Malaysia was a refreshing respite after the hectic and mentally/emotionally taxing whirling dervish known as India. I still feel like I haven’t adequately processed that, or indeed anywhere I’ve been, and while I’m positive this experience will stay with me forever, I am simultaneously petrified that I will forget even the tiniest things that happened. I think that is why I write such long and detailed blog entries, because while I’m sure you find my life fascinating, I probably find it more fascinating than you do, and want to use this as a memory aid in the future.
I have been feeling a little bad that I have been basically just giving a play-by-play of what I do and not what I feel or what happens aboard the ship, but there’s just so much that goes on in every possible sector that I have to pick something to focus on. So far, I have been brought to tears several times, bowled over by the realization that this is happening, that this world traversing is my life, and how utterly blessed I am to have the supportive family, financial means, personal stamina and general beautiful life that I have. I don’t know if I will ever find a way to repay you, Mom and Dad, for making this trip possible; or to thank you enough, Gram & Pop, for the amazing sendoff gifts you gave me. I know I will certainly spend many years trying.
Enough sentiment, let’s get to the play-by-play! Malaysia is AMAZING. I would go back in a heartbeat. Penang is super safe- I never felt threatened or bothered in any way- and the people are all friendly and ready to have a conversation. Several factors helped Malaysia’s natural charms shine ever more: the relaxed atmosphere and lack of tight time budgets and my fabulous travel partners, Katey, Eleanor and Danica. We had so much fun basically hanging around and eating, because there is no better way to experience a culture than to eat its food. Seriously.
Malaysia is semi-multicultural, albeit not to the degree of the mostly-immigrant US. Malaysia has three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian. The Chinese and Indians have been in Malaysia for centuries, but some still feel that the Malays have all the power, and that they are treated as second-class citizens. Most Chinese and Indian Malaysians have never been to their ancestors’ home countries. The racism was never apparent to any of us, but it is very clear that neighborhoods and restaurants (no fusion) are separated by culture.
Day 1: I went on an FDP to a drug rehab center, an experience that was far less dry and far more rewarding than I had expected. I am a total psych nerd, so I obviously enjoyed it, but what made it really cool was that instead of taking us on a lame tour of the grounds, we were able to speak with and quasi-interview several of the patients at the facility. This place, while it was clearly a clean, well-maintained and quality facility, was VERY different from a rehab center you’d experience in the US.
There was a staff of only 7 for nearly 400 inmates (they called them ‘inmates’, not ‘patients’, another difference I will return to in but a few sentences), and none of them were professionally educated in psychology, just a training program for that specific facility. They followed an 8-step program (that none of us had never heard of, even Dr. Cargill) based on a center in NY, and had a minimum stay of 24 months, although most inmates are let out earlier for success and good behavior. The patients are called inmates because it is a government-mandated facility, and as such is more of a penal system solely for drug addicts. While we got differing answers from the staff and the inmates, we eventually eked out of them that the recidivism (the do-you-come-back-for-more) rate was about 70%, which is fairly high, but not surprising considering that it is a mandated and not voluntary facility.
The man I spoke with was 52 and was on his second go, having been in the center in 1995 and then clean for the next 12 years. He said that the most dangerous thing for him to have once released was free time. In the center, the inmates are up and occupied from 5:30am to 11pm, and once released, there is little to no follow-up counseling, job placement, or training to ensure success outside of the facility. Malaysia is trying to eradicate drugs COMPLETELY by 2015 (a lofty goal in my and my interviewee’s opinion), and there are government mandated rehab facilities all over the country. Most addicts (that are convicted, at least) are men, and there is only one center each for women, juveniles, and voluntary admittance.
After that illuminating field trip, I headed back to the ship, then back out to grab some dinner. This going back on the ship then leaving again may sound simple to you, but it was not. We had to do something called “tendering”, which meant our ship was anchored in the harbor, not docked, and we therefore had to use one of our lifeboats as a baby ferry to take us the 8 or so minutes from ship to shore. These boats left the ship on the hour from 7am-1am, and left the shore on the half hour from 7:30 to 1:30. Luckily, we only have/had to tender in Malaysia.
Dinner that night meant Chinese food, and then out to the clubs on Penang Rd. because it was ladies night. Ladies night was a lot less awesome than it sounds, and we got on the midnight tender to beat the river of SAS kids that was inevitably going to come in on the 1am. Dinner was REAL Chinese food, which meant tasty duck and fried rice and the strangest “dessert” I have ever eaten. It was a yam paste with bits of dried fruit and sesame seeds in it. It was definitely a paste, and pretty much tasted like…well, paste. It was the consistency of…paste, and looked like…paste. It was not super tasty, it WAS super pasty, and none of us were really game to order seconds of that particular dish.
The second day I had another FDP about the religions of Malaysia, which was fairly uninteresting and involved walking around to various temples, churches and mosques in the Georgetown area. Relatively unremarkable, although the Kek Lok Si Buddhist temple had some really cool Chinese architecture happening. That night, we went to Little India in search of henna. We found it, and lots more fun, because it was Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights (yeah, every religion’s got one, whether the lights are religiously symbolic or simply a nuisance to hang when it’s 20 degrees out). We found a girl doing mendhi, and while she artfully decorated us, ended up having a really good talk with her and her brother about cultural differences and living as an Indian in Malaysia. We asked her for her dinner recommendation, took it, and enjoyed better Indian food than we’d eaten in most of India. Cashew-sauce covered chicken, a spicy Kashmiri chicken, lots of naan, and amazing mango-yogurt smoothies called lassi. We headed back to the ship after dinner because of our early ferry to Langkawi the next day.
