Perjalanan Lebih

(More Travel)
We went to the night-market in Sri Iskandar on Wednesday, which was pretty fantastic. It was filled with stalls selling a vast variety of items (I bought a sweet dri-fit shirt). The majority of the people were selling food. Fresh, delicious, unfamiliar, food. I ended up buying several unknown fried things. I have a policy of buying food whose name I do not recognize whenever it is available. As usual, it worked out quite well. One turned out to be a fish roll, one some sort of chicken curry, and another was egg, onion and meat wrapped in some sort of bread stuff. I also bought some durian, which had been recommended to me as ‘smelly and disgusting.’ It was odoriferous  that’s for sure; I could smell it before I even entered the alley where the vendor was. The texture is something akin to thick mucus, and I didn't know if I liked the flavor at first, but after eating most of it, I decided that I did. A couple other guys in the dorm smelled it and came to join me in eating it. They were surprised to see me enjoying it, as most foreigners can't stand the flavor.
The purchase that made me the happiest, however, was three kilos of mangos. They are heavenly, and in twenty-four hours I ate almost half of them.

I spent all of Thursday traveling. Landon, Kevin, Berthold and I were joined by Evans, another student from South Sudan who grew up in Kenya and Uganda. We got up early to take a taxi to Ipoh, bus to K. Perlis and then ferry from there to Langkawi. The taxi was late, and the only bus to K. Perlis for the day was already full. Quick restructuring of plans ended with tickets to Butterworth, planning to bus from there to K. Perlis. That is what happened, but we had two hours at each stop (Ipoh, Butterworth, and K. Perlis), which allowed us to explore a bit. I found some pickled nutmeg that turned out to be quite good, much better than the mango I got on Pangkor.

The dried fruit I bought was not at all what I was expecting, it was tasty, but intensely salty. I could have drunk many liters of water, but that is not wise on long bus rides. A Muslim guy gave us some tracts which 'proved the validity of Islam.' I read through it and it was quite interesting, but I was honestly surprised at how impotent the argument was. I am sure there are better specimens out there.





While I waited in Kuala Perlis I wandered around a bit. The mudflats left by low tide was populated by weird one clawed crabs and mud skippers. There were also people out on the edge of the water collecting something, I'm not entirely sure what.

Our stops, combined with eight and a half hours of traveling meant that we reached Langkawi around 2130. Today is a public holiday, and apparently Langkawi is a popular destination. We spent an hour simply searching the town for an open room. We took a taxi from the jetty Pantai Cenang with a motley crew made up of two guys from Pakistan, one from India, a girl from England, and an incredibly friendly Aussie with dreads. I still have no idea how they found each other. Landon found a room around 2215, which had just been made available due to a cancellation.

I got up early Friday and went and wandered the beach for a while, watching the clouds and surf.

 It is a beautiful white sand beach, but very populated. Lots of Europeans and such running, walking, and standing around. Landon went scuba diving so Evan, Berthold, Kevin, and I walked around until we found some fruit pancakes to eat for breakfast. Afterwards Berthold and Evans went to the beach for a while and Kevin and I explored Pantai Cenang. It’s basically a tourist town, with nearly all the shops catering to that cause. It kind of disgusts me to know that I am contributing to the phenomenon of tourism instead of doing something useful with my time, but I certainly have enjoyed it.

Kevin on the rocks.

Kevin and I headed south along the shoreline around 1400, and wandered down the beach until we decided it would be wise to return for water and sunscreen, resolving to return the next day. We found some stupendous rocks, however, and took some pictures of each other on them.

Yeah, we're cool.

When we returned to town I tried to purchase bus tickets back to Ipoh for Monday, so that we would not encounter the same issues we had on the way to Langkawi. I discovered that I would need the passport numbers of all the passengers, so I postponed the process.

As evening fell, Landon and I ran to the next beach over to get a better view of the sunset, and hopefully one with fewer people. Sunset over the Indian Ocean was beautiful as always, and I sat on the rocks and just watched for a while.

