Our steak party at Ilya's dacha today was a huge success. Despite the cold and drizzling weather, we enjoyed very much sitting around the grill, watching the perfect steaks in the making (courtesy of www.meatclub.ru) and then making them immediately disappear into our grateful stomachs. Mmmm, why is meat SO good??? Nothing, absolutely nothing is better than a good medium-rare steak! I will never understand vegetarians!
When I woke up today at 8.30AM, it was pitch black outside. The sun started to rise a little only at 9AM. What else is different here? Time difference – 4 hours. Temperature difference – 70 degrees F (100 in Malaysia vs 32 in St.Petersburg). There is no lush green of the forest here, in fact, there are no leaves on the trees anymore. The scorching sun of Malaysia is now replaced by the heavy, low, rainy clouds of my hometown. But the main difference is... I really like it here.
P.S. Here are my updated "Travel Stats".
On the bright side, this trip gave me ample time to process and catalogue all the impressions I was able to make during my one day in Brunei:
This is a very strange place…
During our 6-star (!) hotel inspection last night we all agreed on one thing: the place is a bit spooky – during the hour we walked around its territory we saw maybe 2 people (both staff); it seems like some mysterious happening made everybody flee in panic leaving its long corridors, huge gyms and posh shops strangely deserted. A ghost hotel...
This morning, we realized that it's not just the hotel that has this ghost feel about it – the entire city seems to be deserted. There was nobody in a huge mosque that can host 10,000 people; there was nobody on the main town promenade; there was nobody but staff (maybe zombies?) in the store we bought the disgusting "king of fruits" durian. This is a VERY strange place…
It is really strange to be in a place where the dry law is in effect. Officially, you cannot buy alcohol anywhere in the country (of course, not true in reality: obviously there are places selling "the goods" illegally). Non-muslims are allowed to bring alcohol into the country, but there's a certain limit per person and you have to declare it.
I hadn't drunk one alcoholic beverage for the past 2 weeks, but of course the second I set my foot on Brunei ground, I was longing for a drink! Everybody felt the same way, so we had a mini-party with rum and coke behind a closed door of our hotel room.
Brunei government offers a lot of benefits to the locals. One that pierced my heart is this: if the University doesn't offer certain subjects that you want to take, as a student you can choose to go study in the UK. Not only your tuition and living expenses will be paid in full, but you will also be given a stipend of 500 pounds a month, and also some money for "warm clothes". Of course, it's impossible to get citizenship in this country…
I am not complaining about the shortness of this flight. What I'm complaining about is the fact that we are in the 21st century already, and teleportation hasn't been invented yet! Every time I get ready for the airport – factoring in the 5,000 hours it takes to stand in traffic on the way there, going through security and check-in pushing all your stupid heavy suitcases with your knee desperately trying (and mostly failing) to keep this luggage pyramid stay put in front of you instead of scattered all over the floor knocking over other people's bags while inflicting minor injuries onto yourself and unlucky innocent by-standers – I cannot help but imagine… You are about to go on a diving trip from New York to Cozumel. All you have to do is point at your packed bags and whatever items you plan to take with you on the trip (it may be your comfortable couch or your favorite painting, now you can afford to travel in style) with a special device – let's call it "magic travel stick", - sit back on the said comfortable couch and do some programming of this device with precise destination coordinates and perhaps some other relevant info. And voila – a second later you are in Cozumel… Wouldn't that be nice? I haven't figured how to go through passport control yet though… And there's also the issue of possible "overpopulating" some popular destinations… But I'm sure all the issues can be resolved by putting some effective controls in place (in fact, I wouldn't mind being part of the workflow design project myself)... In all the sci-fi books I read as a child this method of transportation was widely available by year 2010. Liars!
Since I got into the complaining mode, let me present two other major issues I have with Malaysia.
There are two kinds of toilets in Malaysia: spacious, spotless, with a smell of fresh flowers, and… free AND tiny, dirty, with slippery water-flooded floors, and paid (or employing the local term, "chargeable")! This oddity exists widely across the country. You have to pay 20-50 cents for the pleasure of entering this disgusting haven and another 50-80 cents to become a lucky owner of some toilet paper. What the hell? In one of the paid toilets, I almost exploded with shocked rage when the staff had the nerve to ask me if I "enjoyed the bathroom experience". We couldn't find any plausible reason to explain this phenomenon, but we started to incorporate those useful epithets into any bathroom description: "Wait till another rest-stop if you can – the toilet here looks just like a chargeable one"; "They should be charging us for this one – the floor is so slippery I almost fell".
