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Malaysia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 29, 2010| 3 Comments »

Anyone who knows me will have noticed by now that a major character in my life has been missing from this blog: Food.

Yes, my favorite thing in the world has gone unmentioned because, while I loved the sights and people and culture of Indonesia, I found that the food didn’t knock my socks off. I got into the Nasi Gorings and the Pisang Gorangs (that would be fried rice and fried banana to those of you who inexplicably do not speak Javanese) — but, as they say, it wasn’t anything to write home about. When I crossed the border into Malaysia, however, I found enlightenment.

Where did I find it? In the form of cheesy crabs.

What is a cheesy crab you might ask? Well, it’s very simple and yet while you’re eating it you can’t possibly imagine ever eating anything else again. You take crab meat out of the shell. Mix in some cheese. Put the mixture back in the shell. Then bake. Whoah nelly.

Georgetown architecture

Daniel and I began our time in Malaysia on the island of Penang, which is known as the culinary capital of Malaysia. The main town, Georgetown, has beautiful colonial architecture and is a UNESCO heritage sight. But none of that really matters while you’re eating cheesy crab.

And not just cheesy crab. We also had this dish that consisted of fresh oysters cooked (baked? fried? who knows) into an egg mixture with some herbs and a tomato sauce on top. Or, at another restaurant, we had a lemongrass prawn curry whose sauce I could have just kept eating all day. It was pure delight.

After our food binge in Penang we hopped over to the island of Langkawi. This was intended to be our 2 days of ‘beach time’. Again, anyone who knows me knows that I am not one for sitting on a beach. But Langkawi is a breathtaking combination of stunning beaches, towering mountains, and jungles that come right down to the surf. So while in Langkawi I mostly just read under a tree, looked at the ocean and enjoyed the moment of peace and calm before heading back into Mumbai (while thinking of cheesy crab).

The beach, jungles and mountains of Langkawi

I’d also found some unexpected comforts here. As I’ve been away it’s been continually hard to reconcile the distance that separates me and the people I love. There have been moments where the unfamiliarity has hit me.

But I was lucky enough to have a quick succession of little signs telling me that wherever I am in the world, home is always close by. My first day in Langkawi I was walking along the beach when I saw a sand dollar – it was smaller and more misshapen than the ones we find in South Carolina. But it was undeniably from the same family. A few moments later as I sat reading, I saw that the guy sitting in front of me had a shirt with a palmetto… and a crescent moon… and when he stood up I saw it read “Charleston, SC.” I struck up a conversation with him and it turned out that he had lived in Charleston for a few years and was from Virginia originally. A little piece of home all the way out here with me. I hope that moments like that can help relieve the pangs for home as my days in Asia turn into weeks and months.

We left Langkawi for Kuala Lampur, a complete turnaround. KL (as they call it here) is about as modern a city as you can imagine. We pulled into our hotel and across the street I saw a mall with a ‘Forever 21’ and down the road was a Starbucks. Everything is clean and sleek and anything that hasn’t been built is certainly in the process of being built.

We went to Chinatown for lunch and had another amazing meal. We had laksa, a coconut shrimp soup. We walked around the city’s Chinatown and I couldn’t stop marveling at how the old colonial architecture melded together with the shiny new. It will be an interesting juxtaposition to go back to Mumbai.

But go back we will. Tomorrow night we’ll leave Malaysia and board a plane back to our new home. With our apartment (hopefully? theoretically?) ready for moving in it’ll be round two in the adventures of setting up our life. I think after our time away we’re ready to go back. We’re once again ready to let India take us in.

Addendum:
As I was going through pictures I realized that we were constantly taking pictures of particularly funny signs. Malaysia seems to have an abundance of them. I’m going to share a few below:

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Yogyakarta

Posted in Uncategorized on June 24, 2010| 2 Comments »

The only way for me to describe Yogyakarta is to start with my vantage point from a becak.

Becak

A becak is like a rickshaw where the bicycle is in the back, so as you ride around you see only the city in front of you. Imagine that you start by negotiating with a becak driver, most of whom appear to be above the age of 50. You offer someone at least twice your age to ride you across town for $2 and they laugh at when you offer this price because apparently $2 is HILARIOUSLY overpriced. You are then clearly marked as a silly tourist for thinking that a human being riding a bicycle for 20 minutes with two people attached is worth the exorbitant price of $2. You should have offered less than $1.

But what you see as you go through the town is that this is one of the most charming place you can imagine, pulled together by an amusing range of transportation options. While riding around you’ll see families in cars, becaks with Yogyakartans and their groceries, actual honest-to-god horse-drawn carriages, and motorbikes with 2 year old children holding the handlebars as their parents hold them. It’s a busy city and a small town all at once, bustling with the movement of all the various ways to get around.

