth" read the sign of the cute fish spa in the market. A while ago in Turkey, some people discovered these fish that like to nibble off dead skin. There are many spas in few countries that have pools of these fish you can submerge your whole body in for exfoliation and micro-circulation. KL is famous for these little pools of fish that you stick your feet in. for about 2$USD, we all got to spend 10 min sticking our feet in a tank of well over 400 fish. I am not ticklish in my feet, but we all were screaming with laughter trying to get our feet in. Slowly but surely, we managed to get into our ankle. The fish would like suck, it was very odd and creepy. But our feet really did feel smoother after we did it!
It started raining, of course as soon as we left from the cover of the market, and we took refuge in the outskirts of Little India in a very local Nepalese restaurant, where we all got hard stares as the foreigners entered the locals-only place. Luckily, many of the waiters spoke Hindu, which Chin May speaks, and he ordered us some good snacks and helped with the waiter tried to double our bill price.
The rain had subsided so we went to Independence Square, a large field (think soccer field) where the Japanese Red Army officially surrendered to the people of Malaysia (there was no official government before this, just a king) after they surrendered to the world (Thanks, America). Anyway, it is in front of the beautifully large Government center for Info, Communication and something else. There is also one of the worlds largest flag poles on the square. We hung around Little India and Chinatown, which was full of pirated DVD's and purses. Finally, after eating at a nice local meal which I bartered because I only had 55 RM (Malaysia Ringgits) left for the next 24 hours, we got on to the bus.
The bus system here is very different than any bus system I've been on. (which is pretty much just Singapore haha). You get on the bus and they do not leave until the bus is somewhat full or, in the case of this night, we sat there for 20 minutes and nobody else wanted to get on. Then, someone goes around with little tickets and you give them money and they give you a ticket. There's no official exchange of where you are going or how much it costs to get there, its like an honor system or something. We decided not to go into the KL Patronas Towers after talking with a UK guy from the hostel. In the past year, the towers decided to charge a 3RM fee for coming to get a ticket, which tells you what time that day you can join your tour group. You can only go up to the bridge part of the towers (1/2 way up) and they are offices, so there is really nothing else to see. They told us that most of the time, you can get a ticket before 11am, but because it is CNY, they went at like 7am and the tickets had already been sold out! Office building aren't that worth it, and the bridge was at the height of the SkyBar we had went to the night before, so we know what that view looks like. You really can't get an idea of exactly how tall these buildings are until we were at the bar (the towers have 81 floors) and theres nothing NEAR as tall. And, with an exception of the jungle, EVERY place we went this weekend you could see the towers, EVERYWHERE. Awesome.
The architecture in this area, and many of the government buildings around, are Muslim influence. I mean this by the dome-point-like add-ons to the top of buildings and round/pointed doorways of the top of a mosque instead of traditional square doors in the west. There are many signs written in Malay, English, and Arabic. Many of the jalans (roads) are names after Muslim people as well.
We left for a lunch and headed to the other main city-like part of town, this is the part of the city where communities are rather than large buildings and shopping. This is where Chinatown, Little India, famous mosques, etc are. I noticed something on the way in; there are some words in Malay that are spelled like English phonetics. For example, taksi is taxi, muziem is museum, etc. Anyway, we started at the Central Market. We ended up staying here for a lot longer than expected because it was more like a craft market than a tourist facility, lots of locals and tourists were here. The Chinese ran stands were closed, still for CNY. There were trinket shops, clothing, textiles, hand carved wood, silver, antiques, everything. The first shop I enjoyed was this beautiful pottery-like store ran by an Iranian (it was also Iranian goods). Him and I talked about Southeast Asia, where to go and which beaches were the best. He was curious to ask me questions, as an American in Singapore, what it was like to go from a not-so-much-rules country to a strict country like Singapore, as, how he put it, he enjoyed going from rules-Iran to no-rules-Malaysia but missed the order sometimes. I asked him to tell me about his pottery, since I obviously couldn't afford the 150$ USD+ goods, I just wanted to know about it and he told me about it. It was actually copper, which amazed me because it looked like ceramics until you picked it up. It was painted white in the background, then with hand painted blue designs. It was scratch proof, fire proof, and shatter proof. He also pulled out a box made out of camel bone, which smelled like camel butt. I bought a barrette, which is inlaid wood with enamel and camel bone.
