Malaysia: Our Ever Burgeoning waist lines

Penang
We touched down in Malaysia aboard our first propeller plane of the trip. And while we were a bit skeptical about the flight worthiness of the vessel, as evident by the Lindsay's sweaty palms, the flight proved to be remarkably smooth. We spent our first few days in Malaysia on the Island of Penang, which was home to a remarkably diverse range of cultures and cuisines. Established as a important trading post by the British during the 19th century, Penang is home to a significant population of Chinese, Indian and Malay peoples. And having arrived from Indonesia, whose more homogeneous cuisine had become a bit dull to us, we wasted no time gorging ourselves with more Pork Buns, Naan, and Dumplings than I care to recount.

One of the many Chinese Restaurants we hit up on our gluttonous tour through Penang.

Of course our visit to Penang did not revolve solely around eating. Between meals we strolled through the charming colonial streets of Penang, visiting several Chinese temples, a historical mansion and an impressively large chocolate store. (As an aside, we named this blog entry in honor of the tour guide who took us through the mansion in Penang. He was quite the character and concluded the tour with an apt piece of wisdom regarding Penang: "Prepare for ever-burgeoning waistlines.") And while the heat was oppressive at times, Penang proved to be one of the cooler cities we have visited on our adventure.

Moon Gate at Kek Lok Si Temple.

Another shot of Kek Lok Si Temple

And the Chocolate Store. Please note the disturbing poster...

Splittin' for a couple days

Having traveled as a pack of four for the entirety of the trip, we decided to split up for a few days. In search for some beach time, Sarah and Chris headed off to the enchanting Perhentian Islands, while Lindsay and I decided to take a circuitous but scenic journey down to Malaysia's largest national park. While Sarah and Chris were sitting on a pristine stretch of white sand and starring off into the azure sea, Lindsay and I had the slightly less pleasant experience of dealing with ungodly traffic and broken down mini buses. Please note, traveling through a Muslim nation during the end of Ramadan is a hellish ordeal!

The very talented Lindsay preparing PB&J's while waiting for a bus


Sarah lapping in the warm waters of the Perhetian Islands...

Chris starring longingly into the azure sea...

Taman Negara

After two full days of travel, Lindsay and I made it to Taman Negara National Park. Taman Negara actually means National Park in Malaysian, so for some reason the country decided to name one it's national parks just "National Park." It is supposedly one of the oldest remaining forests in the world (close to 128 million years old), and while the lush jungle environment was not teaming with as many animals as Sumatra, it was nonetheless beautiful. And thanks in part to the much more developed infrastructure in Malaysia we had no trouble exploring the park on our own. Stocked with homemade PB&J's and several liters of water, we spent two days exploring the ancient forests, sweating profusely and collecting a range of leech bites.

Lindsay and I on the canopy walkway

Giant Millipede!

Sweat residue from sitting down. Lindsay was sitting on the right.

Kuala Lumpur
"KL" as it is often called is the capital of Malaysia and is a large bustling metropolis that gave us a bit of a reminder of western life. Below is a photo of the signature skyscrapers in the city-the Petronas Towers, which were at one point the largest buildings in the world.

KL proved to be a good place to run some much needed errands. Mark and I (Lindsay) needed to get more passport pages, so we made a trip to the US embassy. Sarah mailed off her registration for the Bar exam and Chris got a haircut! We did the usual tourist stuff as well and paid a visit to the National Museum and explored Little India and Chinatown for more diverse culinary delights. Interesting tidbit-while KL gave us a taste of "western" life, including big malls, designer stores, fancy buildings, it was the first city of the trip in which we saw numerous women dressed in full burkas, so that only the eyes showed. The women wearing this garb would often be accompanied by men dressed in western style shorts and a t-shirt.

Last note-sadly it was in KL that the parasites part of this trip reared its ugly head. Sarah was the first of the four of us to get a stomach bug, which she appropriately named Elvira. Sarah was an incredible trooper and after a long couple weeks overcame Elvira, though this would not be the last time we would fall victim to stomach bugs. From KL the four of us hopped onto another plane to Vientiane, Laos. Sabaidee Laos!



KL's Petronas Towers


Getting a much needed Dosa fix

elephants in Tankahan

We came to Tankahan for elephants. Tankahan is a small village bound on one side by protected jungle and on the other by a mind-boggling expanse of industrial palm fields. Sarah and I signed up for a day trek, and after a long wait in the sun, six elephants approached from across the river.

