Thanksgiving in Kuala Lumpur

Hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Nikki and I enjoyed ours in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Part 1 of our Thanksgiving meal took place at Carcosa Seri Negara, which was built to house the highest British representative in Malaysia in the early 1900's. We tramped through the surrounding gardens enroute, taking a shortcut through an open field, and arrived for the super fancy afternoon tea covered in mud. We munched on delicious scones and other snacks while monsoon rains outside rocked the hundred year old house, before taking a taxi to the art-deco style Central Market for some shopping and a visit to the fish spa. I was far too ticklish (read: wimpy) to handle the fish swarming around my feet, eating all my hard-earned calluses, but Nikki loved it! As night fell, we strolled around town checking out the Majid Jamek at the junction of the two rivers for which Kuala Lumpur is named, and various onion-domed and mogul-style buildings surrounding independence square (the country formed in 1957). We then made our way over to Chinatown for some shopping on the famous Petaling Street and part 2 of our Thanksgiving dinner at the small, cute, and delicious Old China Café.

Our hotel in KL (the Hilton) was awesome. Aside from the ever-exciting bidet, our 32nd story room had an amazing view and every amenity imaginable. The breakfast buffet was one of the best we've ever seen, with Malay, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and European food all well-represented (tried them all, of course). After gorging ourselves, we took the light-rail over to Petronas Towers – once the tallest buildings in the world. It turns out tickets to the sky-bridge are hard to come by, so we bought tickets to the Menara Kuala Lumpur, a nearby telecommunications tower, for a higher view. We spent much of the rest of the day touring the city via hop-on-hop-off bus, getting out to see locals making batik at a crafts center and snap pictures of various landmarks. We meandered back home through an ethnic Malaysian district, stopping along the way to sample various kinds of street food – spice-filled coconut rolls steamed over a boiling pot, corn-shrimp crepes, and steamed meat-filled buns called "pau." We also ate a bunch of other delicious things at a crowded local restaurant, but I don't know what they were, since we don't speak Malay and we ordered by randomly pointing at the menu.

We spent Saturday outside of KL, touring the countryside with a private guide (what a character – more on him below). First up was a jungle hike and canopy tour at the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia. The scenery was beautiful – we even saw some monkeys – though within 30 minutes I had a huge leech attached to my foot. I proceeded to scream like a little girl and run around with my hands waving for the next few minutes. The bridges built 100 ft high in the canopy provided an excellent view of the preserve, though one had to question the structural integrity of the aluminum ladders providing the principal support. Next on the itinerary were Batu Caves – huge limestone caverns where a Hindu temple has been built and the center of a festival that draws millions of people each year. The caves themselves were stunning and the huge statue in front and various shrines were interesting. The whole place was crawling with long tailed macaques, which were pretty entertaining. We scarfed down an Indian-style lunch, where various visually unappealing, yet very tasty concoctions were scooped out of communal buckets onto banana leaves.

Everyone took a nap in the car as we rode out to the Selangor coast, with a stop at a traditional Malay-style house (100 years old, built without nails), where the third-generation resident taught us about the historic economic drivers of tapping rubber trees and harvesting palm oil. Closer to the famous straights of Melaka, we visited a cannon-circled lighthouse surrounded by silver leaf monkeys. I'm pretty sure that feeding these animals can't be a good idea (for the monkeys or humans!), but as part of the tour we were given handfuls of green beans and subsequently swarmed by these cute little guys. We even saw a few babies, which are golden-colored when they are born. Continuing our activities of questionable environmental consequence, we took a boat out into the nearby estuary to see eagles feeding (attracted with chicken bits). The estuary/river itself was beautiful as the sun set, and we had a lovely seafood meal by the water before heading back out in the boat in the evening to see the huge numbers of fireflies that congregate nearby. Our chain-smoking guide for all of these activities was an interesting guy – generally friendly and knowledgeable, but a bit unprofessional, disorganized and strangely quirky. For instance, he insisted that we shower and change our clothes after the initial hike, as he didn't want to taint the leather in his car – I didn't know I smelled THAT bad! Though a little bizarre at times, the tour turned out to be a great way to see areas outside of KL in a short period of time.  

On our last day in Malaysia, we took the train south of KL to see the recently constructed administrative center called Putrajaya. This beautiful city is designed around a man-made lake, with tons of unique mosques, bridges, and government buildings, though it isn't slated for completion for a couple years. After a great $1 tour, we escaped the daily downpour by returning to Petronas Towers for a Malay-style lunch. In our last few hours before heading to the airport, we toured a pretty good bird park near the city center and paid respect to the nearby national monument (designed by the same guy that did the Iwo Jima memorial in DC). In all, it was a great quick trip and a good way to use the free business class plane ticket that I won in a race a few weeks ago. Next week we are off to Cambodia for another race – the Angkor Wat Half Marathon!

