theotherSAR

and now to spoil the mood. in keeping with my craze of adding more stamps to our passports, Jill and i decided to leave the relative haven of Hong Kong for a day trip across the Pearl River delta. i had been warned not to go, but that stamp was just itching to be had, the guidebook had made our destination look wonderful, and even the mode of transport to get there would be fun. so what if Macau was known to be a seedy vice den? we weren't going to the casinos.



the famed, if not drab, Casino Lisboa anchors a whole strip full of such seedy joints, which bear resemblance to their Las Vegas counterparts only in gaudiness.  apparently several of the Vegas magnates have opened rather plush hotels in Macau since we were there, but back in July 2005 this was as good as it got.  and i wasn't even allowed in--because i was wearing shorts!  below, our transit to the former Portuguese colony came in the form of this Boeing 929 jetfoil boat; yes, it really is made by the aeroplane people, and yes, it really is powered by a jet engine.



though we had wanted to take a helicopter, we opted for a jetfoil  boat because it was considerably cheaper, and while in some ways i still wish we had shelled out some extra bucks for a scenic flight, i wasn't disappointed by the boat.  when they were finally able to crank up the jet engine as we reached the edge of Victoria Harbor, the giant ferry rose up on its foils and cut so smoothly through the still choppy waters we might as well have been flying.  it was a beautiful sunny day and that whole stretch of the South China Sea was bustling with craft of all kinds going to and fro everywhere.  it was awesome to see how fast we passed other jetfoils coming back from Macao, and the whole journey took only 45 minutes one way to cover more than 40 ocean miles.

the only problem with all this, as it turned out, was our tickets.  to save a few Hong Kong dollars and to ensure that we'd be back to Kowloon the same day, we had bought and booked seats for our return journey at the same time we booked them for the outbound leg.  which would have been fine, if we had ended up needing a whole day to see Macau, as we had thought we reasonably might.  so it was a little distressing when we discovered that we still had six hours to kill before our trip back when we had seen everything--literally, everything--that we were interested in seeing on that hot, dirty peninsula.



some of the few worthwhile sights of Macau, clockwise from top left: the centerpiece fountain of the Largo do Senado (Senate Square) plays in the sun in front of the arcaded front of one of the Portuguese colonial buildings; Jill stands in front of the facade of the church of São Paulo, the last remainder of that edifice; the tiled sign set in the wall of a corner building demarcates the beginning of the Largo de São Domingos, or St Dominic's Square; a line of pedicabs in front of the Casino Lisboa; and Jill in front of the Igreja São Domingos, the interior of which forms the backdrop for this collection of pictures.  below, the hilltop lighthouse at the Guia Fortress rises above the whole Macanese enclave.



there are some good sights to see.  the two churches, of São Domingos and São Paulo, are rather impressive, the former set on a pleasant square that is surrounded by colonial buildings and floored with black and white cobblestones arranged in gentle waves, and the latter set on a plaza that is surrounded pretty much by obnoxious Chinese tourists.  Fortaleza Guia, or the Guia Fortress, sitting atop a central hill is almost worth the phenomenally sweaty trek to the top, if not for the smog-ridden view then at least for the cannon riding opportunities (see below).  built in 1638 atop Macau's highest point, the fort was joined by an upstart young lighthouse in 1865 that still functions with a light visible for over 20 miles in clear conditions, which i take to mean under 20 yards in normal conditions.



the view from the Guia Fortress looking approximately southwest-ish, and below, the occasional special view at the Guia Fortress, where the ghost of an ancient warrior rides his surdy cannon into battle... or something.



a word here about guidebooks.  i suppose it's the job of pretty much any such work to make its subject seem appealing, and the types of folks who are apt to write such books are bound to be lovers of travel.  however, i can't help feeling that the folks who wrote the book we used on this trip were either a little punch drunk on, or at least blinded somewhat by that love.  having been reliving this excursion through writing this post, i have felt a little softened toward Macau due to the pictures of the good bits.  but really, i don't think i could ever recommend Macau as a destination to anyone, as much as i love seeing new places and as much as i wanted to like this one in spite of the warning i had received about it.  i could happily live in Singapore or Hong Kong, but i'd be severely aggravated at having to spend just another hour in Macau.  incidentally, we used a Rough Guide to Hong Kong and Macau, while we had a Fodor's book that covered all the other countries we visited on the Southeast Asia trip.  it's not that the Rough Guide is bad, indeed, we started off the Japan trip with another of those, but its authors were a little effusive about some of the features we found most dubious in Macau; in any case, we used the Lonely Planet books for our Taiwan travel and have pretty much got used to them on our trips since, so that's what we usually recommend.

anyway, i'm not expecting anyone to try to make me live in Macau, but then again, i wasn't expecting my first foray there to be so awful, so who knows. we tried to salvage the trip by searching for the highly recommended junk boats that take you on a ride around Macau and under the bridge that connects it to the other two islands of the colony, Taipa and Coloane. unfortunately, we couldn't find any such dock as was mentioned in our book, and nobody seemed to know what we were talking about, so we called the whole thing a big bust and headed back to the jetfoil terminal to see if there was any way to get out of there on a much earlier boat than the one we were booked on. oddly, in a perversion that may have actually made our trip for us, the demand to get to Macau by jetfoil was a lot higher than demand to leave the awful place, so we got onto the next boat with no problems at all. and after just five hours in town we settled back into our plush seats for the comfy, quick ride back to civilized, blessed Hong Kong.

theSARs

we were fortunate on the next leg of our Southeast Asian journey in that there was no good way to make it by overnight train, and even though we didn't get to fly Singapore's reportedly awesome airline, we did plump for a plane again. the destination was the "Special Administrative Region" of the People's Republic of China known as Hong Kong, a former dependent territory of my own native land, Britain. Hong Kong is an intense visual experience, with all the stereotypical images of bright, neon east Asia, like all that we had seen at that point in our international experiences taken to the next level and squared.


the hustle, bustle, neon and glow of Nathan Road's famous Golden Mile in Kowloon.

of course the best way to see the view and the lights of Central is from Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island. getting up there means either a long, hard walk or a short, scenic ride on the Peak Tram, a tourist attraction in its own right. with a rise of almost a quarter of a mile over less than a mile of track, and maximum gradients of nearly 50 percent, the ride can feel pretty hairy at times, but the views are spectacular.



