Melaka, the Straits of Melacca

In the Cameron Highlands, we were taken on a comprehensive tour of a tea plantation, a butterfly farm (which also had examples of all sorts of exotic insects, reptiles and amphibians) and a strawberry farm. The tea plantation tour reminded me a bit of the tours we used to take on IHP. And man oh man, would my IHP compatriots have had a field day. Apparently, all of the tea-pickers are migrant Indonesian workers who pluck for the equivalent of pennies a day, six days a week. It looked like a pretty shitty set-up, but I didn't know what to say to our guide other than "huh" and a lot of asides to everybody else about how that sounded pretty exploitative. The plantation was overrun with field-tripping Chinese middle-schoolers, and I was glad to depart for the Strawberry place which was small and did not appear to run on close-to-slave-labor and I had a really delicious strawberry milkshake.

After the Cameron Highlands, we journeyed South on a "super luxury VIP bus" (which basically just meant huge squashy seats) to the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, or KL. KL is kind of just another huge Asian city, but much easier to get around than Bangkok. (Which is pretty much the extent of my intimate knowledge of big Asian cities, unless we're counting India as "Asian") KL has a skytrain and a Chinatown and a weird park called the Lake Gardens that is basically their version of Central Park, and lots and lots of shopping malls. I enjoy shopping, but malls kind of make me want to kill myself. I got excited about going to Top Shop and finding some cute pants that fit really well, but that was about the extent of it. Also we went to a fancy watch store with the sole purpose in mind of asking them how I should clean my stainless-steel watch which gets really grimy and leaves gross marks on my arm. Fantastic tip: use an old toothbrush and toothpaste. My watch was super-shiny and gleaming afterwards, and I annoyed the crap out of Lacey pausing to admire the shininess and glinting the faces' reflection across the room like Tinker Bell.

Lacey and I spent the first half of our full day in KL in a soulless, air-conditioned shopping mall housed beneath Malaysia's Twin Towers, the second-highest buildings in the world. They actually had a pretty neat aquarium, with manta rays we could touch and huge sharks in an overhead tunnel and adorably-translated "fun facts" about aquatic life. After lunch, we wandered half-heartedly around the deserted Lake Gardens, probably so desolate because it was freaking hot and really humid. They had a weird sort of mini-zoo, with regular sized deer and also mouse deer, which may be indigenous to Malaysia. We were the only people at the zoo, and fed the regular-sized deer green leaves which we hoped weren't poisonous.

That evening, we partook of group-karaoke in a swank place with a cold/hot/dessert buffet, deals on booze, and private rooms. I only do karaoke when tipsy or with people I will never see again, so Lace and I made sure to cover both of those bases. We did a duet to "Summer Nights" (I was mostly John Travolta) and I did Crocodile Rock, among a few other songs. Fun and kitschy, but we still peaced out early.

We're in Melaka for the night, a historically important fishing port that like Penang, passed colonial hands between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. We took a guided tour this afternoon in a tricked-out bicycle rickshaw, and had some seriously amazing fusiony/continental/tapas food at a yummy little place on the river. We're not here for very long, which is sort of too bad because it seems like a pleasant little town, in a lazy-dazy way. On the other hand, I'm jonesing to get home to my boy, dog and cat. I'm planning on slinging a couple Singapore slings, and heading on my merry way back across the big blue ocean. I love traveling, and I think I need to go abroad at least once a year to convince myself that I know what I'm doing. Also I just love it. But once a year is probably enough.

High time for high tea

We are now in the Cameron Highlands, first mapped and charted by a British dude called Cameron, and thusly named.

It's VERY British here. We're staying at the Hill View Inn, which is run by Indians, but bears resemblance to so much bad fake-Tudor architecture. The Inn is a basic B&B and reminds me quite a bit of Fawlty Towers, what with its chintzy English decor and gloomy corridors.

After the beach, where we spent another pleasant day with bouts of rain and sunshine, we crossed the border to Malaysia and spent two nights in Georgetown, on the island of Penang on the Western coast. Penang also reeks of colonialism, mostly in the architecture. Lacey and I had amazing Indian food, toured a nineteenth-century mansion where Catherine Deneuve filmed IndoChine, ate some seriously weird dim sum, were awakened at 5 AM by Ramadan prayers being broadcast throughout the city, and I caught a cold. The tour we're on moves quite quickly, which is good and bad. Bad beacuse its exhausting and my immune system gets mad at me, good because we're getting to see a great deal.