We went to a restaurant for supper and waited 45 minutes before anyone came to take our order, and it was another 15 before we actually got food. After dark we wandered around town, stopping in at a weird resort of some sort that apparently aimed to recreate the ‘60s. It was pretty successful, at least based on the stereotypical image of the era. People sat in circles on the beach sand, lit by candles placed in holes, talking, laughing, drinking and smoking hookah. Others sat in trees or on roofs of nearby buildings watching the live band, which appeared to play a grand total of three chords.

We re-met the group we took the taxi with and chatted with them for a bit. Kevin and I took to the beach and walked to the far end through the incredibly fine white sand, made whiter by a nearly full moon. We went to bed early, exhausted from a day in the tropical sun.

Kevin and I rose before the sun Saturday morning, gathered essential supplies (water, sunscreen, cameras, and ice-cream for breakfast) and hit the beach. We ran most of the way to where we left off our adventure previously and sat for a while to eat our ice-cream and watch the sunrise.

After breakfast we proceeded with Island Trek II, the sequel to our adventures on Pangkor. From 0730 to 1230 we jumped, climbed and traversed the crumbly black basalt that lined the shore. My fivefingers provided incredible grip, and I was able to trace paths across and up faces that would have been impossible without them.

The rock was relatively soft so the movement of the waves has formed numerous caves along the coast. We followed a few of them back to their terminus, but none went more than 30 feet or so. One cave’s multiple exits made it a perfect pirate’s cave. Its sandy floor was exposed by the low tide, and we took a brief break in its shade. Another cave had a sleeping dragon in it; we could hear its heavy breathing and snoring before we could even see the entrance to its cave. I decided that I should probably go investigate and see if I could snatch any treasure, so I shimmied along the wall, clinging to whatever meager handholds I could find.

The opening narrowed as I went, and about the time my forearms gave out I was able let myself fall across the passageway and chimney traverse with my body almost horizontal.
I didn’t make it all the way into the dragons lair, because the walls of the passage began to slope such a way that I was unable to stick to them.
I made it back out the entrance without falling into the somewhat murky water, but my forearms were about to give up. If I had something like that to practice on I might actually get good at climbing.

Once we rounded the tip of the island, most of our path was in direct sun. The intensity of the solar radiation was astounding; it felt as though my skin was being incinerated if I was in the sun for more than a few minutes. Not wanting to be burned to a crisp, Kevin and I decided to spend as little time in the sun as possible. We would scramble over the rocks between spots of shade, and pause while out of the glare from the sky to plan our next assault.

The rock formations were incredible. The whole experience, with its natural amphitheaters, caves, ocean, jungle, islands, and monitor lizards made me think of all the places I see pictures of in National Geographic and wish I could go see myself. And now here I am.

(Photocred: Kevin)

I had glanced at a map before we set out, but I didn’t know where we would find ourselves after following the shoreline for a of couple hours. It turned out that we wandered in to the back of a resort. The construction workers on lunch break looked surprised and confused to see us emerge from the jungle. We pretended we knew what we were doing, and none of them said anything. The resort was quite nice and had a psychedelic boardwalk and a lovely pool.
Though signs indicated that the pool was for guests only, we thought they wouldn’t begrudge two weary travelers a cooling dip. The water felt amazing after trekking over rocks in the sun for hours, and we left cool and refreshed.

I contacted Landon to see what the rest of the group was up to. They had rented a car and were exploring the northern half of the island. Their discoveries included a couple waterfalls and the most beautiful beach he had ever seen. Kevin and I walked the couple kilometers back to town, completely satisfied with the ten kilometers that comprised Island Trek II. Around 1500 we found the rest of the group and headed to the north side of the island.

Our Ride (Photocred: Landon)

The bottom of one of the falls had a lovely, though somewhat difficult to navigate waterslide.(Photocred: Landon)

The other waterfall turned out to be only a trickle and the main part of the falls was completely dry. Our third stop was supposed to be the beach that they’d found earlier, but the security guard turned us away. Apparently it actually closed two and a half hours before the posted information indicated.
The third waterfall we visited, Durian Perangin, was my favorite. It was a 25 foot drop into a pool, and, better yet, it was climbable. The rock was smooth and wet, but I guess the flow was constant enough to prevent algal growth, so it wasn’t too slick. That said, it made me much more comfortable knowing that at any time I could peel off and drop into the pool below.