Family on a motorbike

I’m going to pause here to explain what in the heck Yogyakarta is, because I myself didn’t know about it until Daniel told me it was a place he wanted to go. Yogya (as its called for short) is in central Java (a one hour flight from our Bali paradise) and is considered by many to be the soul of Indonesia. Art and culture permeate this domestic tourist hub. If the Westerners flock to Bali to see Indonesian paradise then Yogya is the answer for Indonesians looking for their own heritage.

And beyond the initial vantage point of the becak, what I have found here is that Yogyakartans, are kind and interesting like the Balinese, but with a sophisticated urban edge. Our first day here started with lunch and a walk. But I soon found myself in need of a restroom – and none were to be found. A man seemed to notice we were looking for something and so he asked if he could help. He told us to come on a walk with him. Along the way he told us he was the Sultan’s accountant and that we could

In the Sultan's palace

use the restroom in the Kraton, the Sultan’s palace. The Kraton is the center of Yogya and it’s public areas are only open in the morning – so we were getting to go in post-tourist time.

When I emerged from what was described as the ‘cleanest toilet around’ (really a squat toilet with no flush or toilet paper), Daniel said our friend had had to leave because he was late to meet his wife. But HIS friend also worked at the Kraton and offered to show us around. Really. I kept waiting for the catch, but there wasn’t one. Our new friend’s friend took us all around and told us the story of the city- he explained that in all of Indonesia only Yogya is governed by a Sultan. And even the Sultan sounds like a good guy – he and his wife have five daughters, meaning he has no male heir to the Sultanate. But he has dismissed previous Sultan’s methods of taking concubines because he is a believer in women’s rights. Could I love the people of Yogya any more?

Me with Slamet Riyanto (amazing Batik painter) and our new painting (the yellow one)

We tell our new friend as we’re leaving that we were hoping to buy some Batik – the traditional art form in Indonesia that is a painting made with a particular type of wax dye on cotton – and he told us the best place to go where the artists were creating original works and that wasn’t a tourist trap. Once again I waited for the catch, but there wasn’t any. Various Batik artists had pieces on display in this gallery and we were able to buy one piece there and another from a nearby artist’s studio. For prices that I’m too embarrassed to even share (because they really are incredibly cheap), you can get some incredible one of a kind art in Yogya.

Borobudur exterior

Borobudur entrance

Our second day we left Yogya to go see what everyone comes to central Java for – Borobudur. It is the country’s MOST visited tourist attraction and yet 75% of these visitors are domestic (most of the others are from Southeast Asia or Japan). Borobudur is a 9th century Buddist temple that is over 10 stories high (or about 400 feet). It is a massive circular structure with hundreds of buddhas looking out onto the mountains. It was hidden under layers of volcanic ash and jungle growth for hundreds of years until it was rediscovered in the 19th century. A huge UNESCO restoration project in the 1970’s saw the whole structure taken apart, new foundations and drainage put in, and then the entire temple was rebuilt (its actually unbelievable to see before and after photos).

But the most amusing part of Borobudur is that the structure is not the most exciting tourist attraction for visitors: we are.

Me fulfilling the role of "giant white person" aka the bule

Yes, Daniel and I are the most interesting phenomena here. After the first group of giggling teenagers asked to take a photowith us our guide explained that it was because we are ‘bule’, Indonesian slang for white people. “Most of them never seen white tall person before. So they take your picture and then they show it back in school.” Great. At every turn people asked our guide if they could have their picture taken with us. Kids. Families. Mothers with infants who cry as they look at us (I’m not kidding). Each with a dutiful photographer cradling multiple phones with cameras so that no one person misses out on the photo with the bules. But none of them minded while I shot video as well, so at least for our own amusement we have a record of this hilarious phenomena.

We spent our third day among the hidden temples across the region and the other main temple, Prambanan. It’s truly incredible the amount of history that exists here. And yet, it shouldn’t be surprising since Indonesia has 240 million people and is the 4th most populous country in the world. Somehow I didn’t know that before coming here. Indonesia had never seemed to be a particularly important place in my limited worldview, but how blind I was. I feel so incredibly lucky to have experienced the sights, culture and people of this wonderful many-island nation.

Daniel and Ali at Prambanan

We’re off next to Penang and Langkawi in Malaysia. A new country and a new adventure before we return to Mumbai!

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Bali

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 21, 2010| 7 Comments »

(Side note: I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking why I haven’t been writing. I see this blog more as a place to share my experiences living in a new culture, not as much a travel blog. So while I’m travelling I won’t be writing every day, but I will be posting a few times. We’ll be back in India June 30th though!)

