Blogs from Asia - page 15631

Hey y'all, just came back from a 7-day excursion to Malaysia. Whether or not you like the country depends on where you go. Crime is rampant in Johor Bahru, a city in the southern part of the country. Kuala Lumpur is safer, but it's advisable not to walk alone at night, especially if you're female. Men on motorcycles will stare at you with devious eyes, hoping to snatch your purse or wallet and ride away. The first leg of the trip was a journey to the Cameron Highlands. The highlands are mountainous areas with embedded spaces of flat lands that are situated high above sea level. Plantations of all sorts are found here, from tea to honey to cabbage and to those found in your average vegetable gardens. The floral lifeform here is somewhat best described ... read more

When I met my friends at the ICF Building at 11am last Sunday (actually 11:15am—husband couldn’t find his swimming trunks), the question was simple: expensive seafood, nice beach/cheap seafood, unknown beach. Decision: Cheng Chau. Though no one had made it past the below-cost garlic squid on our selected island destination, the light-on-the-wallet refreshment was a venerable reward for risking the Cheng Chau beach. We boarded the appropriate ferry and were fortunately forced into the middle seats. No easy harbor-view, but no green faces either. Upon arriving at Cheng Chau, we skirted the menu-toting restaurant-walas, and followed the smell of shrimp paste. Within 5 minutes, the beach was in sight. Ok, so the obviously human-made sand was hot enough to roast a whole chicken, and no person was permitted to exceed his or her 4x4 allocation of ... read more

Our last day in Lhasa. We planned to take a jeep and go to Namtso Lake (5 hour journey one way) and come back during the day (10 hour journey total). Namtso lake is the second largest salt water lake in Tibet and is the only one to be sacred (I forget why). Every pilgrim is supposed to walk all the way around it (about 200kms); foreigners are excused of this duty and only have to walk around 2 large stones (about 20 meters). After seeing the jeep and the driver, we decided to cancel the tour as they both looked exceedingly unreliable and prone to cause problems. Instead, we went in the morning to the Museum of Tibetan History. It would be a farce if it were not in the context it is. The museum ... read more

Whew, first days. Pretty much uneventful getting here. Funny thing, when we were in Tokyo, Conrad went to get a water. Bought a water in a cute little jar, turns out it was 70 proof saki. Funny. He did not drink it, although he thought it was good. Hotel was good, ummmm. First day out we were sort of half way awake. We had arrived at the hotel after midnight, after 27 of air travel, and not quite with the program. As we were driving to the airport, oh and yes, I did the walk through all the shouting taxi and good deal people in the arrival area of the airport. I was so lucky on the flight to Bangkok from Tokyo, I was sitting with a girl from Nan province in Thailand. She was awesome ... read more

Today marks the beginning of my dive adventure as I board the MV WaveRunner to my very first dive site, Sail Rock. When Steve told me that the WaveRunner had 3 decks, I mentally pictured a high tech advanced catamaran that could cut through waves like butter, but when I finally laid eyes on it after a 1 hour bus ride to the pier, it was nothing more than a 3-tiered big fishing boat. Always having to combat motion sickness problems, I put all sorts of pre-admonitions aside and looked forward to my dive. I had completely no idea that the boat ride to the Sail Rock would take a whopping 2.5 hours! The sea around the gulf of Thailand was very choppy. By the time I reached the site, I no longer entertained romantic notions ... read more