Pasar Malam

[Wednesday July 25^th] On Wednesday night there is a open market near my apartment. I’ve been told its called the ‘Pasar Malam’, the night market. It was quite a bizarre experience strolling though. It was fairly crowded with people from all over.



Where do I begin? Well it’s a crowded little side street with several blocks of shops. Very much like a craft fair setup. As you stroll through you see all sorts of different things. There is a lot of food out for purchase from fruits and vegetables to fully cooked meals. Its quite different from the US. There is a guy taking whole (but plucked) chickens and cutting them on the spot. Everything they do is up front for you to see. Everything is open air and just hanging about.


They have fish stalls too. Lots of fish just sitting out waiting to be purchased. There is even this guy on a corner selling fish. He sits on this 6 inch high seat, between his legs is a small brick. Someone will order a big fish, say 18 inches long and about 6 inches wide. He’ll take is knife and scales the fish like skinning a potato. Scales just pile up on the street. He then whacks off the fish head. He slices the head in half right down the center and displays the cut open head to the customer. He pulls out the fish guts from the remaining fish body and they just lye on the street next to him. He cuts the fish down length wise and then many time vertically, the whole time keeping it as one large piece and flailing the fish around. The fish hits the ground (street) many times during this. He shows the fish again to the customer and then puts in a bag. Without washing up he accepts the cash payment, puts the money into his fanny pack and gives back change. Yhep. Fish guts hands and all. He then works with another customer, the scales and guts just continue to pile of and age as the night goes, new fish touching the old remains. Very strange!



They have some very strange produce here. I haven’t tried them yet but many of them are very spikey. Quite different than an apple!



Ah, then we come to the DVD booth. Extremely professional looking. Each DVD has its own case cover and each DVD has professional screen printing on the disc itself. It has the full move description and some even have holographic print on the cover sleeve! You could easily mistake them for the real deal. If you look carefully you can see movies that just got to the theater such as Diehard 4, Harry Potter, and Transformers…


-Terry

My Apartment

Welcome to my humble abode. I live on the 11th floor of Century Bay. A quick ride up the lift brings you to my floor. Just off the elevator you will find an open hallway down to the various apartments. Its quite strange coming from Wisconsin to see the open hallway. When it rains you get wet walking down it as the rain just blows in! It sure makes for a great view of the island though!

As you come up to the door you'll see I have an iron gate and a little entry way. I have a funny door bell too. It plays crazy Olde American songs such as 'there is no place like home' 'rock-a-bye baby lullaby'.

Once you come into the apartment you'll find your dropped right into the main living space. First is the dining table with 6 chairs. I almost get to have a new one for every day of the week! Just off to the right is the kitchen. Its fully furnished with a mid-sized fridge and a plug in water boiler. Funny thing in here is that there is no hot water in the kitchen.

There is a sliding door leaving the kitchen to go to my laundry deck. Its all out doors! I just have a washer, no dryer. Just hang everything out to dry. I haven't done it yet but somehow I suspect it'll take a while to dry in the 90% humidity!

Coming back into the apartment, past the dining room is my living room. A bunch of couch like seating in front of my TV, woot. I haven't turned it on yet though... I have a little balcony off from the living room with a gorgeous view of the Penang Bridge. I believe its 13km long and was once the world's 3rd longest bridge.

Veering right before the living room is the Master bedroom and bathroom. Nothing too remarkable here. Instead of the silly marble flooring in the rest of the place, its got wood floors. The bed is quite low to the floor from US standards but its a big bed. They don't have any closets here either, just wardrobes.

The Master bathroom comes fully equipped with its own water heater! Just flick the switch 5-10 minutes before you want to take a shower and voila, hot water. The marble found in the other living rooms makes an appearance here as well but this time on the walls.

I've also have 2 more bedrooms, one of them even has a bed! The other I use as the ironing room. With the spare rooms I also have a guest bathroom. There is a shower in there but its quite strange. There really is no actual shower stall, you'd just shower near the water fixture and that’s it!

Oh, and I have a pool too. I haven't used it yet but it sure looks inviting!

A full day's Trek

[Sunday July 22nd, Posted Monday July 23rd, 10:30pm local time]
I've been really tired the last few nights so this isn't written well, I'll spruce it up sometime
Sunday July 22nd, The day started with a bit of excitement. I was washing dishes when I met Dino. Initially frightened, I came to enjoy Dino while he was around. I had to run and get my camera and take a shot of him. He scampered off quite quickly. He's a little lizard. Apparently they're fairly common.