(Photocred: Landon)

We stuck around there until dark, planning to return the next morning. On the way back to Pantai Cenang we stopped at a night market in Kuah. I collected various foods from several vendors for a delicious and interesting supper.

I tried again to purchase bus tickets, now that I had all the necessary information, but was again foiled. Though the website stated that it accepted Visa cards, it rejected mine (and the others I tried) because they had not been issued by a bank in Malaysia. We decided that we would have to just go to the bus station hoping that there would be seats that were going in the direction we wished to. It seemed wise to head back Sunday night instead of Monday so that we would have more options and be less likely miss classes on Tuesday.

On Sunday morning we left our hotel around 0600 intending to drive to Tanjung Rhu to watch the sunrise, but on the way we decided to go back to Durian Perangin. The water was chilly but refreshing; I wish I could start every day by standing under a waterfall for twenty minutes.

Why yes, it is immensely refreshing to shower in a waterfall before breakfast.
(Photocred: Landon)

Once the sun was fully risen we went to Tanjung Rhu, the beach we had not been allowed into the evening before. It was beautiful.
Also, since it was a private beach, it was much less populated than many other places. We decided to swim to an island a little way out in the bay which looked like it would be fun to climb. Just before we left, however, Kevin was attacked by a little fish with some sort of nasty venom in its fin spines. The sting in his finger was extremely painful, and the pain spread up his arm to his chest and shoulder. He opted to wait on the beach while Landon, Berthold and I swam the half mile to the island. As I anticipated, it was much further than I expected, and we swam slowly knowing that we would have to swim back as well. The rock of the island was extremely rough. The lapping of the waves had made the surface approximately like the texture of the peaks that form when making whipped cream. But hard and sharp.

It wasn’t as bad farther above the water, and I was very tempted to make the climb to the top. I know that  I could have made it up, but one twenty foot traversal about twenty feet up the face was a little too much exposure for my liking. I could have swum around the island and found a different route, but I didn’t want to make Landon and Berthold wait that long for me. Instead I settled for climbing one of the large rocks that stuck out of the water and jumping (after checking that it was safe of course).

After lunch we took a boat tour through the mangroves. I was skeptical about it, preferring to explore on my own, but Landon was pretty excited about it so I went along with it. It turned out to be quite beautiful, especially the last bit which took us into the open sea with incredible views of geological formations on the many small islands.

We saw Mangroves

And Monkeys

Landon and Kevin on a boat

We stopped off at a secluded beach on one of the islands. Since we had the island to ourselves, I decided that clothing was unnecessary. It was great until I turned my back for a few seconds and my swimshorts vanished. Gone. I assumed that Landon had taken them because it didn’t seem possible for them to disappear so completely in the clear water. He had not, however, and our attempts to find them were fruitless. Fortunately for me, Landon had a spare pair of compression shorts that he let me wear for the remainder of the boat tour.

We had to drive back across the island to return the rental car so we stopped off at the waterfall again to rinse off all the saltiness. I wasn’t used to the clutch, and stalled the car in an intersection a few miles from our destination. It wouldn’t have been a bit deal (other than making me feel stupid for being unable to drive stick), but the battery, which had been struggling throughout the trip, gave up completely. Landon, Kevin and Berthold waited for a break in the traffic and pushed the car out of the intersection. When the way was clear they pushed the car up to speed, I popped the clutch and it started. Because of the minor inconvenience of battery failure, we got an even better deal on the rental.

Berthold decided to stay another two nights because his class schedule doesn’t require him back until Tuesday night. Kevin, Landon and I took a taxi to the jetty, hoping that there would be space on the ferry and bus that lay between us and home. The ferry was packed, but we got on and made it back to Kuala Perlis by 1930. The bus from there to Ipoh also had seats open, so we purchased tickets and walked around town for a while. We bought a watermelon and found a place to eat some supper. I found two things on the menu that I didn’t recognize, roti bakar and bihun badung, and ordered them. Roti bakar turned out to be bread with some coconut jam on it, but my bihun never showed up. I asked our waitress if it was coming and she apparently hadn’t caught that part of my order. She went to the kitchen and relayed my request, and we waited.