The next place I went to wasn't such a positive experience. It was a stall with brass inlaid wood and I found a tray I liked. I was talking to the guy for a while, he was Pakistani. I was trying to barter and I told him I was from the US. He started off with I don't mean to offend you, a bad sign right there, and went into this speech about how he believed most Pakistani's felt about the US as we left their country in shambles after helping them and this and that and we only help out countries of natural disasters to get our image up the world. But please, I don't mean to offend you. I just said I don't want the tray and I left.
I ended up buying a Turkish rug, a tad bigger than a welcome mat for 10$ USD and I also found an antique rummage-through kind of shop with clearance dishes. I bartered down to about $15 USD for a set of three large green Japanese bowls with a gold leaf pattern. Very pretty, and they're antiques :) Some thing we had also planned on trying, we found in the market, the massage fish! "Hello my name is doctor fish and i do not have teeth" read the sign of the cute fish spa in the market. A while ago in Turkey, some people discovered these fish that like to nibble off dead skin. There are many spas in few countries that have pools of these fish you can submerge your whole body in for exfoliation and micro-circulation. KL is famous for these little pools of fish that you stick your feet in. for about 2$USD, we all got to spend 10 min sticking our feet in a tank of well over 400 fish. I am not ticklish in my feet, but we all were screaming with laughter trying to get our feet in. Slowly but surely, we managed to get into our ankle. The fish would like suck, it was very odd and creepy. But our feet really did feel smoother after we did it!
It started raining, of course as soon as we left from the cover of the market, and we took refuge in the outskirts of Little India in a very local Nepalese restaurant, where we all got hard stares as the foreigners entered the locals-only place. Luckily, many of the waiters spoke Hindu, which Chin May speaks, and he ordered us some good snacks and helped with the waiter tried to double our bill price.
The rain had subsided so we went to Independence Square, a large field (think soccer field) where the Japanese Red Army officially surrendered to the people of Malaysia (there was no official government before this, just a king) after they surrendered to the world (Thanks, America). Anyway, it is in front of the beautifully large Government center for Info, Communication and something else. There is also one of the worlds largest flag poles on the square. We hung around Little India and Chinatown, which was full of pirated DVD's and purses. Finally, after eating at a nice local meal which I bartered because I only had 55 RM (Malaysia Ringgits) left for the next 24 hours, we got on to the bus.
The bus system here is very different than any bus system I've been on. (which is pretty much just Singapore haha). You get on the bus and they do not leave until the bus is somewhat full or, in the case of this night, we sat there for 20 minutes and nobody else wanted to get on. Then, someone goes around with little tickets and you give them money and they give you a ticket. There's no official exchange of where you are going or how much it costs to get there, its like an honor system or something. We decided not to go into the KL Patronas Towers after talking with a UK guy from the hostel. In the past year, the towers decided to charge a 3RM fee for coming to get a ticket, which tells you what time that day you can join your tour group. You can only go up to the bridge part of the towers (1/2 way up) and they are offices, so there is really nothing else to see. They told us that most of the time, you can get a ticket before 11am, but because it is CNY, they went at like 7am and the tickets had already been sold out! Office building aren't that worth it, and the bridge was at the height of the SkyBar we had went to the night before, so we know what that view looks like. You really can't get an idea of exactly how tall these buildings are until we were at the bar (the towers have 81 floors) and theres nothing NEAR as tall. And, with an exception of the jungle, EVERY place we went this weekend you could see the towers, EVERYWHERE. Awesome.
