Chinese New Year Travels

I had a week off for Chinese New Year from March 15-19. On the morning of the 16th I hopped on a bus and went down to Kuala Lumpur. I had slept for about two hours the previous night since I had some business back home in the US to attend to via email and Skype. I slept the whole bus ride ride down there. I was in such a deep sleep that I woke up on an empty bus around noon, looked out the window and saw the ugly structure that is Pudaraya bus station and realized I was in Kuala Lumpur. I was having some sort of dream that I was in a cooking class. I was happy to have woken up and been in KL. Although waking up on an empty bus was a bit unnerving for a moment.

I stayed in a hostel near the Masjid Jamek metro station. There was a Burger King and a McDonalds facing each other across the street so I had all I needed. My hostel was pretty nice as it seemed to be brand new. In the dorm I stayed in was this Japanese guy who said he had been living there the past two weeks. He seemed like an all right guy up until he asked where I was from. Upon hearing I was American he started gushing out all these 9/11 conspiracy theories and etc. However, he wasn't as crazy as the guy who told me that the Titanic was sunk so the Federal Reserve Bank could be created.

I spent the remainder of the day walking around KLCC. It was my third time in KL, but this time I really, really enjoyed it. KLCC is a park right beside the Petronas Twin Towers. It's a nice place to unwind amidst the hustle and bustle of the rest of the city. Also, I could sit and admire the Petronas Towers for hours.

I went to the aquarium in the adjoining convention center. I like aquariums for the most part, plus it was a good excuse to get out of the KL heat. The aquarium was nice and had all sorts of crazy organisms from across the country. However, I did manage to pull off the feat of getting motion sickness on the moving walkway going through the tunnel through the tank. Something about the glass made everything terribly out of focus and I just suffered through the 90 meters that it lasted.

The next day I went to Merdeka Square. The Malaysian flag flies upon tallest flagpole in the world there. I asked this tourist couple, I think they were from Japan, if they could take a picture of me in front of the square. The husband then asked me if he could take a picture of me with his wife. I obliged, finding it to me one of the more hilarious "can I take a picture of you?" moments.

After that I went to the National Museum, which was pretty cool. It only cost RM 2 to get in and I learned a lot about the colonial era and more about the politics of Malaysia when the country first gained its independence from Britain. I also learned a lot about the Malacca Sultanate which I found to be quite interesting since I was heading there next.

All in all, KL was great.

On Thursday, I took a bus to Malacca. Malacca is a city that has Arab, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, British, and of course Malaysian roots. I hope I didn't forget anyone there... It was a trading hub back in the day and regarded as a strategic port because it was in between China and India.

Malacca was pretty hoppin' as it was jam packed with Chinese celebrating the New Year. I spent the day walking around the city checking out the old colonial buildings and watching kids set off firecrackers at every corner. I went to one museum that was the rebuilt palace of the Malacca Sultan. It was pretty cool and filled with terribly cheezy manikins reenacting this scene and that.

Some parts of Malacca were pretty tourist trappy. There were gift shops in every church, temple, restaurant, museum, you name it. There was a museum for everything as well. There was the "Malaysian Youth Art Museum" and the "Beauty Museum" and the "Kite Museum" and "The People's Museum" and etc.

I liked Malacca overall. Living in Penang for a little over eight months has made me accustomed to "Malaysian life in Penang," so seeing "Malaysian life in Malacca" was nice.

On Friday I took a bus further down to Singapore.

And that, my friends, will be another post for another time.

Keep Haiti in your hearts and minds

As the initial shock has subsided following the awful tragedy in Haiti, we cannot let the plight of the Haitians to begin to rebuild and recover their lives be forgotten.

I found this blog through the Foreign Policy Association's Facebook page:

http://julieinhaiti.tumblr.com/

It gives a heart-wrenching account of what people are going through there.

