Melaka (February 22-February 24, 2012)

Melaka, in southern Malaysia, is another of the British Straits Settlements and, like Georgetown in Penang, it has strong colonial and Chinese influences. We explored the city by foot, as usual, and found that the rich history of Melaka was present everywhere we looked. The bright pink buildings of the 17^th century Stadthuys (Dutch Town Square), the 16^th century Portuguese St. Paul’s Cathedral sitting atop Bukit St. Paul (St. Pauls Hill), and the 17^th century Cheng Hoon Teng temple, as well as the colorfully decorated rickshaws we saw all around town all spoke to the rich cultural history of this city. Melaka’s famous cuisine also reflects the city’s diverse history, and we sampled our fair share of the city’s specialties during our two days. Highlights were dim sum breakfasts, laksa (thick curry noodle soup), celup (a satay-flavored hot pot), popiah (a local take on spring rolls), the best cendol we had in Malaysia, and several Nonya (descendents of 15^th and 16^th century Chinese immigrants, as opposed to more recent Chinese immigrants) dishes including pork and rice dumplings steamed in banana leaves and pineapple tarts.

Click on the photo below for our Melaka photo album.

Pulau Langkawi (February 13-February 19, 2012)

Just a short hop south of the Thailand border, Pulau Langkawi offered some welcome relief from the heat and humidity of mainland Malaysia. We spent a full week here, only leaving the tiny beach village of Pantai Cenang twice – once to go on an “island-hopping” tour and another time to tour the island by scooter. The island-hopping tour gave us our first glimpses of the iconic karst landscapes of Southeast Asia, and also took us to the Pulau Dayang Bunting (home to Pregnant Maiden Lake), which is occupied by terrorizing monkeys that tried to steal Patrick’s wallet. Otherwise, we relaxed on the beach and swam, watched DVD’s from the huge collection at our guesthouse, or played free games of pool at the guesthouse bar. By surprise, we also ran into Thunder here (one of David’s friends that we’d met in Taiping), and we spent two fun evenings on the beach before he headed back to the mainland.

Click on the photo below for our Pulau Langkawi photo album.

Pulau Penang (February 10-February 13, 2012)

From Taiping it was a short trip to the island of Penang (Malay: Pulau Penang). Situated in a strategic location just off the west coast of Malaysia in the Straits of Melaka, Pulau Penang was the first capital of the British Straits Settlements, and the colonial influence is strong in the islands’ main city, Georgetown. About the same size as Taiping (our previous stop), Georgetown is firmly on the backpacker circuit. As such, it offers the usual assortment of guesthouses, bars and restaurants catering to tourists, and souvenir shops – a stark contrast to untouristy Taiping.

In Georgetown, and Pulau Penang in general, we really started to see the interesting cultural blend that makes up Malaysian society. Chinese and Indian descendants, several generations removed from their homelands, coexist with the predominantly Muslim Malays. Every city seems to have a Chinatown and a Little India, while the Malays still dominate the culture. A random walk through town would generally pass a handful of Chinese temples, a few Hindu temples, and, of course, some mosques.

We spent two days on Pulau Penang. On the first, we explored the town on foot, visiting the impressive Khoo Kongsi (the city’s first “clan house”), as well as a number of small Chinese and Hindu temples and running into an interesting fair at Padang Park along the waterfront. Within a few minutes, we realized that the hundreds of vendor booths each represented some faction of Malaysia’s military or police, and this was a job fair of sorts. We had learned in Taiping that the ubiquitous, huge, blue-and-white apartment blocks that we had seen everywhere were police housing. We hadn’t been able to believe that a small city like Taiping could support such a large police force, but the hundreds or thousands of high school age students at this fair suggested that it must be one of the biggest employers in Malaysia. The fair even featured a dramatic police demonstration. The central area of the park was cleared and two SUV’s filled with “bad guys” roared into the park, swiftly followed by police cars with sirens blaring. As the cars sped in circles, a “shoot-out” started, and the police got the vehicles stopped and dragged the “criminals” to the ground. Suddenly, two helicopter swooped low over the park, a gunman mounted on the side, and a rope dropped out, quickly followed by a swat team to provide backup. As quickly as it started, the “show” was over, and a marching band took to the field playing patriotic sounding tunes. It was quite the show of force.

