This past week we had off for the Chinese New Year, so me and two friends took advantage by traveling to Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines for 9 days (with 6 flights in that span). I apologize for such a long post, but there was so much that happened.
My old RA from UWEC, Minesh, is from Malaysia and had a friend named Harith that still lived in the capital city. He picked me up from the hostel and gave me a tour of Kuala
Lumpur, the capital city if Malaysia. We
started by going to the Sentral Market (yes, Sentral with an ‘S’). He showed me some local food, which I wanted
to try since Minesh raved about the food, and it didn’t disappoint. It was some
of the best food I’d ever had, and I ate it with my hand, too. They use their hands to eat most things in
Malaysia, but only their right hand, because the left hand is the dirty hand
(more on that later). I had a plate
filled with rice, sauce, vegetables, and meat, and using my bare hand, mixed
all of them together, like in the movie Elf, and then ate with my hand. After that, we walked around the market,
until we got to the feet eating fish. I sat with my feet in a tub of hundreds
of fish that ate the dead skin off of my feet for 15 minutes and afterwards, my
feet were as soft as a baby’s bottom, and I felt like I was walking on a
cloud. Those 15 minutes didn’t come
easy, though, because me, being ticklish, had a hard time with it. As soon as I stuck my feet in, a hundred or
so fish rushed over to me, and it felt like a hundred hands were tickling my
feet, so I yanked my feet out of the water faster than a speeding bullet. It took about 2 minutes before I could leave
my feet in the water, but even then I cringed very hard for a few minutes until
I was used to it. Once my feet were baby
bottom soft, we walked past some food stands and I tried some new foods (more
about that later).
Then we went to the
reception of a Malaysian wedding, and after meeting a bazillion people, we
finally sat down at a table full of bankers from all over southwest Asia. I learned a lot from them and had some
disgusting food (probably organs again), and had a great time. Then we went to Batu caves, which were just
outside of the city. We first went to a
huge, wide open cave that was alright, but then we went to the cave right next
to it, which was narrow and pitch black.
There were tons of species in there, including lots of bats and spiders,
which were awesome. The main source of
food in the cave for everything, except the bats, is guavo, which is the bats’
poop. It smelled a little bit, but not too bad.
It was so dark in there, we couldn’t see our hands even if we were
touching our eyeballs. Outside of the
caves was a huge staircase, with monkeys everywhere. They were not scared of humans, and would
even take anything that somebody was holding and then eat it, whether it was
fruit, a bottle, or flowers.
Then we went to Harith’s house, which was
bigger than average due to his parents being doctors. After meeting his family, they handed me a
box of tissues, saying that they were for in case I had to go to the
bathroom. I was unsure of what they meant
at first, but once I got to the bathroom I realized what they meant. They don’t have toilet paper, but instead
have a hose with a spray nozzle at the end.
They spray with their right hand and wipe with their bare left hand, hence
the reason they don’t use their left hand much.
Then they took me to the
local market and showed me even more foods.
Overall, I had so much food, including abc dessert (icecream, ice,
syrup, and corn mixed together), longans, nasi lemak, soto ayam, sirap bendung,
sugar cane, cincau, putu bamboo, fried banana, curry puff, mangosteen, water
guava, murtabak, fish cracker, and so so much more. Then they took me to the busy part of the
city and showed me the Patronas towers, which are the tallest twin towers in
the word that have a bridge connecting the two at the 43rd floor,
which was a sight to behold.
After
taking me to the bus station, I bought a 4 dollar bus ticket for a 2 hour bus
ride to Melaka (or Melacca in English). I didn’t plan on going to Melacca, so I
didn’t book a hostel. I ended up walking
down a road and stopped in at a few places to see if there were vacancies,
until I came to one that was only 5 dollars for the night. Although I slept in a loft with 10 other
beds, it was worth it.
Melacca was jus a neat little historical town in Malaysia, but was nothing too special other than some cool sights and a performance that I saw for the Chinese New Year.
I met a Swedish man at the airport and talked to him while we waited. It turns out that he has been sailing the
globe for 16 years and has only been back to Sweden once in that time
period. He told me about the cool things
he saw and made some recommendations. When
it was time to fly, it was less than an hour flight to Singapore, but I made
the most of it. As soon as I sat down I
fell asleep and I didn’t wake up until we landed, and at first I thought we
didn’t take off yet, because I slept through everything.