An excerpt:

"There’s a man that drives every day- away from his current [metal] sheet motel to his crushed home. He sits in front of the concrete pieces, as they lay there crumbled on top of each other. Haitian dreams reduced to rubble. Below the wreckage lie his wife and 5 children. Perhaps they are still alive whimpering. Perhaps they are dead and bloated. Regardless, at this point, they are part of the wreckage and statistics that makeup this faulted land. He has no idea what else to do… where do you start with a broken heart, a broken home, a broken country and soon a forgotten disaster not exciting enough to be covered on CNN or recent enough to receive donations. For him, the start is going back to where it ended and staring at ruins till nightfall prevents it."


Traveling around Asia, I've had experiences and seen things that make me feel so fortunate to have been born into the circumstances that I was. I am constantly reminded that I cannot take anything in life for granted. Realize that if you're reading this blog, you can afford to buy a computer (a luxury item), amongst many, many other things that a lot of people cannot afford or do not have access to. Be thankful for that.


I'm off to Kuala Lumpur in three hours. Bon voyage.

Ian

Happy Chinese New Year 恭喜发财

Sunday was the first day of the year of the Tiger. I wasn't so sure what to expect, but the Chinese sure know how to start off their year in style. It's been fireworks and firecrackers galore. All of the Chinese are taking the week off to go home and visit family and friends. The atmosphere is kind of like Hari Raya where half of everything is closed.

While I was in India I met Kaja, who is from Norway. We traveled a bit and became buds. Her friend, Linn, came to Penang so we spent yesterday walking around Georgetown seeing what the Chinese were up to. They were partying.

We went to this temple called Kek Lok Si, which is supposedly the largest Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia. It looked really cool and had lights all over it. As any Buddhist temple, it had a very calm and soothing atmosphere. I took pictures, but haven't uploaded them yet. Here's some image I found on Google:

























On Tuesday morning I'm heading to Kuala Lumpur for a night or two, then onto Malacca, and finally Singapore for the weekend.


Gong Xi Fa Cai!

The OFFICIAL Malaysian Chinese New Year song

Chinese Lion Dance, which is really cool.


I'll try my best to post once while I'm traveling.

Ian

An article worth reading

This is a fascinating article that I think anyone from the West studying in Asia (or just anyone in general) should read. I think it would also be worthwhile for my Malaysian and other Asian peers to have a look to see how "Asia's rise" is framed back in the US, or at least in the Boston Globe.

Joshua Kurlantzick's piece Dazzled by Asia

I'm Back

I woke up this morning and felt terrible for a) waking up at 1:30 in the afternoon and b) the fact I don't blog at all and I should. I was paging through GQ and it had a blurb from Stephen King on how to avoid procrastination and remain committed to things you love doing. I, like Stephen King, love writing, but I'm also a 21 year old college student who would much rather spend time customizing a C300 on Mercedes-Benz's website or figuring out how I get invited to get a Centurion Card, as opposed to doing actual things that somewhat actually benefit my existence.

Since I last wrote my life has consisted of: spending three weeks in India, Christmas in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; New Years Eve in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; going to the awesome temple structure Angkor Watt in Siem Reap, also in Cambodia; visiting the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia; making new friends from the new group of exchange students; going to class; being sunburnt on the way to class; and continuing to enjoy my life in Malaysia.

I don't have any class next week because it is Chinese New Year, or the Lunar New Year for everybody else. I should be going to Bali or something but instead I'm just going to cruise around Malaysia. I'm reading Kerouac's On the Road right now and am tempted to go to the bus station, pick out a city name I like, and go there. However, I think I'll pass on that strategy as I wouldn't want to end up near the Thai border to Yala. I think I'll head south to KL then Malacca early next week.

Stephen King said his goal for every day is to write five pages. That's it, write five pages and be done. Well, clearly I'm not going to be writing five pages, but I will make it a goal to try and put something on here every day even if it's just a minor thought or a link.

Also, I'm renaming the blog because I realized from 12:00 AM - 1:59 AM my time, my AM is your AM, which defeats the purpose of everything.

Things I'm thinking about/interested in right now:

How our justice system should treat terrorists: read this and this

Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishment

Anything to do with Twins baseball

Trying to sell Chip my waterboiler that is in no way approved for consumer usage in the US

andd

this New Yorker comic

and hell, this picture too.

Ian