Melaka- February 2007

We took the early morning Transnational Bus from Kuala Lumpur to Melaka. The bus was very comfortable (except for the dripping from the air conditioner) and arrived two hours later at the bus station just outside of Melaka. We took the #17 bus to Chinatown and checked into the Hereen House. This was an amazing guesthouse and the owners were positively charming. The husband travels the world shopping for textile arts and the wife makes an amazing scone. The room had a four poster wooden bed and antique furniture.

Melaka is a fantastic old port city where the Indians, Chinese, Malays, Portuguese, British, Dutch and Thais blended their cultures together in architecture, food and the arts. The famous Straits of Malacca run just off the city center. I have no idea what these Straits looked like once when they were the main thoroughfare for shipping, but now the shoreline floats with trash and crawls with walking fish. There are some sites in Melaka which are flooded with the kind of tour bus tourists that can ruin any city. However, the Chinatown area lacks hotels big enough for such a large group and so retains a more local flavor. The best part of the city is just walking the streets. Two guys Lim Huck Chin and Fernando Jorge hit the streets with a camera and did an amazing amount of research on the city. Their book Malacca: Voices from the Street is totally worth the 50USD we spent on it but you can also pick it up and thumb through it in most of the city’s book stores.

I highly recommend the following sites:

• The Architectural Museum of Malaysia was very interesting and seemed like it didn’t have a lot of visitors.
• The Baba-Nonya Heritage Museum has a lovely tour and a chance to go back in time.
• St. Paul’s church at the top of the hill provides a nice view of the city and interesting ruins.
• On Sunday nights, the area has a local night market on the main street with great food and good shopping.
• On the street Jin Tonkong you can see the Kampung Kling Mosque (Muslim), the Sri Poyyatha Vinayagar Moorthis Temple (Hindu) and the Sanduo Temple (Chinese shrine) all in a few blocks.

The following places are lovely restaurants we stopped in:

• The Best Cafe had good food and very helpful staff. The food throughout Melaka is an amazing fusion of different cultures and very spicy!
  
• Geographer’s Cafe was a bit touristy but great for a late night drink.
• Limau-Limau Cafe was a great place to stop for tea or coffee.

Not so great...

We hiked out to the Villa Sentosa but found it a bit odd. The little old man was very proud of his heritage but the place was kind of like being trapped in your elderly aunt’s house being forced to page through old albums and look at souvenirs from someone else’s life. We stayed longer in the Sultanate Palace than we planned because of the rain; it was an interesting place but full of silly mannequins.

We were sorry to leave Melaka, even though we’d seen all the sites we’d hoped to see, the atmosphere was fantastic and I hope we’re able to return.

Loi Kratong- November 2006

The Loi Kratong festival is something that really has to be seen to be believed. For nearly two weeks in Chiang Mai the nights are beautiful and noisy affairs. Everyone lights floating paper lanterns which carry away all of your bad luck. Many people launch banana boats in the Ping River as thanks for another rainy season. And every night the fireworks go off all night, all morning, all day... ALL THE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE!

If you are fortunate enough to be planning a trip to Thailand in November (when the weather is amazing) you should try to visit Chiang Mai for this festival.

Kuala Lumpur --February 2007

I switched jobs in February 2007 and had to take the obligatory “visa run” that so many expats in Thailand have done before me. My husband teaches architecture and had to switch from a work visa to a tourist visa for the term break. If you’re not familiar with this insanity, I will summarize it: in order to stay in the country, you have to leave the country, go to the Thai embassy in another country, get a new visa then return to the country. The Thai government has significantly cracked down on the hordes of backpackers who want to hang out here for life without official paperwork and so those of us WITH the right paperwork have found it harder and harder to deal with the bureaucracy. So we searched the internet for many “visa run” reviews, talked to a travel agent and chose Malaysia. We had to spend at least two days in Kuala Lumpur at the Thai embassy obtaining our visas but the rest of the time was up to. We’ve been traveling since we met ten years ago but I think that as we get older, we’re becoming less and less organized. We booked our tickets 5 days before left, let the travel agent pick us a barely affordable hotel in KL and picked up our Lonely Planet for Malaysia on the day we flew out on Air Asia (a direct flight from CNX). Air Asia is another low cost Asian airline that charges for water and has tickets that look like they’re for a bus but they’re safe and highly affordable.