the 120-year-old Victoria Peak Tram that winds its way through the densely populated hills of Central. below, Jill and i wind our way through the densely populated star chambers of Madame Tussaud's Hong Kong wax museum, clockwise from top left: Jill gets intimate with her longtime hero, Indiana Jones--who knew?; i take a moment to catch up with my old buddy Tony Hopkins; then get my just desserts for listening to Madonna; finally Jill and i get to know the (sort of) locals, taking the time to hoop it up with Ming Yao.



before we get to those views, however, i should mention the cool views we got at the Madame Tussaud's wax museum in the Peak Tower at the top of the tram. you can't see many stars in the sky with all the light pollution emanating from the Central skyline, but they're all visible inside, and up close and personal. they even have some displays with closed-circuit cameras pointed at them so you can see yourself on TV giving a speech with George Bush or stepping off a plane to greet the crowds with Hu Jintao. but we soon had to leave our friends to continue our tradition of watching the sunset from a high spot in a world city, so we stepped outside and staked a great vantage point complete with a piece of railing to steady the camera so we could take pictures as the lights came on in all the buildings. there are a lot of them on Hong Kong Island, and that view is a sight to see; it's a little boggling to think of all the people that live and work in such a small space.



the awesome Central skyline at dusk, taken from Victoria Peak. below, a shot taken from sea level of the afternoon moon rising over the coolest looking building ever, the Bank of China Tower. it was designed by I.M. Pei, the same architect who did the Louvre pyramids; apparently he's a fan of triangles.



when we had had enough of funiculars and skyscrapers we decided to take in some of the shopping for which Hong Kong is famous. first we took a bus down to the south side of Hong Kong Island to see Repulse Bay and Stanley, site of a famous outdoor market known for its silks. Repulse Bay, as the name hints, was initially important for its maritime connections, including both piracy and naval maneuvers. now however, it may be better known for having a wide building with a huge hole running right the way through it, put there on purpose apparently so that the feng shui spirits would be better able to pass through on their way from the hills to the ocean. or something like that. closer to where we were staying, we checked out the Golden Mile of Nathan Road, which began right about where our hotel, the Eaton, stood. incidentally, the Eaton is a really nice hotel, with a great buffet dinner and particularly pleasant, if a little small, restrooms; the reason i feel qualified to mention that is because the only time i got sick on these travels was after eating a mango-sauce covered soft-serve ice cream at McDonalds on Nathan Road, and i spent the next several hours hugging the bowl in my bathroom at the Eaton. in any case, the Golden Mile seemed like a bit of a bust, being principally a place for overpriced cheap electronics and overpriced expensive jewelery, but there were a lot of 7-11s, which always had a supply of Hi-Chews and my favorite drink from Britain, Lucozade. i was pretty much in heaven, and must have had about three or four of those delicious concoctions each day we were in Hong Kong.

we had a great time in Hong Kong. we had good accommodations, as we had almost everywhere else on our big trip, mostly thanks to our travel agent in Taipei, Jeannie Leng. incidentally, while we usually think of travel agents as being a lot more expensive than making the arrangements yourself, in Asia the opposite seems to be the case. apparently, the agents have networks in each of the other Asian countries that they use to get better prices, and there aren't a whole slew of discount booking sites, at least that are available in English. so if you want to travel around while you're there, just get a travel agent. anyway, back in Hong Kong, most things are written in English, so even though hearing Cantonese was very strange to our Mandarin-accustomed ears, we could generally understand where we were and what to do from the good signs. we got to visit the LDS Temple in Kowloon, which is a lot more boxy looking than most of the others, and which our pictures, and those on the Church website, manage to make look both small and uncrowded, even though neither of these is a correct impression. it's a very efficient space, but really crammed in.



the Hong Kong Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, crammed in on Cornwall Street in Kowloon. below, one of the double decker buses that took us (and our stuff) all over Hong Kong, literally. the Eaton Hotel is the red brick and glass building just to the rear of the bus in this picture.



we also got to take a small side trip out of Hong Kong, one that was supposed to be a day trip to the other SAR, but that ended up being so much less, in every way. i may write about it in another post, but i won't spoil the mood here. because when the time came to make the short flight back to Taiwan, we became very pleased with our sojourn in this administrative region, and with one of its people in particular. we had taken another double decker bus on the long ride from Kowloon to Lantau Island, where both the world's largest seated buddha and Hong Kong Disneyland live, along with the new Chek Lap Kok airport, so we could catch our plane. the airport is the bus terminus and it was only after we and the other passengers were all disgorged from our carriage that we realized that Jill's prized souvenir umbrella, heretofore strapped to her backpack since its purchase all the way back in Thailand, was still on that bus as it trundled back into town. after checking in for our flight we went to the offices of the bus company and asked them how we could get the item back, and basically when the two agents sitting like bank tellers selling tickets to folks out on the sidewalk determined that lost and found wasn't in their job description, they suddenly became a lot less proficient in English and started ignoring me. now you have to understand this about Chinese people in general: that they don't like conflict, and in my experience will do anything, including pretending you're not there, to avoid it. thus being ignored may have made me more contentious however, and soon they were sending out a manager to try to get me to calm down, though not to fix the problem. how could he if we were leaving the country in a couple of hours? he reasoned. i wasn't so concerned about this problem of his, and i realized we may never see the umbrella again, but the least he could do would be to just tell us he would try to get it back or send it to Jill, even if it wasn't true. later on, that's what i thought was happening, after i had secretly followed that manager back into the office while the locked door was still swinging closed behind him. i needed better answers than he had given me, but the folks on the inside got in a real flap that i had come into their space and they didn't seem to know how to get rid of me. eventually, they called in a supervisor from somewhere else, whom they used to lure me back outside for a meeting, and he told me that he would get the umbrella, even before we left the island. finally, someone was at least pretending to take us seriously, so we went along with what we thought was just a placation and grabbed a Lucozade in the terminal building to pass the time until we were due to check back on his progress.

we did check back with the office, a couple of times, each time with the remaining staffers telling us he had not returned, confirming, we supposed, our hunch that he had been putting us on. but then, not many minutes before we were to board our aircraft, an empty double decker came roaring into the bus depot--empty, that is, except for that lone supervisor and Jill's umbrella! this guy had taken a whole bus and sped it all the way out to Hong Kong's mainland to track down our bus, stop it and get our left item! what a guy! that was customer service, at least if it wasn't self preservation. i did feel a bit sheepish when he actually delivered the item, but i guess all my pushiness paid off. so we still have the umbrella, and at one time it was actually decorating a room, but the moral of the story is, if not taking care of your belongings, that using intimidation to get what you want from Chinese folks who have a hard time saying no often works. but be careful, there may not always be a guy who understands Western negotiation with a spare bus hanging around. good luck!