Tom and I went out for the day just to bum around. We went to the local mall to get a bite to eat for breakfast/brunch. We had some Cantonese Chicken which was quite good. We walked through a pastry shop and found some interesting things: UFO Burger Bun, Pizza Serunding, Mushroom Crepe, Sausage Appetite. Quite unappealing.




We ventured to Fort Cornwallis which none of the locals have visited. Its an Olde British Fort originally constructed in the 1780s and rebuilt with brick in the early 1800s. Because it was Sunday the museum and re-enactments were closed but we did get to walk around the perimeter. They had several of the original cannons on the ramparts. As we walked around we saw some famous icons of Georgetown. One is the odd split open architecture things which was pretty. The other was the Queen Victoria Clock Tower. As we went back to our car and made around the final bend we saw a large metal framed structure which turned out to be an original 1800s lighthouse at the fort. We were allowed to climb up to the top of the tower for a great view of Georgetown. In the US they probably wouldn't have had the tower open to the general public due to safety concerns but all is well.







We headed to the North West corner of the island to the National Park. Along the way we passed through Feringgi. I had to take a picture of a sign as the obvious Star Trek reference was too hard to resist!


We stumbled upon a beach along the coastal road and took a little stroll. We could see the mainland from the beach and it was quite pretty with the mountains right there. There were many small fishing boats cruising by, great photo opportunity. We also were enamored by all the little crabs scurrying around. On the way out I stopped to get a pop and found that they didn't have any cold cans. Their solution? Tie a string on a baggie and fill it with ice and pour the drink into the bag, voila! Quite different!
Next we drove the final leg to the National Park. Along the way we almost hit a Monkey darting across the road, thats a first for me! Once we got there we got a hiking permit and began a little hike to 'Monkey Beach'. On the way we saw a bunch of Monkeys on the path just hanging out. These guys were much more friendly than the ones at the Botanical Gardens.We eventually got bored with the coastal hike and turned around. We hiked up a hill for a mere 10 minutes to get to a look out, man did I get sweaty! In fact, I've never sweated so much in my life! The picture explains it all! ~95 degrees, 95% humidity, hiking up a jungle mountain, oh yeah!





We decided to turn back which was a good thing for me as on the way back I the heat was getting to me. I think I need to acclimate a little more before doing that again. We did stop at a fishing dock, what a rickety mess that was! They even drove their scooters on on it, craziness.

Well have a good one!
-Terry

Penang Arrival

[Saturday July 21st, Posted Sunday July 22nd, 8:15am local time]
Add one more stamp to the passport! Yesterday I arrived in Penang! Tom Ray and KS were waiting at the airport to pick me up. It took a while for the baggage to arrive but not only did my bags show up, they were some of the first off the plane, what luck! Getting through customs was a breeze, just one quick luggage screener and thats all really.

We jumped into KS's car, small by US standards but really quite big here. There are tons of scooter bikes roaming the roads. To say that they don't stay in their own lane is an understatement. These guys skirt through traffic, weave lanes, and travel between cars waiting at lights. They are commonly less than a foot away from moving traffic as they veer for into position! Its amazing more accidents don't happen. We went straight to my apartment building,
Century Bay. I'll post more about the apartment later. You'll see various pictures here of different temples we happened to pass throughout the day.

After unloading my luggage we decided to do some exploring. We went to a local mall to get some food and some necessities. The mall was very much like an American mall, very large though. 4 floors I think. They have a central rotunda where it is apparently common for companies to go there, get on stage and demo/announce their stuff. Kind of like at a fair. They have many restaurants there, some American ones like Pizza Hut, TGIF, and Mc Donalds (which delivers here!). They also have an indoor, mall version of a Hawker Center (more on that later). We ate at a coffee shop of all places and I had a chicken rice noodle soup. It was actually quite good! After a while we picked up some stuff like shampoo, soap, milk, etc.

We began a tour of the island, one of our big stops was at a botanical garden. When we got there we stopped for some coconut drink. I had never drank straight from a coconut before! It was quite refreshing! They had coconuts chilled and they just made 4 whacks on top and voila, a drink in its own cup!
After our drinks we walked through the gardens. The landscape is much different than back home. They have rolling hills with tons of different plans and trees. The species are very different. While walking the biggest thing you'd notice is the monkeys!