Our second day, we rented a scooter and headed a little further afield. Besides just getting lost in the winding roads in the hills, the highlight of the day came when we visited Kek Lok Si temple, a huge Buddhist temple complex set into the side of a hill with impressive views back towards Georgetown. That night, back in town, we tried the night food market, sampling a variety of foods, both new and familiar, including chicken satay and rojak (fruit salad in sweet tamarind and palm sugar sauce garnished with crushed peanuts). The next morning saw us jump onto a ferry in search of sun, sand, and a little “R-and-R” on Pulau Langkawi.

Click on the photo below for our Pulau Penang photo album.

Taiping (February 3-February 10 and February 19-February 20, 2012)

Even in the early stages of planning this trip, when almost nothing was certain, we knew Malaysia would be one of our destinations. Nora’s good friend from college, David, lives here and we were really looking forward to visiting him. David lives in Taiping with his girlfriend Erin, in a big, four bedroom, two-story house. The size of the house is important because it happened that on the exact same day we landed in Kuala Lumpur, totally by coincidence, three other sets of David’s friends also arrived in Kuala Lumpur to visit him. Matt and Trina had flown from the Philippines for their honeymoon, Thunder was visiting from South Korea, and globe-trotters Kevin and Florence brought their son Tyler from Japan. We spent one late night on Changkat Bukit Bintang (a popular street packed with bars and restaurants) in Kuala Lumpur before heading to Taiping the next afternoon. It was a full house, but fortunately it was a really fun group and we enjoyed several days of home cooked meals, walks around the lake, and drinking Carlsberg beers. We even got up at early one morning to drink Bloody Marys and watch the Super Bowl.

We also spent a fascinating afternoon visiting a local Hindu temple for the holiday of Thaipusam. We weren’t always sure what was going on, but the locals happily invited us to watch and participate in the ceremony. They burned palm fronds and beat drums, and at one point invited us to join them as they poured milk over a Hindu shrine. Throughout, those that spoke some English tried to explain things or at least told us where to stand and what to do. They even invited us to eat with them at the end of the festivities. We were really touched by how welcoming everyone was to our big group of outsiders!

After the other guests left we spent two more nights in Taiping. While David and Erin worked, we borrowed their bicycles and explored Taiping. A quiet city of 200,000, Taiping was a 19^th century tin mining center and then a seat of British colonialism. By bicycle we explored the colonial old town and its famous “Tamin Tasik Taiping” (lake gardens), 62 hectares of pretty lakes and green parks, set in an abandoned tin mine dating from 1880. We also visited the zoo here, which had a surprisingly good collection of animals (though we were a little suspicious about how secure the animals were in their enclosures). The food in Taiping was tasty too and we tried mee goring (fried noodles), umbra (umbra juice with sour plums), and cendol (sweet rice-flour noodles mixed with shaved ice, coconut milk, red beans, and brown sugar syrup). The highlight of these two days, though, was spending the evenings with David and Erin, cooking and catching up.

Unfortunately, Erin got sick and missed our last home cooked meal together. Fortunately, though, after visiting Penang and Langkawi, we passed through Taiping again (David and Erin were so kind as to come pick us up from the ferry), and we spent one more night here, capping our time in Taiping by lighting and releasing paper lanterns. The next day David drove us to Kuala Lumpur. Along the way, we stopped at Bethany Home, a center for disabled children in Teluk Intan, where Mr. Jayasingh gave us an informative tour and we learned about the life and tribulations of the disabled in Malaysia. It was uplifting to see such compassion from their local and foreign staff, but it is a major uphill battle in a place where disabilities are poorly understood and mental disability, in particular, often presents a great social stigma for an entire family.

