Malaysia is Truly Asia!

That’s the ad campaign for Malaysia – catchy, eh? It really is an amazing and diverse country, and Allison and I were fortunate to visit it, slipping out just as the monsoon season was about to begin! Malaysia is a nation of 22 million people; it borders Thailand and Indonesia. It’s a multi-cultural country, a blend of Chinese, Indian, and Malay peoples with different languages, religions, and cultures, who manage to get along pretty well and share a country. Crazy, huh? We started out on a beautiful island called Tioman – it’s a tropical paradise where, years ago, they filmed the movie version of South Pacific. We recently got our scuba certification, and Tioman is a great diving spot, so if you check out the pics, you’ll see both land and underwater shots! It’s our first experiment with underwater photography, using a disposable camera, but still pretty cool pics. Scuba is amazing!! We saw lots of incredible creatures, though sadly they didn’t all make it to film -- like that Ariel from The Little Mermaid. She was cool, but camera-shy; she’s a lot shorter in real life, by the way.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=hggnkpd.22zesi1p&Uy=kaop1g&Ux=1

Next we headed to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capitol and largest city. We were there briefly, but we did see the famous Petronas Towers, the tallest building in the world when it was finished in 1999. And we’ve included a few pics of a Hindu temple and a beautiful mosque (Malaysia is predominantly Islamic) that I was allowed to visit in a borrowed robe, hence the choir outfit:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=hggnkpd.5hlwtx0d&Uy=-9d2tan&Ux=1

We then headed to Georgetown, also know as Penang, the country’s second largest city, where Allison had several days of meetings with colleagues, and I did a little exploring, a little attempted writing (yes, my book is making progress but I don’t recommend lining up at the bookstore just yet . . . ), and lots of eating. We dined several times at hawker stalls, where for just a few ringits you can try nasi goring with anchovies, sizzling noodles, and some great frog porridge, if you’re feeling adventurous. Some places actually have the live frogs out front – so you KNOW it’s fresh. Hey, who wants to be disappointed with stale frog? Yes, we did have frog, but regrettably, no photographic evidence of this . . .

On our last weekend in Malaysia, we went up to the beautiful, breezy and cool mountain country of the Cameron Highlands. We shot some great video at the Boh Tea Estates (now with voiceover! Another Hong Kong Chronicles technical breakthrough – the TALKIE!). You can see and hear it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U-wHS2gKtY

The tea plantations are spectacularly lovely, with steep rolling hills in numberless shades of green -- but the Cameron Highlands actually had many other attractions. We visited a lush Mossy Forest, with tigers and elephants! OK, they were tiger lilies and elephant grass, but very pretty. The cup-shaped flower in the pics is the pitcher plant, which gathers water, than lures in insects, or small children if available, and gobbles them. We also went to a “butterfly farm” that had several other critters, from bunnies to stick insects, but which we found rather sad. Much better was the strawberry farm, where you can do “self-plucking,” for a fair price. Hey, I admit it, I did a little self-plucking! I’m not made of stone, but flesh and blood. As usual, we ate experimentally, including a nice Indian sidewalk place with banana leaves for plates. Check out the visuals of Cameron Highlands:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=hggnkpd.6sr82ztp&Uy=a8iisd&Ux=1

Now we’re back in Hong Kong, working, exploring, and having various adventures we’ll blog about soon, in the next episode of . . . The Hong Kong Chronicles! See you there!