Malaysia could stand to invest in sidewalks

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But otherwise I'm a big fan of this country. I spent the afternoon in Penang walking up through the colonial business district, taking pictures of random architecture, and then walking down through the Chinatown area.

Things that I've noticed about Malaysia - they have waaay fewer cats than Thailand (this is not necessarily a good thing since I love cats). They have sidewalks but they are really more like skirts for the buildings and it's up to each building whether or not to have one, whether or not to use it to park motorbikes instead of pedestrian traffic, etc. Also (and I took a picture to this effect) they use white mannequins in the store windows which looks incongruous with the saris they are wearing.

Things I've noticed about myself - I LOVE wandering about random towns. And I love colonial architecture, it's just so QUAINT, which may be why I was such a fan of Luang Prabang.

I also have been spending a lot of time thinking about how much I'm going to miss the ubiquitous fresh fruit stalls everywhere and how much of a shame it is that the US has nothing like it available. How much healthier could we be if you could buy a slice of watermelon on every street corner for 25 cents? I am of course, ignoring the fact that 2/3rds of the street stalls here sell nothing but fried food and sweets, but since I'm not frequenting those stalls they register on my consciousness less.

And ANOTHER thing I wanted to mention - which is that it became pretty clear to me two nights ago when talking to the swiss couple and the swedish girl that I'm definitely more safety conscious than most of the European tourists. Maybe it's because I have a shorter time to spend here that I don't want to spend 2 weeks of it in the hospital? But the swiss man had broken his shoulder in four places drunk driving a motor-scooter (and then not gone to the clinic for three days, and then had to be flown to Bangkok for surgery and a 2 week hospital stay). The Swedish girl had a friend that after seven days of tubing down the nam song over and over again was soo drunk at the last bar on the river she fell face first into a bon fire without putting out a hand to stop herself. She ending up burning her wrist to the bone and her face, and had to spend two weeks in the hospital in Bangkok. Another friend had broken his foot riding a motor-scooter. She herself had crashed on learning to drive it. I feel like I'm the only person that doesn't think a hospital stay is a pre-req for a fun vacation.

Sorry about the rant, continuing on with my time in Penang. I wandered through Chinatown with a big smile on my face because of the news of my law school acceptances and I decided to celebrate by buying myself two purses (one is a dark, dark brown hobo, with a single cream colored braided shoulder strap, the other is a satinish pink fake D&G purse, again with a single braided shoulder strap). And then since they don't have fruit shakes here, but they DO have 7-11 I bought myself a slurpee.

I picked up my bags from where I was storing them and made my way down to the bus station (through homicidal traffic - extra points if they are carrying a backpack!) and spent the fifteen minutes before the bus arrived chatting with the people at the travel agency. Sample conversation with everyone I meet here "where you from?", "USA", "OBAMA!". Seriously, they LOVE Obama. But Traci I thought you would be interested to know that the woman at the travel agency was telling me how great they thought America was, because we have a real democracy, and our government is waaay better than the one they have. She also said something I hadn't been aware of which is that in Malaysia if you want a good job you have to be Muslim. One of the main differences I've seen so far in Malaysia is that there are very clear ethnic differences in the people of the city. You have the Chinese, the Malay, the Indian (and the Muslim but I'm under the impression they are mostly Malay, I don't know enough about it to say for sure).

I got on the bus and it reminded me of the bus that Caroline described in Argentina (minus the bathroom), the seats were huge, they had footrests, they reclined almost into beds, etc. And I wish I could say I watched the countryside between the two cities but actually I slept the entire way and only woke up when we entered Kuala Lumpur.

Not much has happened since I got here, I got off the bus, crossed the street, lived to tell the tale, and then completely misunderstood the map in my lonely planet guidebook and wandered around a bunch of random alleys and through some sort of Hindu festival before I gave up and asked a cab driver to take me to Chinatown. I wandered through Chinatown for half an hour or so looking for a specific hostel but gave up and got a dorm bed at the Red Dragon instead. Used the Internet, and then wandered through the Chinatown night market for a while desperately resisting the urge to buy sunglasses or really nice fake designer purses. I did buy one present but it's clear that the dam is starting to burst and any day now I'm gonna whip out my credit card and really go to town.

I got a late dinner at a chinese restaurant, grapes from a fruit stall for dessert and then people watched until the market closed down.

I've got to run to catch my flight to Singapore but I'll let you know about my morning in Kuala Lumpur next time I get a chance!

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Comments

[Traci Haback]

Just do it
Go shopping... sounds like the excellent trip continues. I'm glad you're being safe, and it souds like those Europeans need to get it together and stop all this rif raf and risk taking!

[Caroline]

i saw your pictures and as i commented on facebook, they DO look exactly like the argentine buses. i hope for your sake you got a single-seater and there were no crying babies.