Island Paradise(s)

Time has been flying by in a hot, sticky blur the past couple of weeks. If time were pulling this rickshaw instead of me, we'd all be home by now.

Anyhoo...

After KL, we headed south to Melaka, a port town with a distinctly Nonya, or Chinese/Malay feeling.



Melaka post sunset; everything glows blue.



The streets of Melaka are narrow lanes lined with traditional two story mansions, most containing an open courtyard in the middle. Probably the most Chinese influenced place I've visited.


Above, the "tri-shaws" you can pay someone to pedal your lazy ass around in for an hour or two. Added bonus: they blast cheesy party music.


After Melaka, we caught a bus to cut across the peninsula over to the East coast. The buses here, btw, are NICE. By that, I mean they are air conditioned, and the persistent fear of death we've come to expect from bus travel in Lanka and India is all but a hazy memory.


We landed late afternoon in the port town of Mersing. Since we only had about 12 hours to kill before the ferry took us to our intended destination, the island paradise Pulau Tioman, we opted for a dirt cheap hostel. I assume that many tales of misadventure in travel begin this way. Ours was no different. Things got broken, a mysterious Fraulein delivered a grim warning, ravenous insects made an appearance and our heroes were unfortunately very hung over for a rough ferry, to predictable result. This is why, as my adored aunty would say, you always opt for the luxury hotel. If only.

But, the island turned out to be stunning. High forested mountains surrounding crystal clear waters loaded with coral and tropical fishies. Oh, and pretty sunsets.


Surprisingly spacious, for an island.


Trees, pulling off the mysterious feat of growing out of salt water.


Tioman beauty shot.


Waiting for the early ferry back to the mainland.


After Tioman, we hit a beach town called Cherating. It was nice enough stop on our way to uber paradise Pulua Perhentian on the North East coast of Malaysia.


Above, one of the few beauty shots of the smaller island that I've got. This island has the best visibility for snorkeling that I have ever seen and reefs that can be reached by just swimming off the shore, no fins required. Because of a mild but malingering head cold, we weren't able to bust out our PADI cards, which I regret since I am sure the diving there has got to be beyond awesome.



above- YWL uncovers a ruin of earlier civilizations.

Our few days of island hopping passed in a turquoise blur of amazing aquatic adventure. We hit the mainland at Kotu Baru, and again, it was time to eat.

The Chinese Market in Kotu Baru was a very happy place for us in uber Muslim Kotu Baru. They sold cold beer, when even 7-11 wouldn't.


Of course we also tried out the famous Malay night market.

This nasi kerabu doesnt look so hot, I realize. Perhaps because the rice (nasi) is actually blue, and because roast fish never looks so pretty. But despite looking nasi, it tasted pretty. Ba dum bump.

If you can guess what's under the peanutty/shrimp pasty sauce in this dish called rojack, you are better than us.

If you guessed fruits and veggies, you are RIGHT!

More Hating on Durians.


And this is where we will be again tonight. The Pengang Night Food market, whose own SIGN dubs itself "Food Paradise." Are they exaggerating? No, they are not. At times like this, it is a pity to have but one stomach to feed.


It's hard to believe we have only two more nights in Malaysia, Food Paradise before we move on to Thailand, Food Utopia.

Mall-aysia

The Petronas Towers...with a petroleum based water bottle.


The Night market in little India turned out to be not very Indian at all. There was however, pretty stellar food, like lhaksa served up in giant vats which most people were getting "to go."



Supersized Shrimp Soup.


There were lots of more easy to handle on the street options like spiral fried potato, various skewered delights, and a good old hot dog bun filled with gyro like-roasted chicken. Mmm, sloppy.


We also bought some of these noodles, which we ended up eating with a soda straw bent in half (excellent makeshift chop sticks).

As far as the goods that were on hand amongst the edibles, it was a lot like what you might find at a NYC street fair, except add about 95% more headscarf vendors (if you must wear a headscarf in a tropical country, at least you have a billion color, pattern, and rhinestone saturation options to choose from) and other clothing options of a wrist-to-ankle, full on full-coverage persuasion. Otherwise, unless in the market for socks, Indian sweets, or cricket/soccer jerseys, the shopping options that evening were rather limited.

(a Brief Interruption for Gratuitous Food Porn)

Thai Fish Filet




Above, Awesome Lhaksa. (Technically spelled "Assam" Lhaksa. Sort of like an extra spicy Thom Yum soup, but with cabbage and soy braised fish. It was Assam indeed)

This is not to say that it is at all difficult to shop here. Nothing, actually could be further from the truth. The famous Petronas Towers perch atop a stolidly massive five-story super mall. Walk 15 minutes, another enormous, fully air-conditioned, triple-food-courted Mall. Pick another direction, you guessed it, more Mall, more market. If you cannot walk blindfolded in KL and hit a shopping center or a food vendor, then you are likely a ghost or otherwise vaporous entity for they are everywhere and possibly, everything.