I took the MRT (the train system) to downtown Singapore, and
first went to the Gardens by the Bay, which I think is one of the largest gardens in
the world. It was filled with plants
from every area on earth, and even had some manmade plant shaped structures
that were about 100 feet tall that had plants growing outside of them. With a river running through it all, it was
very scenic. Then I walked to the Marina
Bay Sands Casino and Resort, which was enormous, and is one of the most
expensive buildings in the world. I took
some pictures, and then I walked across the water to the financial district,
had some lunch, and then talked to a local CPA turned professor for almost 2
hours about business in Singapore. Then
I walked around the city some more, seeing a local TV show being filmed, saw
the stock exchange, ate some local food, and relaxed until going to the airport
again to fly to the Philippines.
Manila, the capital of the Philippines, was something else, but not in a good way. In the airport, the only “information desk”
available was a tiny little counter with a police guard sitting there, and they
didn’t know much. We then found a taxi,
and for the first time I actually had to barter with a taxi driver (which has
to be done with every taxi driver in Manila) to bring the price down to 150
pesos, which was cheap, but when we were leaving the airport grounds the driver
crumpled up a 50 peso bill, dropped it on the ground for the guards, said
something that was apparently funny, and then took off. I’m not sure what just happened, but I’m sure
it was something shady.
While driving
and while walking around, the city appalled me.
It had a few skyscrapers and was on the water, so they had the ability
to be a nice town, but they purposely neglected to do so. There was garbage all over the streets and
sidewalks, most buildings looked like they were falling apart, and most people
tried to swindle us out of our money. It was the dirtiest, ugliest, smelliest,
most appalling place I’ve ever been, and it was horrible. What differentiated Manila from any other 3rd world country on earth is that the government had all the ability to make it a nice little town, especially since it was the capital, but they were too corrupt to do so. But believe it or not, I loved it. I love culture, and seeing how they live, no
matter how horrible, was a sight to behold.
Although to me it was horrible, they were all happy and smiling.
After going to see an old U.S. army base,
Fort Santiago (or Port Chintago as the locals pronounced it), we saw what
appeared to be a local market, but it turned out to be a neighborhood. Their “neighborhoods” are actually slums, but
we decided to walk through them anyways, and we saw some people playing bingo,
and they asked us if we wanted to play with them (luckily they spoke
English). We played with them for a half
an hour, and the whole time we did we had a huge crowd surrounding us, like we
were some sort of celebrities or something.
Eventually we had to keep walking, and left until we saw some kids
playing basketball, and they, too, asked us to play. I said yes, of course, because I could never
pass up basketball, and I had a ball (pun intended). Also, since I am taller than everybody, they
wanted me to dunk for them, and they loved it (it was only about a 9 foot rim,
so it wasn’t very hard). Although I had
fun in the slums, it was disgusting; people peeing in the streets (which was
like their front and backyards), naked kids everywhere, garbage everywhere, and
so on. One kid wanted me to pick him up and he was grabbing my arm, but he was
dirty and I had no idea if he had any diseases.
I didn’t touch anything until I got back to the hostel and washed my
hands rigorously. Thankfully I don't think I contracted anything while I was there.
We
took a tricycle (which besides taxis are the main modes of transportation
there) from there to our hostel, which is a tiny, but awesome motorcycle with a side cab for passengers, but the driver
took us to the wrong building, and we were still about 20 minutes away. We found a new taxi driver and asked him to
go to our hotel. He started driving, but
seemed confused as to where to go, and we asked him if he knew where he was
going, and he said yes, but it didn’t sound convincing, so we hopped out as
soon as we could. We finally found a
taxi driver that knew where he was going, and then we got back to our hostel
and went to bed early to catch our early flight. At the hotel, though, customer service is not
the number 1 priority. The front desk
was frequently unattended, and our bags were stored in a communal locker, with
no ID check to make sure nobody took the wrong bag.
The domestic airport in Manila is the tiniest airport
imaginable, about the size of the average house in America. The “boarding pass” from Manila to Bohol (the island that we went to) that they gave us was
actually a receipt-not too formal compared to America.