In Penang, we visited Southeast Asia's largest Buddhist temple which was a labyrinth of huge golden Buddhas, pagodas, swastikas, kiosks selling everything from Jesus wall-hangings to incense to t-shirts, and a huge concrete bowl called the "liberation pond" containing hundreds of turtles. Apparently, turtles are good luck, but these turtles were piled on each other, and sort of sluggishly moving around looking for vegetables people dropped for them. There was a guy picking his way across the turtles collecting rubber bands that people dropped with the vegetable bundles, and also collecting dead turtles and depositing them in a plastic bag. Cultural differences indeed.

Today we had a psycho bus driver take us from the straits of Melaka to the Cameron highlands. First off, he was a just a terrible driver-- but he compounded this by reading the paper while he drove, taking his hands off the wheel and stretching deeply whenever he felt like it, and chain smoking all the way up the windy mountain highway. I haven't been this terrified on a bus since Mr. Machen kept dozing off on the way to the Gila in 10th grade.

Tomorrow we're going to tea and strawberry plantations, and to a butterfly farm, all of which the highlands are known for. It's quite cool here-- I almost don't have enough clothing and will probably sleep in my socks. We're here for one night only, before heading to Kuala Lumpur, the capital. We're going to have dinner in the second-tallest buildings in the world. KL, as it's called, is supposed to be a lot of fun.

Off to nibble on the rest of my Cadbury bar and take more miracle Asian cold meds before bed.

Tasting and Complaining

The Thai prime minister is being forced to step down because he hosts a cooking show, and apparently, this is in direct conflict with his ministerial duties. No one's talking about it in Krabi, though, the southern Thai beach province where we're currently shacked up.

Lacey and I are pretty sure that the other members of our group think we're puritans. We've been going to bed really early, don't like going out on the town with them, and both have been wearing one-piece bathing suits. We've decided to cultivate this image for entertainment purposes, and it's also useful because we don't really feel like hanging out with them.

We have been having a wonderful time, though. Elephant riding our last day in the jungle was great, especially on the way back because I got to sit on the elephant's neck. His name was Hamun. My legs dangled down behind his ears, and I rested my hands on his head. Elephant skin is terribly rough of course, but also covered with bristles, a bit like a boar. First though, we sat on a seat thing fixed to his back like a saddle, which involved a lot of bouncing around and trying to shift our weight. I somehow thought it would be more glamorous, like a maharajah or a dignified Queen Victoria or something, but riding on Hamun's neck was much more graceful, for both of us.

When we got to Ao Nang, the town in Krabi where we're staying, it was raining. This is because it rains more during September than any other month of the year in Krabi. Again, we did not bother to check this while we were making expensive decisions about where to go on vacation. Still, it's very nice here. Today we took a boat snorkeling beach tour of nearby islands with the rest of our group, and actually lucked out with partly cloudy weather. I am now bright pink despite repeated sunscreen applications. We went to the beach where the Leo DiCaprio movie of a few years back, "The Beach" was filmed. It was sort of disappointing, because there was a lot of litter on the beach, and this seems antithetical to Leo's "I'm such an environmentalist" stance. OK, so it's not solely DiCrapio's fault that the beach has fallen on shabbier times. But it is sad.

The rest of the tour was lovely and quintessentially tropical. The snorkeling was decent to very good, and the scenery was definitely wow-worthy. Limestone cliffs in weird formations, gravity-defying foliage, and twenty-five different shades of blue.

On our way home, we ran back into the clouds that'd been hugging the coast all day, and the weather turned very quickly. I joked to Lacey that it was just like
"The Perfect Storm" which was funny until the boat crew busted out the lifejackets and insisted we put them on. I'm not exaggerating when I say the ride back was extremely intense and slightly scary. It hailed on our heads, I got hit full in the face by the tops of many, many waves, and I think my ribs are now compounded into my tailbone from so many slams of my butt into the seat. The ride was exciting in an "oh my god we're going to die but not really" kind of way, and once we'd arrived safely on shore, I decided it was a safe bet that we're more badass than Leo. Yes, for sitting through a storm and occasionally shrieking. To console ourselves, and partly for medicinal purposes, we drank hot chocolate laced with Thai brandy when we got back.

