Malacca, Malaysia

Tiles in the town square.
A trishaw driver. Some of these had stereo systems that played music while the guy rode you around town.
The ruins of an old church. From the top you could see the Straits of Malacca which was important back in the days of the spice trade.

An old Dutch church.
The clock tower in the town square.
Doesn't this look like small town America?
I love the Chinese lanterns!
Jonkers Street.

After Singapore, I took a bus into Malaysia and stopped in Malacca. This is a sleepy town with more colonial influence. I walked to the top of the hill and sat in the ruins of an old Dutch church. There were some guys selling their wares, tourist trinkets and such. There was also a guy playing the guitar. The first song I hear him play was Country Road (they love to play that over here in south east Asia...he didn't quite get the mountain momma line but I didn't have the heart to correct him either; maybe the fact that he was missing several key teeth garbled his pronunciation). I experienced a very strange feeling, a clashing of times and cultures. Christian church, Muslim country, a centuries old edifice, a popular song playing in the background, Asian, European. Such an interesting blend of influences.

I liked Malacca. It was small town. I also stayed in a real hotel (not like the hostel in Singapore where I had to share a bathroom with everyone and their mother) that had a restaurant where I ate nearly every meal. I visited with some of the other travellers and got to know the waitstaff. There was a guy who played live music every night so that was an extra perk. Besides the historical square and church up on the hill, the other highlight of the town was Jonkers Street, kind of like their Chinatown. Most of the places were closed due to the holiday but it was decorated with tons of red lanterns and hanging lights. Just walking down the street at night was magical.

Chinese New Year

I could have watched these guys all day. There are two men inside the lion outfit and they did some incredible stunts.

It is Mickey Mouse's year (even though I thought he was a mouse and not a rat...?).
I wish you could see the eyelashes on this thing.
The art of Chinese brushstroke.

I should have done a bit more research before I made my plans for Chinese New Year. I was thinking that I would get to see a whole bunch of festivities while I was in Singapore. I was wrong. The New Year for the Chinese is something that is spent with your family. Since most of the people in that country are of Chinese decent, many of the businessmen had left to go be with their families. Many places were closed and the whole place seemed somewhat deserted. I was able to catch a lion dance at a mall near Chinatown which was fascinating.

Chinatown was alive and well early in the week which I was thankful for. Even the Chinatown there is clean, way cleaner than the one in Bangkok. More open, easier to walk through, nicer products. While I was shopping, I was caught off guard in an antique shop. A very handsome guy, twenty something, Chinese, started chatting me up in the store. I happened to be looking at some very provocative ivory carvings of various extracurricular positions. He asked the usual questions. Where are you from? Are you married? Boyfriend? I was flattered to be getting such attention as he was a handsome fellow. But then the questions changed a bit. Where are you staying? Would you like for me to come over? Whoa buddy...this was the middle of the day in an antique store. I could see something like that happening in a club at night after a few drinks but this felt totally out of place. And then he said, "Will you pay me?" This was a first for me. I have never been asked to pay for services of that kind. Pay? I wondered if he did this all the time. Was he a pro? I didn't think they had prostitution in Singapore as it is such a wealthy country, but I am just naive I guess. Even though I really did want to take a closer look at the salacious little figurines, I turned on my heal and walked out of the store.

But what I really wanted to ask him was how much it would cost. Not that I would have paid or anything, just out of curiosity.

Singapore

Did Pizza Hut at home make this pizza for the Chinese New Year?
I think they mean business. If they put this sign on the Governor's Palace wall, maybe they wouldn't have so many trespassers.

Very trendy.
There is a really smelly fruit over here called durian and this building looks like a huge two huge durian. It is the Esplanade, a concert venue among other things.
This fire station seems kind of small town America to me.
The National Library. Whew. They are serious about their books.
This made me think of Charleston or Montreal.

Last year there was a teacher who would go to Singapore all the time. After visiting there, I can see why. IT IS SO CLEAN! Everywhere is landscaped and manicured, kind of like Disney Land. The way the ultra modern blended in with the colonial architecture was fascinating to see. The men are taller and very handsome, Eurasian. While I was there, it was mainly men who waited on me, in restaurants, Chinatown, even the massage I had was given by a man. Ooh la la! This was a nice change from Thailand where women almost always serve you.

A big plus (as well as a negative) is that most people in Singapore speak English. How can that be bad? I heard people complaining. I never hear people complain in Thailand. I'm not saying that they don't do it but I don't hear it. On a whole though, I think there is much less complaining in Thailand compared to other places because of the Buddhist belief that to want causes suffering so your goal is to not want. Anyway, in Singapore I had more than one person complain to me about how stressful life is there, how expensive everything is, how low the wages are. And yes, it is expensive. Think NYC prices.

And there are a whole lot of fines. You get a fine for not flushing the toilet. A fine for chewing gum which is illegal in the country. A fine for jaywalking. A $500 fine for eating on public transportation. The cops are almost always plainclothes officers so you can't just behave when you see a man in a uniform. It is a very controlled country. But I hear the counterculture is alive and well, even if somewhat underground.