The architecture in this area, and many of the government buildings around, are Muslim influence. I mean this by the dome-point-like add-ons to the top of buildings and round/pointed doorways of the top of a mosque instead of traditional square doors in the west. There are many signs written in Malay, English, and Arabic. Many of the jalans (roads) are names after Muslim people as well.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
KL: Day 2; The Jungle Day
Had a fabulously long day at KL. Woke up at 630am and had a hostel breakfast of toast before catching a taxi with our little group of 4 people to find this train entrence I read about on one blog to a waterfall. Of course, the taxi driver said he knew were it was when we got in, but when we got around the area he started calling the taxi people on the radio for directions. He was nice enough to turn off the meter when we got lost for about 15 minutes. We were all cracking up in the back of the car as we would continuously go back and forth down the same roads and he was on the cell and radio trying to figure out where he was going. Finally, he figured it out (the first way we went) and it was like 5km down this dirt road literally in the middle of the jungle.
The jungle here was like nothing I thought; it was mainly bamboo and other types of trees I haven't seen; not many flowers or anything, probably becuase it wasn't a rain forest. Anyway, we enjoyed getting a tad lost among trails following this bloggers informative directions. Heard all sorts of monkey's hollering to each other but didn't spot any. Finally, we came to the trail to the waterfall! It was about 50ft tall, coming down from smooth rock around a corner surrounded by bolders. Of course, we all took our shoes off and got in! Alma immediatly got attacked by a leech, Maria soon after. We wandered around, it was beautiful, we were on the edge of a complete unknown wilderness and you could really tell.
We had ran into a couple locals who ran an ATV-tour through the jungle (why do people insist of destroying jungles with 4wheelers?) and they told us, as well as our taxi driver, that there was no way we would find a taxi back. We were told to stop by the ATV main HQ and they could help us get a ride home. After walking around for about 4 hours, we finally got to the ATV main HQ, which was a roofed patio (with cold water luckly) and a beautiful pool. It had rocks and boulders at the bottom and was fed using mountain water. We sat with our feet in, and luckly, some Europeans showed up so we used thei taxis to make our way to Batu Caves.
Batu caves are one of the most famous things in KL. On the outskirts of the city, there are small mountains. A Hindi temple was built inside two a joining caves, one covered and one opened up on the top. You clumb about 280 stairs to get into the temple. There are other temples around at the ground, and bad monkeys looking for tourist food everywhere! We went to eat, and since Chin May was with us (He's Indian), he ordered a mixture of Southern Indian food to try. We tehn climbed up the stairs and into the caves, it was beautiful! There were peacock statues and feathers everywhere; Chin May told us that each Hindi God had its animal that he travelled with, and the god which this temple was dedicated to rode a peacock. There was also this very provocative statue of a cox with breasts and a woman's face; this symbolized that the God was first married to a cow, before he married his wife who was a human. Interesting...
We decided after to head into a local craft market, but it was closed for Chinese New Year (CNY). The place is near what is known as the Golden Triangle, which is an area of the city full of "the main city", economy and tourism. It was much cleaner, nicer everything. After seeing this, I realized that we lived in the "average" part of town, hence why garbage wasn't necessarily picked up regularly or completely like it was here. Anyway, we couldn't decide which over prices resteraunt to eat in, so we went to TGI Fridays because it had happy hour (free drinks for ladies at 8) and it was the same price at home with the exchange rate, even a little less. Stayed for about 3 hours, drank and had a great time on the deck overlooking the main city which was still beautifully decorated from CNY. We then attempted to meet up with some other NTU kids at one of the coolest bars I've ever been called SkyBar. It was on the top floor of a hotel located about 3 blocks from the Petronas Towers. 3 of the 4 walls of the bar were complete windows, so you could see the towers, which were lit up RIGHT There and have a drink. It also had pools and hot tubs. We only lasted for about an hour, after complaining about how everything was important from Europe and the US so there was nothing under 100$ US to order....
