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.