Malaysia is next, the day after tomorrow. Ten hours on a bus. Ugh. Hooray for snacks and sleeping pills.

Hearts of Darkness

Among the many, many differences between me and the Thai people, this is one of the more unfortunate, and one of the more obvious: I sweat a lot in this climate. Thai people don't. As Lacey gracioulsy pointed out on our first outing into the streets of Bangkok, "Your face is covered with little droplets of sweat."

We had set off across the city in search of a super-cool contemporary art space/"concept mall" called Playgound, that turned out no longer existed, or was under extensive renovation or something. (uh, hello, memo to Lonely Planet) Then we went looking for a vegetarian restaurant called Tamarind, which was empty and bore a for rent sign. (See previous parenthetical aside) So we wandered around the up-market rich Thai people/ ex pat area of Bangkok (wayyy across town from our hotel) when it started to storm. Thunder, lightening, the whole bit. This was real, tropical, torrential, typhoon-style downpour. They don't call it the monsoon season for nothing.

Me: Lace, did you know this was the rainy season?
Lacey: Um. No. Did you?
Me: No idea... Hmm. Maybe we should have checked that before we left?

We made it back across town with a cabbie who shreiked whenever we hit a big puddle, or the rain got more intense, or we narrowly missed a tuk tuk. Not exactly reassuing, but he expertly navigated the roads-tunred-rivers and dropped us off at the hotel soaking, but fine.

Then, joy of joys, we got to take an overnight bus! This really reminded me of IHP, though we only did that once, and it was something we planned on our own. The bus was decorated in shimmering pastels (blue, purple and pink) and there was a psychadellic falling leaves theme throughout. We purchased dinner at the bus stations' 7-11 (which seems to have a total monopoly on the convenience store market here) and I ate a really intersting "crab stick and mayonaisse sandwich", "super extra barbecue" potato chips, and a heart-shaped doughnut with no hole from Dunkin Donuts. Just as we were settling down to sleep, the bus people provided, for our entertainment, some weird movie about a monster in a lake I think, starring James Van Der Beek of massive fame from the piviotal TV series "Dawson's Creek". It was dubbed in Thai, and they played it twice, back to back, even though everyone was asleep. The ride was not as awful as I'd originally anticipated, due to the indespensible "Simply Sleep" and of course earplugs.

Still, we crashed hard, for two hours, when we got to our jungle bungalows. Which are really awesome. We're right on the edge of Khao Sok national park, deep in the oldest rainforest IN THE WORLD. I suppose it's rather unfortunate that I'm reminded of every Vietnam movie I've ever seen-- but really, it DOES look just like Apocalypse Now! Huge limestone cliff/mountains protrude out of nowhere, and the jungle is dense and everywhere, and green green green-- I'm half expecting a bald Marlon Brando to be spying on us from behind a tree. We went tubing this afternoon, down a lazy river; it was wonderful, and pictaresque and again reminded me of too many movies. Then we went to a temple where we fed monkeys and took pictures of them (kind of fucked up and exploitative, but the monkeys seemed to enjoy it) and then we came back to our resort/hotel place and drank tropical drinks and ate delicious Thai food. (Dynamite, no surprises there.)

The rest of our group is mainly unfortunate, and no, I'm not just being an asshole. There are the pair of Irish girls I've decided to call Paris and Nicole, but with bad teeth, who light up their cigs at every available opportunity. There are two Scottish couples who look alarmingly alike, beyond their pale creamy complexions and rust colored hair, only I like one of the couples and not the other. (The one I don't like wore raincoats while we went tubing) There's also two British boys who are barely eighteen and behave accordingly, a sweet Japanese guy called Masa that I want to make friends with, two girls from Wales who are fine, and the only other Americans, lame Bostonians who actually FLEW here from Bangkok because they couldn't stand the idea of an overnight bus. Come on. I may bitch and moan, but I also know when to suck it up.

Lacey being quiet and shy, and me having a penchant for whispering more obviously than I think I am in front of people, I don't think our fellow group members are going to try especially hard to make friends. This suits me fine, as I am here to be with Lacey, and see stuff, and eat, and get as many more massages as possible.