Trek begins: a train of elephants, and we're at the rear. Riding these animals is incredible. Elephants plod, but they are a smooth sturdy ride. SO POWERFUL./ Arguably the most powerful animals on earth, they carried us up steep/rocky mountain slopes without losing momentum the way a horse would. It was less like riding a large horse than riding a noiseless tank. HUGE heaping shits on top of gallons of piss: it really makes you appreciate how prehistorically significant these animals are. At one point, the elephant in front of us ripped a small sapling from the ground with its trunk then immediately flicked it aside as if to say 'whatever'.

The harem consisted of 6 elephants, 5 females and 1 guy (with the group's first baby on the way). Our elephant was named Sori. At 45, Sori was the matriarch. Guides expect these elephants will live 80 years, which is about 9 yrs longer than the avg Sumatran.

Afterward, we followed the train down to the river for a bath. No one told you to keep your distance or watch your step and you could walk right up next to them adn pat them on the ass. The females were very tender with each other. On several occasions I watched one tear grass from the side of the trail and feed it to a neighbor. They also did that "holding hands" thing elephants sometimes do.

A pre-bath ritual: Look closely at the photo. Sori's expression says it all.
Mark and Lindsay met us here. The elephants had a huge vocabulary and responded to a variety of commands, including what amounted to "lay down", "roll over", "flap your ears", "bellow", and "nail THAT tourist with a powerful blast of water"

thick craniums, trunks. strange-looking aliens. Elephants communicate in very low frequencies, a vibration you feel in the hairs on your skin. the bottoms of their feet are remarkably flat and round and hard, like bone (like a flat hoof). A trunk has a life of its own-- it'll hit you with small blasts of air then snort in any dislodged scent with a rapid series of inhales. they have a finger-like nub above their nostrils that is also prehensile and can poke around at you. and like apes, when elephants look at you, you can feel their mirror neurons. A very intimate close encounter.

That night: No windows in the cabins of Tankahan, just plywood walls and a thatched roof. Sarah and i left the light on inside when we went to dinner and came back to a cloud of insects swirling around above our bed and this BEAST on the wall. The spider was larger than my hand. It's worth clicking on the picture: it's so big its cluster of eyes have that iridescent glow you get when taking pictures of large mammals at night. one of the creeper things I've seen in a while.

Indonesia almost over.

Bukit Lawang

The drive from Lake Toba to Bukit Lawang took about 6 hours. we should emphasize that most drives in Indonesia come with a lot of adrenaline. As far as we can tell there are three lanes on roads here: the one you're in, the one for oncoming traffic, and then the dotted line in-between where every vehicle on both sides that isn't a bus plays chicken with the oncoming cars, trying to sneak ahead in trafffic. Worse, it seems the seat belts have (literally) been dis-installed from most cars. Why? we don't know.Bukit Lawang is a small strip along a wide river the color of the Amazon (light brown). it sits just outside a huge preserve in Sumatra that is one of the few places on earth you can still find endemic wild Orangutans, along with many that have been rescued from sad situations and are now being re-acclimated to the wild.

Orangutans are curious and on several occasions a few came close enough that we could smell them, swinging down on long muscular arms that could pull you apart. In fact there is one orangutan in the preserve named Mina who has (amazingly) attacked over 30 guides in Bukit Lawang, along with some tourists and one guide just a week or so before we got there. Because orangutans are endangered and protected, guides must (amazingly) bear the brunt of these attacks, and many of them have Mina scars as proof. Incidentally, all these pictures are ours (Mina is the one whose face is framed by her baby's limbs).

Orangutans can live to be 60. they are the only apes outside of Africa and the only ones that live their entire lives in trees. They are solitary animals. While males and females only come together to mate, they "always make love face-to-face". Umbra and Daydee--our guides-- were fond of saying this. Afterward, the male hurries away to endure yrs of solitary leaf munching. TWO YEARS after mating, mother orang will give birth; she will look after her baby for up to 8 yrs.

Cute baby orang periodically emerged from mother's back hair.

Can you spot the peacock-like pheasant in the picture above? The Great Argus is a rare sight, but we got lucky. thick spiraling vines everywhere in jungle. Most start in the canopy and work their way down (the opposite of what I thought), suffocating host trees (often several at a time) while stealing their water (they are a good source of water for lost trekkers, the cactus of the jungle). As our guide Umbra pointed out, these parasitic vines are an essential part of the jungle's ecosystem, opening holes in the canopy for new plant life. The trees that survive them can get enormous and old.

