That's my leg. I misapplied suntan lotion. I am in pain.
Location:Siem Reap,Cambodia
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Kuala Lumpur
After Vietnam, we had a two day interlude in KL to catch our breath. KL is a distinctive place. It's is verrrry metropolitan, even moreso than Singapore in some ways. It has the feel of a major western city in terms of architecture-major skyscrapers everywhere, even one called the twin towers.
But it's also quite unsafe and much less friendly than Vietnam. We had a great cab driver who complained about the corruption of Malaysia in general and KL in particular. Overall, I'd say I liked but did not love it. We did have some fantastic food, but I didn't feel as at ease as I did in Vietnam.
On to the pictographs!
We had to wake up very early to catch the flight. Boo hoo!
Disembarking into Malaysia.
Gasp! Our first golden arches in weeks! I had a big Mac, fries, and a milkshake.
Snake wranglers! This was weird. The human won.
We went to the Malaysian National Museum, which was cool if somewhat whitewashed. This dragon sculpture represents the whole museum. The thing about Malaysia is we really knew nothing about it. Here are some fun facts.
1. The official religion of Malaysia is Islam. Official religions in general creep me out a bit.
2. Malaysia prides itself on being multicultural, as it ha large Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations. The museum stressed this a lot, but it seemed to be much more rhetoric than reality. Still, it's a nice sentiment!
3. The Malawian flag is very similar to the American flag.
4. Colonialism/imperialism really fucked things up, and I'm talking about the European kind. Malaysian history is basically a litany of different European countries conquering and then exploiting the country. This lasts up till the 1950s! America has it's faults but I am proud we don't have a hard imperialistic history. Lefty friends/family feel free to lambast me about how we are too imperialists now! You're mistaken!
Then we went to the space museum, which frankly sucked. There was an antigravity room that was essentially just a slide. Chris went down it.
Wouldn't you know it, but then we got caught in a monsoon! We hid under a bridge basically. One of the biggest, loudest storms I'd ever been in!
We then traipsed through a large park, soggy and wet, until we found a bird sanctuary with a cafe attached to it. The birds were cool but got too close and tried to eat our food! Rude.
This is where we saw wild monkeys as well. Hello, monkey!
You can tell the bird park was cool bc Martha Stewart visited it.
Ok this is weird. Many KL beauty parlors offered body whitening. What's THAT all about!
As I said before, malaysian flag very similar to American. See? They also have millions of them all over the place. It's a bit ostentatious.
But it's also quite unsafe and much less friendly than Vietnam. We had a great cab driver who complained about the corruption of Malaysia in general and KL in particular. Overall, I'd say I liked but did not love it. We did have some fantastic food, but I didn't feel as at ease as I did in Vietnam.
On to the pictographs!
We had to wake up very early to catch the flight. Boo hoo!
Disembarking into Malaysia.
Gasp! Our first golden arches in weeks! I had a big Mac, fries, and a milkshake.
Snake wranglers! This was weird. The human won.
We went to the Malaysian National Museum, which was cool if somewhat whitewashed. This dragon sculpture represents the whole museum. The thing about Malaysia is we really knew nothing about it. Here are some fun facts.
1. The official religion of Malaysia is Islam. Official religions in general creep me out a bit.
2. Malaysia prides itself on being multicultural, as it ha large Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations. The museum stressed this a lot, but it seemed to be much more rhetoric than reality. Still, it's a nice sentiment!
3. The Malawian flag is very similar to the American flag.
4. Colonialism/imperialism really fucked things up, and I'm talking about the European kind. Malaysian history is basically a litany of different European countries conquering and then exploiting the country. This lasts up till the 1950s! America has it's faults but I am proud we don't have a hard imperialistic history. Lefty friends/family feel free to lambast me about how we are too imperialists now! You're mistaken!
Then we went to the space museum, which frankly sucked. There was an antigravity room that was essentially just a slide. Chris went down it.
Wouldn't you know it, but then we got caught in a monsoon! We hid under a bridge basically. One of the biggest, loudest storms I'd ever been in!
We then traipsed through a large park, soggy and wet, until we found a bird sanctuary with a cafe attached to it. The birds were cool but got too close and tried to eat our food! Rude.
This is where we saw wild monkeys as well. Hello, monkey!