Our one pineapple daquiri each seems to have gone straight to our heads, and I'm tired from too much movement and too little solid sleep. It gets dark quite early here this time of year (by seven PM) and I think I'm going to wash and then sleep sleep sleep.

ALSO-- We're going to ride elephants tomorrow!

Tuk Tuk Thai

Arriving in a foreign land is always overwhelming and surreal. No matter how many times one does so, there's always jet lag, cramps from sitting in coach, and sometimes, not speaking a word of the language to contend with. But all in all, I like the what, 6, 7 hours? of Thailand that I've seen so far.

Apparantly, there's a military coup going on right now, but the only evidence we've seen of that was a bunch of grey uniformed soldiers standing around in a not-very-official looking way. (We is me and Lacey, my bosom buddy from college, and most fantastic travel companion. Lace optimizes cool and collected.) Also the Thais tend to unseat their prime minister every couple years I think, so maybe it's not a huge deal.

Our adventure began in Taipei where I chugged Starbucks (I know, I know, but we needed coffee) and had some yummy dumplings at 6 in the morning. They have a Hello Kitty gate at the Taipei airport, which is basically a marketing ploy, but also super cute. I wanted to buy everything, but especially Hello Kitty plastic stacking boxes for my dad, who has a collection.

Bangkok is smoggy and crowded and filled with people who want to talk to us, most of them male. Most of them well-intentioned, several a little too pushy. We went to Wat Pho to see an enormous gold-leafed reclining buddha and have traditional Thai massages, which were definitely the highlight of the first few hours here. The massages seem to defy lots of Thai conventions: stuff about touching feet and heads, relations between the sexes, and I had two index fingers inserted firmly into my ear canals for an uncomfortably long time. I feel pretty good though, enough to want another one tomorrow. They use a vick's vapo rub smelling herb (menthol, I guess) and give you cute little juice cups of cold tea afterwards.

My head is spinning, so I'm going to end this lackluster post. More later, after I have slept, encountered the third "lady boy" gender, met the other members of our group (oh yes, we're going on a tour) at least some of whom I will undoubtedly despise.

kisses from Siam.

How to make a Secret Compartment Book!

At my just recently ex-Audubon job, we received a donation of a bunch of old children's books. After conducting a e-bay/amazon/google search concerning the current value of first-edition "Tom Swift" (boy wonder from the 50s and 60s who does things like go to space and play cowboys and indians but for real) adventure novels, I was allowed to take one home. I promptly destroyed its literary value by turning into a cool, if somewhat sloppy, secret compartment book. You can make one too, if you want. Here is how:

You will need a book (hardcover is better) that either is really awesome (judging by its cover) or super-boring in case you want to hide things where no one will find them.

Also needed are an exacto knife (the sharper the better) some type of glue, a paintbrush, plastic wrap or a plastic bag, and heavy books. Felt is optional.

First mix whatever type of glue you have with a little bit of water, so it's thinner, but still not too runny. Wrap the front cover of the book and several of the beginning pages in plastic so they don't get glue on them. Paint the outsides of the remaining book pages with glue, on all three sides-- these are the sides of your book/box and need to be solid-- you won't be able to flip the pages anymore.

Next, put the book under several heavy books and wait for it to dry. This is important so it doesn't warp.

Once the book is dry, you can start attacking the pages with the exacto knife. Leaving yourself a margin of 2 or so inches (or whatever shape you want) start carving out the pages a few at a time. This part is lots of fun, but also pretty difficult. I am sort of an impatient person and probably went too fast, which led to some sloppiness in my final product, particularly around the corners. Go slow with the corners! After you've cut out all of the pages to the back cover, clean up the inside sides a little. This is also hard, it's tough to get a good angle to cut the raggedy paper.

Now, paint the inside sides with the glue/water to strengthen the box. If you want to add a felt lining, this is a good time to do it. I measured vaguely and then cut a piece of felt into five separate pieces (one for each of the sides and the bottom) that fit pretty well. I had a hard time getting the felt to stick with my glue/water mixture, so I broke out the gorilla glue. Not a good idea. It kind of dries in blobs, leading to further sloppiness. Next time, I will try a different, less extreme adhesive for the felt bits, or I will try to prop them up until they dry using toothpicks or something. It could be hard. Lemme know if you find a good gluing method for felt!

