This weekend I went to Malaysia! Singapore is very western, Malaysia is not at all. The bus ride was interesting, to say the least. It took 2 local buses, a subway, and one long bus ride to get to Melaka. My Canadian friend Rahul and I rode the bus together to meet everyone else there. On the bus ride from Johor Bahru (just over the border) to Melaka, I let him take care of most everything since he planned the trip and actually knew where to go. He took me to a bus, and when we climbed on, he went to the back, and when I passed the front seat, this old guy starts yelling at me to sit next to him. I looked at him with probably terror in my eyes, and just pointed at Rahul and ran after him. We sat in the back, and it was incredibly bouncy and dirty. It’s a 3 ½ or 4 hour ride, and after 2 hours, we stopped for a bathroom break. The old man came up to me and said, “You should go relieve yourself, my dear.” I didn’t know if I should laugh or scream. So he came and sat by us and talked to us forever, after explaining to me that he only wanted to talk. He was a little creepy, but he turned out to be a harmless old man. He asked us to guess his heritage, age, and how much money he had – a little weird. And now Rahul keeps calling me "my dear." Creepy.
So we finally got to Melaka and the hostel we were going to stay in was full, so we met up with the others and searched for another. We got a room that was gross, but dirt cheap and slept 4 girls to a room comfortably. We had our own room and bathroom and we each paid 15 ringgits, which is about $4 US. Let’s see, my impressions of Melaka. It’s certainly real Asia. There were open sewers, stray cats, and it was pretty dirty. But actually, some parts of it reminded me of Florida. There would be a poor, dirty neighborhood right next to a nice, wealthy area with brand new cars. And of course, the climate and plants reminded me of Florida, too. It was gorgeous weather, though a bit hot. The first night, we got there so late that all we did was find a bar and hang out for a while before we went to bed. Not meaning to toot my own horn, but apparently I was a big hit with the locals on the dance floor. I doubt they had ever seen a real-live natural blonde before. So that was fun. And all my friends are still making fun of me for it, too.
The next day, we slept late and got up for checkout and lunch. I love Asia because food is cheap! At home, a cheap meal (but better than McDonald’s) would cost me US$7. In Singapore, lunch runs about US$2 and in Malaysia, it’s about US$1. So I eat a lot. I think on Saturday we probably ate 5 times. We didn’t do much during the day – it’s extremely difficult getting 8 people organized onto a plan. We walked around in an open market for a little while and bought bracelets and sunglasses. When we went to the tourist office for information, we walked around shops there, too. I saw a little girl who was 1 or 2 years old. She waved hello to me, so I kneeled down to talk to her. I had my hair back in a bandanna, but she still reached around to grab it. Something like that would never happen in Singapore, but in the rest of Asia, it does. I gave her my sunglasses to play with, and she tried to run off with them, but her mom stopped her. It was very cute.
We took a ferry to Pelau Besar, an island of the southwest coast of Malaysia. We were planning on spending the night at the “resort hotel” there. Apparently in Malay, “resort hotel” means “campground.” We had a cabin in the woods. There were 3 beds for 4 girls, so we pushed them together and shared it. There were two showers, which really came in handy because when I was in the shower, 3 frogs jumped through the hole in the floor (the drain). I screamed at the top of my lungs because I turned around, and they were just there! I tried to get the guys to get them out, and they wouldn’t because they're all big girls, so I just used the other shower. When the maintenance guy came to fix the a/c, he took the frogs out for us. But the next day while Bailey was showering, 2 more jumped back in. And in the morning, the freely roaming roosters crowed right outside our window from dawn until lunch time. We got there about 6 pm on Saturday, not realizing that there’s not a thing to do on the island after dark – the only thing on the island is our hotel, an eating place, and a stretch of land where a lot of vacationing Malays were camping. But it turned out to be a lot of fun. We spent the evening in one cabin all together playing card games and telling each other our most embarrassing moments. There were a lot of things we found out about each other that I’m not sure I wanted to know. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim, and on the island, we could hear the prayer music broadcasted on the radios throughout the whole island 5 times a day. That was pretty cool.
On Sunday, we decided to go to the beach on the island before heading back. We slept in again and woke up for brunch. When we headed down to the beach, we discovered that the sewers were running directly onto the beach. So we walked down a little further and found another beach that was covered in trash. So we walked some more and finally found a little beach cove in between a jetty and a mangrove. We hung out there for a while. The water was still kind of gross, but that’s Malaysia for you. Since it was a cove, it was very shallow, so we didn’t do much swimming, just hanging out in the water, which was fine with me. And despite putting on SPF 45 sunscreen, I still got sunburn on my back. I guess when I’m at the equator I’ll have to switch to SPF 250. We took the ferry back over to the mainland and got a taxi to the bus station. We ate dinner and shopped around a little until our bus left for Singapore. I know we didn’t actually DO a lot, but it was tons of fun.
Now I’m just hanging out and doing school stuff. It’s a weird thought that I went on vacation to Malaysia for the weekend and then just came back to school like usual. Classes are going well. I enjoy most of them. And they come in handy because I’m meeting a lot of Singaporean students. I made friends! I brought my friend Natalie along with all my exchange student friends to the movies, and during dinner, they questioned her forever about living in Singapore. By the way, the movies only cost US$4. So I’ll be seeing movies a lot, I think.
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