theparadise

paradise indeed. this picture pretty much sums it up.

apparently Milton never made it out to Indonesia, because a couple of weeks into our legendary Southeast Asia tour we found paradise there in a big way. the tiny island of Bintan is one of more than 17,500 in the Indonesian archipelago, and conveniently sits just a few miles to the south of Singapore. after restless nights on trains, and days of backpack-laden wandering around hot city centers, a couple of days on a deserted white sand beach was just what we needed. plus, i wanted another stamp in my passport. (in fact, that was the only reason i wanted to go, but i had to sell it to Jill on the grounds that it was only a 45 minute ferry ride away and there was a beach.)



the awesome "turbocat" ferry that took us on the short hop from Tanah Merah in Singapore to Bintan Island, Indonesia--a very beautiful ride across clear blue-green waters. below, upon arriving, we found our old friend the humble durian was equally as discriminated against as it was back in Singapore.



the ferry was one of the huge turbocharged catamarans that seem to be so popular in this part of the world. through large windows we looked out over pristine waters glistening under a beautiful blue-sky, and leaving the Tanah Merah ferry terminal turned exhilarating as we sped into an ocean channel teeming with huge container ships and buzzing speedboats. the trip was brief and we soon found ourselves pulling into a bay whose wooden huts looked like they could have been plucked from the 19th century. going through Indonesian "customs", which was really just a money grab--$20 each for a three day visa, US currency only, please--and arriving at the Nirwana Gardens resort with its "no durian" signs quickly brought us back to the present though, despite the refreshing remoteness and primitive feel of the resort.



the secluded pathways and beach front chalets at Nirwana Gardens. below, one of the diversions in the open-air lobby of the main hotel makes Jill and i feel like queen and king for the day.



there wasn't a whole lot to do on the island, but then that was the point, and for a only couple of days lounging on the beach or in the horizon pool it was pretty much perfect. so we rested and recouped, we ate in the restaurants and we drank the best smoothie concoctions i've ever had at the swim-up bar; we even had our picture taken by the very enterprising barkeep. but all the relaxation threatened to come to a premature close when we were presented with the bill for all this fun and it ran to more than half a million Indonesian Rupiah! all's well that ends well, however, and a quick crunch of the numbers revealed that our two days of splurge had cost only 50 real bucks, so we sailed back to Singapore calm in mind as well as in body. incidentally, while foreign money often feels like play money, nowhere has this been more true than in Indonesia in my experience. i still have a worn 1,000 Rupiah note, small and dirty--and worth about a dime. you wonder why they don't just drop a couple of zeroes to revalue the currency; maybe counting in hundreds of thousands is easier than using decimals? in any case, it's their business, and i feel like we got our money's worth. and i'd definitely use some more to go back and explore more of the paradise that is Indonesia.


Jill and i get our picture taken by the multi-tasking tender of the pool bar at our Bintan Island resort. he also turned out a mean "snowy": Nirwana's smoothies made with ice cream and orange and raspberry juices.

themerlion

welcome to Singapore...

though once again it's been a while, and by now the story may be getting just a bit disjointed, the last time we left Southeast Asia we were skipping out on our tour guide Dr Nick's tip at the KL Sentral train station. this time we were going as far as it was possible to go by that method of travel, all the way down to Singapore. this ride was just a few hours but was even more jarring at its conclusion than the trip into Malaysia had been. as the sign above, taken in a subway car, demonstrates, Singapore can be a pretty strict place. don't get me wrong, it's a very nice place, a clean place, an orderly place; but upon stepping into a cool, modern train station to go through customs one is little prepared to be greeted by a phalanx of paramilitary-looking guys holding submachine guns and demanding... that you spit out the gum you're chewing and hand over the rest of the pack, evil foreigner! no fines for possession, just a volley of bullets from a teenage Rambo. a bit scary, but did i mention Singapore is clean?

other than the nagging terror of being an outsider in pretty much a police state, i really liked Singapore right from the get-go, it providing a welcome contrast to the clamor and bustle of all the other places we had been for the previous six months. i liked it for the same reason i liked Japan: that it was organized and quiet and people give you some space. not that there's much space to give, mind you, as Singapore sits on just 271 square miles of land, at least 30 of which are man-made or reclaimed from the ocean (to put that in perspective for the Utahns among us, Salt Lake county is just over 800 square miles). but people there speak English, just like in Malaysia, it being the most official of the four official national languages. the others are Chinese, Malay and Tamil.

but if one can't chew gum in Singapore, and it's small enough that you could spit a piece cross-country, what does one do, i hear you cry? fortunately, we had asked the same question before leaving Taiwan, to a young native of the tiny nation, a missionary of the LDS Church named Elder Merican. though he gave a long list of things to do during my hour-long conversation with him, i quickly got the point that Sentosa Island came at the top, so it was there we went first.



the Sentosa island Merlion, majestic symbol of the city-state of Singapore; and below, Jill beautifies the view from his crown over Keppel harbor. Singapore is said to have the world's busiest port in terms of tonnage shipped (or second busiest, behind Shanghai, depending on whom one listens to).



funnily enough we didn't see much of the island, which we thought small at the time but is actually rather large, with several five star resorts and long beaches made of white sand hauled in from Malaysia. a lot of the attractions there were also placed since our trip in mid 2005, but there was at least one important structure we got a very thorough look at. the Singapore Tourism Board explains what it is and why we went looking for it:

The Merlion has a lion head and a fish body resting on a crest of waves. The lion head symbolises the legend of the discovery of Singapura, as recorded in the "Malay Annals". In ancient times, Singapore was known as Temasek, a Javanese word for sea. In the 11th century A.D, Prince Sang Nila Utama of the Sri Vijaya Empire rediscovered the island. When the Prince first landed on Singapore's shores, he sighted a mystical beast which he later learnt was a lion. The Prince then decided to name the island "Singapura" which in Sanskrit means Lion (Singa) City (Pura). The fish tail of the Merlion symbolises the ancient city of Temasek and represents Singapore's humble beginnings as a fishing village.