Busy Social Weekend

We had a busy schedule last weekend – two fundraisers, a couple performances, a pottery class and a frisbee tournament. It started Friday night with an NFL viewing party to raise money for the consulate soccer team (the "tiger team"). Turns out all military/diplomatic posts have free access to all the games – I guess it keeps us fully American! The next morning I got up early for another beloved American sport – ultimate frisbee. It was blazing hot and humid for the all-day tournament. Unfortunately, I had to stop out early when I pulled my hamstring diving for a loose disc – so inflexible – I'm starting yoga next week. Hopefully things will heal up in time for the Angkor Wat half marathon that we are running December 5. Since I was home early, Nikki and I headed over to the consulate charity bazaar, where each of the consulates in town was selling goods representative of their respective countries – vodka from Russia, handicrafts from Malaysia, wine from Australia, cookies and cupcakes from the US (we export obesity!)

Saturday was national teachers' day in Vietnam, so in the evening we attended an event put on by our language school. I participated in more than a few performances – a group song, a skit, and a duet with one of our friends - all in Vietnamese, of course. The song for the duet was "Con Gai" ("The Girl") and I've been working to learn the words and accompanying guitar for a few weeks now. In the end I think it was pretty successful – at least no one ran screaming from the building (it was videotaped, so I'll try to post the footage for viewing pleasure later). I also entered contests for writing a Vietnamese Essay (second place!) and a home-made thank you card for our teachers (no prize – it's me – you can use your imagination…)

We got up late on Sunday, had a leisurely brunch at "the elbow room," (yeah western-style brekky!), and then meandered around town looking for a store to buy a wedding veil. No, Nikki and I have not decided to have a second, Vietnamese-style wedding (though we are thinking about getting pictures taken). It just so happens that Nikki is the "morale officer" (aka party planner) for her section at work and one of the local staff just got engaged – Nikki is helping to celebrate by making her wear a veil all day at work and throwing her a party. After finding a place (there are wedding stores everywhere) and grabbing a soda at a street stall, we taxied across town for a pottery class. The stuff that we shipped from the US by boat STILL hasn't arrived, and we drink a lot of coffee/tea, so we decided to make mugs. The nice Japanese sensei that runs the class was awesome, and with his help, our mugs turned out pretty great. We capped off our busy weekend with a trip to the Saigon Opera House with our friend Danette, where we saw performances from a visiting Korean choir, the local Saigon choir, and the Saigon Symphony (performing Tchaikovsky – they love the Russians here).  The most interesting number was "Mamma Mia," in Swedish, performed by the Koreans, here in Vietnam – talk about a multi-cultural experience!

Short work-week this week and tomorrow we are off to explore Kuala Lumpur. Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family and hope everyone is doing well!!

Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

Wow have we been busy! And the next couple weeks are going to be even crazier. To kick off the madness we took a trip up north a week ago for work and a little bit of fun. The North is different in a lot of ways – a center for government and academia and generally thought to be more conservative – which was interesting to experience firsthand.

The highlight of our trip was a visit to Ha Long Bay – a world heritage site and one if the most beautiful places I have ever seen. We spent three days on a Chinese Style junk cruising amongst hundreds of limestone islands, alternating between kayaking, swimming, reading, and eating delicious multi-course meals on the top deck amidst stunning scenery. We actually visited a place adjacent to Ha Long bay proper, called Bai Tu Long, which is a little less crowded, so we had much of the pristine landscape to ourselves. We visited a remote fishing village 30 km from the nearest port where we chatted with the locals and checked out their small scale aquaculture facility. Women from the village took us around via rowboat to see the local lagoons and let us try our hand at rowing (Nikki was pretty good!).

On our second evening, after an incredible sunset and some swimming/jumping off the top of the boat, the crew ferried us over to an island where they had prepared a candlelit dinner in a cave. Aside from the great ambiance, food, and wine – and the fact that the chef carved several mini-sculptures out of various fruits/vegetables – my favorite part was that the crew sang several songs and then invited the guests to sing a song from our respective countries. There were four Americans present, and we started things with the quintessential "take me out to the ballgame."  The Auzzies (waltzing matilda), Brits (beatles song), Irish (fields of athenry), Germans and French (I don't remember, but the there was lots of waving of wine glasses in the French one) all followed suit.

After returning to port Saturday, Nikki and I settled in for the three hour trip back to Hanoi through rice paddies and tried to get a little rest before the Marine Corps Ball in Hanoi that evening. The ball is a black tie event celebrating the founding of the Corps and carried out each year wherever Marines are posted around the world (we had a dress and tux specially made for the occasion). A bunch of our friends from Ho Chi Minh City made the trip north for the party and we had a blast dancing all night and exploring the city together a bit the next day. Hanoi just celebrated its 1000 year birthday, and Nikki and I had fun poking around the old quarter where each tiny street is named after the merchandise that was originally sold there. We also checked out the Temple of Literature, where mandarins, doctors, and other members of the elite were trained. Of course, we had to also visit Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, though the body of the revered leader was out for "maintenance."

After our brief tourist stint, we spent the next few days working from the capital city (staying at the actual Hilton in Hanoi). Nikki had the opportunity to meet her counterparts at the embassy and work on a couple of special projects, while I met with various members of the environmental community. For those of you interested, I've got a couple of irons in the fire these days – a mariculture planning project (http://www.icafis.org), my old work with MLPA (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa), and most recently helping with a NOAA-run capacity building workshop here next month. We of course made time for some great meals, including dining al fresco at a colonial-style French villa and a dinner at a place called KOTO that mentors/employs street children.

All in all it was a super fun AND productive trip and we'll have to go back to see everything we missed.