We stayed at the Equatorial in KL (booked on Asia rooms) which was nice and had a fantastic buffet breakfast. I’m still very fond of my western-style breakfast but the spicy soup that Asians love for breakfast is growing on me- this buffet had both. I think the time we spent and the amount that we ate means that I should really emphasize the glory of this breakfast. It was fantastic! Full and rested we were off to explore the city. Our impression of Kuala Lumpur was that after nearly a year in Thailand and four years in Manhattan, it felt very clean and orderly. Here are the places we visited, the places we ate and what we liked best (**) in the city.

Chinatown: We like the Central Market (mainly because it had AC and the outside world was a bit hot) and hated the tourist stalls of the Jalan Petaling. We liked the Sze Ya (Taoist) and Sri Mahariamman (Hindu) Temples but they were mobbed with people and steaming with incense so we didn’t spend long at either. We agreed with the Lonely Planet that the Old China Cafe** was rich with atmosphere and served fantastic laksa. We also loved the Purple Cane Tea Restaurant** and I loved the beautiful tea pots they had for sale in their store. I still kick myself that my frugal husband talked me out of “another” tea pot!

Golden Triangle: We stayed here because of the proximity to the Thai embassy but it wasn’t really a highlight of the city. The malls were interesting (I’m always up for a good bookstore) and we enjoyed the giant Ferris wheel inside the Mid Valley Megamall. We spent one evening bowling at Mid Valley and it was an interesting experience as the only woman without a headscarf in the whole place.

Masjid Negara area: We wondered out to the old KL Train Station (built in 1911) and loved the Malayan Railway Administration Building** across the street. The Masjid Negara Mosque was a nice place to hide from the rain but I was less impressed with the building. Our next stop was a hike up the hill to the Islamic Arts Museum** which was fantastic. My friend Ian highly recommended this place and I have to agree with him.

That was all we had time for in our short visit except I have to mention the famous Petronas Towers. Thanks to a hot morning at the embassy (and some bacteria or virus that wanted to hitch a ride in my gastrointestinal system) I wasn’t well for this part of the trip so our last night in town we ended up at the adjoining Suria KLCC mall. We did not go up in the famous Towers, instead we followed Ian’s advice again to go to the KL Tower** which is much shorter but the crowds (and cost) are lower and the view is fantastic at night. We spent several hours walking around the glass windows to see all of KL (including the Petronas Towers) and then spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to hold my husband’s digital camera at arm’s length to capture us with the Petronas Towers in the background.

One place we didn’t stay but wish we could have was the Number Eight Guesthouse which looked fantastic but wasn’t available for both nights of our visit. If anyone goes here and has a different experience, please do let me know as we plan to stay there again if we have the chance.

In the middle of our trip, we took a bus 2 hours to the city of Melaka (or Malacca) where we spent several nights. I consider Melaka the highlight of my trip to Malaysia. This will be the subject of my next blog.

photos from Cambodia

Cambodia- August 2007

We traveled to Phnom Penh 11-13 August 2007. We live in Chiang Mai, Thailand and we’re basing our traveling on the availability of cheap tickets these days and Bangkok Airways had a sale. In order to get most places from Chiang Mai we have to connect through Bangkok. We took Air Asia to Bangkok the night before and spent the night at a hotel which wasn’t bad. Air Asia is one of the many low cost airlines in Thailand and it is a situation where you definitely get what you pay for. The water costs money, the flights run late and the airplanes seem to be hand-me-downs from one of the low cost Chinese airlines. But they’re cheap, safe and convenient. After a very short night at the hotel in Bangkok, we boarded Bangkok Airways. Bangkok Airways calls itself a “boutique” airline and it was much nicer. The food is descent and free. The airplanes are all painted with unique, if slightly silly images. The flight even ran on time!