beginnings indeed; Singapore has grown so fast and been so economically successful that it's considered one of the four "Asian Tigers" and even ranks up with the world's wealthiest countries. nevertheless, it's still a tropic with its fair share of jungle and wildness, which we decided to experience in a couple of very different ways. first, there was the incredible Night Safari at the zoo, which is just what it sounds like but even better. the problem with safaris in general is that most of the animals are nocturnal and so asleep when you're driving around to look at them. not so in Singapore, where they are awake, alert and on the prowl as the open sided bus conveys you around the park, stopping whenever Malayan tapirs cross the roadway or come to sniff the passengers. amazingly, when you're done with the motorized tour, you can wander almost the whole park on a series of paths that in many cases cut right through the animal habitats, all of them totally open and lacking any type of enclosure! and we're not just talking about tapirs and sloths either, there are lions, tigers, hyenas, elephants, giraffes; you name it, it's out there wandering around with you in the dark. awesome! it seems hard to imagine Singapore having lax liability laws, so we couldn't figure out how the safari keeps folks from being attacked. our best guess is that in addition to keeping the animals very well fed, there may be some kind of ultrasonic fence system in place around the areas of the scarier beasts.

well, even after all that we hadn't quite had our fill of dangerous creatures, so the next day we bussed and hiked out to the middle of suburban nowhere to try and find one of the most highly recommended attractions in our guidebook. it was a very odd thing indeed, and made me wonder about the zoning laws in Singapore; we had thought for sure that we were way off track when we finally got to the place as directed. but lo, to our astonishment, set back a little way from the rows of other houses in the neighborhood, was a sign for the grandly named but highly unassuming Singapore Crocodile Farm. they do have a website though, on which we read:

Six decades ago, not long after the end of the Second World War, an enterprising Chinese man, Mr. Tan Gna Chua, decided that he wanted to share his home with these unloved reptiles. With the help of his family, he transformed the one acre of land that surrounded his home at Upper Serangoon Road into a reptile farm, which was the first of its kind in Singapore. They started with only ten crocodiles. With careful breeding, the numbers grew rapidly. Being the entrepreneur he was, Mr Tan opened his farm to the public. Within its premises he set up a factory, where the crocodile skin was processed, made into various products, then sold at the gift shop as well as overseas. Visitors were free to come in to take a look around, without having to pay an entrance fee - and this is still the case today.

the Singapore Crocodile Farm, clockwise from top left: a house that ended up serving as offices and a shop for the farm, complete with all the handbags, watch straps and souvenir crocodile heads you could ever want; and at least there's more out back if you don't see something you like: a not very deep pool full of caymans is one of several that sit where other folks would have their back yard; this may be the industrious Mr Tan himself, who spent a good 15 minutes stringing these chicken heads onto some kind of wire before throwing it to the crocs at precisely 11am, just the time this last fellow likes to be fed, apparently.

despite its distance from everything, making the trek to Mr Tan's place was one of the most singular experiences i have had while traveling. it's totally surreal that in amongst all these very dull houses there are pools and pools of various teeming crocodile species, and that if you show up at just the right time you can see them snapping at each other to get to the food that is so unceremoniously tossed them. the folks there were indeed set up to receive tourists, but it was clear that this had never been the point of the place--we were the only visitors there at the time, and they carried on with their operations as if we hadn't been. truly remarkable.

as long as we're talking about wildlife, we should mention another kind that is prominent in this part of the world, one that despite its total inertness and vegetative state may be as potentially harmful as many of the creatures heretofore mentioned. i'm talking about the humble durian, a fruit that is banned not just from underground trains, as the first picture shows, but from most other public places as well. the lack of a specific posted fine suggests to me, rather sinisterly, that getting caught breaking the durian rules will net you an encounter with another squad of riot police rather than just a ticket for a few hundred bucks (incidentally, each Singapore dollar was worth around 60 US cents while we were there, to give you an idea of the magnitude of those fines). this is a very strange thing, especially considering that the cantaloupe-sized delicacy is extremely popular and can be had quite cheaply on any number of street corners all over the city. and it's really very good. so what gives? that it only seems to be sold in the open air is a clue: durian basically consists of a full-frontal assault on the olfactory system, each one containing the sulfurous pungency of a month-old crate full of rotten eggs. they also look a bit dangerous, as the picture suggests, but they really are very tasty. if you can get past the smell. and you don't get arrested for possession.

so as long as you can stay out of jail, there are a few other things you should see before leaving Singapore, one of which is actually a giant concert hall and performing arts center whose shape and design are said to be inspired the durian, belying a national love for the eggy treat. i'll leave you to check out the Esplanade website for an idea of what the center, which is also reminiscent of a pair of bug-eyes, looks like, and then i'll leave you with this cool picture of the sign in front of the buildings, one of the most entertaining bits of modern art we've come across in all our travels. and it's true:

thepeninsula

not the hotel, the Malay (or Thai-Malay) Peninsula. though it's been a while you may remember that we left the story of the Southeast Asia trip when we left Thailand, in a train carriage. we thought going by rail would be a great way to see the countryside of old Siam, the region's only never-colonized country, as we rolled towards one of its most recently de-colonized: Malaysia. what we didn't count on however, was that shortly after chugging out of Bangkok's main station, the lights in the firmament would fade out and we would be left to appreciate the many miles of Thai wilderness in almost complete darkness.


a night on the tracks

you may also remember that we were fortunate to have secured sleeping berths in our train carriage, so all the nighttime hours weren't completely wasted. though i will say that it's awfully hard to sleep on a moving train--even with ear plugs--unless you're extremely tired. that being said, trying to sleep on a moving train will get you awfully tired for the next night of sleeping on a moving train, so with a two-day trip it all kind of works itself out. it was the time in the middle that was kind of difficult, starting with being woken, or at least roused, early on the morning after leaving Bangkok, just as we were approaching the Thai-Malay border. the train ground to a halt and we were directed to take our bags and make our way through the long platform-side building that served as a joint ingress/egress point for both the Thai and Malay customs and immigration services. shortly after getting through that mess and setting off again we began making stops at all kinds of little Malaysian towns whereon hordes of folks joined themselves to our happy rolling throng. only we were getting less happy the more they piled themselves into our car, encroaching ever so slowly but very surely into our personal--and paid for--space, eventually practically sitting on top of me. for some reason i had assumed Malaysia would be more civilized than Thailand, but i felt quickly disabused of that notion by my very uncouth seat mates.


the Georgetown Mosque on Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

soon enough we ground to final halt in the rather unsightly town of Butterworth in northern Malaysia. here we were unceremoniously booted from the train so it could head back up to Thailand, and we wait for our ride to Kuala Lumpur. only thing was, it was still morning and our ride wasn't coming until late that evening. in the blistering heat we did the only thing anyone could do: we took the ferry over to Pulau Pinang--Pinang Island. the breeze on the boat was nice but as we stepped off the ferry with laden backpacks and no good map of Georgetown, we quickly felt the misery of our situation. it's pretty hard to adequately describe how hot it felt just walking around the outskirts of a semi-urban area completely exposed to the sun and the 100+% humidity. heat doesn't really bother me that much, but Jill was probably the most unhappy i've ever seen her. at this time we weren't married and i remember thinking that this was likely to be her at her worst and that if i could get through that day with her then we'd probably have no major problems in life. strangely enough, that may have been the day i decided we should get married.