I spent my time eating at lovely restaurants with the handsome male waitstaff, exploring Chinatown and Little India, shopping some but not much because it was crazy expensive, and wandering around admiring the beautiful old buildings and the striking new ones. I had a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, which felt like it was straight out of the Bombay Company. It had those spade-shaped straw fans lazily rotating on the ceiling, the kind that servants would have been manning one hundred years ago, fanning white men in their cream linen suits smoking cigars and sipping brandy. Lots of dark wood. Classic. Colonial.

I went out one night and felt extremely old. The drinking age in Singapore is 18 and a whole table of kids walked into this fabulous club Le Baroque. They looked 15, I swear. And they were ordering bottles of whiskey! I wanted to know where their mothers were.

Fickle

Back in January, I started the job search. Since I had decided to return to the states next year, I figured it was time to get all my paper work in order. I started looking at different school districts in Virginia, pay, SOL scores, demographics of students, affordable housing in the different areas. I was looking at the application procedure for Virginia Beach Schools and was distressed to read that "grade point averages, student teaching evaluations, references, and interview ratings are used to form a pool of qualified applicants. " Grade point averages? I have been teaching for eight years and they want to look at my GPA? Depressing.

No job vacancies were listed that early so I decided to start updating my resume. Only problem was I couldn't find my resume. Ugh. And where are my Praxis scores? Who do I have to ask for reference letters from again?

I am not ready package, polish, and sell myself again.

In the end, I changed my mind again. I figured I can suffer through administration for another year. It will look better on my resume to have a three year stint instead of a two year stint at a school. And besides, it could always be worse at the next place. At my current school, at least teachers are given much freedom in regards to what they teach and how they teach. I don't know how I would do with a prescribed way of teaching. So, I am staying after all. Over the summer, I will get my ducks in a row so that I can start the search for another international school for the 2009-2010 school year.

What this means is more cheap shopping, pedicures, massages, island holidays, and more travel! Sunny will be in Venezuela next year...I might have to meet her in Trinidad.

January 31, 2007

Traditional Thai dancing. The Thai people are forever resourceful. The lights the girl is holding are made out of water bottles cut to look like flowers.

A Thai fire balloon. These are amazing, especially when there are hundreds of them in the sky at one time.
More Thai dancing. Check out those nails!
Sunny, Daylin and me in our fancy Western party hats and our ornamental Thai flowers.

So, I'm a little late getting this post up. It's been a busy and crazy two months. If you remember, I was down in Southern Thailand on an island for the Christmas holiday. It is a quiet island with not too many tourists. The place we stayed put on a big New Year's Eve dinner complete with Thai dancing. The girls had obviously practiced for a long time. Their families from the neighboring village came to watch. Wrapped in their head scarves and standing on the on the edge of all the festivities, the mothers looked so proud of their babies.

After the Thai dancing, the karaoke started. Oh boy. What is it about Asians and karaoke? There were some pretty good performances though. A mousy German woman psychologist really belted one out and it was great. And the whole time they were on the island, I was thinking her husband was the rock star. Go figure. I sang something but it was very, very bad. I Just Called to Say I Love You (the choices were very limited). That was the first and last time I will ever do karaoke.

When midnight rolled around, all the Thai people starting singing a Thai song. Then it was onto the beach to do some fireworks and the fireballoons. The fireballoon is a tradition here for special occasions. In some places, hundreds of them are released at the same time and the sky is filled with floating candles. It is a beautiful sight. Even with the few that we had, it was still remarkable. I like the symbolism of floating something into the sky, letting go. The whole thing made me a little teary eyed, even now.

Koh Libong

After a meager Christmas celebration in Bangkok, Sunny, Daylin, and I headed down south to a remote island in the Andaman Sea for the rest of our holiday. There are plenty of beaches in Thailand over-populated by foreigners on holiday—blonde, Swedish, twenty-somethings in bikinis, buff backpackers sleeping in hammocks—but we were looking for someplace a little more low key to bring in the New Year. Somewhere removed from the usual hullabaloo associated with the more touristy destinations.

And boy did we find it. Koh Libong is nestled amongst the other 98 islands in the Andaman Sea. The majority of the 2000 Thai citizens on the island are Muslim, evidenced by the thrice daily prayers that could be heard floating through the air from the nearby mosque as well as the women wrapped up in multi-colored head coverings. A very different feel from the largely Buddhist population here in Bangkok. There are two resorts on the island (and I use ‘resort’ loosely here) which did not have more than thirty guests at one time the whole nine days we were there. It took us sixteen hours on an overnight train, one hour in a mini bus, and forty five minutes in a boat to arrive to our destination.

Most of the island consists of untouched jungle. Our resort was located next to a small Thai village but the bigger village was located on the other side of the island, accessible by fifteen minutes on a motorbike or by boat. There were no ATM’s on the island, no 7-11’s, no Western Unions. In the village, there were little stores at the front end of people’s homes where you could get the basic necessities; of which I was surprised to see body-shaper underwear. I found this sadly funny. That even far far away from modern civilization, women still feel the need to suck in their tummies and minimize their rear end jiggle. Strange. There were also some large, flat screened televisions in some of the cement block homes; I imagine they caused quite a stir upon their arrival, comparable almost to the opening of Ame’s in West Point circa 1988.