Langkawi is a GORGEOUS archipelago off the coast of peninsular Malaysia (there are two bits of Malaysia, Peninsular and the part on the island of Borneo, aptly named ‘Borneo Malaysia’). Seriously, when you see pictures you’ll say “Oh, that’s beautiful,” but pictures do not BEGIN to do it justice. I had a “I am so lucky” moment just standing on the ferry looking at the lush green islands all around. Langkawi is a tax-free island, and we got a sweet four-star hotel room for $10 each.
We spent our two days on Langkawi relaxing. We were ravenous as soon as we got off the ferry, and made the FANTASTIC choice to eat at this dumpy looking Thai place called “Siam Palace” or something equally uninspiring. It is a rule of the world that the crappier the place looks, the better the food (only up to a point, though, I’m not advocating eating that really tasty-looking prawn off that dirt-covered plastic plate in Chinatown). This place had the BEST fried rice I have ever eaten in my life, along with an incredible coconut-milk-and-lime seafood soup, chicken curry, and fresh lime juice. I would pay airfare to Malaysia just to eat that rice once more. No lie. Okay, a little lie, but everybody loves literary embellishment.
It had been pouring rain all day, but we went in the water anyway, being the free spirits that we are. This was a good choice, because the cooler air temperature meant the water felt bathtub warm and toasty, plus a rain shower is the best shower. We chilled in the room and watched hilariously bad Malaysian soap operas (in Malay, so we dubbed it ourselves), then got a DELICIOUS dinner of noodles, the best satay of my life, and fried ice cream downstairs at the restaurant. We then hung out in the room some more, taking advantage of the WiFi to stalk Facebook and Youtube like the internet-starved techno-children we are before deciding that it was karaoke time.
Yes, there was a karaoke bar in the hotel, and yes, we took it over from 11:45pm until well after 1. I mean took over literally, because there was no one in there and no hotel staff to set it up, as it technically closed at midnight. We figured out the equipment for ourselves (lucky for me the CD player was the same one we used to use at YMCA gymnastics), then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half serenading each other with fantastic English (there were also Malay, Mandarin and Hindi) hits, including one song that we had never heard and used the on-screen lyrics to make up notes for it. I love hanging out with music nerds, because there is usually improvisation, there is usually dancing, and there is always harmony (pun intended).
The second day was paradise- super sunny and warm. We relaxed on the beach in the morning, then Katey and I went in for our spa treatments. We paid less than $60 for an hour-long massage, a facial, a body scrub, and something called a milk bath, which will come into play later.
This spa treatment will forever be known as Katey and my “Accidental Lesbian Holiday” (seriously, that’s how we refer to it now), because after being in the same room for our now-couples massage, facial and scrub, THEY DREW US THE SAME BATH. This was clearly because there was only one bath, but Katey and I thought it was hysterical nonetheless. Our initial shared look as we walked in was pretty priceless, and while we decided taking turns in the bath would be the best course of action, we thought the whole concept was fairly uproarious.
We took the evening ferry back, which yielded stunning views of the archipelago and the Malaysian sunset, then headed to Penang Rd. to stay in a hotel for the night, as we wanted to go to a morning market up the street the next day. We fought other SAS kids for rooms at several hotels before nabbing the “family suite” at the Oriental Hotel, which was clean but by no means fancy. The “family suite” was code for “two twins and a double bed in a strange round formation, circling-the-wagons style, centered around a large pole in the center of the room.” We left our suite and hit up dinner at the Red Market, which is a mini night market and ginormous food market with entertainment. This was the dinner highlight of Malaysia. We ate like kings for about $3 each: pad thai, fried rice, chicken satay, amazing Malay BBQ chicken, and incredible duck, all finished off with fried sweet corn ice cream. I know it sounds weird that sweet corn is an ice cream flavor, but this was seriously the most awesome dessert I have tasted in a while (especially after the yam paste). It genuinely tastes like corn, but the sweet summery yellow corn. It is textured like ice cream and coated in a thin layer of fry-age. I have daydreams about this fried ice cream. Seriously. Full of ice cream and happiness, I bargained a dress seller down from RM90 to RM50 (a little less than $15) for a cute long gray jersey dress.
In the morning, we left our wagon encampment and headed up the street to the market. The Little Penang Craft Market is held the last Sunday of every month, and contains several trinket/curio sellers, a few clothing sellers and A LOT of jewelry. The atmosphere reminded me of the Scituate art fair, but a lot smaller, more like the Bird Sanctuary’s autumnal bonanza. I bought a lot of gifts, for myself and for others. If I tell you your gift came from Malaysia, it’s either from this craft market or from the STELLAR craft shop in the mini-mall-thing attached to the ferry place.
After the craft fair, we headed back to the ship to ditch our many purchases, eat a quick lunch and head back out for our final service projects. Katey and Eleanor went to the St. Joseph’s Orphanage, which they said was unfortunately very crowded and overwhelming for the kids that live there. I went to the Cheshire home, a care center for mentally challenged teens and adults. It was tough to interact with the combination of the language barrier and the differing levels of cognitive development. It was hard for me because I’ve never worked with the mentally challenged, and we weren’t informed as to the degree of developmental delay in most of the people there, so I wasn’t sure who wanted to color and who wanted to practice their English. We all eventually found friends though, and I spent a few hours helping a guy named Lim work on puzzles, and coloring with a really sweet woman named Hooilee. All in all it was a learning experience for me.
After that it was back to the ship, and off we sailed for Vietnam! We’ll be there tomorrow morning, and then I leave pretty much right away for Cambodia. I’ll let you know how it goes! Who knows, maybe I’ll bring home a baby, Angelina style. Send me emails to come back to!
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