Now, with the first few decoy pages and the front cover still wrapped in plastic, put the book under heavy books again, for good measure. When the insides are mostly dry, you can open it up and put it somewhere your pets can't reach so the inside felt portion will dry. Stay away from gorilla glue.

Now you have a neat secret compartment box that wasn't purchased from Urban Outfitters. yay!

Red Crossing

This past weekend I decided to take a CPR/First Aid certification course with the Red Cross. My desire to do this came out of some convoluted ideas about being a good citizen and spur-of-the-moment decision making that a click or two and an idle moment on the internet can offer.

My class was held in a miserable windowless cinder block room deep in the boonies of Union City. Union City is one of those sad towns of central California you read about in Steinbeck novels, only not as romantic. There's a street sign (the kind on a stoplight, official and everything) that has two arrows pointing in different directions and reads "Target" and "Circut City". Like, this is Target and Circut City street?

Our instructor was a man named Dave, who seemed to use the class as a vehicle for telling gruesome personal anecdotes as much as a means to teach us CPR and first aid. Apparently, Dave had been the Sheriff/Chief of Police/miner of some kind in a small town in Utah for several years, and had also served as the interim EMT until real medical personnel could arrive from fifty miles away. "Yep," he said. "I have to tell y'all to use a breathing barrier cause that's what the Red Cross recommends. But lotsa times you don't have a breathing barrier, and you just gotta do mouth to mouth. Remember to plug the nose, or you'll get a face fulla boogers." Charming man, Dave. A lot of his stories sounded suspiciously like lies. He described giving someone the Heimlich maneuver (which they don't call the Heimlich maneuver, by the way) at an Outback Steakhouse after walking up to an old man choking on a shrimp. The way he described the scene, play by play, sounded exactly like the part in "Mrs. Doubtfire" when Robin Williams (disguised as the housekeeper Mrs. Doubtfire) saves Pierce Brosnan from choking on a shrimp. It's the pivotal scene in the movie, because all of the man-lady makeup comes off, and I remarked (kind of under my breath) after Dave told his story that it sounded just like Mrs. Doubtfire. He laughed uncomfortably, which I took to mean he was either an exaggerator or a liar. Perhaps both.

A lot of the class participants were there because they were teachers, or had to complete the course for work. There were two pregnant couples present, one with a particularly wild-eyed mother, who insisted on telling everyone that this was the second time she'd taken the course, (the first time was before they had their first baby) and that she never let anyone without a CPR certification NEAR her daughter! I can appreciate being cautious, but sometimes these things serve as forums for people to congratulate themselves on being responsible citizens. Which is a good thing, really. But I wish the shrill, self-righteous attitude didn't come with it. Everyone had an aunt or a coworker or had witnessed a stranger have some terrible accident. "This isn't group therapy, people," I felt like saying more than once, but didn't, because generally that makes one look like an asshole.

The CPR training itself was useful. I'd taken courses before, but it's been a long while. We got to practice on alien dummies and babies with removable faces. And on one another, which is always sort of awkward, even if you're just pretending to give the other person mouth-to-mouth, and instead are repeating "breath, breath" right over their faces. The first aid training was a little bit of a joke-- it reminded me of driver's ed in high school, when we watched episodes of "Red Asphalt" which were basically cautionary tales of brains and guts spilled across the highway. I mean, if I'm actually going hiking and my buddy Marvin falls and breaks his leg, I suppose I will be a bit better off having watched an instructional video. But not by much. In either scenario, I'd probably scream for help and avoid touching poor Marvin's leg if possible.

Sharks and their attacks have been a theme at our house the past few weeks (Bryan, boogie boarding, etc.). In honor of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, our landlady Phyllis (who lives next door) had us over to watch Jaws. That's her in the costume. She made it herself, and is quite proud of it. I fell asleep halfway through in Phyllis' "Cadillac chair" (a nice, broken in Laze-Boy)

This is the most useful thing I learned this weekend, in reference to poisonous snakes that can bite you and make you die:

Red touching yellow, he's a deadly fellow.
Red touching black, he's a friendly Jack.

As always, watch out for snakes, sharks, and please, take CPR. It's for the children.