Yesterday was sooooo amaaaazing!!
well, yes, indeed it was.
we set out around 8.30 in the morning to go down from KL to Port Dickson, a small beach on the west coast with nothing much apart from the seashore, and later Melaka, the historical city of Malaysia.
The Port Dickson trip was actually part of a school gathering; Choy, Dominique, and Xiao Ma, my hosts for the day, led me to join 80 other law students on the beach and play a few games, like volleyball and "guess what/who Im trying to imitate". quite a lot of fun. Since Malaysia is a very religious country, most of the girls attending wore a headscarf, and though it was a bit surprising for me to see the majority wearing it, it became sort of natural after some time. It's just part of their daily lives, I won't have a say in it.
In the sea, a few families were swimming, women fully clothed on. Men and children wore only swimsuit.
The beach was very nice, white sand, extremely fine, and we walked all the lenght of it, and back again. Before we knew it, Choy and I were quite burned. Actually, he was rather okay with his darker tan, but got sunburnt on the nose (everybody kept telling me"hold your nose! it's going to fall any minute now!"), and behind the legs, which is actually very painful every time you want to sit.
The student gathering was for me just another demonstration of how diverse the country is, people showing so many different origins: Indonesia, India, China, indigenous Malays from the peninsula, indigenous from Borneo Island... all tones of skin color, all with different accents, different native mother tongues. They address these differences as "races", but it does not cayy the same meaning as in French, so people will not get offended by that term.
we had lunch in Melaka: typical, local "chicken rice", which consists of a half chicken cut into slices, served with riceballs, cucumber, and chili sauce. Grab a wood stick, pick a piece of chicken and add a rice ball at the end, dip it in the sauce... yummy!!
Xiao Ma guided us throug the city, because he comes from there, and invited us to that restaurant. Later on, we bumped into a dutch brass band playing some jazz classics, an impressively tall Dutch woman coordinating a painting class for beginners on a public plazza, and we ended up in the inevitable Chinatown.
Every medium-sized or larger city here has its Chinatown neighbourhood, since Chinese make up for around 30% of the population, on average.
At the very top of the main hill of Melaka, one can see the relatively well preserved remains of the Portuguese church, and a few tombstones of Dutch traders and explorers.
we did visit everything, or close, and retreated from the burning-hot sun into a local cafe to eat pineapple tart, a specialty of the city which is just as good as the name allows you to imagine :) we took a box for the trip back to Kuala Lumpur.
The city has a traditional architecture, the colonial influence is visible. It has been adapted to deal with the sun ad monsoon rains, also. Though the city was colonized successively by the Portuguese, the British ad the Dutch, it is the latter whose influence is most visible today.
To end a good day, we went for dinner at a Satay restaurant: choose sticks from a giant fridge, whicever you want: squid, pork, local type of bread, vegetables, tofu, chicken, prawns... then throw them in the hotpot in the middle of the table. after a few minutes, you can take them out and enjoy your freshly cooked dinner with cucumber and rice.
I recommend this trip to anyone who is going in the area of Melaka, it is really "depaysant". the beach in Port Dickson is nicer, and offers some sailing opportunities.
lundi 10 septembre 2007
samedi 8 septembre 2007
"-I can't walk to Uni! - why? - because of the monkeys!"
Somewhere in Malaysia, 1:00 am local time.
For some reason, sleep did not come yet. I start recalling the day...
Waking up around 9 am to the commuter train to the city, I reach the Times Square mall area around one hour later. Shopping galore, I manage to grab a pair of skater shoes, which look amazingly like the old ones Im trying to replace, slippers. I also find the shop I had spotted two days ago, which had the "buy 1 free 1" sign over a huge pile of jeans, and get a really good deal from it. I end up finding myself cornered in a muslim style shop, the saleswoman trying to mae me buy every single item: for me, my mom, my girlfriend, my sister maybe, or also for any friend because everybody likes that color, and if you take a shawl then you need a "broche" (en francais car j'ai oublie), etc.
I got the best our of it, and was happily surprised when she started bargaining. It seems I got some skills from my stay in Beijing.
Shoppping is huge fun, but time consuming, it is already time to go back if I want to do anything else from my day. around 5 pm, Choy drives me through the campus of his university: UKM.
It is immense actually, much larger than any of the two campuses I had visited lately in Singapore. golf course, swimming pool (were people swim with way too many clothes on... covering the body is an ethic issue), two stadiums. And many faculties, almost everything except medicine, as the hospital is much further away.
Two days ago, when I had asked a malay student if she walked to university, she had answered: "no. and you will easily see why. actually it is because of the monkeys". I thought it was probably a joke, in fact it is very serious: some species similar to "chimpanzes" (chimps?) brings havoc to the place. They eat fruits that fall in the middle of the road, disrupting car traffic (thought they usually flee when one approaches), they turnover trash cans, doubling or tripling the work of the cleaning staff. They rarely attack students though, so they are tolerated. But if you drive to your class, you better make sure that your car windows are closed if you dont want to end up with a primate tribe on your backseat.