Click on the photo below for our Taiping photo album.

Kandy (January 30-February 3, 2012)

Kandy is Sri Lanka’s second largest city, located about sixty miles east of the capital and largest city, Colombo. The city is built around a pretty manmade lake (built in 1807) with a beautiful temple and palace complex on its shores. Once we arrived here we were a little wiped out and our time here was fairly relaxed. We enjoyed walking around the lake, and visiting the devales, temples devoted to the four gods (Pattini, Natha, Vishnu, and Kataragama) who protect the city. We also visited the former Royal Palace complex, but skipped the city’s most famous site, the Temple of the Tooth. The temple houses an important Sri Lankan religious relic, a tooth supposedly saved from Buddha’s cremation fire. Though the tooth itself is rarely publicly displayed these days, it is supposedly about three inches long and therefore not likely a human tooth. After Kandy we spent one final night in the town of Negombo, near the airport, before catching our early morning flight to Malaysia.

Click on the photo below for our Kandy photo album.

Adam’s Peak (January 28-January 30, 2012)

Our train ride from Ella took us to Hatton, where we caught a crowded local bus to Dalhousie. Though only about 30 kilometers in distance, the up-and-down, winding road took over two hours to navigate and left few of the locals sick to their stomachs. Dalhousie is a tiny town that mostly exists to support pilgrims and tourists attempting to climb Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada).

Buddhists believe that an imprint on the rock at the summit is the footprint of Buddha, and they have been making pilgrimages here for over a thousand years. Other religions, however, have also laid claim to this mountain. Some Hindus claim it’s the footprint of Shiva, and some Muslims believe it is Adam’s first footprint after being cast out of Eden. Adam’s Peak is a very popular pilgrimage for Sri Lankan Buddhists (some return every year), but believers of all faiths make the trek up to the summit to view the “footprint” and admire the amazing sunrise view.

The peak, though not that high at 2,243m (7,359 ft), is a daunting sight from town. We started out at 2:30 a.m. with two other travelers we befriended, Carole from Switzerland (who we met on the railroad tracks in Ella) and Mark from Ireland, in order to reach the top by sunrise. The trail begins fairly easily, passing a mind-numbing number of shops open at this early hour to sell snacks, tea, and all kinds of unnecessary knick-knacks to pilgrims. Soon, however, the trail becomes stairs that head, more or less, directly up the mountain. Because it was a Saturday night (technically Sunday morning) the trail was packed with locals making the pilgrimage. We saw newborns being carried up in their parents’ arms and great-grandmothers being supported up by sons and grandchildren. Some people stopped along the way to sleep on the stairs, often creating a backlog along the trail. About two and a half hours into the hike, with what we thought was about a half-hour left to climb, we came to a near standstill because there were so many people on the trail that no one could go up any further. For the next two hours we moved at a snail’s pace, moving only if others ahead of us began descending. Despite giving ourselves four hours to complete the seven kilometer hike, we didn’t reach the top in time for sunrise, but did have a wonderful view from the steps just below. It may have been for the best, though, since the summit was insanely crowded and actually had more obstructions of the view.

As soon as the sun had completely risen, there was a mass exodus down the mountain and the summit cleared enough to do a quick tour to get the 360-degree view. Within twenty minutes the crowd had almost totally dispersed, but we skipped the footprint, which had a very long line, and headed back down. We flew down, passing many of the older Sri Lankans who struggled down the often very steep stairs. Breakfast was waiting for us at our hotel, and we spent the rest of the day relaxing on our porch listening to the sound of the passing creek and admiring the lush green garden, happy to have some respite from those early morning crowds. That evening we had a nice dinner and too many Lion beers with Carol and Mark. It was a fun way to say goodbye to our new friends.

Click on the photo below for our Adam's Peak photo album.