I met an Austrian woman eating street food and she's in Hong Kong working as a logistics and design person for the equestrian events for the Olympics. I'd noticed all of the jockey and horse billboards everywhere but just thought Hong Kong had some famous jockey competing. Turns out that all of the equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong. The Austrian said that more than 100 planes full of horses have been flown in and that many of them get jet-lag just like we do but all have arrived healthy. I had my palm and face read by a man at the park so now I know what to expect :) It was totally worthwhile for $8 US and he even took notes for me to have since his English was a little choppy. ... read more

My time in Malacca picked up a bit-was a bit dreary after having seen so many museums. Next day I walked around Chinatown and wandered into a temple with Taoist, Confucionist and Buddhist shrines. I started chatting with the man at the desk about religion and he quizzed me on my Buddhism and since I scored 80-90% correct I walked away with not one but two books on Buddhism! He said one of them is really hard to get outside of Asia. I wandered back to the hostel not knowing what a colorful crowd we'd have there that night: the owners and 2 British brothers who've been there awhile, 2 trishaw drivers one of whom has the most beautiful trishaw in all of Melacca, a street vendor who sells atop the hill without a license, and ... read more

We took a speedboat out to Perhentian Kecil from the mainland-another bronco bucking ride! A girl I was travelling with and myself were the last 2 off the boat and the driver started yelling that we'd have to hurry and get off as he was easing close to a cement staircast out of the water up to the walkway. I had my backpacks on and managed to get my left leg up onto the staircase when he started drifting the boat away my right leg totally in the air! I wavered and nearly lost my balance and fell into the water but disaster was averted. We found a chalet on Long Beach which is a 10 minute jungle trek from the other side of the island and has the best swimming since the soft white sand ... read more

Half of the people in Cameron Highlands are of Chinese descent, around 30% Indian, and the rest Malay. The Cameron Highlands is an old British hill station and (according to an informative Indian shopkeeper in town where I bought a ton of tea) since the British already knew how to efficiently utilize the Indian caste system in India they decided to bring them here and plug them into the tea industry. Indians were given specific jobs according to their caste and paid based on the daily amount they produced so there was incentive for work. The British brought over Sri Lankans, who were more highly-educated than the Indians, to supervise. But the Indians kept needing to go back to India and the British couldn't understand why. Since Indians were only here as workers, none of their ... read more

We decided to use our hotel points to stay in a 5-star hotel in KL after the jungle. Our first night we went out to a club in the Hilton and when asked what we were doing in Kuala Lumpur they didn't believe my response of backpacking. The place was buzzing with excitement because Mel Gibson was in house for some environmental fundraiser and was supposed to show up at the bar. We saw him later in a special VIP bar tucked in the back with security all around him but at a distance so he could still chat with his friends and pretend they weren't there. KL is one of my favorite cities. It has the Petrona Towers-designed by an Argentinian-which they call the Twin Towers. They look much better at night when they are ... read more