The law faculty is really nice, painted pink though, and has a relaxed atmosphere to it. The monkeys playing around, the surrounding forest of palm trees, and the foutain at the entrance may have something to do with it.
On our way out of the uni, I spot a cloud in a shape that I had never seen before. Actually, I had been saying "amaaaaaaaaazing" at least 500 times since the morning so Choy was not so attentive to it anymore, so I had to repeat and ask him to stop the car, and I tried to capture the cloud in a picture. I don't think I did. Something to do with contrast and white balance. Anyway, it's just that is was a low cloud with a large, vertical part in the middle, like a chimney going up to the nest level of clouds, and it was really "thick" for a cloud, looking quite dense.
After staring at drops of water in suspension in the atmosphere, we head for food at a local foodcourt, and order a bunch of different meat sticks (mutton, beef, fish, chicken), served with a bowl of sauce. I have been told the sauce was made of sesame and some nuts. It tasted a lot like sesame, only. And we added a loooot of chili to it. After a very filling meal, we went to Putrajaya, the adminsitrative capital, and tried "kembu" ( I think), a local fruit that I cannot describe without comparing it to all of these: lemon, apple, pear, "grenade"( in french), pitanga (brazilian fruit) and coconut... yeah, it's like the platypus of fruits!
I'll tell you more next time, for now the sleep has come back.
and I got tired of waiting for emails. When I dont get any email in 24 hours except automated notifications, and when absolutely no one is on msn+skype, it almost feels like I dont exist!!
talk about existential crises in our modern societies hehe
For some reason, sleep did not come yet. I start recalling the day...
Waking up around 9 am to the commuter train to the city, I reach the Times Square mall area around one hour later. Shopping galore, I manage to grab a pair of skater shoes, which look amazingly like the old ones Im trying to replace, slippers. I also find the shop I had spotted two days ago, which had the "buy 1 free 1" sign over a huge pile of jeans, and get a really good deal from it. I end up finding myself cornered in a muslim style shop, the saleswoman trying to mae me buy every single item: for me, my mom, my girlfriend, my sister maybe, or also for any friend because everybody likes that color, and if you take a shawl then you need a "broche" (en francais car j'ai oublie), etc.
I got the best our of it, and was happily surprised when she started bargaining. It seems I got some skills from my stay in Beijing.
Shoppping is huge fun, but time consuming, it is already time to go back if I want to do anything else from my day. around 5 pm, Choy drives me through the campus of his university: UKM.
It is immense actually, much larger than any of the two campuses I had visited lately in Singapore. golf course, swimming pool (were people swim with way too many clothes on... covering the body is an ethic issue), two stadiums. And many faculties, almost everything except medicine, as the hospital is much further away.
Two days ago, when I had asked a malay student if she walked to university, she had answered: "no. and you will easily see why. actually it is because of the monkeys". I thought it was probably a joke, in fact it is very serious: some species similar to "chimpanzes" (chimps?) brings havoc to the place. They eat fruits that fall in the middle of the road, disrupting car traffic (thought they usually flee when one approaches), they turnover trash cans, doubling or tripling the work of the cleaning staff. They rarely attack students though, so they are tolerated. But if you drive to your class, you better make sure that your car windows are closed if you dont want to end up with a primate tribe on your backseat.
The law faculty is really nice, painted pink though, and has a relaxed atmosphere to it. The monkeys playing around, the surrounding forest of palm trees, and the foutain at the entrance may have something to do with it.
On our way out of the uni, I spot a cloud in a shape that I had never seen before. Actually, I had been saying "amaaaaaaaaazing" at least 500 times since the morning so Choy was not so attentive to it anymore, so I had to repeat and ask him to stop the car, and I tried to capture the cloud in a picture. I don't think I did. Something to do with contrast and white balance. Anyway, it's just that is was a low cloud with a large, vertical part in the middle, like a chimney going up to the nest level of clouds, and it was really "thick" for a cloud, looking quite dense.
After staring at drops of water in suspension in the atmosphere, we head for food at a local foodcourt, and order a bunch of different meat sticks (mutton, beef, fish, chicken), served with a bowl of sauce. I have been told the sauce was made of sesame and some nuts. It tasted a lot like sesame, only. And we added a loooot of chili to it. After a very filling meal, we went to Putrajaya, the adminsitrative capital, and tried "kembu" ( I think), a local fruit that I cannot describe without comparing it to all of these: lemon, apple, pear, "grenade"( in french), pitanga (brazilian fruit) and coconut... yeah, it's like the platypus of fruits!