We waited for half an hour. Kevin and Landon finished their food, and it was nearly time to catch the bus and my food still hadn’t shown up, so we paid for the food we did get and headed to the bus. I still want to know what bihun badung is.

The bus left at 2100, and turned out to be nearly empty. We watched a movie for the first half of what was supposed to be a four and a half hour drive, and then tried to sleep. The frigidity of the AC, the noise of the bus, and the roughness of the road made sleep impossible for me. Around midnight we stopped at a bus station in some unknown town and just sat for nearly an hour. I’m not sure what was up with that, but it meant that we didn’t get back to UTP until 0330.

When we arrived I realized that I had left the keys to my room with Berthold, and my other pair was in Landon’s cupboard, the keys to which were locked in my room. And Kevin couldn’t find the keys to their room. Just when I thought I would get to spend another night sleeping on concrete, Kevin found his keys and Landon was able to extract mine from his cupboard without unlocking it. Effective security.

Since Monday is a holiday (some sultan's birthday or something), I slept for six hours and then began the process of sorting the 627 pictures I had taken over the weekend.

Closing thought: If you think you're having a bad day, just be glad that you aren't being crushed to death by a jellyfish.
(Photocred: Kevin)

Once more unto the Beach

On Thursday morning I finally registered for classes. I still don't know for certain that I will be able to take one because classes change without notice and the instructor has not responded to emails. But hopefully this schedule will work.

You may note that I have no class on Friday, and as it turns out, Landon, Kevin, Ahmed and Berthold were able to do the same. This means that every weekend is a three-day one, and allows much more time for travel.
A friend of Landon's (who turns out to be an avid Ultimate player) gave us a ride to the train station at 2315 Thursday night. We arrived at the train station with plenty of time to spare, which was fortunate because apparently retrieving record of tickets purchased online is more difficult than one might think, despite the fact that Landon had all the necessary paperwork. While we waited for the train we counted geckos we could see. Kevin got to 32.

I even caught this little guy

We boarded a train at 0200 Friday morning, bound for Palau Penang, which is about 183 km north-west of UTP. We arrived in Butterworth around 0600, and wandered around until we found a ferry to Penang. We crossed to the island just as the sun was coming up, and I got to see Venus for a bit before she gave way to the sun.
Georgetown, the main city on Penang, was founded as a base for the East India Trading Company, and its British heritage is still quite apparent. The architecture is a fascinating blend of East and West, with stately colonnades and elaborate Chinese temples side-by-side.

 We saw evidence of the wide range of faiths adhered to in Malaysia: Buddhist and Hindu temples, mosques, a catholic church and convent, and many establishments of Chinese Folk Religion. It is impressive to me that each religion can exist to that extent in such a small area.

We spent most of the morning just wandering around the city.

Photocred: Kevin

The Lighthouse at Fort Cornwallis, ETC's original installation.

At Cornwallis we saw the Google Trike driving slowly in circles.
Maybe we'll even show up on Street View!

A beautiful tropical beach in Georgetown

I thought it would be fun to walk down this alley.
We didn't get mugged, but we did meet an elderly woman watering her flowers.

After eating some incredible noodles from a street vendor, we found a bus to the far side of the island. We intended to stay in Batu Feringghi, but it turned out to be filled with tourists, so we went on to Teluk Bahang. Teluk Bahang was much smaller, and more of a fishing village than a tourist trap. We walked around town a bit and found place to stay.The beach was mostly deserted and the water felt amazing.

