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Published: January 4th 2010
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Day 32: Burkit Merah to Taiping
We began the day biking along the highway but after only fifteen miles spotted a sign for the zoo. The zoo!!! I wonder what animals would be at a zoo in Malaysia? J wondered too. So we detoured, and rode ten miles off in another direction to the zoo. It was fabulous! We got the ticket agents to hold our bags in their little ticket booth, and locked up our bikes in the parking lot. We saw giant Malay cats, civets, lizards, barking deer, crocodiles, monkeys, rhinos, giraffe, zebra and elephants. We enjoyed seeing the reindeer get fed, watching the zebras and the bulls break bread together and seeing the mama and the baby elephant cuddle. The monkeys and chimps were unfortunately depressed, but I think thats common for monkeys in captivity. The animals all seemed to be well cared for, with big, maintained cages.It felt alot like an American zoo, with a snack bar, a gift shop and loads of screaming children.
Being zoo-lovers, it was late afternoon before we knew it, and we’d spent the entire day at the zoo. The sky was dark, it was thundering and lightening, we didn’t
know where we were, and we did not want to bike any further. We biked a few miles back in to town and looked at a few hotels that were expensive and full. It was starting to rain and we discovered a decrepit and ancient A-shaped hotel with pillars, set upon a hill.
The clerk told us the hotel was full and everywhere else would be full too as school vacation had just begun. As we thanked her and turned to leave, she remembered one room that was free due to a cancellation. It was a ridiculously huge old room, with a plush, dirty red rug, paint peeling off the walls, rust stains in the bathroom, and mysterious stains upon what remained on the painted walls. We talked her down from 69 to 57.50 ringit, and once again, beat our record of staying in a more decrepit habitation than before. Although this one did have some charm and intrigue. We had a great view of the prison next door. That was a plus. A sign read, if you go close to the prison, you will get shot. While showering in the rusty bathroom, we marveled that someone would even
rent a room as decrepit as ours.
Stepping outside, the rain was clearing up, and gorgeous mountains loomed all around us. We were in a valley. We biked in to the main part of town, which was very cute, with lots of people bustling around, old buildings, Hindu temples, mosques, and Chinese locals burning big piles of offerings. To our dismay, there were also plenty more non-decrepit hotels in town. Incredulous, we found a sushi restaurant, and ate four delicious salmon, eel and California rolls for $7. We stopped by a “Cyberlounge”, an internet shop, and I found a fifty-ringit note under my chair. Nobody was around us that might have dropped it, so we kept the money.
We journeyed on to a food plaza where I picked out different homemade dumplings and a cook put them in soup and a curry noodle dish and served them to us. Then we biked to a different part of town and discovered a massive internet lounge, open twenty-four hours, with 200 computers, almost all occupied by gamers, the sound on their games turned up loud, and Top 40 music blasting. I emailed home some photos of our trip and received
six replies within ten minutes. That was pretty neat as such near instant reply had never happened before.
We walked across the street to an awesome open food court, bursting with people, 150 tables, all full. It was 11:30 on a Saturday night and a huge screen was set up to show the Olympics. People were eating from the dozens of different vendors, drinking from the sole drink vendor and enjoying the lovely evening with friends. Waitresses would come to the table to offer us their food or drinks, but we could also walk around to the stalls and pick out what we wanted and they would deliver it to our table. It was a great setup.
We drank beers, watched the Olympics, and of course, ate more food. We watched, fascinated, as a cook at a nearby stand rolled squid and cuttlefish through a pasta press. We also played with a bunch of cute, hyperactive children, whose parents were completely ignoring them while socializing with friends. These kids were running around like maniacs at 1 in the morning while their parents drank nearby. At times, the parents would come over to our table, scream at the kids,
and drag them back to their table. Three minutes later, the kids would be happily bouncing balls off our legs or pulling our arms to play. We were exhausted but just loving the party. We were the only Westerners there, and only the kids played with us. Still, everyone smiled and seemed friendly. Almost everyone was Chinese, with a few Indians.
Later, we biked home along a lake, amazed by the activity in this town, the beauty of the evening, the feeling of excitement from the Olympics. Teenage kids were out with their friends, their cars parked on the side of the road, or in parking lots, hanging out, revving their motorbikes. Monkeys scrambled through the trees above us as ancient men pedalled quietly by on bicycles.
It was a magical night.
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sayhau
ong sayhau
the elephant with 5 legs!