I'll tell you more next time, for now the sleep has come back.
and I got tired of waiting for emails. When I dont get any email in 24 hours except automated notifications, and when absolutely no one is on msn+skype, it almost feels like I dont exist!!
talk about existential crises in our modern societies hehe
mercredi 5 septembre 2007
Malaysia!!!
Hi everybody!
this post in english, who knows who may want to read...
Just arrived this night in Kuala Lumpur, capital city of Malaysia.
A mere 5 hours and a half of bus ride, and there I was, at 3:30 am, in the main coach terminal station, the pitch dark sky above my head, re-discovering the "real" world of sensations and people. after the bleach white and cleanness of Singapore, KL offers a wide range of strong smells of food, smoke, dampness, and... just the local bakground smell.
There is litter. Some people do shout, even in the middle of the night (god forbid, thinks the Singaporean...hehe)
I found a hostel less than 50 meters away from where the coach dropped me. the room was made up of four walls, a floor, a fake ceiling (some cardboard boxes unfolded and jointed together), a dirty-looking bed and a tiny chair.
The population is quite different here, no more chinese. Well,... at least, it's more difficult to say, compared to Singapore. I'll be chaking out options to go to Penang, and report on the local food of course.
what have I seen so far? a guy selling miniatures guitars, looking slightly shabby, at the foot of a giant escalator leading to the Maybak tower (national bank? am I right?), that one looking really fancy. a hostel like any other, youth smoking away their night in front of the "late show" (global media...), taxis drivers and stalls selling coach tickets approaching me every ten seconds. I keep asking stuff to random people in the street, in the shops: where is nearest hostel? where can I buy a sim card? where can I buy a guidebook? etc etc , the answer is always nice :)
hopefully I'll be able to put some pictures also, either here or on facebook.
Hugs from Malaysia
this post in english, who knows who may want to read...
Just arrived this night in Kuala Lumpur, capital city of Malaysia.
A mere 5 hours and a half of bus ride, and there I was, at 3:30 am, in the main coach terminal station, the pitch dark sky above my head, re-discovering the "real" world of sensations and people. after the bleach white and cleanness of Singapore, KL offers a wide range of strong smells of food, smoke, dampness, and... just the local bakground smell.
There is litter. Some people do shout, even in the middle of the night (god forbid, thinks the Singaporean...hehe)
I found a hostel less than 50 meters away from where the coach dropped me. the room was made up of four walls, a floor, a fake ceiling (some cardboard boxes unfolded and jointed together), a dirty-looking bed and a tiny chair.
The population is quite different here, no more chinese. Well,... at least, it's more difficult to say, compared to Singapore. I'll be chaking out options to go to Penang, and report on the local food of course.
what have I seen so far? a guy selling miniatures guitars, looking slightly shabby, at the foot of a giant escalator leading to the Maybak tower (national bank? am I right?), that one looking really fancy. a hostel like any other, youth smoking away their night in front of the "late show" (global media...), taxis drivers and stalls selling coach tickets approaching me every ten seconds. I keep asking stuff to random people in the street, in the shops: where is nearest hostel? where can I buy a sim card? where can I buy a guidebook? etc etc , the answer is always nice :)
hopefully I'll be able to put some pictures also, either here or on facebook.
Hugs from Malaysia
Singapour
- - - Singapore, Singapore _ Wednesday, September 5th 2007 _ local time 6:50pm - - -
La ville/pays est surnommée "one fine city", du fait des nombreuses amendes infligées à tout contrevenant à la loi. Mais cela est bien intégré dans le paysage, on ne le remarque pas tout de suite. L'architecture est "post-moderne", typique à cette région d'Asie, le centre ville "City Hall" est constitué de bâtiments de style colonial: l'ancien parlement, le musée de la civilisation d'Asie du sud-est, le théâtre et salle de concerts (le symphonique de Singapour joue les "4 saisons" quelques jours après mon retour vers Pékin), un des plus anciens malls de la ville aussi.
"Raffles Place", ainsi nommé en hommage à Stamford Raffle qui le premier fit de Singapour un hub de commerce et d'industrie (je crois.... je relirais mon guide!), est à une station de métro de distance, et concentre le plupart des hauts buildings de Singapour: centre financiers, tours de SingTel, Bank of China, DHL, ces derniers ont même un ballon captif comme celui du square Citroën à Paris.
Au nord de Raffles place, Orchard Road, une avenue louvoyant entre les centres commerciaux, les fameux "malls" tous plus grands les uns que les autres, et pareils les uns aux autres. j'ai arrêté de compter après 20 (imaginez 20 x parly 2, une longue chaîne de malls...) Ca n'empêche pas les promoteurs de croire que les 3 nouveaux qu'ils viennent de démarrer là où il restait de la place trouveront leur public.
Contre mon attente, la répartition de la population est la suivante:
76 % originaires de Mainland China
15% venant de Malaisie
environ 7% d'origine indienne
et 2% de divers.
