Living like Paris

Dearest faithful readers, I apologize for the great, great delay. I wish that I could say that the internet has yet to hit Malaysia, but the only excuse I can come up with for Katie and myself is gluttony and extreme mall-rat tendencies. I hope y'all didn't give up on us.

Well, I know all of you have been waiting with bated breath for me to confirm the rumors, and I am happy to say that, yes, Malaysia truly is Asia (Leona--after searching every t-shirt stand in the country, I finally found one with my favorite country slogan at the airport on the way out. yay!). The weather wasn't the best, a downside of visiting during monsoon season, and we didn't get to visit the supposedly stunning beaches on the east coast, but we were able to get a good taste of the country. Literally.

After a rather difficult journey south and a welcome goodbye to Thailand, we headed off to the duty free island of Langkawi (the whole place feels kind of like an airport). It is rumored to be quite beautiful, but it was raining and we checked into a gross "motel." The next day we were going to move to a different guesthouse run by an Iranian guy and his crying Japanese wife, but somehow we ended up on a boat headed further south to Georgetown on the island of Penang. I am still not sure how that happened, but we stand behind our decision. Georgetown is the most beautiful city I have seen in Asia. The colonial (Georgian?) architecture still stands today, and it is juxtaposed nicely with mosques and Chinese and Indian temples. Malaysia is about a quarter Chinese, a tenth Indian, and the rest Malay. Malaysians are very proud of being a multicultural society, which I think is deserved. They are friendly, helpful and almost everyone speaks nearly fluent English; some folks may have been a little too chatty and helpful--such as a tri-shaw driver we asked for directions who went into a speech about the history of Malaysia and all the local customs.

Well, we may have hit Malaysia at the wrong time in terms of weather, but it was a cool time for holidays. We were there for Ramadan and the Indian festival Deepvali. Ramadan wasn't so interactive for us, but it was interesting to be in a restaurant or food court when the sun went down. Everyone got their food (usually from amazing looking buffets) and sat down with it in front of them, just looking at it until the exact second when everyone was allowed to eat. While all the Muslims were fasting, it seems as if all the Indians were eating. Deepvali is known as the festival of lights. I am not quite sure what it is all about, but we enjoyed all the food and shopping.

After Georgetown we ventured down to Pangkor, and nice island where we had decent weather and got to see monkeys playing on the beach. The place was kind of dead, but it we had a good couple of days there before heading further south to Kuala Lumpur.

Somehow we got stuck in KL. Let's just say that on our best days Katie and I are not operating with much of a plan. Maybe it was all the malls, or the Chinese vegetarian restaurants (with great "pork" buns, buffets, beverages, and dorky helpful waitresses), or the friendliness of Malaysians, or the bakeries on every corner that Katie made me walk through "just to look," but somehow we spent seven nights there. It certainly was not our guesthouse, which looked as if it were decorated by a schizophrenic 12 year old girl, with pictures from magazines covering the walls. Turns out it was done by a middle aged man. Well, the place had bed bugs, and possibly more annoying, two little boys sleeping next door, which was closer than you may think since the walls did not reach the ceiling. The mother just let them run around the strange guesthouse fighting. This was possibly more difficult for Katie as she may have felt as if she were looking into a crystal ball. My favorite moment was when she screamed, "Enough!" at the little shits. Well, we occupied about 5 days with malls and eating when we finally took a look in the mirror and realized that we had to get out. While Malaysians may be some of the most friendly folks in Southeast Asia, as a group they are not the most attractive. I blame the food. It is just too good. Well, we were starting to lose our striking good looks so we made plans to leave. Things did not go so well with us at various embassies--Vietnam was closed for the next week and the lady at the US one told Katie that her passport was too busted to get extra pages. We also failed for the second day in a row to make it up to the bridge connecting the Petronas towers. We were feeling sad and dejected, went and booked tickets back through Bangkok to get visas when I had an amazing realization. Earlier in the week we were feeling somewhat guilty about not seeing anything of "cultural value" (though one could argue that Topshop does have it), so after a day of shopping and yes, eating, we decided to race to the national museum before it closed. Getting there required walking though the basement parking garage of the Hilton and Le Meridian and then crossing two interstates (a serious flaw in city planning). Katie and I made some joke about how if we were Paris we would be staying there, swimming in the pool, which we could barely make out by the palm trees way up in the air, sipping on girly drinks instead of wandering around like homeless people. So, back to our dirty sadness, while we were feeling gross and bad for ourselves I thought, 'I bet my Dad has hotel points.' One phone call and a trip to an internet cafe later and the next morning a very youthful looking John Chandler and his partner in crime dragged their sweaty selves to the Hilton. Sorry Paris, but my image of Hiltons at home is that they are a pretty middling bunch, but this place was amazing. We walked into our room and started squealing like pigs, running around admiring the modern Asian styling, vast clean white bed, 42" plasma TV, huge bathtub, waterfall-like shower, view of KL, and all the little services offered by the hotel. Unfortunately they only provided us with one terry cloth robe, so Katie had to push the magic button (not a joke) to ask them to bring another one up. She also requested a complementary goldfish named Angie (she was the perfect match for us--she didn't move around too much and defecated constantly). The two nights in the Hilton hit the spot. We worked out in the gym, swam in the second longest pool in Malaysia, and bathed three to four times a day. It was a great way to cap off our Malaysian experience. Thanks Dad! I will certainly have to go back for the food, people and beaches I have seen on the commercials but didn't get to visit.

We flew to Bangkok polished clean, took care of some business, ate some great Korean and Japanese food, and flew to Hanoi two days ago....