Kuching & KL, Malaysia: Sept. 17 - 22

Why hasn't anyone told us about Malaysia??!!!?! Why hasn't Malaysia been discovered for the easy and wonderful place to travel that it is?? We know exactly three people who have been here - one was born here, and two lived in Singapore at the time. We absolutely loved it and were bummed that we only had 5 days here, three in Kuching and two in Kuala Lumpur. The food is diverse and wonderful and cheap, and includes Indian, Malay and Chinese cuisines. The people are warm and mostly speak English! Such a nice treat! And the country has everything from lush resorts, to coral reefs, to temples and mosques, to jungles with amazing animals. Really, whatever level of luxury you want, you can find it here.

We stayed three days at a lovely hotel called The Lime Tree in Kuching, which is on Borneo, where everything was lime themed, including the yummy body wash and the complimentary limeade served on the rooftop deck. Every morning we had a lovely complimentary breakfast buffet, which included both local and western goodies. Kuching means "Cat" in Malay, so this is known as "Cat City." We spent our days eating, drinking cold coconut juice and wandering through the city taking pictures of the various cat statues.

Favorite food while we were there, Laksa!

Much like Singapore, the downtown area was divided into an Indian section, a Chinese section and then Malay was scattered throughout, but it lacked the chaos factor and the mildly scary politics. Of course there's corruption, but they don't practice the form of oppressive control over the populace as does Singapore. We met up with the parents of Charles's high school friend, Mongkut, whom we saw in Singapore, and had a fascinating discussion about the politics and the upcoming elections. But I'm jumping ahead - that was in Kuala Lumpur.

A feng shui rice bowl fountain:

In KL, we stayed at a great guesthouse run by a really nice couple who really cared about Malay and Malay-Chinese culture. The first night, Christina took Charles and I to a night market and walked around with us for a couple of hours, teaching us about the food items and suggesting interesting things to try. With a twinkle in her eye, she would urge us to try items like duck tongue,



or the gross-looking Century Egg. The Century Egg is buried in clay for one hundred days before digging it up and eating it. Yum. It looks putred, literally. The whole egg has turned black and the egg "white" looks like a black jello. I thought it would taste fermented, but surprisingly it was great - it tasted just like a hard-boiled egg. You just have to ignore the appearance. Christina told us it was actually used on fear factor, blended into a smoothie-type drink.

The next morning, Christina and her husband, Michael, took everyone staying with them out for an Indian breakfast

and a visit to an Indian shrine where you make a wish and break a flaming coconut in return...

If your wish comes true you're supposed to come back and break the number of coconuts you promised as an offering. Here's a picture of a woman we met from the Philippines trying it out.

Nice arm!

  We unfortunately only had the next day to see the city and spent much of that having a slow, fancy, Vietnamese meal with Mongkut's parents. The restaurant was in a crazy-fancy mall - we were so under-dressed! Such great people. I'm so glad we were able to spend an afternoon with them. I really wish we had time to explore KL more, and to go further up the coast to Malaka and beyond. Oh well, next time.