have a bolly, bolly christmas- also, happy birthday jesus and KRISTY!!!

the past few days have been strange.

to begin, the celebration of the birth of christ our lord. so, my big plan to celebrate was to find a cobbler so that i could wear my boots again. said boots were no longer so much attached to their soles. the street cobbler i'd been banking on was gone and so i bereftly went in search of breakfast. i went into an indian restaurant (sidebar: they give you dahl with sweet banana pancakes- the first time this happened i thought they were mocking me but it happened again so perhaps this is a real thing?) and was greeted by the friendly owner, an old Malaysian man of Indian decent. upon hearing of my problem he insisted on taking me to his friend who is a cobbler. we got in his mercedes and drove to this insane market way out of the tourist area and indeed a cobbler we did find. we wandered the market and had some food and the boots were ready exactly at noon as promised. my new friend insisted on paying for all this, as well as buying me a bracelet for a christmas present. next he asked what i was doing for the day and i said i wasn't sure. this prompted him to take me along visiting three of his friends' houses to celebrate christmas. all were hindu households but had fake christmas trees, plastic snowmen and pictures of jesus up. apparently they just like having the holiday. now there was no vegetarian food prepared so instead i was given plate after plate of pancakes, half a bag of raisin bread and endless cups of nescafe coffee, tea and juice. i felt ill but didn't want them to be further offended, as i already snubbed the main meals. i eventually learned that you can't clear your plate or empty your cup because they will keep refilling it. a small portion must be left to deter the friendly advances. of course, i will probably get giarrhdia from the untreated water. all the while we watched bollywood movies and my new friend remarked, "if you spoke tamil this would be very funny". he then returned me to my hotel.

i was feeling a little strange and distinctly over sugared and caffeinated at that point, so i decided to take a walk. i walked for half and hour and this man in a white car kept following me! he would drive past me and then stop. after i walked past he would honk and wave. it was weird and i ran away from him. this may be my come uppance for stalking the orange man...

to top this all off- the day concluded with a huge parade that consisted of acrobatics with huge flags, dragon and lion dancers and gaudily decorated trishaws. this is apparently a georgetown christmas tradition. finally, sleepy phone calls at two in the morning, christmas morning to you guys, and then to bed.

now we're in southern thailand and trying to figure out what to with ourselves (other than eat banana pancakes). we're in krabi currently but we are probably leaving tomorrow for the east coast.

today we went to wat tham suah and climbed the 1200+ steps to a mountaintop shrine. we found giant moths, rhino beetles and a heap of sweaty farang at the top. the climb was intense- some of the steps with a rise of 2 feet and a tread of only 6 inches or so. my heart almost pounded out fo my chest but the view was beautiful.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KRISTY- you are a princess and must be treated accordingly. remember- it is better not to tell barb things. just in general. remember telling her about the germans? you see, it is truth.

following

on pulau penang now, georgetown.

out of the rain and into the sun.

i've begun partially stalking and partially running away from an old man clad in bright orange robe. i first saw him sitting near a guan yin temple, looking at a tree filled with tiny shrines. then i saw him outside of the hindu temple, both of us called by the clanging bell. he prayed outside and did not go in. he is frighteningly intense looking. i'm afraid he has noticed me peering at him and then running into bushes. he has an orange cloth wrapped around his head going up in a cone. underneath is a huge mass of dreadlocked hair. it is about a foot high.

my boots broke yesterday. tomorrow will now be spent looking for a cobbler.

we went to a snake temple near georgetown. it tried its hardest to persuade me that there is no magic left in the world. originally, the temple was said to have filled miraculously with pit vipers who became its guardians. now the snakes are wrapped around a few frames near the altars. the biggest ones are kept in tiny glass cages with rocks weighing down the lids. there are many pictures of smiling white people with snakes wrapped around their heads. at the guan yin altar a young woman tried to sell me rhinestone santa claus trinkets. the gift shop is bigger than the temple. connected to this whole monstrosity is a snake farm. the wild snakes have left, scared off by increasing people and the massive industrial development in the area. the ones left are nothing but slaves to the tourist trade.