in any case, after interminable minutes of wandering, we finally stumbled upon a mall of sorts, where we availed ourselves of their Pizza Hut. or Pizza Hut's air conditioning, more exactly. by the time we finally left there, the worst of the heat had thankfully passed and we began a more considered exploration of the place. on our way to see Fort Cornwallis and the famous mid-roundabout clock tower, we came upon a large mosque and decided to see what we could. the thing with that was, we arrived at this mosque just a day or two after the July 7th bombings of the London Underground and buses (about which we had heard very little), so the folks in the visitor's center were a little on edge when a Brit and an American showed up. we had a nice conversation with a well-spoken and thoughtful fellow there, who repeatedly apologized for those and the September 11th bombings, despite my telling him i strongly doubted his involvement. in our theological discussions, we didn't really agree on many points of doctrine, though he was very respectful and quite well informed of our LDS beliefs, and we learned quite a lot about Islam from him. he had us don long robes so that we could be taken for a tour of the large and airy mosque itself, which we did with great interest. it's still the only mosque we've ever been in.


enjoying a cool Kickapoo Joy Juice in the fierce heat of a KL Sunday brings obvious joy to my face. note the sweet haircut, specially designed back in Taiwan for the sultry Southeast Asia weather.

but soon the time came to leave, both the mosque and the island of Pinang. late that evening we boarded another sleeper train, much more tired this time than we had been the previous night, to begin the journey to Kuala Lumpur. KL, as it's often known, was just about as hot as Pinang had been, but there was more shade to be found in the shadows of the tall buildings. tall buildings like the famous Petronas Towers, owned by the national oil company and still the tallest twin towers in the world. until Taiwan built its incredible 101 building in Taipei, they were the tallest buildings period, and they do look awfully cool. there's a skybridge that runs between the two towers at about the 42nd floor, but they only let a certain number of people up there per day, and we didn't get there early enough to get tickets for the one day we were in town. just like the Taipei 101, however, the Petronas Towers have a sprawling mall at their base, and we spent some time enjoying the air conditioning there while we ate yet more pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen.



the spectacular Petronas twin towers in the heart of KL, and below, another shot of the same taken from the observation deck of the Menara Kuala Lumpur, a telecommunications tower a couple of miles away.



though we had found the folks in the north to be pretty much uncivilized, it was nice to be in a country where pretty much everyone speaks English, and quite well for the most part. standards of living seem pretty high, at least in the city, and i understand this is largely attributable to the vast wealth that Petronas generates and throws around. one wonders what will happen to Malaysia's economy when their oil reserves run out and there is no longer such a sector to prop the whole thing up. not to say that they haven't tried diversifying; folks in Britain will remember the the flashy introduction of Malaysian-made Proton vehicles somewhere in the late 80s. trouble is, you no longer see many of them in the UK and even though more than half the cars in KL are Protons, we understand they're heavily subsidized domestically. add to this the continued pandering and wealth-shifting to ethnic Malays by governments since the well-liked Mahathir Mohammed's, and you get a place that probably won't be somewhere you want to be when it all comes crashing down amidst enormous civil unrest. i'm no Malaysia scholar, but these were the general thoughts i remember having as we were there.

in any case, the so-called Garden City of Lights is actually a fairly pretty town, and one of the best places to get a panoramic view of it is from the top of the Menara Kuala Lumpur. i don't really know what Menara means, but the tower is owned by the Telekom Malaysia group and is apparently the fifth-tallest telecoms tower in the world. its top is even a little higher in elevation than those of the Petronas towers, but only because the base is set on a pretty high hill; the structure itself is a good deal shorter. either way, it's a fun ride to the top and the views are spectacular. and after coming back down we got some souvenirs at the--you guessed it--mall at the bottom and had Indian food at a restaurant that overlooked a tree-filled garden with monkeys clambering about.



the terrifying heights of the Menara Kuala Lumpur, and below, the awesome lodge we shared with some new Korean friends at the Firefly Park in Kuala Selangor.



but possibly the best thing we did in all of Malaysia was to take a very crowded city bus on a two-plus hour drive out to the coastal "town" of Kuala Selangor to see the highly recommended fireflies on the river. just when we thought the bus couldn't go any further, it kept on and on until we were finally booted off in a small parking lot in the middle of nowhere. at least there were a couple of Korean girls standing there looking as confused as we felt, so we agreed to share a taxi with them the remaining few miles out to what may be the most remote tourist attraction i've ever been to. but it was well worth it, and was actually packed with Chinese tourists, so good thing we had a reservation. the same could not be said for our random new friends however, so we opportunistically halved our bill by agreeing to share our little watertop chalet with them. the Firefly Park sells you tickets not only to their accommodations, but to their electrically powered--and thus virtually silent--boats that make late-night trips along an inlet from the Strait of Malacca in the Indian Ocean, along which many millions of fireflies light up the night like a fantastically starry sky. it's a lot cooler than it probably sounds, and we were even able to catch a couple of the flies by hand despite not being able to capture them on film. partly because it was so good, partly because we had come so far, and partly because our first ride was punctuated throughout by the loud belching of an old Chinese woman, we decided to ride again, which worked out nicely as we got a boat all to ourselves and the pilot was happy to extend the ride. i seem to remember that guy getting a good tip.


the $1,000,000 chair, carved from a single piece of jade, that Dr Nick the travel guide took us to see (and sit in, obviously). it's a lot more comfortable than it seems like it would be.

one poor fellow who did not, however, was Dr Nick. not really a doctor, but a nice guy nonetheless, he was our tour guide on our last day in KL, and he took us to see the amazing chair pictured above, among other things. though i can't find his card i know we have, i think he was working for the Tourism Malaysia folks running tours that people like us called up to book at the very last minute. it turned out that we were the only people on this particular one, and we were cramming it in just before we got on another train for Singapore, but he was very gracious and showed us pretty much everything we wanted to see and more.