They are absolutely crazy. I've never seen monkeys in the wild before this. They're like big smart squirrels running around the gardens. You can get really close to them but watch out, many get very aggressive and you can get bite. There were alot of people taunting the poor guys, such a shame. The Mother's were caring their babies, you got so seen a lot of young ones scampering about. Many seemed to like this 'cannon ball tree'.

We made a quick stop at the toilets in the the gardens. Turns out it was 20 cents to use the facilities. I didn't need to use it but I did see one of the fabled long drops, thankfully I haven't had to figure out how to use it yet!

At the end of the night we went to a true Hawker Center. Basically its a bunch of little booths, each selling a specific food. First you have to find a table and a drink person will stop by and ask you what you'd like. They'll bring it out to you. Then you venture to a booth and order some food. You go sit down in the crowd and they come find you and then you pay right there at the table. At first one can feel uncomfortable eating at a place like this, it doesn't seem clean in comparison to out establishments back home. In the end you realize that it quite fine and akin to a 'greasy spoon' restaurant.

What an exhausting day! I feel asleep right away when I eventually went to bed at about 11pm. I had a chance to get the internet and Skype working so I could call home. This morning I got woken up about 6am by the Mosque's call to prayer. Apparently thats a daily occurance about 5 times a day. So far I haven;t found my way back to bed. Tom and I are planning on venturing out day and seeing some more, ought to be fun!
Take Care,
-Terry

Taipei!

[Saturday July 21st, 6:35am local time]
Hello all and Happy Saturday! (Where did Friday go!?) I just made it into Taipei Taiwan and its about 6:10am. Just as a heads up, Saturday is looking good so far. Well my longest leg of my journey to Penang is over, now one more flight and I'm there.
Recap:
On Thursday July 19th 2007 I was picked up for our house via a limo service and driven to Milwaukee. Funny thing, on the way there it sounds like the car had a squeek, squeek, squeek. I Finally commented that it sounds like there was a bird up there! Turns out there was! Her daughter needed her to babysit the bird so along for the ride it came. All three of use (bird included) got held up in gridlock before the 894 splitoff in Milwaukee. I was getting nervous. All is well though as we did make it to the airport wih plenty of time to spare. I had a chance to talk, or rather hear at great depth, from a new Midwest pilot all their training procedures and how to become a pilot. Quiet crazy, 3000 hours then you can apply. They have 1000s of applicants peared down to a class of about 30. After several months of course work, quite vigorous actually, only 4 in his class made it! Makes one feel a lot safer knowing all that the pilots have to go through, and knowing they've got to really enjoy it to keep going through the hassle of random testing where your job is on the line each time!

My first leg was a Midwest flight from Milwaukee to LA. Before it I had to get an UNO pizza as I don't know when the next time I would get pizza (that and I hadn't eaten all day! So much for waiting to the last minute to pack for a 3 month trip!) My flight was delayed a couple of times which made me nervous (Nervous start that day!) . Eventually we boarded and I got a Window seat but it was dark most of the flight since we left at 8pm. While over Utah (I think it was Utah?) we saw a large wild fire burning in the night. Sad to say, but it was an amazing site. I wish I had gotten a picture! I meet Cleveland, a car salesman from LA as well as a lady who worked for GE. We had some interesting discussions, she kept refering to Alaska as a country... Eventually we all began reading but Cleveland didn't have a book so I loaned him my copy of 'Slaughterhouse Five'. 'Interesting' was his choice of words for the book...

I Eventually made it to LA. I ventured to the International terminal, found the China Airlines counter and got all checked in. Supposidly my luggage is ticketed through to my Penang destination, we'll see about that! The LA lounge ws closed so I got a voucher and found a chili cheese dog, had to savoir some more fattening American food. I got a chance to talk with Anna for a while, it was great to hear her voice. I miss her so much already! Its going to be hard to be away for so long :(

We boarded and I got to sit in the upper deck of the 747! That was pretty kewl. We had our own individual fold out screens for movies, big chair that reclined quite a bit, extra storage bins. We were served 2 meals an a snack over the ~15 hours, pretty western in general, steak with raw salmon and veal. Eggs benedict with some green stuff. Strangest I think was mixed nuts, some were wrapped in seaweed, strange but good. The flight was pretty uneventful. I watched some movies, lets see, '300', 'The Last Mimzy', and 'Blades of Glory'. They were all good.

Well now I'm in the VIP lounge, time to get some refreshments and such before my next flight! It's going to be a long day!

I miss you all!

-Terry