I found several large starfish in the flotsam left by high tide, but left them on the beach due to their unpleasant odor. I stepped on several things that weren't sand while swimming. One was either a fish or a ray, and it swam quickly away. The other was a sand dollar, and when I tried to pick it up with my toes I discovered that the living ones have spines around the edge that deliver a painful stab.
On our way back to our hostel we accidentally wandered through a Hindu festival called Monthly Life Liberation. I didn't really want to be liberated from my life just then, so after traipsing through some back yards we found our way back to the road. An ten-story, abandoned resort begged us to go exploring/climbing, but we decided that it would probably be wise to abstain.
We got up relatively early on Saturday to go adventuring in Teman Negara Palau Penang (National Park). We ate a quick breakfast of banana pancakes with honey and ice-cream (Yes, I was singing Jack Johnson for the rest of the day). Due to differing interests, the group split; Landon, Kevin and I headed to a lighthouse and Ahmed and Berthold went to a beach. The hike to the lighthouse was about 5 km on a rough path through the jungle and across beaches.

The sun was sweltering, and we were quite glad for the shade of the canopy. The last bit of path up to Muka Head was about a kilometer with 225 m vertical change. At one point we passed a group of guys hauling batteries up the steps. They had six or seven of the 2ft cubes which, judging from the effort necessary to move them, must have weighed around 250 pounds each.
I decided it would be a good idea to run up a section of the stairs, which was quite strenuous. I always forget what good exercise stairs provide. We were all drenched in sweat by the time we reached the top, and we were very thankful for the faucet with which we doused our heads. Hunger was beginning to pervade our thoughts, so we killed the fatted papaya for calories to carry on. The view from the top of the lighthouse was very nice, but the breeze was even more appreciated.

Sand, reef and clouds

We ran down the trail from the lighthouse, miraculously twisting no ankles, but my burned shoulders complained about my 20 pound pack rubbing against them. We swam for a bit at Monkey Beach and headed to Pantai Kerachut to meet Ahmed and Berthold. The trail crossed a stream several times as it meandered through the jungle, and when we found a spot with enough water to submerge ourselves, we did so.

We met Ahmed and Berthold about half-way across the island, they decided that banana pancakes were insufficient sustenance for an entire day of hiking, and were heading back to civilization to find food. We finally arrived at the beach around 1300, and spent an hour or so in the water. It was great to cool off after hiking about 13 km. Apparently the island is also a breeding ground for turtles, and we got to see a bunch of the little buggers.
I hadn't been very hungry since eating papya, but a snack of two pieces of bread and jelly reminded my brain of my stomach's existence. Apparently it did the same for Landon and Kevin, and around 1500 they headed back across the island for food and water. The beach looked as though it would provide a beautiful view of the sunset, so I opted to stick around until then and just walk back in the dark.
With a couple hours to kill before sunset I wandered along the shoreline, climbing rocks, sitting in trees and swimming, and taking pictures. 'Twas lovely.

I met a group of Malays playing volleyball (two on two, no net, no bounds, no rules) and joined them. After the game disintegrated, I chilled on the beach and talked to one of the guys. His name was Solau, and lives a couple of hours from Palau Penang and works in a semi-conductor factory. Apparently he camps on this beach often because of the excellent fishing it offers. When asked why I wanted to come to Malaysia, I told him that it seemed like a very interesting combination of cultures, and I was wanted to learn about it. This began a discussion of how our cultures differ and some of the positive and negative sides of each. I was told that I should definitely learn Malay because it is 'such an easy language' and given a brief lesson in it.
While we were talking some people farther up the beach started shouting and waving at us. I had left my backpack about ten feet behind me and while I wasn't watching some monkeys were taking stuff from it. As we chased them into the woods I noticed that one was carrying my camera case in its mouth. The monkeys vanished into the trees, and I assumed that my camera had gone with them. To my relief however, I found it behind a rock under some branches.
Having stuff stolen by monkeys is quite the rookie mistake, and Solau agreed when I said that I still had a lot to learn about living in Malaysia. When I told him that I was planning to hike back through the jungle, alone, after dark, he said that was not a good idea. I would probably not have any problems, but the possibility of encountering muggers made it safer to just sleep there on the beach.
I thought I should probably inform the rest of my group that I would not be returning for the night, but I had no cell service. Out on the pier I could occasionally get enough of a connection to make a garbled fifteen second call. After about 30 minutes of trying to call whenever I had service, I finally confirmed that I had communicated successfully.
I found a tree from which to watch the sunset. It was fair but, due to cloud cover, did not live up to the area's sobriquet "The Bay of Glowing Amber."