from there we went to an organic tropical fruit farm. we met mimosa (shy) grass- you touch it and it curls in like a blushing debutant! we learned all about fruits- common and exotic. we got to eat the miracle fruit that makes water sweet and crap apples taste like candy. we ate egg yolk fruit! i decided that despite the snake temple, there may still be magic in the world. we still search for the elusive durian.

so so- here for a little longer. we're still not sure what all the flooding means for our entry into thailand. georgetown is interesting but it gives me a funny feeling that i can't put my finger on. there are many things to like about it but for some reason it makes me uneasy...

and the rain came tumbling down down....

so. we left KL for the east coast. four hour bus ride. walk to a bus stop. bus doesn't come. stay in a cheap and not so cheerful chinese hotel. get up early to get on a bus. bus is full. wait an hour and a half- are buses going? where? when? different answers. a lot of waving us to different bus stalls. an hour and a half later we leave for a few hours. we loiter. post office is closed. we eat. back to the bus. the bus is late. 45 minutes later we're on the bus. 4 hours later we're here in kuala terrengannu. a short odyssey in public transit. glorious. eben gets to practise his "technique" several times. ask him if you want details on that.

here we are. flood warnings have prompted me to look for info on the internet. it's wet here but not like the pictures we've seen of elsewhere. this may change our itinierary. don't worry though, we're safe!

for now... dun dun dun!!!! (ominously)

we were afraid that the last bus we took would get stuck in the flood and a pod of dolphins would push it out to sea. dolphins are jerks.

kuala terrengannu is nice, although i can't say specifically why. it just feels nice. i can imagine that it's quite lovely when it's not monsoon season. we are stupid, perhaps. although it may be nicer now than in high season when all the package toursists swarm like piranhas hungry for sun, white sand and handicrafts.

we bought a pineapple for RM 1! and a papaya the size of a small bebe for RM2!!!! simply amazing. there is a massive and labyrinthine marketplace here- the bottom floor filled with food stuff and the top filled with clothing and fabric. the markets in malaysia are truly fantastic. you think it would get boring but every time there is something new and the regional differences are quite interesting.

terrengannu- and the northeast in general- is substantially more muslim than the other areas we have been to. i am one of the few women here who doesn't have a covered head and i feel a little conspicuous, although i guess my white skin and dirty clothes would do a fine job of that anyway. the muslim women here look so beautiful- like delicate, brightly coloured flowers. most of them are immaculate and have perfect outfits. their head scarfs are fashioned in innumerable styles and pinned with rhinestone brooches. perhaps i am just jealous. i miss my clothes. i miss looking nice occaisionally... but i digress. what we see here is very different from my former conception of muslim women, as the only images you usually see are of the burka. i have not seen any here, although eben has seen one or two. i guess that i did not know much about islam before coming here and i have found it quite eye opening. the practise that we have seen here is very beautiful, very noble... it is hard to reconcile this with all the bad things you normally hear. hard to reconcile with some of their beliefs that are so different than what we are used to.

writing lots because my feet don't want to walk all the way home...

well it's the last night in KL and i'm exhausted. too much walking, too much pollution, too much too much too much!

we went to our first malaysian bar while here- they are insanely expensive to get into and drinks aren't cheap either. not sure if this is due to the muslim influence or not... so we opted on buying beers from the gas station and drinking them in a bus shelter before going to dance. yes, i manage to ghetto drink even here! if danielle reads my blog, this reminded me of you... such good times in the southcentre parking lot.

the next day we went to the batu caves. they are huge natural caves that have been converted into a humongous hindu shrine. it was pretty empty when we were there and hard to imagine it filling up with a million people for thaipusam. thaipusam is a hindu festival held to thank Duruga for prayers met in the past year. people carry silver jugs filled with milk and big spikey cages that are attached to them with hooks through their skin up the 200-something steps. other people put tridents and mini swords through their faces. couples who have had chldren carry the babies on their shoulders in saffron coloured cradles. the pictures are hard to look at. monkeys like the shrine too and leap through the air and climb to dizzying heights. i kept trying to take their pictures but i would freak out when i got close to them and then run away, sure they would snatch my camera and use it as their very expensive chew toy. no pictures of the minkeys.