In this country Malay, Indians, and Chinese co-exist more or less happily, mingling with each other at work and play on a daily basis. They all know English because this is the language they use to communicate with each other. And oh my, what English it is! I thank my lucky stars every day here for introducing me to the www.engrish.com website back in the day – that's the only reason I understand anything here. Somewhat. I rarely get understood myself outside the hotels, UNLESS I strengthen my accent to its very fullest Russian and deform the grammar to its very simplest, enunciating slowly and carefully (at the same time heavily utilizing hands and body language): "Me – pRawn noodles. No spicy. She – dRink caRd. No, not green card, dRink caRd. Yes. Your coffee – too strong. My cup – half water, half coffee. No, no, no, not half milk. Wa-te-r. Yes. No, not tea. Half coffee, half water. Eh, whatever. Nothing, nothing, I want no-thing more. Thank you. Terima-kasih."
And this happens not only at the cheapest food stands. Sometimes our guides or hotel managers are equally unable to construct a coherent English sentence. Language is definitely not the main tool of healthy communication here. What is it, I wonder?
The Shangri-La Rasa Ria hotel, where we stayed our last night on Borneo, has its own orangutan nursery: for the past several years they have been making an effort to find abandoned baby orangutans, take them in and feed and protect them in the natural environment of the rainforest until they turn 7; this is the age when orangutans can start taking care of themselves, so they are released into the wild. The nursery already has over 15 "graduates" and currently has 4 little residents. In the nursery, orangutans can learn whatever skills they are supposed to be learning, but in the safety of professional – instead of parental – supervision. The animals are on a strict meal schedule: breakfast is served at 10AM, lunch – at 2PM, there's no dinner.
After about ten minutes of our sweating our butts off in the giant steam-room of the morning rainforest, two little orangutans finally heard the pleas of their "mentors" and showed up. One was apparently starving and without any further ado went straight to the feeding hand of one of the guys (encouraging him to eat more in MalayJ). Interestingly, the other one didn't seem hungry at all (maybe he has some snack stashed away and thus survives the absence of scheduled dinner, I don't know). She decided to give us a full-fledged orangutan talent performance – jumping up and down the trees, swinging back and forth on tree branches, occasionally breaking them and dropping them on our heads, striking many picture-worthy poses and careful to pause in them for a second as if giving us a chance to photograph her. She will make a great catwalk model when she grows up. The show lasted for about 40 minutes, after which she finally got hungry and joined her friend at the breakfast table.
The Sabah region of Malaysia is famous not only for its eco-touristic beauty, but also for the fact that it still is home to 32 indigenous tribes. The cultural village Mari Mari (near Kota Kinabalu) is designed to introduce you to the tribal life through participation in all the rituals and traditions. Originally, we didn't want to go to the village at all: we are all exhausted from all the sight-seeing and weather and heat by now, and on top of everything it started pouring on our way there. Unfortunately, turning the van around wasn't an option and, frustrated and hating group tourism, we obeyed to our sorry fate. As it often happens in life though, the village turned out to be an awesome experience. Even the rain didn't spoil the fun we had, and the three hours we spent baking chicken in bamboo sticks, making fire without matches, frying crepes, listening to music, dancing and just walking around in the darkness of the scary mysterious forest went by like 20 minutes. In the end, nobody was ready to leave the hospitable people of Mari Mari (translated as "Come here") and tried to prolong our stay there by eating the dinner veeeery slowly:).
The moral of today is: if you strongly resist something, it's a sure sign that you have to do it - there's a huge chance life will surprise you with its tremendous awesomeness one more time (just out of spite, I guess:)).