So…

The second time we tried, India let us go. And we arrived in Bali – a tropical mountainous volcanic paradise halfway around the world from where we started in New York.

Mount Batukaru and rice paddies

We drove an hour and a half north to Ubud, which is in the center of the island. When most people think of Bali, they do not first think of Ubud (unless you’ve read Eat Pray Love where Ubud features prominently. And at this point it seems everyone has read it). Bali to most people is beaches, partying and, unfortunately, nightclub bombings.

Daniel and a monkey side by side in the Monkey Forest

But Ubud is a thousand years away from any party central you can imagine. Ubud is an ancient city hidden among jungles and mountains. When we arrived we first went to a forest that is literally called “Monkey Forest.” It’s called this because when you walk inside you curiously find yourself walking along with hundreds of monkeys. Most are waiting for you to feed them one of the bananas you can purchase at the entrance (“Official Monkey Forest Bananas”. The only thing official about them is that they are 10 times the price of a normal banana). But these monkeys live among thousand year old temples in a forest sanctuary. Let me just say it is not something you see every day.

Daniel and Ali in Monkey Forest temple

Our first night we met a driver named Wayan, and we agreed with him that he would take us on our varying excursions over the next few days. Meeting Wayan I think was the luckiest part of our stay in Bali – but as Wayan would say, “You do good things, so you have good karma, so good things come back to you.” That is the wisdom of Wayan. He is a man who owns his own business in partnership with his friends, speaks three languages (English, Japanese and Balinese) and is devoutly Hindu. I think that the wisdom of Wayan should be written down somewhere, so I shall do it here. A sampling:

“No one feel stress as long as they don’t have target. Target means you must make more money than you make now or must get better job. But without target, you just happy living your life.”

or

“I do not understand Muslim Jihad. Why would they want to hurt people? Jihad brings very bad karma I think.”

or, after Daniel asks how the government prevents tax evasion in cash businesses like his:

Me and Wayan on a rice paddy

“Yes, the government doesn’t know what I do. But God does. So even if I get away with it with government, I would not really get away with it. Bad karma.”

Karma. What a beautiful amazing concept. It drives Wayan and it certainly seems like a very good way to live. But, as you learn wherever you go in the world, people can lead happy successful lives but they are still only privy to the knowledge that their society affords them. And while Wayan lives by his karmic wisdom, not everyone around him does. For example, when we ask Wayan if he has a website he says he can’t have one anymore, because its too expensive. But more importantly, it’s too dangerous because the website operators in Bali will take bribes to steal emails from their site and give the emails to competitors. If they pay even a day late the operators will send viruses to their computers.

Seriously.

So Daniel very animatedly told Wayan about how you can build a website for free or even just get a domain name very cheaply. It really hit home that education and technology can do so much to even the playing field in a world where monopolizers will take what they can when they can. So, while I write this, Daniel is currently helping Wayan build his website. Wayan says this is good karma. I certainly hope so, because we need it after our initial difficulties in India.

Gunung Kawi

Prayer march at Besakih

But beyond website building we’ve also been able to explore the incredible and varied sights of Bali. On our first day with Wayan we went to a number of ancient Hindu temples, such as Besakih, which was built in the 14th century at the foot of a large volcano. You can’t imagine a more beautiful view.

Besakih

On our second day we decided to take the more scenic route and go for a hike near Munduk, in the north of Bali. Wayan took us to meet his friend Budi, whose family owns a plantation in Munduk and gives tours of the plantation and the nearby waterfalls. It turned out that Budi was no ordinary tour guide – he speaks 5 languages, has a civil engineering degree from a university in Tokyo, is an architect, and is sought after for his knowledge of coffee, specifically the rare Kopi Luwak coffee (if you’re thinking this is the world’s most expensive coffee that is made after a cat-like creature digests the beans, then you are correct).

Daniel and Budi in Munduk

And yet, when Budi was asked to speak in Denmark about his architecture (he designs and builds villas when he’s not running the plantation or showing people around the plantation. Naturally.) he didn’t enjoy it because the cold was too off-putting. Like most Balinese people he can’t really imagine why anyone would want to live anywhere else.

And when you tour the plantation with Budi you tend to agree with him.

What I’ve come away with from my trip to Bali is that for all the amazing things there are to see, the people here are very special and that whatever their station in life is, they all tend to find comfort just in being from Bali. I think that in itself describes the beauty of the island.

I know this blog is more about people than places, but for the rest of our visit the pictures truly are worth more than any thousand words I could write. I also have included a video – because things like monkeys up close, sprawling vistas, waterfalls and loud bugs that sound like the whole world is coming to an end are things you can only watch for yourself.

Gungung Agung

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