I sat on some rocks out on a point watching the waves, and as it got darker I started to notice that the breaking waves were still quite visible. Upon closer inspection I found that it was bioluminescence, with millions of tiny organisms illuminating any movement in the water. I could see schools of small fish darting about below the surface, as well as some which appeared to be quite large. Wading was stupendous and even the sand near the water was saturated with the tiny lights; every step kindled an ephemeral aura around my feet.
I did my best to photograph it, but with the limited capabilities of my camera, the results were rather disappointing.

I was torn between sleeping in the sand or out on the pier, but mosquitoes tipped the scales in favor of sleeping on the hard wood. While I was watching fish below me and the moon above a Swiss guy came and joined me on the jetty. He had been staying on at this beach for the past ten days, reading, lying on the beach, bumming food off locals and drinking rum when the food ran out. He was forty-three, used to work as an economist but retired about five years ago. We chatted for about two hours about shootings, gun laws, educational standard, economic policy, and the like.
After he left I once again attempted to sleep, and had almost succeeded when, around midnight, the group of Malays I had been hanging out with came out to the pier to fish. They shared with me some chips, and though I couldn't identify the flavor, they were delicious and I was grateful. I talked with them until 0130, when I left to try to sleep in the sand instead. I had no sheets or even a towel to sleep on, but the sand was quite comfortable. A strong breeze kept away the insects, but was also rather chilling.
I slept little.
The clouds cleared some around 0600 Sunday morning, and I got up and walked around looking at the stars for a while. It is a very different sky here, and most of my friends were not visible, so I made some new ones. At 0630 it was still quite dark, but I decided to start walking back.
The jungle was eerily silent in the predawn darkness, and the canopy completely blocked any light from the stars. I had a headlamp with me so I could see well enough to keep from tripping over roots, but anything beyond my circle of light was invisible. At one point I gained a relatively large companion who moved parallel to my path through the bushes just out of my sight. After a few minutes it went its way and left me to myself. Birds and insects started to make noise as dawn approached, and by the time I emerged from the jungle it was nearly light enough to see.
This was fortunate because my headlamp started to flicker and die just as I reached the beach.
I found some rocks to sit on to watch the sunrise and read my Bible.

A floating village

I contacted Landon and found out that the rest of the group had returned to Georgetown for the night, so I would have to rendezvous with them there. I wandered through Teluk Bahang collecting food from various street vendors. My breakfast consisted of three pieces of delicious flatbread (RM2) curry sauce and sugar to dip it in (RM1) and eight bananas (RM2).
It was exquisite.

My enjoyment may have been influenced by the fact that in the last 36 hours, I had eaten a pancake with ice cream, one third of a papaya two pieces of bread and a few chips.
I bought some 'preserved mango' so that I would have change to pay for a bus and a snack for the ride. It turned out to be pickled, and not pleasing at all to my palate. It was one of the few foods I have encountered thus far in Malaysia that I did not enjoy. I put it in my backpack to share with the others.
I met Kevin and Landon at a Police station in Georgetown. It was near to the hostel they had stayed in and served as an excellent landmark. I opted to go rinse off some of the sand that clung to me from my night on the beach, and they pointed me in the direction of the hostel. I saw lots of people in one street so I ignored Landon's excellent directions and went into a massively crowded street market. I shoved my way through the dense mass of humanity, scavenging some delicious food along the way. I found a roseapple, which looked like a pear crossed with a flower of some sort, and tasted like a combination of apple and starfruit. I also found some interesting soybean biscuits and samosa-like fried things with curried chicken inside. I passed innumerable other delicacies, varying in appeal of both appearance and odor, but did not have the abdominal real-estate or money to partake.
The train ride back to Batu Gajah was long, but we passed some most interesting scenery. We tried to put all five of us into one taxi to get back to UTP, but the driver would not allow it, even though I volunteered to take the trunk.