When we got to Bohol, we had a friend of a friend pick us up. Their names were Ta Tai (which I think means
“old man”) and Lola. They gave us a
great price on a tour, and drove us around the island for the day. We went to see the blood covenant between the locals and the Spaniards, the oldest
church on the island(about 600 years old), the largest snake held in captivity (27 feet, but
it was dead and the skin was stuffed. We
were able to see and hold a 17 foot snake, though), the smallest primate in the
world (a tarsier monkey), took a river boat cruise buffet, and went to the
chocolate hills. The river boat cruise
buffet was awesome. The food was good,
there was a live band, we stopped for a local dance performance, the view was
amazing (our table was on the edge of the boat), and we sat with two 19 year
olds from Denmark, so we talked to them for the whole hour. The chocolate hills were pretty cool, we just
got to go up high and look down over them, and for miles there were little
brownish green hills, which makes one wonder how such things form. Then we finally drove to the hostel, and
meanwhile the whole time we were driving, Ta Tai and Lola were talking about
their lives and about Bohol, so I learned a lot. Also, they told me about how much
Christianity has affected the island, as every tricycle had a bible verse on
the back of it. He also said that for
that reason, everybody in Bohol is nice, and anybody that isn’t is
shunned. He said that if that somebody
wasn’t nice, they were probably from Cebu (the island above Bohol).
I noticed
in Bohol, and the rest of the Philippines, that the standards aren’t very
high. For example, a bathroom didn’t
have lights, a toilet had no flusher, the zip-line was all about getting Eden
gone as fast as possible, KFC almost didn’t charge me until I practically told
them that I didn’t pay yet, and the police don’t enforce a lot of laws, because
they break them, too.
Our hotel was called the Coco
Farm, and it was awesome. It was in a forest filled with coconut trees, and we stayed in little
bamboo huts, there was a bamboo skywalk that we walked on connecting some of the trees, I got to pick a
coconut from a tree, we got a lot of food, and played cards in the lobby a
lot. For a little bit, we played with a Chinese man and I was even able to practice and learn some Chinese words! All in all, it cost $31 for three
days.
We were able to go to the beach, and relax a little from the fast paced vacation until this point. We found a random motorist driving on the
road and he gave us a ride to the beach for 100 pesos. There’s not much to say, but we spent a few hours
swimming, skipping rocks, throwing rocks at buoys, and just relaxing in the hot
weather. There were a lot of people
trying to sell us things while we were there, and they wouldn’t just ask once,
they’d come up to us multiple times as if I’d changed my mind in the 2 minutes
that they were gone. This annoyed me a
little bit, so I took the initiative to stop this. The next time they came up to me asking if I
wanted to buy something, I said no, but then I asked if they wanted to buy the
shirt I was wearing, telling them that I would give them a great price on it
(which was their go to advertisement).
They got the message and didn’t ask me again.
After a relaxing morning, sadly it was time to go, but
not before one last eventful thing: I got locked in the hut. The door got jammed shut, and we were unable
to open it until 20 minutes later a worker guy used a crowbar to pry the door
open. It was hot in there and it felt
like prison, especially since my only access to outside was a little flap in
the window. It was fitting though, because it was an event filled vacation, and it had to end the same way.
In the end, it was a terrific vacation, I tried a lot of new things, saw a lot of new things, talked to some very cool people, and had a blast. Here's just a few pictures from the trip!
Yes, I rode AirAsia (4 times in fact). I don't know if it was just me, but the safety procedures seemed to take a little longer than usual.
We had to take our shoes off at the entrance of the hotel before going to our rooms
Eating with my bare hand like the locals!
Getting my feet eaten by fish
Malaysian wedding reception
Monkeys everywhere!
Cave exploring in the pitch black
The infamous toilet paper-less toilet
Durians-a very smelly fruit that tastes equally as bad. They are banned from many buildings due to their smell
My tour guides for the day! Harith on the right and Haziq on the left.
The enormous Petronas Towers
River running through the middle of Melacca
The nice little church that I went to
Celebrating the Chinese New Year
Gardens by the Bay in Singapore
These weird flower shaped things were everywhere
Singapore skyline
Just your average road in Manila
Bingo with the locals!
Playing basketball with some kids!
My "boarding pass"
A dead (but stuffed) 27 foot snake
A real 17 foot snake
River boat cruise buffet
Chocolate hills
Who needs aloe vera gel when you have the actual plant!?
Our hut for 3 days
Bamboo platform connecting the trees
The tricycle that was our main form of transportation
Locked in the hut 30 minutes before we left
