Postcard from Melacca

Yesterday I arrived in Melacca, the famous trading port for hundreds of years. Melacca was first colonized by Arab traders, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and the English for 100-150 years each! Talk about a lot of colonizing. Today it is turning in to quite a tourist attraction. I walked around this morning and saw a couple of tourist attractions and tons of tourist markets selling those tourist trinkets that people buy and give to people who aren't sure what to do with them.

There is a replica of an old Portuguese Gallion from 1512 on display which is an example of "colonial plundering of Malaysia."

There were tons of museums everywhere. I think it might rival the smithsonion for number of museums in one place. I wasn't very interested in them so I only went to one which kept making me take my shoes off and put them in a plastic bag to carry around.

Also in Melacca was St. Paul's Church on the top of the main hill that used to be the Portuguese fort. It was later abandoned by the Dutch when their church was built on the bottom of the hill. St. Francis used to visit this church often and his body was interred here for 9 months after his death. That is his statue.

After a little sightseeing, I hopped a bus to Kuala Lumpur.

Singapore Supplimental

I've got a couple more pictures from Singapore that I took my last morning there.

The first one is the skyline from my friend's appartment complex. I share it with you so you can see the skyline of almost all of singapore: more appartment complexes!

The second one speaks for itself. Kakapoo Joy Juice? Yum.

Postcard from Singapore

I arrived in Singapore yesterday afternoon and immediately met up with my friends. We've been hanging out for the last day. It is good to have people I know to hang out with and go see stuff with. I've been to Singapore before so it isn't much different than last time. People are more organize, get in lines and stuff is more expensive here. That is about it. Oh, and the public transportation is REALLY easy to use.

Last night we all went on the night safari at the Singapore Zoo. We took the tram ride around for the first 45 minutes and then walked the trails for a couple of hours. I have to say it was really interesting to see all the animals at night. They get really active. Usually at zoos they are just sitting around or sleeping whereas at the night safari, they were all up and moving. The Night Safari is highly recommended if you ever visit Singapore.

We went shopping today just to see around. Lots of good food too! Pretty expensive. After sunset we went out to the beach for some reason. I guess my friends like the beach after dark. It was nice though and we had some Singapore Slings. They were... a little overated if they are rated at all. I guess you have to have one when you come here though.

Tomorrow I'm off to Malaka to get some ferry tickets for later on in the trip. Good news too! We got our Letter of Invitation for Uzbekistan so we can now get the visa. I was really worried that wasn't going to happen. All the visas are now coming together.

Postcard from Kuala Lumpur

I decided that maybe the best way to keep all of you up on my travels was to send postcards from the different places I'm going with pictures (when possible). Here is the first, from Kuala Lumpur.

I've been in Kuala Lumpur for about a week and a half now and have been all over the city (mostly walking). KL has some of the phenomenal eateries. All very cheap too! Its a mixture of Chinese, Malay and Indian food which is really spicy and good.

I've successfully gotten three visas so far. China, Russia and Kyrgyz. I wasn't able to get the Uzbekistan visa yet since we haven't gotten the Letter of Invitation yet (they are mad at the US so they are making it hard), or the Kazakhstan visa (it takes a whole week to get it and I don't have a week left). We'll have to get those later.

Here are some pictures from different places I visited that were photo worthy.



This photo is of the Batu Caves. They are a set of three caves just north of KL that you can take a bus to. There are 272 steps leading up and a huge statue of some god sitting there. The caves were okay with lots of little shrines around inside and lots of monkeys that are mean. There was also a cave just to the left of this picture that went back 2.2km but I didn't go back since I've seen caves before and you had to pay to do it.



Of course you can't go to KL without visiting the Petronas Towers. This is the view from the top. I must admit that I haven't been up them yet. I just haven't felt the need yet. Interestingly (at least to me), Petronas means Petrochemical Nasional which is the national gas company. Gotta love what monopolies can afford.