It was a lovely day with great weather. Can't complain :)
The jungle here was like nothing I thought; it was mainly bamboo and other types of trees I haven't seen; not many flowers or anything, probably becuase it wasn't a rain forest. Anyway, we enjoyed getting a tad lost among trails following this bloggers informative directions. Heard all sorts of monkey's hollering to each other but didn't spot any. Finally, we came to the trail to the waterfall! It was about 50ft tall, coming down from smooth rock around a corner surrounded by bolders. Of course, we all took our shoes off and got in! Alma immediatly got attacked by a leech, Maria soon after. We wandered around, it was beautiful, we were on the edge of a complete unknown wilderness and you could really tell.
We had ran into a couple locals who ran an ATV-tour through the jungle (why do people insist of destroying jungles with 4wheelers?) and they told us, as well as our taxi driver, that there was no way we would find a taxi back. We were told to stop by the ATV main HQ and they could help us get a ride home. After walking around for about 4 hours, we finally got to the ATV main HQ, which was a roofed patio (with cold water luckly) and a beautiful pool. It had rocks and boulders at the bottom and was fed using mountain water. We sat with our feet in, and luckly, some Europeans showed up so we used thei taxis to make our way to Batu Caves.
Batu caves are one of the most famous things in KL. On the outskirts of the city, there are small mountains. A Hindi temple was built inside two a joining caves, one covered and one opened up on the top. You clumb about 280 stairs to get into the temple. There are other temples around at the ground, and bad monkeys looking for tourist food everywhere! We went to eat, and since Chin May was with us (He's Indian), he ordered a mixture of Southern Indian food to try. We tehn climbed up the stairs and into the caves, it was beautiful! There were peacock statues and feathers everywhere; Chin May told us that each Hindi God had its animal that he travelled with, and the god which this temple was dedicated to rode a peacock. There was also this very provocative statue of a cox with breasts and a woman's face; this symbolized that the God was first married to a cow, before he married his wife who was a human. Interesting...
We decided after to head into a local craft market, but it was closed for Chinese New Year (CNY). The place is near what is known as the Golden Triangle, which is an area of the city full of "the main city", economy and tourism. It was much cleaner, nicer everything. After seeing this, I realized that we lived in the "average" part of town, hence why garbage wasn't necessarily picked up regularly or completely like it was here. Anyway, we couldn't decide which over prices resteraunt to eat in, so we went to TGI Fridays because it had happy hour (free drinks for ladies at 8) and it was the same price at home with the exchange rate, even a little less. Stayed for about 3 hours, drank and had a great time on the deck overlooking the main city which was still beautifully decorated from CNY. We then attempted to meet up with some other NTU kids at one of the coolest bars I've ever been called SkyBar. It was on the top floor of a hotel located about 3 blocks from the Petronas Towers. 3 of the 4 walls of the bar were complete windows, so you could see the towers, which were lit up RIGHT There and have a drink. It also had pools and hot tubs. We only lasted for about an hour, after complaining about how everything was important from Europe and the US so there was nothing under 100$ US to order....
It was a lovely day with great weather. Can't complain :)
Thursday, February 3, 2011
1st night in KL: Just arrived
had a long day of travel, the keyboard sticks here at the hostel (its very nice, 5 computers with free internet for use) so excuse any spelling mistakes.
So a few more comments about the zoo, since I rushed out this morning: It was SO much nicer than China, for those of you who remember my posts about that sad depressing place. They even had a Borneo section full of animals you can see there and the list of animals the island has that nowhere else in the world does (this is where I'm spring-breaking with dad/max!!!) They also had this cool like walk-in (think big net with free ranging animals and you walk around in it) called fragile forest. It was a walk through the different levels of a rain forest. There were bats (biggest I've ever seen), little mini deer, bird, etc. There were two sloths, both were moving which was amazing. One of them was sitting on this little perch where you could have touched him from the walk way. He was holding onto the perch with hsi hands and feet, beltn over backward. There was a guy who was making kissy noises at him to get his attention to take the picture. The sloth would bend over backwards and stare at him with his big black eyes just amazing. Everytime he stopped and started again, the sloth would arch back, got pics, will post when I get back to Singapore.
