Travel blog!

Hong Kong

Hi! So we are in Hong Kong right now and hurray for internet! It’s a bit slow here but it’s better than nothing (ie. in Malaysia, oh how I suffered).

The last days of Malaysia were spent between doing nothing at home and eating out with relatives again. Said goodbye at the airport and went to Singapore again for the night. The next morning landed in HK.

Hong Kong is sort of what I expected. The apartment that we’re staying in is in the Kowloon district which is apparently the most densely populated place. It seems a bit like Las Vegas because everything is so crowded. There are a ton of people here, the buildings are also really tall and on the streets you’ll find lots of those neon signs. The heat here is about the same as Malaysia (about 35 degrees C) but the air con is much more extreme. You’d need a light jacket indoors.

The food here is really good too, and I feel like I’m repeating myself but really, it’s much better than back home.

I checked out the malls here and in comparison with Malaysia, the clothes here are just as cheap but the style is much more varied. In Malaysia, everything there was either frilly, lacy, with pearls or pink. I kid you not, it was hard to find something that wasn’t girly there.

I’m finally doing research on HK and there seems to be lots of places to visit while here!

Hi! Still got a week left in Malaysia. Yup, still using the wi-fi in Starbucks. Do you know how rare Starbucks is here? Back home, there would be a Starbucks every other block, but here, I had to take a half hour drive to a mall to get one. Apparently people here don’t drink much coffee seeing as there aren’t many other coffee shops either. Also the stuff here is really cheap. Most things here are the same price number as Canada, but the exchange rate is 3 RM = 1 CAD so it’s a good deal living and eating here. The down side is that the food sometimes isn’t always clean. We would often eat in those outdoor places and watching them make the food is a little bit unappetizing. There’s a night market here that I went to a few times. In Malaysian, they call it “basam alam” and it’s much like the night market back home. It’s quite nice but smells like the highway because they use their cars/motorcycles to power the lights of the stalls and you’d breathe in exhaust all the time.

Ipoh isn’t much of a sight-seeing place. There are some really nice mosques and some churches, but other than that the buildings here are quite dull and frankly shoddy. That might also have to do with the fact that we don’t really go out of our way to look at tourist-attractions here. Sometimes, we’d pass by an alley with garbage littered all over the side. My sister (aka The Super Sniffer courtesy of her sensitive sense of smell hahaha) suffers quite a bit. I’ve realized that travel is very much engaging in the five senses. Looking at new places and people. Smelling and tasting different food. Listening to the native people’s language. To be honest, I don’t really engage in my senses much. I relate to what Sheldon said in one Big Bang Theory episode, something in the lines of “My body and I have a distant but friendly relationship”. But having been in a place other than home for the past two weeks have taught me that there really is lots to see out there. It’s more than just google imaging the Sydney Opera house or reading up the Wikipedia page on Mongolian people. It’s much more than following a recipe for curry chicken or learning Chinese from Saturday school. It really is so much more different when you’re here and you’re bombarded by new things, and you learn something new everyday.

So, true to my non-sensing nature, I’ve observed a lot of the culture/traditions/way of life around here. I feel very much like an anthropologist! The Chinese people here are very much like the Chinese people back home (well, the non-Westernized somewhat newly immigrant Chinese families). They hang out with their own people, eat pretty much the same food. They don’t really engage in much Malaysian culture. I can’t really speak for all Chinese people in Malaysia but my side of the family is quite traditional. Their way of raising their kids is very strict and sometimes physical punishment is used. At the same time though, they are very family-oriented, and the parents love their kids and sacrifice a lot for them. The family structure is quite matriarchal and it’s usually the women in charge, organizing everything, leading the conversations. The men are just all relatively quiet, and mostly do the driving, heavy duty lifting, etc. I would say it’s quite traditional in this sense.

In terms of religion, there are a lot of Muslim people here. I don’t know much about Islam as a religion (only briefly studying it in grade 8 but I don’t remember anything) but I know they are quite conservative in terms of how they dress. I have immense respect for them seeing as it’s super hot and they still wear a lot of clothes. My relatives are all mostly Buddhists and so every house I would smell incents and see those statues. I have one uncle (my father’s brother) who is a very much into Buddhism and he carries a chanting tape wherever he goes. He shaved his head and frequently meditates (when we’re all watching tv – speaking of which, they show Korean dramas here, what do you know!) A lot of them, though, aren’t as religious as that uncle of mine. In fact, some of my aunts are quite open to new religions and ask my parents to talk to them about Christianity. We are planning to go to a church this Sunday with them and I’m really looking forward to seeing what churches here are like.