The electricity for the bungalows was run on generator power which only came on at night. We ate at the same restaurant for the whole time we were there; fortunately, the place served up some tasty Thai food. The cheeseburger was another story though, especially since there was no beef on the island due to religious restrictions. It was an egg battered chicken sandwich. How do you get hamburger out of that? One day, I walked down to the other ‘resort’ and was greeted by a fairly large snake which scared the begeebies out of me. I guess with a tropical island, you get tropical wildlife as well.

The few tourists that were on Koh Libong were of a different breed than I am used to meeting in Thailand. More families and career oriented people, less kids on holiday with their parent’s credit card. General practitioners, dentists, psychologists, NGO’s and engineers traveling with their spouses and children. It made for a totally different atmosphere. Very mellow. Quiet. Perhaps a little too quite at times. And since there was nowhere to go, the daily routine settled into wake up, breakfast, read, nap, lunch, lounge on the beach, read, dinner, night cap and then bed. A real vacation.

Finding Nemo

I don’t want to give you the impression that life on a tropical island is boring. I definitely wasn’t wishing to be anyplace else. And there was one opportunity for adventure and that was to hire a boat and go snorkeling. I had never been snorkeling before this trip so I was pretty excited. On New Year’s Eve we hired a long tail boat with what looked like a lawn mower engine rigged up on the back of it that took us out and about in the sea. A British family went with us, two doctors and their seven and twelve year old daughters. First we went to the Emerald Cave. Holding on to each other’s life jackets, we swam through a pitch dark cave (quite scary actually) that led to an enchanted cove. Once upon a time, the cove was used by pirates to stash their illicit booty. It was truly a magically beautiful place. Removed from everything. An enclosed room that opened up to the sky.

After that, our captain (who would kill the engine to take a call on his mobile phone at the drop of a hat) motored us over to a fabulous spot for snorkeling. I was the next to last one to exit the boat, left alone only with the male Dr. Mackenzie. The others had disembarked using the ladder but I didn’t want to take that route. I just didn’t feel comfortable climbing down a small ladder that Barbie would have used to climb off of Ken’s yacht. So, after consulting with the doctor on the depth of the water (sure it’s deep enough), I jumped right in with my mask on. Once submerged, I took in the green blue wonder of the silent ocean as it passed by with an almost dream-like quality. The little fishees swimming about, the coral flowering everywhere. I kept sinking slowly until CRASH, my left knee slammed into the coral. The coral, which looks like it is leafy and soft, almost as if it would flutter with the water’s current, is actually rock hard and alive with poison. Its surface is jagged and sharp, allowing it to rip into the skin with knife like precision. Good thing I didn’t dive in head first, huh?

I floated back up to the surface and tried to act like nothing happened. I don’t think I did a very good job at that. The doctor asked if I was okay, my pain manifesting itself in a grimace on my face. I didn’t want to cry. Thai people don’t often show their emotions and I didn’t want to be the blubbering idiot of a foreigner and I surely didn’t want to ruin the outing for the others in the snorkeling clan. So I clung to the ladder and just bobbed about for a bit while my knee bled into the water. Salt water might be good for an open wound but let me tell you, it stung like hell. I stayed in the sea for as long as I could take the stinging before attempting the blasted latter. If it was just a smaller version of a ladder that would be one thing, but I don’t think there were enough steps on this ladder. Step implies that you just step and then go up; instead for this ladder I had to pull my knees up to my chest to reach the bottom rung, grab on to the top of the ladder and then pull the rest of my bodyweight up using my arms. That would assume that the user had some upper body strength. And as Coach Schaffer (nightmare gym coach from seventh grade) could tell you, upper body strength is not my strong suit—I held the record for zero seconds on the bar hang; go me.

After a humiliatingly heave of my corpulence over the side of the boat, I continued to bleed profusely into the boat. I was particularly aware of my bloody leg because we were out with two doctors and their small children. I’ve had enough OSHA training to know about blood borne diseases, and I figured this might be going through their minds as well. I should mention that this was not the kind of boat that kept rubber gloves handy. Nor was there a first aid kit for that matter. The captain and his mate gave me concerned looks to which I just smiled, nodded my head. Ignoring my half hearted attempts to affirm my well-being, they flagged down another boat and borrowed a first aid kid, broke out the gauze and iodine solution, began pouring and dabbing away. More stinging.

Nearly two weeks later, my knee is still giving me trouble. Angry red, scar-like tissue that itches constantly covers my knee now. It feels like it has been badly bruised but there isn’t discoloration like a bruise. When I bend my knee, it hurts. Bad. Some scabbing that isn’t healing too well is also evident. So, I don’t think I will go snorkeling again anytime soon. I did get back in the water later in the day, trying to salvage the trip a bit, and I did see some beautiful fish (like the ones in the pictures). But I stayed far away from the malicious coral.