Anyway, the bus ride was about 6 hours, with an house spent waiting for people to go through customs. Learned that you can get cheap booze/gas in Malaysia compared to singapore, so of course they've made rules: no brining booze across the border from malaysia, and if you drive over the border, you MUST have a 3/4 full tank of gas, there are huge signs everywhere. We rode on a new MRT line to get to the station which was in this Thai/Indian part of town which smelled like rotten cheese. We rode these really neat escelators that spead up when the motion sensor went off that someone was getting on, I kept playing with the sensors, it was really neat. We took the bus about 30 minutes to the border. Everyone got out and "departed" Singapore. We got back on the bus on the other side of the fence and drove over one of the (I believe) two bridges to get to Malaysia. The whole ocean-side of Singapore was fenced in, not in Malaysia. Soon after the bridge, the rest of the road was fenced in until you got to customs. There were photos of royality on the wall and customs was very easy. This is a place with no toilet paper, which isn't that uncommon and I always carry it with me. But they have their own version, hoses in the stalls that you "wash" yourself with...so all the bathrooms are dripping wet.
Prohibited Items to bring to Malaysia: Porn, gun-shaped lighters, any imprint/reproduction of the Quran phrases on any type of material, turtle eggs, drugs (penalty by death), piranah fish, lead, anything that could possibly hurt the image of teh country.
It was truley a foreign country, as I see Singapore as definalty more westernized. About 5-10% of the signs on the road/customs/rest stops had english translation, most was strictly in Malay. Not everyoe knows any English, and if they do, its very few. Since there is a huge population of Muslims here, there were prayer rooms at rest stops. It reminded me of Central America at first, we entered the country in a very rural part full of plantations and trees, with constant reminders that rural folk usually live in poverty. There are lots of posted laws like Singapore, such as no food here, no littering, etc. But here nobody seems to follow them. The streets are dirty, we got a little lost when we got off the monorail from the bus station to the hostel, and everything smelled like trash during our wander around. We saw huge rats coming out alot of the trash cans and stray cats everwhere. but this is the biggest city, the capital. I think maybe we aren't in the tourist part of town, but its okay.
The hostel is nice, its the first one I ever stayed at and my friends who are with me (US, India, and Mexico) said this is a pretty nice one. Anyways, its super late, we are getting up very early to go try and see animals during our hike to some waterfalls tomorrow!
So a few more comments about the zoo, since I rushed out this morning: It was SO much nicer than China, for those of you who remember my posts about that sad depressing place. They even had a Borneo section full of animals you can see there and the list of animals the island has that nowhere else in the world does (this is where I'm spring-breaking with dad/max!!!) They also had this cool like walk-in (think big net with free ranging animals and you walk around in it) called fragile forest. It was a walk through the different levels of a rain forest. There were bats (biggest I've ever seen), little mini deer, bird, etc. There were two sloths, both were moving which was amazing. One of them was sitting on this little perch where you could have touched him from the walk way. He was holding onto the perch with hsi hands and feet, beltn over backward. There was a guy who was making kissy noises at him to get his attention to take the picture. The sloth would bend over backwards and stare at him with his big black eyes just amazing. Everytime he stopped and started again, the sloth would arch back, got pics, will post when I get back to Singapore.
Anyway, the bus ride was about 6 hours, with an house spent waiting for people to go through customs. Learned that you can get cheap booze/gas in Malaysia compared to singapore, so of course they've made rules: no brining booze across the border from malaysia, and if you drive over the border, you MUST have a 3/4 full tank of gas, there are huge signs everywhere. We rode on a new MRT line to get to the station which was in this Thai/Indian part of town which smelled like rotten cheese. We rode these really neat escelators that spead up when the motion sensor went off that someone was getting on, I kept playing with the sensors, it was really neat. We took the bus about 30 minutes to the border. Everyone got out and "departed" Singapore. We got back on the bus on the other side of the fence and drove over one of the (I believe) two bridges to get to Malaysia. The whole ocean-side of Singapore was fenced in, not in Malaysia. Soon after the bridge, the rest of the road was fenced in until you got to customs. There were photos of royality on the wall and customs was very easy. This is a place with no toilet paper, which isn't that uncommon and I always carry it with me. But they have their own version, hoses in the stalls that you "wash" yourself with...so all the bathrooms are dripping wet.