the Batu Caves, clockwise from top left: the 272 steps leading up to the caves, which if climbed, it is said, will net the faithful Hindu forgiveness of half his sins. beware indeed, for monkeys come in all shapes and sizes... as apparently, do Hindu deities. even the many macaques were a little confused by it all. below, the views from inside the cavernous vaults were pretty enlightening:



one of the big places we wanted to see was the Batu Caves just north of KL, which are a series of vast caves set high in a limestone cliff that house one of the largest Hindu shrines outside of India--i mentioned that there were a lot of different racial and ethnic groups in Malaysia, didn't i? every year there is a festival here known as Thaipusam, which sees somewhere around a million and a half Hindus gather at the complex, some of them marching all the way from the Sri Mahamariamman Temple in KL to do fun things like put meat hooks through their backs and use them to pull carts up all 272 stairs to the top as an act of devotion. these are the same folks who get themselves all worked up into "spiritual" frenzies and push swords through their cheeks and other such fun things--quite a spectacle to witness i imagine, if you're there on that day. here's a little taste of what we did witness up in the caves, for the curious:

and then we come back to Dr Nick. he didn't climb the steps with us, but kindly waited around for us to get back, after which he took us to a couple of duty free shops, but with the express understanding that we were seeing only native handicrafts and had no obligation to buy. there was one pretty cool place with a whole demonstration of the batik making process and then several pretty amazing examples all over the walls and for sale. Dr Nick had picked us up from our hotel and had kindly agreed to drop us off at KL Sentral, the largest train station in Southeast Asia. by that time we were hungry from our excellent tour, and we wanted to thank our guide for the extra mile he had seemed to put in. the problem was we were all out of Malaysian Ringgit for a tip, and had only large denominations of American bills. to our shame we slipped from Nick's van into the station and used a credit card to buy Halal (meaning "permissible" in Arabic, and used kind of like a Kosher designation for Muslims) burgers at McDonald's, vowing that we'd mail him his tip when we got home. i still feel bad about stiffing the doctor; now if i could only find his card...


Dr Nick; not a doctor, but a pretty good travel guide and rubber tree-tapper.

thewat

i knew i was famous somewhere... it was rewarding to arrive in Thailand and find i was already practically a household name.

after biding our time earning a hefty tax break in Taiwan, we were finally able to head on our long awaited tour through Southeast Asia, beginning on that most Asian of holidays: the Fourth of July. when Americans plan a trip, the first impulse is to stay as far away from travel agents as possible, but as with all else this impulse is just the wrong one to take to Asia. our plans were not straightforward and we never got as good a price going through airline and hotel websites as we did just handing over the dates to our agent and letting her go to town. actually, i handed several sets of dates to several agents all over Taiwan and let them duke it out for the best deal. they each have these networks all across the region that give them sweet deals on certain airlines and hotels, and we finally chose what turned out to be a really good set of flights and lodgings from an agent named Jeannie Leng in Taipei. she was so good we even tried to get her to do all of our trips from Japan, but she couldn't arrange anything that didn't originate in Taiwan. so we took off on a China Airlines 747 for Bangkok and three and a half hours later we were safely on the ground and through customs at Don Muang airport.

following all of our adventures in Taiwan we thought ourselves pretty savvy travelers, and though we didn't feel like we had left our comfort zone, there was this awareness that we didn't know quite how things worked anymore, and we definitely didn't know our way around. we hadn't wanted to get guidebooks for each of the countries we'd be visiting, so we got one that covered the whole region, and so it wasn't very detailed regarding any single place. for that reason we decided to bite the bullet and take a taxi to our lodgings, rather than try to figure out a bus or something, as we usually would have done. good thing Thailand is cheap, because that airport (which is no longer in use for commercial flights) is way out of town, the taxi ride taking almost half an hour, most of it at freeway speeds (even on surface roads). fortunately, we had heard from several friends that taxi drivers at Don Muang pass along to passengers the hefty fee the airport charges them for getting in, so we hiked out of the transit loop (to the dismay of many drivers) and flagged down the first car we saw outside the gate.

our self-congratulation for being so travel smart was pretty short lived however, as the next day we got one of our best ever lessons through our own painful experience. our first intended stop in Bangkok was the impressive Grand Palace complex, formerly the residence of the Thai royal family. the huge area is walled and surrounded by water, either river or moats, and is not only heavily guarded but heavily visited. our taxi dropped us some distance from the main gate, but we espied another gate close by and made for it. before we could get to the guard however, a helpful English-speaking guy came over and asked if we were going in. "you'll have to wait," he said, "the palace is closed right now for morning prayers. is there anywhere else you'd like to see in Bangkok?" indeed, we told him, there were several other places, some of which we pointed to on our map. "no problem, just take a tuk-tuk (one of the small three-wheeled taxis for which Thailand is so famous) around to some of those places, and come back later in the day."


Jill in our first tuk-tuk. it's just as cramped as it looks, and much noisier besides, but has excellent air conditioning--at least when the cab is moving.

at that moment, a tuk-tuk just happened to pull up right next to us, and our helpful friend offered to tell the driver where we wanted to go. how nice, we thought, as we boarded our cramped and noisy ride, and the palace guard looked on. soon we were on our way to our next-best spot, the Golden Mount, or Wat Saket (Saket Temple). or so we thought, anyway. he first took us to a local temple he said was quiet and overlooked, which was enjoyable though in some disrepair. there we found people selling small birds for tourists to set free and by so doing gain answers to their prayers; we later learned that those birds were all trained to return to their cages. then, supposedly on our way to the Golden Mount, our driver began to tell us of a special deal whereby he would get some free gas for taking us to a duty-free shop, which would enable him to honor the low fare he had promised us (the other guy had negotiated with him to take us to about five places for 50 Baht, the equivalent of $1.25). fair enough, we agreed, as he assured us that all we had to do was look and pretend to be interested for a few minutes, and then he would get his free gas and we could go to the Golden Mount.

having done our duty we returned to our carriage, whereupon we were told we hadn't looked long enough, so we would have to go to another store. this process repeated itself a few more times, with each one making both the driver and me more angry. at the last stop we even bought a few of the cheap trinkets, but when he told me we hadn't spent enough i laid it out: he had better take us to the mount, or things were going to get nasty. he finally drove us there and let us out across the street, saying he'd find parking, but surprise surprise, when we came out he was nowhere to be found. at least we didn't have to part with our buck-25. it started to dawn on us how intricate and well orchestrated the scam had been, and how we hadn't seen it coming at all. the taxi driver drops us far from the palace entrance, right by a guy who just happens to be walking by and wants to help the foreigners. it also just happens to be prayer time and we can't go inside, but you can go see some other things and "oh look", there's a tuk-tuk right now, let me help you get a good deal. very smooth, and i'm sure every driver in town is part of that or a similar scam.



