Malaysia - Borneo

We went to Borneo kind of randomly (it happened to be the cheapest place for us to fly to), but I'm really glad we made the detour and stopped in for a few days. The big attraction in the northern state of Sabah, where we were, is Mt. Kinabalu, which is one of the tallest mountains in SE Asia and also one of the easiest to climb. It was also a little out of our price range, so we admired it as we drove by in the bus that took us to the Kinabatangan River valley. In truth, we weren't that interested in mountain climbing because we had a sweet homestay set up, and some jungle adventures planned. The homestay is a WWF project to provide livelihood for people in the area, so besides having families host tourists, they also train people to be guides, boatmen, back office people and anything else that might go into running such an operation. The family we stayed with was big and shy, but we got to chat with them a fair amount, watch some Malaysian soccer, eat some good food and have a cooking lesson that consisted of Abby dumping some chopped veggies into a pot and the mom declaring "done!" The boat tours were nice, it was just us and our guide Joel, so we got to putter around on the river for hours, looking for wildlife and dodging the occasional power boat of a bigger, much more expensive jungle operation down river. The wildlife was amazing: wild elephants, monitor lizards, a variety of macaques, proboscis monkeys, crocodiles, orangutans (which we didn't see), kingfishers, hornbills and egrets, wild boar and a few other things I'm probably forgetting. We tried to set up a jungle hike to maybe see some animals up close, but the hike was more like a 15 minute walk into the jungle to the eco-camp they're building, and not much else. Oh well...

There was another group there so we got to sit in on their cultural show. The cultural dances were almost exactly the same as Filipino dances, minus the weird Spanish colonial dances. I half expected them to come out and do tinikiling, and when I asked they said they have the same dance, it just goes by another name there.

They asked for volunteers to come up, so I got to bang on some drums in a Borneo version of the hippie drum circle.

Kingfisher

Monitor lizard - about 5 to 6 feet long

We happened to be there during the annual elephant migration, so we were extremely lucky to see a herd of elephants. In fact, we were so lucky our guide literally jumped up and down in the boat saying "we're so lucky!"

We came across them a second time, and this time they were out in plain view. Unfortunately it was getting dark, so most of our pictures were a little blurry, since we couldn't use a flash, obviously.

This is the best picture of a mom and baby. We watched them eat for about 10 minutes.

Proboscis monkeys, hanging out in the trees.

Macaques

The river at sunset. It was pretty muddy from the erosion caused by all the recent flooding.

A lake we hiked to.

This photo is actually the reflection off the incredibly still lake.

Malaysia - Penang

We went to Penang because we heard it was a great place to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but when we were there, it was totally dead. Maybe the parades and dragon dances and fireworks happen some other time, or maybe they don't happen at all, we'll never know. Even though Chinatown was shut up, everywhere else was open so we spent most of our time over in Little India. The transition between neighborhoods was hilarious. You would cross a certain street and it would go from the quiet, breezy calm of Chinatown to an explosion of people, sound and smell in Little India. Tons of people out in the streets, everything was open, and every other shop was blaring Indian pop music. Instead of spending our time in a street party, like we thought, we ended up seeing a lot of sites: walking all over town checking out the different temples, going up to Penang Hill and then engaging in a ridiculously steep (from 800m to sea level over 5km) hike down to the botanical gardens and lots of eating. Luckily all the hawker stalls were open, so we had tons of satay, a tom yum soup so hot it was deliciously painful and various indian feasts. Malaysia is an amazing food country, incorporating the best of chinese, indian, malay and other southeast asian countries (notably Thailand), and it's all super cheap. We were eating good meals for MYR10 (about $3) and had an enormous indian dinner with way too much incredible food for MYR20 ($6). It seems like other SE Asian countries get more tourist love, but Malaysia was fantastic.

Abby in the archway of the Chow Yun Fat mansion. Used to belong to a rich Chinese merchant, now a hotel that you can also take tours of. Expensive tours, so we just admired the outside...

Indian temple

The outside of the Kek Lok Si temple, supposedly the biggest Buddhist temple in SE Asia. Leading up to the temple was the traditional t-shirt and other assorted junk hawker hallway.

There was a writhing pond full of turtles in the temple, for some reason.

There were Buddha statues everywhere inside the temple, of all shapes and sizes.

A view out over the city of Georgetown from about halfway up the temple.

We didn't take this picture, it's from wikipedia, but this was going on while we were there. They only light up the temple during Chinese New Year, which is 15-20 days long.

They also have great fruit in Malaysia, but unlike in the Philippines, they actually eat it! You could buy fresh fruit and packets of sliced fresh fruit everywhere, even late at night.

There were a lot of monkeys on the hike down from Penang Hill to the botanical gardens.

There were also a lot of monkeys in the gardens, but unfortunately there were also hordes of tour bus tourists feeding them. This guy just opened his brothers mouth and helped himself.

We also visited a Burmese Buddhist temple which was really beautifully done.

This reclining Buddha is the third largest in the world! Or maybe Asia! I'm not really sure, but that's one big enlightened being!

A shot inside another Buddhist temple. There were a lot of people praying in all of the temples we visited. I'm not sure if that's normal, or if it had something to do with CNY...

Malaysia - Singapore and KL

Singapore might have been the highlight of the trip for me. I was wondering while I was there if everything seemed so amazing because it actually was amazing, or if my take on things is a little skewed because I've been living in a little town in the Philippines for two years, taking cold showers out of a bucket. I didn't come up with an answer, but I'm still pretty convinced Singapore is freakin' amazing. Much like Malaysia, Singapore is mostly made up of Malay, Chinese and Indian, with a pretty good sized ex-pat community and apparently millions of white babies, all being pushed around in strollers. What the hell was up with all the white babies? The city was sparklingly clean, well planned out, had amazing public transportation and green everywhere. Open spaces, parks, trees... I think I'm a little too easily impressed at this point. It was definitely a taste of the 1st world, since Singapore is a pretty rich country. Income-wise they rank in the teens worldwide, above countries like Germany and France, so there were lots of nice cars, well dressed people and the like, kind of an Southeast Asia-lite.The food was top-notch, just like Malaysia, and the beer expensive. They also have a lot of laws that they enforce, including a weird one about chewing gum. Apparently you can get fined for having it, as it is illegal, to which I say right on because if I sit on one more piece of gum, I'm going to bomb Wrigley and blame it on terrorists.

This is a hawker stall area in Singapore. There are maybe 40-50 different places to chose from here, each one with something different(ish). It's kind of like if a mall food court didn't suck, but instead was full of amazing, cheap food, and wasn't in the mall.

Why can't everywhere be full of roast duck?

Having a beer at the boat quay, waiting for the museum to be free (Fri night from 7pm-9pm).

Top of an Indian temple

There was something going on at the temple while we were there, so as the parents talked the kids roamed free...

Temple of 1000 Lights

Renovated Chinese shop houses in Chinatown, now selling really expensive clothing.

Amazing temple door art

We ended up staying in the Muslim area (called Kampong Glam), which was probably my favorite part of town, and home to great middle eastern food.

Singapore had a great botanical garden, but it was free and open from 5am - midnight, so it was more like a city park. Never the less it was huge, and beautiful, and quiet. Ah, quiet.

The best part of the park was the orchid garden. I am by no means a flower nerd, but they were pretty spectacular.