Prohibited Items to bring to Malaysia: Porn, gun-shaped lighters, any imprint/reproduction of the Quran phrases on any type of material, turtle eggs, drugs (penalty by death), piranah fish, lead, anything that could possibly hurt the image of teh country.
It was truley a foreign country, as I see Singapore as definalty more westernized. About 5-10% of the signs on the road/customs/rest stops had english translation, most was strictly in Malay. Not everyoe knows any English, and if they do, its very few. Since there is a huge population of Muslims here, there were prayer rooms at rest stops. It reminded me of Central America at first, we entered the country in a very rural part full of plantations and trees, with constant reminders that rural folk usually live in poverty. There are lots of posted laws like Singapore, such as no food here, no littering, etc. But here nobody seems to follow them. The streets are dirty, we got a little lost when we got off the monorail from the bus station to the hostel, and everything smelled like trash during our wander around. We saw huge rats coming out alot of the trash cans and stray cats everwhere. but this is the biggest city, the capital. I think maybe we aren't in the tourist part of town, but its okay.
The hostel is nice, its the first one I ever stayed at and my friends who are with me (US, India, and Mexico) said this is a pretty nice one. Anyways, its super late, we are getting up very early to go try and see animals during our hike to some waterfalls tomorrow!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Zoo Zoo Zoo
Good morning! Had a very exciting day yesterday, we finally went to the zoo! It was amazing, nothing was in cages (minus one of the big cats) and there were monkeys literally climbing everywhere, out of cages, around the park. It was the greenest zoo I have ever seen! We got to watch the feeding of the two jaguars, I got it on video. They threw in the meat from up above (snack size portions) in various directions to make the jags jump and get excersise. They would dive off rocks into the water and dive to the bottom of the pool to get the meat. Then they would swim around above and below water to find more and eat it, they are it holding their paws together and nibbling on it, it was the coolest cutest thing I've ever seen. ALL the animals were up and active, even the 3 white tigers were all swimming and running around.
Sorry this will be so short, but I am running late for the bus to catch to go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia today since last night was Chinese New Year and we stayed up until 4 in the morning. We all went to this bar/club in the city and watched fireworks at midnight; there was no new year celebrating or hugging/kissing or singing like we all do on new years, just a few cheers and that was it. No count down, just very relazed. It was beautiful though, the place had a huge wall of windows overlooking the bar into the main part of town so you could see the famous "ship" looking building and this other one that looks like a flower, very neat!
But I will be going to KL soon, think about me during the Super Bowl, as I will be on the midnight bus driving back 7 hours through fun, rough Malaysian highway to get back to Singapore at 7am on Monday morning. HOPEFULLY I can post while I am there, but we'll see how good our free internet at the hostel is! Love everyone :)
Sorry this will be so short, but I am running late for the bus to catch to go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia today since last night was Chinese New Year and we stayed up until 4 in the morning. We all went to this bar/club in the city and watched fireworks at midnight; there was no new year celebrating or hugging/kissing or singing like we all do on new years, just a few cheers and that was it. No count down, just very relazed. It was beautiful though, the place had a huge wall of windows overlooking the bar into the main part of town so you could see the famous "ship" looking building and this other one that looks like a flower, very neat!
But I will be going to KL soon, think about me during the Super Bowl, as I will be on the midnight bus driving back 7 hours through fun, rough Malaysian highway to get back to Singapore at 7am on Monday morning. HOPEFULLY I can post while I am there, but we'll see how good our free internet at the hostel is! Love everyone :)
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