while eating in a chinese vegetarian restaurant a monk in saffron came up to us with a begging bowl. when i made a donation he gave me a bracelet of brightly coloured string. can anyone tell me what this means?

last night i wandered for hours- made my way to the petronas towers. they don't look that big... but there is a water fountain display in front of them that has jets of water that you can jump over and crawl under without getting wet. it was awesome, although i think i scared a pair of german? tourists who happened to witness my leaping about.

today i also wandered for hours- endlessly frustrating. trying to walk in KL is like trying to run back and forth across a freeway. i saw some great things- orchid gardens, diving birds that are bright green and blue, big huge lizards, the national art gallery and theatre- but mix ups and mistakes of mine and HORRIBLE maps made things a little too epic for my liking. KL has its moments but overall i don't know if i could stand being here longer. there are too many people trying to sell me dvds and watches. i'm sure there must be lots of good things here but i just have no idea how to find them. it's hard to make yourself run across 6 lanes of traffic on a giant overpass in hopes of finding something on the other side that isn't just another huge road. i probably would have been happier just sitting in a street cafe rather than searching endlessly for nothing in particular. who knows. indian sweet shops, a crazy chinese lady doing strange traditional looking hand gestures and saluting us, frangipani falling on the sidewalks, the singing of two imams lofting at me from distant mosques as a flock of cranes flies overhead...who knows who knows.

onwards to the muddy confluence!

dad- you are a funny man. unfortunately we have decided not to go to sabah so i will not see robert and company. instead we are headed today for the muddy confluence. but thank you, both for contacting him and for wrangling with the computer. i'm still waiting for mom to start a blog of her own! although i suppose she may still be in the prodding the computer with a stick phase... sometimes we all get like that, though.

o and i should mention now that my uvic email account has died and i have not received mail from there for several weeks. so please retype all love poems and bequeathals and send them to my hotmail account (mr_natalie).

ok ok- so the taoist temple was pretty big. which is odd, as no one in miri seemed to know it existed, including the bus driver who's route went directly past it. it was also very beautiful with stone carvings on all the wall panels, no two the same! buddhist monks tend it and we could hear them singing in the distance. chinese temples have incence sticks as tall as me and as thick as my arm (which we all know is bulging and muscular). we went to another temple in miri that had a turtle pond and some of the turtles had chinese writing on them, but we didn't know what that meant.

from miri we went to the niah caves. they were also pretty big. we got covered in bat/swiftlet poo. we also saw a man collecting the birds' nests with a long pole. for the first time we actually saw birds in the jungle! i know this doesn't seem hard to do but the trees are so tall and dense that you can usually just hear their strange disembodied voices. it started monsooning while we were in the caves and water poured in through holes like waterfalls. we waited it out in the cave, watching the changing of the guards (swiftlets coming home to sleep, bats going out for night adventures). we slept in the park and i went back the next day to take photos (my batteries died the first day). i ended up walking with some french man who likes handicrafts a lot but does not like macaque monkeys. they are not real monkeys (he says) because they are so common. he was a strange man. perhaps he would like them more if they shared their mentos with him???

o and the butterflies the butterflies! whirling and swirling! some dynamically cutting through the air, others heavily batting like betty boop's eyelashes.

i don't know at all what to make of people here. some are ridiculously friendly- a man bought us dinner last night because he said it was considered an honour to treat one's guests in the country. he talked more than we did, and more eloquently, even though english was not his first language. drivers follow us around trying to take us to various places- sometimes they lie, sometimes they rip you off, but other times they are very helpful. i have no idea. a lot of young malaysian boys are now watching eben and i at our computers and have pulled up chairs...

thank you kristy for your awesome email, you write very well. perhaps nanowrimo is not total crap after all?

things like to bite me. i have started yelling at ants and calling them assholes.