During a short break, our second guide, Daydee, aggravated a colony of lemon ants by sliding his lit cigarette into a hole in a root, and again they came pouring out like a scene in some horror movie. speaking of which: according to Umbra-- who confirmed lemon ants taste like lemons-- the jaws are so big on these beasts that locals have used them to suture deep wounds, holding the ant's mandibles over a wound until it bites, then ripping the body away, leaving the head and jaws piercing patient's skin together!!!

You must cross a river to get into and out of the national preserve (the river also keeps the wildlife IN). Below: the Thomas tree leaf monkey (long tail, tiny head) is actually quite tall when loping bipedally past you. big time hops.

Only one male per troop, so solitary males are common and want very much to fall into line in other simian hierarchies. This one followed us for a while. Our guides, Umbra (not pictured) and Daydee (blowing smoke next to Sarah (every man in Sumatra smokes)), were very careful about not leaving any scraps around. Pack it in, pack it out, nothing but footprints, etc, etc.

Pictured: a gibbon. Gibbons are heard often, but rarely seen. Small fox-like faces. Loud throaty hoots done in deafening chorus. males adn females have monogamous life-long relationships. Families stick together as one band. Very long arms, and when gibbons move it's like they're falling horizontally through the trees. Lightening fast. They never come down from the canopy. Very shy, keep their distance from humans. Again, a rare sight for tourists, I think. This picture was LUCKY. he was a speck in a tree... zoomed way in after the fact).

About midway through trek, I cut my hand pretty deeply on a vine and half-jokingly asked Umbra if he knew of any plant that would help (lemon ants were not readily available). Within a minute he handed me leaves from a small plant-- a "peacock plant"-- and told me to chew them then rub the resulting paste into the cut. The pain stopped immediately and within 5 minutes the swelling had receded as well--a small reminder that the jungles are our only real drugstore.

It's going to be tough to top our experiences at Bukit Lawang.

Harau Valley visit

Our bungalow in Harau stood against one of two sheer cliffs in the narrowest part of the valley. Sunlight was limited but the views were astounding, claustrophobic. We heard gibbons hooting immediately after arriving but we didn't see any. The smaller Macaque monkeys were occasionally in the trees, and, as has been the case everywhere in Indonesia, the guesthouse property was overrun with skinny semi-feral cats (especially during mealtime).

It t-stormed each night as the air cooled, and mornings were misty. Everything in Sumatra is bigger than we're used to. For example, the leaves and beetles are so big that you jump when they hit the ground near you. We continue to play a lot of Hearts. Lindsey has a comfortable lead at the moment.

The highlight of the Harau visit was our trek on the second day. A local man named An took us on a trail up the steep cliffs and into the jungle above. this was our first real taste of the jungle adn it didn't disappoint. Going up, we often found ourselves shimmying along ledges or climbing rickety bamboo latters or using vines to let ourselves down slippery embankments (when it rains, as it had the night before, the trail is a stream/waterfall). Several (non-stinging) territorial wasps followed us, too, and when An jabbed a stick into a hole in a large root at the base of a resin tree, ants the size of your pinky came pouring out. these ants are so big you can pick one up by the "scruff" of its neck and (if you're so inclined) bite off its abdomen, which is about the size of a Skittle and apparently tastes like citrus; the locals call them "lemon ants" and consider them a treat.

Our guide An was full of interesting information. three examples: one, a small fern here closes its leaves when it's touched. you've probably seen these at botanical gardens, maybe even read its unimaginative scientific name. Here in west Sumatra the fern is called "ashamed lettuce", which we think is a pretty excellent name (a close second... the day before, our driver referred to speed bumps as "sleeping policemen"). Second example, An emptied the contents of a pitcher plant ("condom flower" as he called it) into his palm to show us the decomposing ants and mosquitoes inside. The best part about this demonstration was that after talking about it, he carefully poured the juice back into the plant's guts. Final example, An showed us a leaf that behaves like Velcro on clothing. you can literally toss the leaf onto someone, and we used the leaves to hide the corporate logos on our tshirts.





Next, An lead us to a hidden swimming hole and we swam. swimming meant jumping in from a horizontal log about 10' above the hole, being careful not to hit a large trunk partially visible just below the surface.

next was lunch (Nasi Goreng wrapped in banana leaves) in a bat cave (hundreds of bats darting about). After lunch we walked through to the other side. Look closely at the photo and you'll see hundreds of little bat eyes illuminated by the flash of my camera. Guano everywhere; locals harvest it.

The trek down was quicker than the trek up, tho some challenging vine action was still required. A really cool hike.