The day started with another yoga session at a white sand beach overlooking slightly nervous turquoise sea. I cannot imagine doing yoga in a room anymore. It is so much more expansive en plein air. Even if all you are trying to get from yoga is a little bit of muscles, you cannot help but feel that you are part of some mystic presence when you are stretching toward the sea. It's an unparalleled sensation, really. The question is, what will I do back in NYC without the sea? I have to figure out how to move this mystic presence with me, I guess…
After a leisurely lunch we set out on a Proboscis Monkey "hunt". Those long-nosed monkeys are supposed to be unbelievably cute and we were all super excited to look for them from our little boat along the river banks. We saw many, but unfortunately none of them showed off their main feature – the long nose! It was so funny: we saw them jumping, quietly sitting, eating, sleeping, but in all the poses they managed to masterfully cover their nose. Kudos to those enthusiast photographers who sit day and night on a mangrove tree patiently waiting for their majesty the nose to appear. Thanks to them at least we know how those funny creatures really look like.
So the moral of the story for me is (however confusing): allow yourself to feel whatever you feel without feeling guilty that you are not feeling what you are supposed to feel, and all of a sudden you will feel free and able to really appreciate everything around you.
For the next 3 days we are going to be eco-touristing on Borneo, the world's 3rd largest island (after Greenland and New Guinea, according to this list) as well as the world's 3rd highest island (after New Guinea and Hawaii, according to this list). Administratively, Borneo is divided among Brunei (1%), Malaysia (26%) and Indonesia (73%). For now, we are in Malaysia, but will go to Brunei for 1 day as well; that will be interesting, with all its oil and dry law, and generally being another random country on my list (along with UruguayJ).
It's almost the end of my travel in Malaysia, and I still cannot get excited about all its beauty. It makes me sad. But unfortunately, there's no way I can force myself to enjoy the stuff that simply doesn't speak to me. I'm trying to find reasons though, because, seriously, look at the pictures – isn't it beautiful? Of course, it is! So, what the hell is my problem?
Speaking of being thankful: one of the girls from our group gave me a beautiful gift – a little "thanksgiving" stone that you have to carry in a pocket (or a purse) and whenever you remember, touch it and say thanks for something (whether it's health or an opportunity to look at a blue flower). Just a tiny reminder to appreciate your life more.
Originally, we were also supposed to go to the Mount Kinabalu, but it was closed today for the Climbathon – a climbing 21-kilometer marathon up the mountain! So today and tomorrow you can only reach the top if you participate in this event. Therefore, we had to be satisfied with view of the mountain instead of the view from the mountain. I don't think it was any less beautiful though. By the way, the mountain name – Kinabalu – is translated as "Chinese Widow" and based on a pretty interesting didactic (for women) tale (I had to look it up on Wikipedia, because the story our Chinese guide told us didn't make any sense whatsoever, although we really made a concerted effort to collectively decipher it on the busJ).
I used to dread the whole rigmarole with taxis, airports, flights. I used to hate connections because having to wait for the next plane frustrated me. During this Voyage of mine, I have become SO patient with those little things though. Lines, waiting areas, people not understanding me, people understanding me, flight cancellations, unexpected room changes – now it's all a piece of cake for me to handle.
So today I'm just quietly following the route Langkawi – KL – Kota Kinabalu, which takes pretty much all day: we left the hotel at 9AM and are supposed to come to Borneo at 6.30PM. Oh well, that gives me a chance to catch up on my blogging.
P.S. The only thing I still cannot tolerate is people making horrible noises around me – constant tic coughing and sniffling, incessant throat clearing. Of course, I'm surrounded by all of this right now on the plane (for the training purposes I suppose). But it's OK, this time I didn't forget my iPod in the checked-in luggage, so Miles Davis to the rescue!
I don't think I will ever do this kind of travel to myself again… Nowadays, I need more time to process the information I receive, as well as my impressions and reactions. In the Malay language there is no past or future tense, everything is in the present (they just use time-defining adverbs like "yesterday" or "tomorrow" to make things clear). I want my life to be like this language, in the present, and on this tour it seems like we are desperately trying to catch the future by the tail all the time.
Since I chose a "transformer" guise today, I was not in the least surprised when I learnt upon arrival to our new hotel that our standard rooms have been miraculously transformed into royal suites. After all, why not get transformed into a princess – if only for tonight. So obviously we had a huge party on the the terrace.