Happiest happy birthday happy jenya (happy)

For kruncherton: borneo is the landmass- it is divided into malaysian and indonesia parts. and some tiny sultanate called brunei is here to.... or so we are told.

so we headed out of kuching, sad to leave the fantastic fairview guesthouse. we cooked our own meals there with food from the huge markets and a curry paste mixed like a magic potion by an indian man there. he had huge fragrant and colourful mounds of unknown substances that he cut chunks off of and put in a bag for us.
also, we caused an upset in the power structure of the yard animals at the fairview. the dog became so enamoured with eben that she neglected her scrap eating duties in order to stare at him wistfully while wiggling every inch of her doggy body. she seemed to resent me slightly... this left the scrap dish open for both the cat and the rooster. there was an uncomfortable tension in the air. it is probably for the best that we left.

for some reason we caught a night bus up to miri. now we are there. we are going to see the biggest taoist temple in southeast asia. it better be big. damn big. our room is on angle and looks out over part of the old part of town through a row of big windows. we lie on our beds sweating and listening to people doing things down below. who are these people? what are they doing? we have no idea. then we sweat some more.

o yes- and i am allergic to antbites and am covered in welts. o yes- and we have trusted some laundry place to clean all of our clothes- the receipt includes the diclaimer that they are not at fault if our clothes come back unclean. oyes- and happy birthday miss jenya, we love you!

wherever you go, there you are

(eb)

Hello. Natalie and I have decided to blog together (or to at least try it out). I'm redirecting my email list over to here, and we'll see how it goes.

So we're in Kuching. Have seen some caves (bats hanging like fruit, mmm fruit) and two parks (stayed one night in the second: Bako National Park, daytripped the first). In the first park, I nearly stepped on a four/five foot snake (and I do indeed mean 'nearly'!). The second was very beautiful but our stay was cut short because we didn't book in advance and it all filled up the next night. There were macaque monkeys here, who I witnessed go in through the 'canteen's' window and steal a pack of mentos, the freshmaker. I also saw one when it realized there was an annoying insect flying around it, then it spun around crazywindfast and grabbed it in the air, just as quickly tore it in two, sniffed it, then threw it away.

There are weird insects here. The ants all seem to bite (how many different ant bites can I get?) and the mosquitos seem to feast. The forests are full of construction bugs: they sound like chainsaws or power machines or something like that. Always workin, always busy at it.

The fruit is fantastic (those of you who know me know I love fruit). Fruit fruit everywhere, types I've never heard of, types I won't remember. Yay! The markets here in Kuching are amazing as well.

----------------------------------------------------------

But, of course, wondering time is approaching.

Why are we here? What is happening? (QUESTION.)

Wherever you go, there you are.

Yeah.

coo-kuching-ka-choo!

for any of those who are envious of us, who have now made it to kuching (meaning cat in malay) in borneo, please employ the following program thrice daily (or as desired):

1. dig dirty clothes form the bottom of the hamper. yes, those ones. the ones you pretend to have forgotten about. (mildew is good)

2. put on crinkled smelly, mismatched ensemble along with shoes

3. hop into your shower and turn on the water full blast. protect yourself with a flimsy umbrella while marching back and forth in the tub. (the best is if some men are watching you. strangers, of course.)

4. get out of the tub and turn your thermostat to a balmy 30 degress celsius.

5. begin running about and lifting heavy awkward packages.

6. imagine eben is there.

that is all.

And now from my hairy faced companion:

for those unfortunate souls who have not made it onto eben's email list, here are some thoughts from him:

Salamat
(greetings)

Remember to always keep your cool here, keep it tucked away, 'cause if you
lose it, man it's hot.  When it rains, you rejoice, though the Malaysians seem
to run for cover.  I think the rain is the cover.  Tucks in the cool.  Keep
it.

I just had a sugar cane drink.  The vendor put these huge stalks of the stuff
through this rolling pressing wheel about four or five times until the stalks
were practically dried and mushsplintered and then I drank.  Mmmm.  Very very
sweet, and very greeny tasting.  Green is good.  This was nice, but I think
the coconut drinking is the best: we've had a large green one and a smaller
brown one.  The guy chops off the top and you stick in a straw and slurp up
the sweet nectar.  Oh, outside the Hindu temple we ventured into in Singapore
(remember to go in the front way and to take off your shoes), some would smash
coconuts as symoblic of the ego: the hard exterior revealing the soft
interior.  I didn't actually see this, but I saw the coconut rinds (assuming
they are rinds?).

