April 13, Singapore. We decide to skip the planned tour - we are temporarily tired of tours, plus I've seen this city before. Just want to relax, enjoy a good meal. We leave the ship and discover a huge shopping mall connected to the boat terminal. Brigit browses and we eat at an Indian restaurant, busy with the lunch-time office crowd. You can read all about Singapore, though I'll summarize for you. It is an extremely well-run city-state, not nearly as polluted as most Asian cities. Population around 5.5 million. Situated on an island off the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula, not far from the equator. Land mass is just 250 sq. miles - roughly 16 miles square. With little land and few natural resources, this hot, humid place has managed to become one of the wealthiest countries on the planet - exactly as the visionary Raffles intended 200 years ago. A good example of democracy/free markets at work. A paradise for entrepreneurs and shoppers, a multi-cultural society living in peace and prosperity.
April 14 - Kuala Lumpur. Again we decide to skip the tour - not yet in the mood for bus rides. Instead we negotiate a cab ride to the city - about 1 hour. On the ride from the port to the city, we both make the same observation - the area reminds us of the the 680 corridor from San Ramon to Pleasanton in northern California. Similar condos, office parks, freeway. Certainly not what we were expecting in Malaysia. Driving through the city, the air conditioning in our taxi stops, so the driver pulls over, gets out, lifts the hood, and uses his pocket knife to fix it. He gets back in and the air conditioning now works.
Traffic in Kuala Lumpur seems orderly, though pollution is heavy. Oddly, when we step out of the cab in front of the mall, there is a uniformed man with a short rifle slung over his shoulder. Everyone seems to ignore him. I sneak a photo on my cell phone.
We visit a brand new shopping mall called the Pavillion, located a few blocks from the iconic Petronas towers - formerly the tallest buildings in the world. While in the Pavillion we wander about hunting for the perfect sunglasses for Brigit. Despite the presence of dozens of high-end, overpriced retail stores, our search fails. In this Malaysian capital we do however find a good Thai restaurant and enjoy a nice meal, served by a Philippine waiter who speaks perfect English. Most of the customers are Malaysian muslims, the women all wearing headscarves. As expected, they don't have real Thai ice tea - that is only available in the U.S. and Europe, not Asia.
The mall is crowded with shoppers, some women in head scarves, a very few in burkas. However mostly young Malaysians dressed similarly to westerners. Stores are very westernized with the same provocative marketing displays found in most of the world. Products are the same as found worldwide, though sizes are for Asians, not westerners. I try to compensate and buy two shirts, then have a tailor sew them together. Now the shirt fits, but it has four sleeves. Only good for a Hindu deity.
When we finish shopping, we return to the taxi stand where remarkably, the driver is there as promised - four hours of waiting to take us back to our ship. We make the one-hour return journey with the same driver in the same cab and leave Kuala Lumpur with only a slight, though overall favorable impression. We don't see anything remarkable about the place. Or perhaps we are just becoming familiar with Asia.
April 15, Penang Malaysia. Our second stop in this country, today we take a 3-hour tour via trishaw, a contraption in which the driver pedals and his two customers sit in a small seat in front of him; a cross between a tricycle and a rickshaw. A group of us go on this tour, so we form somewhat of a caravan of trishaws pedaling through an older part of town known as Georgetown, now a UNESCO world cultural heritage site.
In this former colonial area we see a neighborhood known as little India, good practice for our upcoming visit to big India. The traffic is mellow here, not too fast or dangerous - very good for trishaws. First stop is a mansion built around 1875 by a wealthy businessman in Penang. The impressive part of his story is that he migrated from China as a young man, penniless, worked in the tin mines, and gradually became one of the wealthiest men of the area - a Malaysian version of the Horatio Alger story. Then we visit some Hindu temples, then finally relax at a tea-time in a nice hotel, chatting with other travelers. After the tour we wander through some shopping malls, low-end retail for the locals here. Very low prices - great bargains.
April 16, Phuket Thailand. The local taxi driver union has managed to prevent the ship's shuttle bus from operating, so instead of docking in the small town on this island, we anchor on the west side, a few hundred yards from a public beach and string of resorts. We tender onto shore and head straight to the resorts in search of a good massage. On the way we are solicited by dozens of taxi drivers looking for customers. We decline their offers, but some follow us for three or four blocks still trying to generate business.
We finally find a nice looking resort and schedule some treatments. Brigit gets a Thai, a Swedish AND a foot massage. I get a Thai massage and a facial. Always good massages in Thailand, and prices are quite low compared to U.S. - maybe a quarter of what we would pay in a good western hotel. Next we hang out on the beach for a while. Located in the Andaman sea off the west coast of this same beach was hit hard by the massive tsunami that struck this part of the world back in December 2004. We are told that 3,200 Thai people lost their lives right here, and probably many non-Thai as well. They say the water reached as far inland as three blocks. For the most part the damage was repaired and rebuilt within a year, and today Phuket remains a popular destination among European and Australian travelers. After a lazy day here, we head back to the ship, finished with our tour of southeast Asia. Tonight we sail west toward India.
No comments:
Post a Comment