the overwhelming gold of the Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand's most sacred Buddhist temple, at the Grand Palace, which we finally saw later in the day. clockwise from top left: the Phra Sri Rattana chedi, a stupa that looks a lot like the Golden Mount; the guardians of Phra Mondop, the library; Jill doing her best gracious Thai pose in the clothes she was loaned and had to wear to be considered modest enough to enter the complex--shorts are not allowed; and some of the Yaksha demons that adorn the chedi. below, the Wat Arun, or Temple of the Dawn, lies directly across the Chao Phrya River from the Grand Palace and is one of the most visited temples in Bangkok.



it was frustrating that the guard hadn't done anything, but i guess that's not his job, and you've got to let your fellow countrymen hustle to earn their money. Thailand is very permissive with that kind of thing, but we're lucky this tame experience has taught us to be very cautious in all our travels, including helping us to avoid the very costly art scam in Beijing. i did wonder what King Bhumibol thinks about all the scamming. Thailand's long-serving monarch is widely revered in his country, possibly due to his having spent some of his vast personal fortune on development projects in rural areas (also perhaps because to insult him is a jailable crime). we went to see a movie at what was rumored to be the world's largest movie theater, in the MBK shopping center, and following the previews there came on a song for which everyone in the theater stood up. as we rose we saw pictures of the king flash up on the screen in slideshow fashion, a demonstration which continued for the full five minutes of what we determined must be the national anthem. it was kind of surreal but people seemed to genuinely reverence their very own Rama (IX).



one of the many large monuments to current King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his wife Queen Sirikit, this one just off a large intersection. below, a longboat like the one on which we cruised the mighty Chao Phrya River, which runs right through Bangkok. if you follow this far enough out, you come to huge floating markets, wherein people sell their produce from tiny punts. where we went there were only a couple of ladies floating around and selling Singha beer, and who urged us to buy one to thank our driver. not very smart, perhaps, but certainly politic.



at some point during our stay in Thailand, we knew we would have to satisfy one of Jill's greatest ever dreams: riding on an elephant. to her this was synonymous with a trip to Siam, and since there isn't much room for the giant creatures in town anymore, we signed up for an all day excursion out to one of the national parks. before going to Khao Yai, which lies (i think) to the northeast of Bangkok, our awesome guide Sumpit took us to some village markets and for what she called an ock-cart ride. it took us a while to figure out that x is a hard letter for Thai people to say.


the authentic Thailand trip, clockwise from top left: our great guide Sumpit, whose English wasn't quite excellent, but may have been eckellent; some of the tasty morsels available in a typical Thai marketplace; Jill and me in front of the Haew Narok waterfalls in Khao Yai National Park; and us on our ock-cart, which was much more fun than we thought it would be.

the actual elephants were really cool, and it was amazing to be riding through a jungle on them. there were signs all along the road through the park that warned of elephants crossing, though we didn't see any that way. our mounts were brought to a tall platform by young fellows who used hooks to steer the beasts by their ears. there were seats strapped onto their backs for us, but we were also allowed to shuffle off and sit right on their necks, which meant you had their haunches pressing into you with each lumbering step. no fear of lawsuits here; in fact, there was a Dutch family on the tour with us, a couple and their two sons. the father, René, was riding with one of the boys when the seat mount slipped and he almost feel clean off the elephant. somehow he managed to stay on but he looked a bit shaken up--it feels higher than it looks up there.



Jill and me on our sturdy beast, spurred on by the handler's constant shouting of "ma maa, ma ma maaa!". in the picture above, try to spot the deliberate mistake, an act of which we were mercifully unaware at the time. below, we had been wisely advised to buy some bananas at the country market, each of which our hungry elephant took down whole. this was way better than the zoo.



but we had to come down at some point and return to the zoo of Bangkok. it's a busy city that is actually a lot less dirty than it very easily could be, but is kind of packed with dirty old white guys, all walking around with 12-year-old Thai girls. but once again, this is something that everybody in the City of Angels (that's really Bangkok's nickname) seems to turn a blind eye to, and we tried to ignore it also as we avoided the clubs and headed off the see more Buddhas. i think i've already mentioned that despite there being literally millions of Buddha statues in the world, each one of them has a very specific claim to fame, usually relating to size. we visited the (supposedly) tallest seated Buddha in Taiwan and saw the (again supposedly, there's no way to really tell) tallest seated Buddha in the world in Hong Kong, along with Japan's largest in Nara. we've seen some of the largest standing Buddhas in the world, and probably the largest Buddha that sits right on the Tropic of Cancer. i'm sure there's also a category for largest Buddha built by blind monks, as well as one for largest Buddha standing on a hill or resting in a valley or even on a park bench; the categories are literally endless. but here in Thailand we entered a whole new league: the reclining Buddha.



the "Reclining Buddha" at Wat Pho, or aptly enough, The Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok. his mother-of-pearl-inlaid feet are very famous and come with a sign warning: "DON'T TOUCH MOTHER OF PEARL". Jill's cape is to piously cover her arms rather than a sartorial choice, although it does make her look quite English departmenty. below, the Phra Buddhajinaraja, an impressive Thai-style Buddha inside the Wat Benchamabophit, or Marble Temple, a heavy tourist draw in its own right.



not so much reclining as just lying down, the Buddha is still pretty impressive at 46 meters (151 feet) long, and is probably claimed to be the widest Buddha in the world. well, whatever, we've pretty much seen them all, the skinny Thai ones, the moderate Japanese ones, and the jolly fat Chinese ones, and i can tell you that once you've seen a couple of each kind you've more than seen them all. so after a long day of Buddha watching and shopping at the endless street markets, you... take a tuk-tuk to one of the night markets, of course. the one we went to is called the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, and is huge and more organized than its name makes it sound. rows and rows of very interesting shops, along with several restaurants and the strange but famous Joe Louis Puppet Theater, made for some good souvenir shopping, dinner and sightseeing. Suan Lum is definitely a place you have to go in Bangkok. but even night shopping has to come to an end at some point, so we headed back to another recommended spot in town, our hostel the Suk 11:



views of the very friendly Suk 11 hostel, named after the road on which it stands. the main road across town is called Sukhumvit, and all the side roads are sois, each with a number. this cabinesque lodge is, oddly enough, on Sukhumvit Soi 11. clockwise from top left: the Swiss Family Robinson look of the outside; the acceptable graffiti on the inside; the communal-feeling lobby; and us leaving our mark, in English and Chinese. below, much less comfortable accommodations on the train to Malaysia.