Above, Random things we bought at the mall. Curry Doughnut, Chocolate Puff, and Soju. Score!

Street Meat

AS we'd dared to hope, really, really good things happen to meal time in places where three major culinary traditions collide and intermingle.


(above- The street is where ya eat.)

Although there are about a billion different restaurants in KL, we decided to follow our noses and spent the night sampling many a wonderful thing from the street hawkers. We were not disappointed to say the least, and if I forsee any food related problems here, it will be getting plump from too much Duck Fat.

Below, Roasted Duck, and duck consomme, and some rice, anointed in the aforementioned toothsome avian drizzle.

You may be interested to know that this cost only around $3.50.

Below, spicy ginger-chili cockles with surprisingly expensive beer. Sadly, booze here is ubertaxed, and the pictured Tiger cost about 5 large and change. Youch.


Below, grilled wings. We want to discover the secrets of this marinade for future backyard grillings...


NOODLE SOUP! On the left Curry Mee, on the right Prawn Mee.


This cart had a shabu-shabu like set up where you could boil your skewer of choice in different roiling sauces. Didn't have room to try it (yet), but it looks midly dangerous, which is always fun.


The fruit stalls were also too tempting to pass up.


We scored the bell shaped red fruit picture above on the left side, which is called a Rose Apricot. Served with a little salt and pepper, it tasted somewhat like pear.


I'll close on a gratuitous durian shot. Our hotel has a communal fridge bearing only one sign which reads "NO DURIAN!" Strangely, it doesn't smell that awful to me, but then again, I'm only a month out of India.


More food porn to come. Tonight, we visit the Indian night market to hopefully reconnect with some old favorites.

Coast to Coast

The East coast of Lanka is very difficult to get to, we realized, while on our forth bus of the day, eight hours on the road and a few more to go.

The worst moment was waiting for a bus to leave, and noticing a digital thermometer that read 44 Celsius. Lucky for me, I'm not to savvy on my Celcius temperature conversions, so it wasn’t until I was told (at a cooler time) that we were simmering in our own juices in the triple digit range. It was late afternoon as we headed out to the coast, and we ended up picking up school kids and townsfolk until the bus was beyond clown car packed. We had a collection of student’s book bags piled in our laps for an hour or two, but eventually the bus cleared out and we saw the clear blue waters of Arugambay.




We went there for surfing, but were according to the locals, about two weeks too early. We enjoyed the flat ocean for what it was worth, and watched Sri Lanka lose the cricket world cup to India (Whatever, just population wise, a win for India elates a billion more people).

Another epic bus trip back to the West coast and we are in Hikkaduwa, times three-a. Tomorrow, we travel to Malaysia where we cannot wait to report on all the delicious street eats. Stay tuned…

TEA

I’ve seen where your tea comes from, and it is spectacular. We stopped in Haputale, in the foggy cloud forest highlands to hike around and look at some agriculture.

Tea trees most resemble little dense bushes and are kept around waist high. The fancier tea grows high up the mountain, and the (mostly female) tea harvesters pluck only the bud and the top two leaves and then toss them over their shoulder into the bushels that they carry on their back via a strap that they wear across their forehead. Lots of this beautiful tea is sold under the shockingly pedestrian Lipton label.




It seems like a really long way for Sri Lanka to your tea cup, and it is. But little green leaves are important enough to the world that wars get fought over them, or so I have heard.

Kandy-land

Kandy is the second largest city in Lanka, and has a reputation for being the nation’s cultural heart. It is located in the higher, cooler middle of the county, and has a collection of temples and museums scattered around a sunken lake. While here, we checked out a traditional music and dance show which featured a good deal of drumming and some rather half-hearted dancing followed, inexplicably, by fire eating and hot coal walking.

But what we really came to Kandy for was to visit the Elephant Orphanage (adorable video to come). About an hour out of town, the orphanage was a huge complex consisting of a covered feeding area for the tiny newborns ( of which there were two, who both seemed very confused about this being an elephant business) and a large pasture for the rest of the herd to graze and wander about. Twice a day, the elephants get marched down to the river for play time, where they hang out, cool off, get clean, or get very muddy, depending on elephant preference. Although called an orphanage, there were elephants of every age and persuasion, including one three legged land mine survivor who was the original elephant at the preserve. Which elephants, if any, were actually motherless was not apparent, as every tiny elephant had several protectresses keeping an eye out at all times.




I fed a three year old elephant (volkswagon beetle sized) and it sucked down a liter of milk in about 20 seconds. We were also able to walk amongst the elephants ( yes, even the babies) without any physical barrier, which was amazing, but we were cautious to be respectful of elephant sensitivities so as not to be featured on “World’s Scariest Animal Attacks.” It was really fascinating to watch the wide range of elephant activity at the river and though we observed for a very entertaining two hours, I could have stayed all day. In fact, if they set up a river elephant web-cam, I would probably get up in the middle of the night to just to watch it.