La vie y est facile pour tous les étrangers, puisque tout le monde parle anglais dès la naissance. Les habitants locaux ont aussi la langue de leur civilisation parente, la plupart des signes, informations, documents etc. peuvent donc se trouver en Chinois, Malais, ou hindi, en plus de l'anglais.
Globalement,... les gens sont sympa. C'est un peu différent de Pékin quand même.
- faire une bulle de chewing gum = 10.000 $
- manger/boire dans le métro = 1000 $
- fumer dans un lieu public couvert (par ex, métro) = 5000 $
- cracher par terre = 1000 ou 5000 $
- non-natural sex = (je n'ai pas trouvé le montant. mais en tout cas c'est interdit, et puni par la loi)
- possession ou trafic de drogue = peine de mort
Il y a aussi quelques autres crimes et délits punis de morts, et certains de coups de canne aussi. mais comme l'administration de 50 coups de cannes en une seule fois entraînerait une mort certaine, le condamné doit se présenter chaque semaine et en recevoir 2.
Les séropositifs sont parqués dans certains quartiers seulement, à l'écart semble-t-il.
je pensais arriver dans un pays totalement différent de la Chine. J'ai été surpris de voir le nombre de points communs.
Départ ce soir pour la Malaisie. en bus tout confort! Kuala Lumpur demain matin, Penang le soir. Melaka plus tard dans la semaine.
pour ceux qui sont sur facebook... j'ai rajouté des photos de Singapour!!
pour les autres... j'ai mis de nouvelles photos de la Grande Muraille sur http://fotologue.jp/#jonhjonh
- - - fin de transmission - - -
La ville/pays est surnommée "one fine city", du fait des nombreuses amendes infligées à tout contrevenant à la loi. Mais cela est bien intégré dans le paysage, on ne le remarque pas tout de suite. L'architecture est "post-moderne", typique à cette région d'Asie, le centre ville "City Hall" est constitué de bâtiments de style colonial: l'ancien parlement, le musée de la civilisation d'Asie du sud-est, le théâtre et salle de concerts (le symphonique de Singapour joue les "4 saisons" quelques jours après mon retour vers Pékin), un des plus anciens malls de la ville aussi.
"Raffles Place", ainsi nommé en hommage à Stamford Raffle qui le premier fit de Singapour un hub de commerce et d'industrie (je crois.... je relirais mon guide!), est à une station de métro de distance, et concentre le plupart des hauts buildings de Singapour: centre financiers, tours de SingTel, Bank of China, DHL, ces derniers ont même un ballon captif comme celui du square Citroën à Paris.
Au nord de Raffles place, Orchard Road, une avenue louvoyant entre les centres commerciaux, les fameux "malls" tous plus grands les uns que les autres, et pareils les uns aux autres. j'ai arrêté de compter après 20 (imaginez 20 x parly 2, une longue chaîne de malls...) Ca n'empêche pas les promoteurs de croire que les 3 nouveaux qu'ils viennent de démarrer là où il restait de la place trouveront leur public.
Contre mon attente, la répartition de la population est la suivante:
76 % originaires de Mainland China
15% venant de Malaisie
environ 7% d'origine indienne
et 2% de divers.
La vie y est facile pour tous les étrangers, puisque tout le monde parle anglais dès la naissance. Les habitants locaux ont aussi la langue de leur civilisation parente, la plupart des signes, informations, documents etc. peuvent donc se trouver en Chinois, Malais, ou hindi, en plus de l'anglais.
Globalement,... les gens sont sympa. C'est un peu différent de Pékin quand même.
- faire une bulle de chewing gum = 10.000 $
- manger/boire dans le métro = 1000 $
- fumer dans un lieu public couvert (par ex, métro) = 5000 $
- cracher par terre = 1000 ou 5000 $
- non-natural sex = (je n'ai pas trouvé le montant. mais en tout cas c'est interdit, et puni par la loi)
- possession ou trafic de drogue = peine de mort
Il y a aussi quelques autres crimes et délits punis de morts, et certains de coups de canne aussi. mais comme l'administration de 50 coups de cannes en une seule fois entraînerait une mort certaine, le condamné doit se présenter chaque semaine et en recevoir 2.
Les séropositifs sont parqués dans certains quartiers seulement, à l'écart semble-t-il.
je pensais arriver dans un pays totalement différent de la Chine. J'ai été surpris de voir le nombre de points communs.
Départ ce soir pour la Malaisie. en bus tout confort! Kuala Lumpur demain matin, Penang le soir. Melaka plus tard dans la semaine.
pour ceux qui sont sur facebook... j'ai rajouté des photos de Singapour!!
pour les autres... j'ai mis de nouvelles photos de la Grande Muraille sur http://fotologue.jp/#jonhjonh
- - - fin de transmission - - -
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