mercifully far from the hippie mecca of Khao San Road, the Suk 11 is nevertheless pretty bare bones and communal, but is clean and convenient, not to mention really atmospheric. and it sure beat our lodgings for the next couple of nights: a train sleeper carriage on the way to Kuala Lumpur. check out the preview of that little adventure above, and thejayfather will bring you the full story soon.

thetyphoon

wild weather has had a habit of following me around, but now it just
may be getting ahead of itself. we are due to fly back to Taipei from
Hong Kong in a couple of hours, and are hoping that the airport there
is open again after Typhoon Haitang passed through. we have been
keeping close track of the storm's progress, since our flights back to
the US are in just a couple of days, and i really don't want to be in
Asia anymore. but it looks like Haitang will make landfall on the
mainland of the Middle Kingdom today, so we are told everything is
open and operating again in Taipei. and to think we almost scheduled
our vacation to end yesterday.

part of me, however, was wishing that it had ended yesterday. having
covered five countries in just under two weeks, i was getting to be an
avid collector of stamps in my passports. this avarice drove me to
make the trip across the Pearl River Delta to China's other "Special
Administrative Region", Macau. big mistake. no matter how badly you
want a stamp in your passport, don't go there. i had been given this
advice before, but it went unheeded as i undertook the costly trip
anyway. in contrast to Hong Kong, Macau is a dirty hole with perhaps
one-and-a-half mildly interesting sights, but certainly nothing worth
having to spend part of your life there. about the only cool part of
the trip was the mode of transportation: the jetfoil boat. this is a
large, Boeing-made boat which is indeed powered by a jet engine, and
rides up out of the water on a pair of aircraft wing-like foils.
needless to say it was a fast, and very smooth way to travel across
the South China Sea.

but i'm still looking forward to travelling across it even faster back
to Taiwan.

thecolonies

so Hong Kong is pretty much the perfect way to cap off this whirlwind
'round Asia trip. it is just about as clean as Singapore, but without
all the ridiculous rules and fines for everything (it really is true
that chewing gum is banned in Singapore). Hong Kong is also about
twice the size of Singapore, with many more than twice the number of
attractions. for instance, yesterday we rode up the famous tram to
Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island and beheld one of the most
spectacular sights i've ever seen. the well known Central Skyline,
including the perfect geometry of the Bank of China building, appeared
to our right as we neared the upper tram terminus, with what seemed
like the whole of Hong Kong spread out beyond that. what made it
almost perfect was that we went up shortly before sunset and watched
the billions of neon lights come on all over town as the natural light
receded. it was truly spectacular.

on the way back to Kowloon we took the also-famed Star Ferry (we rode
on the "Twinkling Star"), and browsed some of the hundreds of shops
lining Nathan Road, on which i think is the "Golden Mile". i imagine
we'll get to check that out today, along with yet more Chinese night
markets. hopefully this is the last shopping i'll have to do for a
while, and hopefully you put in your gift requests already.

theairport

well folks, i'm using a free internet terminal inside the
gate/boarding area at the Changi airport in Singapore. i only have a
couple of minutes before i have to get on the plane, but this was so
cool i had to use it.

we just got back from a short stop in Indonesia, at this little resort
in the middle of nowhere on this paradise white sand island. it was
one of the high points of the trip so far. now only Hong Kong to go,
then back to Taiwan for a couple of days to finalize business there,
and then home to the States.

see you then.

theelephants

that's right, the elephants. among many other things we did in
Thailand, a couple of days into the trip we took off on a tour into
the jungles of the country and rode some very large Indian elephants.
pretty much only the pictures do that experience any justice, but it
will be a while before i can get those up here, so you'll have to
imagine. the people are all pretty relaxed about stuff out here, so
we even got to ride on the necks of the creatures, which is really
weird since you can feel their haunches going up and down right
underneath your buttocks, which makes you feel like you'll be thrown a
long way every time they step. then we fed them bananas--boy can they
eat a lot! long story short: it was pretty cool--the best of
Thailand.

then on Friday we boarded a train for our 22 hour overnight journey to
Northern Malaysia, where we waited and looked around a little in what
felt like hot fiery hell for our next train down to Kuala Lumpur.
that one was only 10 hours overnight, putting us here just a few hours
ago, but take a look at a map and try to figure out how the journey
from Butterworth to KL could possibly take so long. i think they
waited till we were all asleep and then stopped the train and took a
nap themselves. honestly.

in general and so far, i have found Malaysia to be much dirtier both
than Thailand and than i had expected it to be. KL is pretty nice,
and we are currently just outside the Petronas Towers, which are a
much more amazing sight in person than in pictures, but the whole trip
is quite different than i had imagined. out of Bangkok, Thailand was
quite beautiful and looked something like i imagine the plains of
Africa to look like. unexpectedly, i quite liked Thailand, but
Malaysia has yet to win me over completely. perhaps it will soon; we
are on our way out of KL to a small resort that specializes in short
cruises to watch fireflies. check out www.fireflypark.com if you want
to see what thejayfather is in for.

thestart

well this is it, the first email post from "the road". we had a
pretty uneventful, though very late trip from Taipei to Bangkok, and
woke up around noon to find an enormous city teeming with people from
all over the world. i've been surprised so far by the large numbers
of Europeans, Middle Easterners and Africans who are here, all
probably chasing the same supposed bargains (or ladies of the night)
that bring Americans here. many of the prices are actually fairly
comparable to elsewhere, though there are some deals to be had, if you
don't get hustled by the tuk-tuk drivers. apparently, this week is a
very special week, with the "Thai Center" buying gasoline for the
insane drivers of the ubiquitous three-wheeled taxis, allowing special
fares to be had by all passengers. that is, as long as the driver
gets to take you to the shops of each of his friends along the way.
not that thejayfather would know about this from firsthand experience
however...

so we've seen markets galore, and more gaudy golden palaces and
temples than you could shake a very large stick at, and we've only
been awake here for about seven hours. i imagine that tomorrow there
will be a bit more of the same, but we plan to work in some Thai
boxing and an elephant ride. if we can get one of those tuk-tuks to
take us out of the city, that is.

thetest

behold the test of the new email blog entry system. i'm trying to see
if i will be able to keep up on the blogging during my tour of
Southeast Asia, by using this special email address to make posts. if
this works, you just might get one or two updates from the road,
though they'll have to wait until i get back to be formatted and have
pictures added.

stay tuned; i leave tomorrow night.