Everywhere a Buddha

Next stop was dusty Dambulla. None of these little northern towns have all that much going for them other than an intersection with a clock tower and some commercial streets. Most streets offer the same collection of stores, and the stores the same selection of products and services. It all feels comfortingly familiar, or maddeningly identical.

Dambulla offered convenient access to two places of interest: the Cave Temples and Sigiriya, a ruined palace complex perched on top of a giant honking rock.


The caves, which are reachable via a mostly vertical hike, are part natural, part carved out of a rocky overhang where some important figure ( let’s say, a king) had to hide out because of some invaders, and being saved by this lucky hide out, wanted to do something for the Buddha in gratitude. Hence, he dedicated the place as a Temple, and it has been accumulating Buddhas every since. There are now about four large caverns filled with Buddhas in different poses, shapes and sizes. There are Buddhas painted on the ceiling, Buddhas standing in long rows, big Buddhas reclining and giving you the lazy eye. It is a Holy Place, and people offer flowers and prayers ( how they chose which one to offer to, I can’t guess). I’d read that the Buddha had requested that people not make images of his person to worship, but clearly you cannot get everything you want ( you should try not to want anything at all, in fact).



Sigiriya, as yet unconquered.

After seeing many, many Buddhas we took the bus ( packed cheek to jowl as always) to Sigiriya. On the hike up, there’s a rock overhang that protects some very old frescoes of some very topless ladies. The literature assures us that these were high class court ladies, which may be true, supposing that all high class court ladies were stacked like Sports Illustrated models (will share video soon). Moving on, you climb past some really cool, very fortressy huge stone claws at the the base of the main rock. Not much of the palace that was on top remains, but the view is stunning. Nothing for miles but soft green tree tops.

What are you, Stupa?

Above, Stupa!

After Unawatuna, we traveled north back up the west coast, stopping at Hikkaduwa with hopes of revisiting the surf scene. Poseidon was whipping up some massive troubles though, roiling the ocean into a series of massive waves that flooded the beach. The sand was staked out with red danger flags, and not even the local surfers would venture out under the threat of serious undertow and rips.

So we rolled on, ever so very, very slowly via train. We sat, dripping sweat, desperate for a breeze as the train inched north on a six and a half hour jaunt. It was very tempting to hop out of the train when it inevitably crawled to a halt and just start walking (at a brisk pace, we might have even gotten there faster). Our destination was the city of Anuradhapura, once the capital of ancient SL, it is now a sleepy town notable for its collection of impressive ruins.



Jetavana Stupa and a tiny me.

The most spectacular sights are the three large stupas (or dagobas, your choice) that pop up out of the land like big pop-a-matic bubbles (“Trouble” anyone?). These Buddhist Temples are dome-shaped and sit atop a square base. The Jetavana Stupa is really very old and very large. Made out of an estimated 90 million bricks, it was, for a time, the third largest structure in existence, the two front runners being the Pyramids at Giza. Also at Anuradhapura is the Temple of the Bodhi tree, which has a Bodhi tree allegedly grown from a cutting of the original Bodhi tree. A very active sacred site, the tree is not much to look at but the rituals taking place were worth seeing.

The next day, we traveled a few hours more to visit Polonnaruwa, which is another similarly ruined city. The difference between the two sites is that A- has the big impressive stupas but the details are long gone, while P- has less massive structures but more stone work and art still in decent shape. P- was never quite the megalopolis that A- was, which is why it didn’t get so entirely sacked by repeated invasions.

Below, ruins. Polonnaruwa


These invasions were sometimes inner power struggles amongst Sinhalese royalty ( they made a practice of killing and dethroning one another, a bad habit of many royal families), but more often were battles with the invading Tamils from India. It seems that way back when, there was a land bridge between India and Lanka, and some people came, and settled down, and then they didn’t want other people to come in and take over, which inevitably happened. So over thousands of years, the Sinhalese remained miffed about the Tamil's invade-y ways, and the Tamils that had been around for a couple centuries got annoyed that the Sinhalese insisted on everyone being Buddhist, so, both parties attempt to destroy one another every once in a while, which has been the status quo for the last couple millennia. There is currently peace on the island, but the bad blood here seems too ancient and hopelessly entrenched for everyone to just forgive and forget.

Downpour of Updates

Sri Lanka keeps proving to be a very civilized place, lacking only in the modern technological conveniences department ( I’m talking wi-fi). Since I last had a chance to update from Unawatuna ( yes the town names here are solid gold) we’ve crossed up, into and around the central highlands, got some culture, headed to the east coast and circled back to our beachside redoubt of Hikkaduwa (which we’ve somehow visited thrice).

So without further ado- Sri Lanka!