I've been to Malaysia for more than a week now, and the most frequent word I use for my descriptions is "anticlimactic". When I travel, I'm not looking to be impressed, don't get me wrong. I just want to experience joy. And I'm not that hard to please, yet so far the only real happiness I've felt here was during the fireflies "show". The only hope left in my heart for Malaysia after KL was the islands, and I have to say Penang is quite disappointing. Am I a spoiled brat? I don't think so. I just have to accept that the tropics are not my cup of tea. I'm sure for some Malaysia is a paradise on Earth. Tastes differ, indeed.
But it's not like I am suffering here. No, no, no. There are still a lot of little things that I enjoy to the fullest. For example, the water around Penang – although not the brochure-promised turquoise blue – is actually quite beautiful. Light grey under the clouded sky and viscous-looking, it makes me think of clay on potter's wheel. This, naturally, brings the Gost to my mindJ.
The food is excellent: no matter whether you choose Chinese, Malay, Indian, Thai or Japanese, it's always delicious and dirt-cheap (for example, a huge plate of Phad Thai that I couldn't finish was 5RM, which is less than $2). And, of course, the best worst coffee I've ever tried - Nescafe Original iced coffee in a can or... in a plastic bag with a straw! (A note for my compatriots: it's exactly like coffee in Пышечная - with milk and sweet - but iced - yum!:)).
The day promised to be pretty athletic: the plan was to climb up some little mountain in search of the world's biggest flower rafflesia, followed by another climb to see some "cascades" (waterfalls).
Dear God! Both climbs were ridiculously difficult! My new linguistic task is to find synonyms to the expression "drenched with sweat". In fact, what we all looked like after our rafflesia trip was way beyond "drenched". Sweat was not dripping down our faces and bodies, it was pouring, showering us, clouding our eyes. The paper napkins that I providently put in my backpack to wipe my face were so pathetically useless that it was really laughable. At some point a death by complete body sweat-out was a very real possibility for me. No joke, I was actually worried.
And what's worse, both trips were absolutely anticlimactic (again, this favorite epithet of mine for Malaysia)! Only at the very top the guide told us that the rafflesia in this particular forest is the smallest species. So technically, what we saw was the world's smallest biggest flower… As to the waterfalls, well, only a couple of weeks after The Smoke That Thunders it really looked like a tiny creek to me…
They are an interesting people, those Orang-Asli. They don't mix with the other Malaysian peoples. Their life expectancy is about 35-40 and they refuse to work or study (at least, in our sense of these words). They live on hunting, as well as fruits and vegetables growing around. Also, they get some miserly financial allowance from the government, but they don't seem to need much. We were there during the day, when all men are out hunting, I guess, because there were only women and children in the village. They did nothing. Just sat or walked around. Like in the Chinese village the other day, I didn't hear one word spoken between them. They do use products of the outer civilization though: there were lots of empty coke cans, candy wrappers and chewed gums scattered around on the dirty premises. We also witnessed a curious twist on the use of modern consumer goods – several Pampers on a dryer rope.
And we are back on the road (ironically, I'm reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac); going to the Penang island. In many travel guides, Penang is advertized as "a sea pearl of Malaysia, with its beautiful pristine beaches and turquoise water". Well, fine, maybe it's a "sea pearl" in the sense that it is located in and completely surrounded by the sea. As to the beaches and water, my personal advice is, if you want to have a quality swimming vacation, go to another Malaysian island. There are a few deluxe beach resorts here, but even at those the sea leaves much to be desired. Another tiny interesting fact about Malaysia – all beaches are public, so if you want to have a lawn-chair on the sand right by the water, you still have to pay for it, even if you are staying at your 5-start hotel-resort; alternatively, you can walk back and forth from your hotel's free chair positioned outside the beach on some grassy area.
For the locals, Penang is about business (it's a major port). For the tourists, Penang is about history, religion and food. The Chinese, Indian and Malay are represented on the island in pretty much equal numbers, so there are three main "boroughs" in Georgetown (the capital) – Little India, Chinatown and the unnamed Malay area. Each features its own authentic food, temples and stories.
I've been really waiting for a camera with smells to be invented, but in Penang's Chinatown I was thinking that it would have been a really controversial thing: some people would have probably died to host the Penang picture show at their places whereas others would have not let the photographer cross the threshold of their house – the smells of the famous "food row" are incredibly offensive and delightful at the same time. Without a resident Chinese though we dared not try the local delicacies, what a shame! However, the seafood restaurant we picked instead was delicious and dirt cheap (and none of the staff spoke English, so it was still a lot of fun).