So we've been keeping busy; it feels like we've been here ages and yet, not
really.  Hours go by so fast but days and time in general is slowfastslowfast.
Yesterday, we decided to take buses to a ferry and go to Perau Besar (I think
that's what it's called -- meaning, "big island").  We got on this
40-passenger boat and started off on the rough waters.  Almost immediately,
this guy to our right started to lose his lunch.  He was in real rough shape.
A child also lost (seemingly) four lunches at once.  The woman sitting behind
Natalie was also in rough shape.  Well, they'd stop the boat to try to help
out these people, but the seas were not calm, so finally the guy who kept
vomitting yelled at them and they just drove the rest of the way.  All this on
what was supposed to be a 25 minute crossing!

The island was nice, seeing fiddler crabs (perhaps?) and some villagers and
nice trees birds sky water fish land love sunshine death garbage and a man who
informed me "pray pray pray" as he went to a shrine with incense.  So much
incense burnt.  Save the incense!  But that's nothing compared to the amount
of Chinese shrines in Malaka.  There must be more than there are Chinese!
We've been inside a mosque (in Sinagpore) as well as that Hindu temple...no
Chinese temples yet.  Going into these places is a tough thing to do.  Is it
acceptable?  What are we doing there?  What's going on?
How/when/why(QUESTION) does one pray in that kind of setting?  How do I escape
the escapade of my own language?

Today is the first time really Natalie and I have split up.  I went to the
bank then got promptly lost.  Well, not really lost.  Lost of course is more
of a feeling, and I didn't feel lost.  I just wandered.  Bought some ciku
fruit as well as a yellow pomegranate.  The fruit here is so tasty (peel it
first!).  Have had mangos and mangosteens (WOW!) and oranges and mini orange
bananas and a rose apple (not so good)...pineapple awaits at room (different
kind from back in Canada).

And we saw this beggar in Johor Bahru after getting off the bus coming up from
Singapore.  He had two chunks missing from one leg: red in a forest of brown.
A hint of things to come?  Will my coconut harden or try to envelope the
impossible?  It's a bit of a nervous area.  All coconuts can crack.  All
coconuts can grow.

Being vegetarian is a challenge.  Indian food is fine, but Chinese and
Perkanan and most other Muslim food is not so good.  They'll say it's
vegetarian but it'll have anything from tiny fish (an interesting experience)
to chicken to god knows what else.  Veganism is touch and go, not an essential
thing really.  (I had some gross egg tart thing this morning...didn't know it
was egg!)

Ok, time for you people to make bets.  How long before ... wait, more context
is needed: there are open storm sewers here, right next to the road, where
pedestrians walk (there aren't any sidewalks, or very few).  How long before
Natalie falls in one?  How long before I find a Bob Dylan song to listen to?
How long before one of us gets well ill?  How long before...we had others, but
I forget them now.

The people here are pretty kind.  Talking to strangers is not as weird here.
Actually, after the boat ride, Natalie and I got rides back with these people
we met on the ferry...on their motorcycles!  Neither of us had ever been on
one before.  The guys rode very slowly and were very nice (ie. don't worry,
mom and dad! - yes, we had helmets too!).  Motorcycles here are everywhere and
more of a transport method; back in Canada and the US, they are more of a
symbol, a punctuation leaving its mark.

Another type of punctuation: the mosque (the masjid).  In Singapore, there was
this very mournful (my interpretation -- as is ,of course!, this whole email)
sound from the mosque.  Then, here in Malaysia, they broadcast over
loudspeakers the prayer time (Muslims pray five times a day facing Mecca with
differing number of prayer cycles within that): they do so by having who I
assume is the imman singspeak some Arabic prayerphrases for a few minutes.  It
sounds again to me mournful, but stunningly tearyeyed beautiful.

But now these words are too long in my eyes.  My I's long for those other
words out there.

- eb