You can tell the bird park was cool bc Martha Stewart visited it.
Ok this is weird. Many KL beauty parlors offered body whitening. What's THAT all about!
As I said before, malaysian flag very similar to American. See? They also have millions of them all over the place. It's a bit ostentatious.
Sapa
This is going to be a long post.
Sapa was one of my fave spots so far. We took an overnight train there and spent one night in the village, then another overnight train back to Hanoi.
The cool thing about sapa is how pastoral it is. There are staggered terraces of rice paddies every direction you look, with small cottages and shacks interspersed between, and the Himalayan mountains looming thousands of feet in the air above.
The mountains have been carved out into terraces to maximize the amount of rice grown. The weather is cool here (relatively, it's still in the 80s), so the locals can only grow one harvest of rice a year, as opposed to three harvests in the rest of the country. The terraces allow them to maximize their crop output.
This is me, in case you forgot what I look like.
These are more Hmong people! They pestered us to buy trinkets from them in very clear english. Most weren't actually fluent - they'd just memorized some phrases. The vietnamese language is highly phonetic, making it easy for them to mimic American accents in a fairly convincing way.
Open air market in sapa. This was the fruit area. I'll show you the meat area later.
Scorpion wine.
This is our tour guide, Kroon! I think he thought we were too goofy at first, but he warmed up to us by the end. Note: he's not the blond one, thats Val.
Purdy.
Those are the Himalayas in the distance.
This is a young child sweeping. I always found sweeping kind of fun.
A pig! I chased him.
Path down to the Hmong village.
Oh one other thing. There are wild dogs everywhere in Vietnam! This is a cute wild puppy! Hmmm. Why would there be lots of dogs around? Read on!
More snake wine! No lie, right next to it was TIGER TESTICLE WINE! I took a pic but it didn't come out.
Rice, up close and personal.
If you can make out this sign, you should read it. The English translation is hilarious.
Like waterfalls.
A chained one legged monkey. It was sad.
We walked about 6 miles in bonecrushing heat. Good adjective, me!
Danielle approaching the buffalo.
Val gets an asthma attack and takes a ride back to the hotel.
Ok. I should have warned you. I have been alluding to this all post but this is a dead dog being prepared to be eaten.
A decapitated cow.
Sunset in sapa!
Sapa was one of my fave spots so far. We took an overnight train there and spent one night in the village, then another overnight train back to Hanoi.
The cool thing about sapa is how pastoral it is. There are staggered terraces of rice paddies every direction you look, with small cottages and shacks interspersed between, and the Himalayan mountains looming thousands of feet in the air above.
The mountains have been carved out into terraces to maximize the amount of rice grown. The weather is cool here (relatively, it's still in the 80s), so the locals can only grow one harvest of rice a year, as opposed to three harvests in the rest of the country. The terraces allow them to maximize their crop output.
This is me, in case you forgot what I look like.
These are more Hmong people! They pestered us to buy trinkets from them in very clear english. Most weren't actually fluent - they'd just memorized some phrases. The vietnamese language is highly phonetic, making it easy for them to mimic American accents in a fairly convincing way.
Open air market in sapa. This was the fruit area. I'll show you the meat area later.
Scorpion wine.
This is our tour guide, Kroon! I think he thought we were too goofy at first, but he warmed up to us by the end. Note: he's not the blond one, thats Val.
Purdy.
Those are the Himalayas in the distance.
This is a young child sweeping. I always found sweeping kind of fun.
A pig! I chased him.
Path down to the Hmong village.
Oh one other thing. There are wild dogs everywhere in Vietnam! This is a cute wild puppy! Hmmm. Why would there be lots of dogs around? Read on!
More snake wine! No lie, right next to it was TIGER TESTICLE WINE! I took a pic but it didn't come out.
Rice, up close and personal.
If you can make out this sign, you should read it. The English translation is hilarious.
Like waterfalls.
A chained one legged monkey. It was sad.
We walked about 6 miles in bonecrushing heat. Good adjective, me!
Danielle approaching the buffalo.
Val gets an asthma attack and takes a ride back to the hotel.
Ok. I should have warned you. I have been alluding to this all post but this is a dead dog being prepared to be eaten.
A decapitated cow.
Sunset in sapa!
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