Hello from Ipoh, Malaysia!

I’m currently in a Starbucks coffee shop using their wi-fi. They have blue aprons here! Also they sell better food like cake instead of pastries back home. Unfortunately they don’t have the apple chai tea I like at home either.

So I haven’t had consistent internet for a while and I’m finally glad to have access to everything again. So I spent 4 days in Singapore and landed in Malaysia a few days ago.

Singapore was quite fun. It’s ridiculously clean with lots of nice buildings and tourist attractions. The laws are super strict – you can get fined for not flushing the toilet, having “unnatural sex” (the picture was with two people and an animal… I’m guessing bestiality is what they consider “unnatural”) and importing foreign gum. The last one put Shana in quite a panic.

Some highlights:

-          The Singapore Flyer: a really tall Ferris wheel that effectively rid me of any fear of height up to 165 m

-          The Night Safari in which we witnessed lions procreating. Loudly. Also zebras are prettier in real life.

-          The food. Food in Asia is so good and so cheap. The hole-in-the-wall places serve the best food, although it can look a bit shoddy from the outside

Another plane ride here and we are at Ipoh, my dad’s hometown. While Singapore had mostly tall buildings and lots of tourist attractions, Ipoh is a little more rural in comparison. All the houses are dilapidated, and even the best of the houses (like the one I’m living in now) is akin to Vancouver’s east side housing, probably worst.

Oh the showers here are a bit funky. Their showers are their bathroom; the bathroom is a small room with the toilet, the sink and a showerhead with nothing to keep the water out. The drainage is the bathroom floor. It’s hard to get used to, and the bathroom floor is wet all the time. No hot water since the weather is so hot all the time. Thumbs down for cold showers. Thumbs up for character?

There really isn’t much to do here in Ipoh, mostly eating out with my relatives (my dad’s side of the family is ridiculously huge and I have at least a dozen nephews and nieces), occasionally going to the mall/night market.

Some interesting things here:

-          My aunts (gu ma) are awesome. One of them is in her 60s and rides a motorcycle and gives us a lift. And motorcycle rides aren’t as scary as I thought they were (thanks Hollywood) almost everyone here has one.

-          It’s really “yeet hay” (don’t know the English translation) here – all the food here is so fried and so good but so unhealthy. So you have to drink lots of Gook Fa Cha (I think they call it Chrysanthemum tea in English) to avoid sore throats.

-          There are lots of stray dogs and stray cats. The cats eat bones here and we feed them some nights

-          Not very technologically advanced here, which is why nobody really has internet around here unless they’re businessmen that deal with international things

-          Engrish isn’t really that funny after a while

Internet here is really limited so I will update more once I land in HK.

Under the weather.

I’m quite sick at the moment with a nasty cold. I blame it on the changing weather. One moment it’s hot and the next - dreary, in typical Vancouver fashion. It even drizzled a bit this morning. An Asian-studies friend of mine (who has been in China and HK a zillion times) advised me not to do any “building hopping” (air con in buildings are mega cold!) while there as it can get me sick. It’s kind of ironic that it’s happening here with me now. Totally looking forward to how my immune system responds.

Okay okay, enough about weather, who wants to hear about that? After all, we’re not on the front porch like a bunch of Gen X folks.

So I think I’m starting to feel the anticipation with all the packing my family is starting to do. To be honest, I’m not too excited about the trip - although I think I should be since a month is a long time! - it only pertains to visiting lots of people I don’t know and will never talk to again. Even though the trip isn’t my idea and I’m rather “meh” about it all, I want to approach it with a positive attitude since I don’t travel often and it’s a good opportunity to see what it’s like. I look forward to seeing new things, engaging in a different culture, eating not-so-vastly-different food.. I should also read up on the building structures and examine the buildings a la true tourists. A chem prof of mine was telling me how the buildings in Malaysia are very much like the British’s, but I am absolutely clueless about these things.

Not much of an update, but I did make a list of the things I need to pack seeing as I always forget things. And I just remembered that I didn’t get a converter for my laptop yet.