We arrived in Phnom Penh before 9am and caught motorbike taxis to the guesthouse. We stayed at the Boddhi Tree del Gusto off Street 113 near the Tuol Sleng Museum. There are three Boddhi trees in town and ours was the one further from the genocide museum. They all have great food and lovely rooms. We splurged on the aircon double bed with a private bath. At some point after I turned 30, I stopped dealing with the shared bath and hot rooms. Once we settled in, we were faced with the fact that we hadn’t really had the time to research where we were going and what we were going to see. We had in our possession a print out from Travelfish, the Cambodia section we’d chopped out of a Let's Go Southeast Asia 2003 and a copy of the free Khmer Architectural walking tour. Since many things in the city close for lunch, we decided to plan to go to Independence Monument followed by Monument Books then see some of the architectural walking tour. We knew we had to see S-21/Tuol Sleng on Saturday since they were closed on Sunday so we figured we would head there in the afternoon. Sunday we planned to go to the Central Market, followed by brunch, finish the architectural tour and then do a bit of shopping. And this is what we did.

Monument Books had fantastic tea, good coffee and wonderful baked goods. Since we’ve spent the last year and a half in Thailand, we tend to seek out non-Asian goodies on our travels. The book prices were ok but the place had a great sale book section. I grew up walking cities all over the US and my husband’s an architect --- so the architectural walking tour was perfect for us. I had a great pair of Chacos, a Nikon SLR (I refuse to go digital), a good tour guide and an umbrella. I think this tour was my favorite part of the city. It wasn’t just the buildings we saw but also the detours we took. Phnom Penh is very chaotic and where ever I walked I was heckled by cries of “Taxi Miss?!?!” but the city was fascinating. We took a taxi to Tuol Sleng and prepared to be depressed. The country is too poor to really develop this museum but walking from room to room in this high school that was converted into hell was very powerful. The photos of the people who lost their lives here were the most arresting part. There were so many children! Men, women and children stared back at you from these photos with fear, defiance, anger, hopelessness and most of all pain. It’s too much really to put into words so I won’t try.

We had dinner that night down on Sisowath Quay at a place called Frizz which was decent. We had Cambodia curry which was good but not remarkably different from something I might have ordered in Thailand. We followed this with martinis at Metro and some ice cream. We had heard that Phnom Penh can be a bit dodgy after dark so we took a taxi back to the guesthouse.

We awoke pretty early and walked a long way up to the Central Market. It was an interesting market but I’m not used to aggressive markets anymore. I felt like I was back in Turkey with all the heckling. We headed over for a fantastic brunch back at Metro and spent a lot more money than we planned. It wasn’t that expensive; no more than breakfast at a diner back in NYC. But we’re used to $2 lunches and $5 dinners. We picked back up on the tour and saw so much of the city our feet were beginning to ache. We stopped by a few shops. We climbed the stairs to Madam Penh’s hill. Tried to get into the Royal Palace (but it was too crowded) and ended up visiting two Wats (Buddhist Temples) instead. Both were very interesting. Wat Botomvatey was the first and Wat Prayuvong was the second. Wat’s in Thailand are always open, clean and free of people except for monks or nuns. Both Wats we saw in Cambodia had people camping out under every eave. Laundry was draped between monuments to the dead. In addition, the Wat seemed shuttered and locked. But we met a very nice monk who showed us some of the murals and we discussed differences in how the Buddha is depicted in various countries.

We finished our day with a shower and dinner at the guesthouse. The Boddhi del Gusto has a very nice balcony upstairs where we could sit and listen to the sounds of the city over a glass of wine and very nice cheese. The next day we returned home though Bangkok. It’s nice to return to something so familiar. I have to suggest avoiding the Black Canyon Coffee in Suvarnabhumi Airport.The food was mediocre and a roach tried to hitch a ride with us in my backpack. We thought we were rid of him until we popped upstairs to the Sky Lounge for dessert and he came crawling out when I was looking for my book.

It was a great trip. I'll post my favorite photo once my film is processed. Next post I will review our recent trip to Singapore. I’m working backwards in time.

Traveling via CNX

Publishing my mess
So this blog is just my way of reviewing the places I've traveled. I have all of these notes and photos and they're just sitting in my computer, on my shelf or in boxes. People always ask me for advice as to where to go, what to see, airlines to use and more. So I figured I would start blogging so I don't have to keep sending the same emails. Basically I'm just lazy. So my first blog will be Cambodia.