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!

Hong Kong Markets and Shenzhen.

What do these have in common? Shopping!

Hong Kong: Wanchai is a popular shopping area near our house – outlets as well as food.We've got pictures and videos of the food! The pictures show fish and vegetable stands -- unfortunately what you won't get are the smells, which can be, um, incredible. But when they develop smellovision online, we'll bring it to you first here at the Hong Kong Chronicles! The first video is of a man wrapping up live crabs – then they stack these for purchase. Click on the link or cut and paste the address into your explorer widow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-za6ADzKS0

The second two clips show how fresh the Chinese love their meat - the first is a chicken getting its throat slit and the second is meat being cut up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24vp3WQCa8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GILYxfMilpU

Here is a link to photos of both Hong Kong and Shenzhen:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=hggnkpd.5zontm6l&Uy=-ixp9gq&Ux=1

Shenzhen is in what we call Mainland China, just across the border from the Chinese Special Admininistrative Region of Hong Kong. Folks say it is what Hong Kong used to be in terms of tailors and good shopping deals. However, because it is in China, visitors (even Hong Kong residents) need a visa to shop there. It was a fishing village until Deng Xioping singled it out to be the first of five special economic zones of China in the late 1970s. Due to its status, it's gotten a lot of foreign investment and has been one of the fastest growing cities in the world. It is also the busiest port in China.

The shopping mall most visited by tourists and Hong Kong natives is Lo Wu Commerical City – you take a 40 minute train from Hong Kong, step off and there are all 6 floors of tiny shops. Everything from nail salons, tailors, stores selling clothes, handbags, fabric, DVDs, jewelry and electrical goods, even spas. We bought a book written especially for shoppers to navigate the center – and even then it was extremely confusing and overwhelming. We felt like little mice in a maze. We arrived early Saturday morning and with an attack strategy any army general would have admired. Though the book warned us of the paparazzi feeling we would experience, we were not prepared to be asked every minute, “DVD? Buy watch? Mister, come look, buy! Where you go, I take you there…” in addition to be tugged at and pulled down hallways. We came up with a defense of speaking animatedly in a French/Spanish mix that somewhat baffled the people so they left us alone for a few minutes till the next barrage.

We first chose a tailor and proceeded to get measured and choose fabric. The tailors were conveninetly located next to a huge fabric market with every type and color fabric you could imagine.. A suit ran from $40 US to a shirt or skirt from $10-15. Then we had to check out the fake handbags and shoes. We were led away from one shoe shop through a bed linen store to a hidden back room where there were more knock-off shoes, hand bags, ties, clothes. We had the impression something weird was happening but never quite figured it out and walked away with lots of goodies.

Bargaining was also something we thought we were prepared for – but definitely not. After some practice, we finally honed our skills. We would counteroffer 1/3 the quoted price. The bargainer would act all offended, talk about profits etc and we would go back and forth for about 10 minutes. Then we would have to walk out and say – “oh well – we’ll go somewhere else.” Then they would run after you and pull you back and we’d ultimately end up around 50% of the original price. Mind you – all this could end up saving you only $5 depending on the item – so we then started doing a time vs. money cost-benefit analysis.

We stayed at the beautiful Shangri La within walking distance to rest up for the next day. Sunday morning we started out in a photo shop that does wedding photos. It is customary for people in Hong Kong to get wedding photos way before wedding to include in invites and to have life sized photos at the reception. We thought it would be fun to get photos in both Chinese and traditional attire. They did all the hair and make up and had the costumes! It was very fun and cost all of about $40! Check out the very cheesy photos!

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=hggnkpd.4hth6xsl&Uy=-7fkuoj&Ux=1

Then after a second stressful day of shopping, shirts, shorts, jewelry, eye glasses, soccer jerseys, oil paintings, tailor fittings…. we went to a spa to get massages - they were a great bargain and a great way to end to a very fun weekend!