He doesn't really know a lot of historic and cultural facts about Malaysia and cannot answer most of our questions on those subjects, but he is indispensable as far as facts of life are concerned. "In the old, man choose woman beautiful. Now, woman has apartments and businesses, and man say, this woman beautiful." "In Malaysia – many temples different, for Chineseses and Indianites (для китайский человек и индийский человек), not for muslims. One temple for pray (храмы для помолится), one for ask important question (храмы для спросить). You want marry, you go temple to ask and ask grandmother (бабушка) in temple, can I to marry this girl. Grandmother look and say, no marry her: she has markbirth on cheek – no good, she to make love all time, you exhaust (хочет лубов делат ден и ночъ, ты – очен устал); she has markbirth on above eye – no good, 24 hour talk-talk-talk; she has markbirth in breast middle – no good, husband kaput, she eat her husband one by one (муж – капут, она кушат мУжей); she has markbirth on chin – no good, always has 'friend' and no marry, but if marry, has 'friend' always too". All the girls took out mirrors and muffled sighs прошелестели over our bus – none of us has any chance to marry a Malaysian Chinese or Indian…
Thus were we entertained all the way from KL to Belum, a road that takes 5 hours… Also, we made 3 sightseeing stops.
I am not sure why, but I've been always fascinated by the concept of mangroves. Some of my friends even make fun of this obsession, but seriously, don't you find it plain amazing that trees root themselves in the saline water? Exactly!
On a little motorboat, we spent an hour sailing around the seemingly endless and unbelievably dense mangrove forests. It was heavenly. Now that I know that mangroves also host firefly feasts, I can only imagine how this river looks like at nighttime…
There are very few people: not doing anything in particular, they are simply standing or lying or sitting somewhere, staring at the horizon or TV, not paying any attention to the dirt of the water and boardwalk around them, or the shabby houses nearby. All of them seem to be relaxed, calm and content with their lives. For the 20-30 minutes we were walking around the place, I didn't hear one spoken word here…
By removing the usual 5-star "luxuries" the place is successful in accomplishing its main task: to make you pay attention to nature, really enjoy it, become part of it. You can rent a boat or a bike; hike one of the many trails into the surrounding rainforest; or simply sit on the bank and watch the monumental stillness of the rainforest covered mountains across the lake.
The famous Skybridge is totally anticlimactic (sadly, so far this is the most popular word in my descriptions of Malaysia). It is located on the 41st floor (out of 88) and provides good panoramic city views, BUT… everybody agrees that it would have been so much more interesting and challenging if it had a transparent floor. Oh well.
Our lunch stop was in the Chinese quarters. It looks exactly like NYC Chinatown and apparently exactly like China.
The highlight of my day was the Thai massage I did at the hotel. OH MY GOD! I have never done Thai massage before, and now I'm hooked and will look for it everywhere I go. Without a doubt, this is the best massage technique for me. It is something between a massage and yoga (sometimes they even call it "passive yoga", although I think it's rather "partner yoga" with one passive partner). Throughout the session you wear yoga pants and a t-shirt, and they don't use oils of any kinds. The massage takes place on a most comfortable mattress placed directly on the floor. You enter the dark room that smells like rose petals and is filled with low-volume meditational music, and for the next 90 minutes a tiny lady stretches and massages the hell out of you with the strength of ten ordinary men. And then you enter the wonderful state of nirvana...
Unfortunately, I couldn't stay in my nirvana for the rest of the night. Our group (10 people) consists of both 25-year-olds who still love to party or girls with adult children who want to resume partying now that the kids are grown. I personally don't like clubs or loud bars, but to support the collective effort I decided to "inspect" the Lunabar poolside lounge on the roof of our hotel. I didn't regret: people watching at this location is a curious sight, the entire city seems to file into the space one by one, gorgeous Asian girls in black and red (dominating colors of KL nightlife) accompanied by white men (mostly), single men with starving eyes looking around for single women wearing the air of fake light boredom, single men who lost hope to meet anybody drinking heavily at the bar, designer branded socialites, and finally groups of friends laughing around their tables devouring delicious drinks one after another. I enjoyed this for a bit and retired back to my room and my nirvana state, while the others continued until 3AM club-hopping. I admire this energy!