Sorry about the haze in the pictures. Every year Kalimantan in Indonesia decides to burn down the entire jungle so the haze from the fires goes across to Singapore and Malaysia. The haze in both pictures is from this. There is no smell but it is like really bad smog. There isn't a lot of pollution from cars here since most vehicles run on natural gas.

Today I'm headed to Singapore to visit some friends. I can't do any more visa work and I need to visit a port to get some ferry tickets from Medan to Melacca so I can get a visa to Indonesia. More postcards to come.

Its a small world

I was hanging out in the hostel the other night after a day walking around Kuala Lumpur when in the door walked an old student of mine! He was one of the first class I taught and graduated the same time I left the school. Pretty cool who you run into around the world. It really is a small world after all. (dang, now I have that stupid song in my head)

In Kuala Lumpur

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur without a lot of fanfare. I've been trying to find my way around and get to know the city. I found a nice little Hostel to stay in that isn't too expensive and is near lots of fun stuff.

I got extra pages put in my passport today at the US Embassy. I love the US Embassy. Its so nice to walk up, flash my US passport and walk by everyone else in line. I was through security, pages filled and out within 30 minutes. Amazing. Someone I don't think my experiences with the rest of the embassies are going to be as nice.

Next I went to the Chinese Embassy which of course doesn't do consular services. You have to go to the Bank of China for that. So I went there and got the forms but didn't have all the information so I'll go back tomorrow to get it done.

I also went looking for the Uzbek, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz Embassies but apparently they have all moved since I got their addresses so now I need to get new addresses for them. That pretty much sums up what I've been up to. Hopefully I can get these done soon.

Gone

I'm on my way this morning and will be gone traveling for the next four months or so. I won't have my laptop with me most of the time so my posts are going to become a bit more sparse but I'll try and post whenever I get a chance. I'm headed to Medan this morning and then on to Kuala Lumpur this evening to begin getting visas for all the countries we're headed to.

Finding Nemo

I had a great time in Sabang this last week. I spent it sleeping in a hammock, snorkeling and scuba diving. The coral in Sabang was largely damaged by the tsunami but has started growing back and is still good in the deeper areas. The fish there are phenomenal. To start with, I saw Dory (Regal Blue Tang) everywhere. I tried to say hi bush she kept acting like she didn't recognize me. I also saw Gill (Moorish Idol) quite often with plenty of Bubbles (Yellow Tang) around as well. I even saw huge schools of Moonfish although they didn't make any funny shapes for me. They just looked like, well, a school of Moonfish. Once I even caught a glimpse of Jacques, the cleaner shrimp. On my last full day there I went out for my last dive still looking for Nemo, Bloat and Crush. As I was descending along the decline to the dive depth, I passed over some very familiar anemone. I went in for a closer look and there they were! Clown fish! There was even three of them. Two larger and one smaller. I had found Nemo. I had seen plenty of puffer fish but not exactly a porcupine fish until the morning before I left. I saw a perfect huge one! He was a little shy though. I never did find Crush (Sea Turtle) even though the island I was on is famous for having them around. I asked and they told me I would be lucky if I saw one. Lucky I was not.

Anyways, besides the fish from Finding Nemo, I saw a black tipped reef shark, gigantic mooray eel, blue spotted rays and tons of cleaner wrasse. Of course, not to mention all the millions of other colored and shaped fishes. Very nice week at the beach.

Gone to the Beach

I'm finally taking off and will be at the beach for the next week so don't expect any new blog posts for a while. I won't even have my cell phone with me. Later!

4 Years

I missed it a couple of days ago but July 29th marks my four years here in Indonesia. Its amazing to look back at who I was then and how I have changed since. Funny how I only have a few more days left till I leave permanently. Seems like just yesterday. Sigh...

If you want to read about all that has happened since I arrived, it is all contained in my newsletters that stretch the entire time. Tons of stuff is also included in the last two years of this blog. Interestingly enough, the last month was also the two year anniversay of this blog.

I'm going to be taking off to the beach for a week so I'll be out of contact starting monday but I have a couple of random posts I've been mulling over in my head for a while that I'll try and post before then.