[check all the Malaysia photos here]
We got back from Malaysia yesterday at 9 in the morning so we had to go and sleep off our journey. Only one hour time difference but economy class has a way of stretching time.
So Malaysia. It was so hot and sweaty that I had to imbibe water like an intrevenous drip just to keep from getting a migraine. The humidity put Tokyo to shame which is something special.
We flew into Kuala Lumpur (which I didn't even know was in Malaysia) and then took a flight to Penang. We were with a tour group of about fifteen people. Seven couples and one lonely retired man whom we nicknamed Mr. Happy. He constantly wore a frown and refused to speak to anyone except on the last day, when he revealed that he spoke pretty good English. Maybe he wanted to hear what I would say about him. You wouldn't believe the amount of double takes I got as the only pasty westerner in a Japanese tour group.
In Pinang we stayed in a nice hotel, and we had to eat dinner all together - this became the standard dinner format: us all sitting around a table with a rotating center on which the staff put (or threw) our food for us to pick at. The manners involved in dinning at a rotating table are difficult to master - you see something you like at the other side but you have to wait until there are no hands reaching into the centre before you spin the plate towards you. And usually it is intercepted and emptied before it reaches you.
We went to the usual tourist places. Our guide took us to a jewellery shop where they locked a big metal grille behind us and wouldn't let us out for about forty five minutes. Then we went to a leather shop and the same thing happened there. Maybe our guide knew the owners.
Then we went to Penang Botanic Gardens. It was extrememly sweaty, and I drank a fresh fruit juice that a guy in a stall made with dirty gloves and a food mixer. I worried about that for a while, but nothing intoward came out of my backside during the entire holiday. That has to be a first for me.
After that, Fort Cornwallis, the first landing site of the British or something like that. There is a big stone fort with old cannons and speakers playing rousing classical music like Ride of the Valkyries.
When the other tourists left and only Ai and I were left the guard said "Ok, I'll let you go in now, but don't tell the others". So we went in and the little orangutans were startled at first, but they stretched out their hands to us. They have really strong hands, and I can imagine the adults would be able to break bones with their grip. Actually the guide said in Japanese that the big moon-faced orangutan leader broke an attendants skull and killed him after a particularly careless feeding session. I took some photos of Ai with her Orangutans and she pressed 10 ringit (300 yen, 1 pound fifty) into the guide's hand and we caught up with the group. She continues to feel ashamed that she didn't give him more, but we hadn't really got a handle on the currency.
That afternoon we sat on the bus for three hours while we drove to the hotel in Cameron Highlands. If you have seen
Later that day we went to an outside foot spa place. It was an area with various little pools of naturally heated water.
There was even a pool at 90 degrees. They had sieves that you could use to hold eggs in the water and boil them. Ai made me boil my sandals, and I have to say they didn't smell after that. I might start boiling all my shoes.
We went down to Kuala Lumpur and checked into The Grand Seasons Hotel, which was inhabited almost entirely by Indian families. The tallest hotel in Malaysia apparently. We were on the 23rd floor and got a decent view of the Petronas towers.
The next day was our last and so we spent our time wandering around the city and taking cabs to various places. It's a world apart from the countryside where some people had literally nothing but a wooden shack.
Despite the multitude of shifty glances and dishonest taxi drivers the city felt really safe. If you stick to the tourist beat I think nothing would happen. We took the monorail to KL Sentral (they spell everything phonetically) and ended up off the beaten track, but nothing happened to us.
I would like to go back to Malaysia and maybe spend some time on the coast, where I think it would be really cheap. The best thing by far is that because of their colonial past a truck (as they say in japan) is called a 'lori', elevators are lifts, and every building has a Ground floor. After two years of Americanisms it's nice to see that. [check all the Malaysia photos here]
After that busy day shopping we got up and decided to do something relaxing. I had the aquarium in mind, but on the way to the coffee shop we saw something that we've always been meaning to try - Dr. Fish.
Dr. Fish is a service whereby a tank of about fifty tiny fish suckle and chew the bits of hard skin from the soles of your feet. When you first put your weary feet into the tank it feels utterly unbearable and the temptation to make high-pitched noises is not something that a normal person can overcome. It feels like thousands of tiny vacuum cleaners hoovering at your feet. After a couple of minutes if feels amazing. Being pampered by tiny creatures is not something that you usually get to do, and it there is something very Roman-emperorish about it. Couple that with a massage chair/foot onsen and you come out feeling like a new person. And that's only for ten quid.
Tomorrow is Suzie's last day so we are going to head back to the park to check out more strange freaks and maybe have a drop of champagne.
Here is a video of the stuff we've been up to for the last couple of days - the clips are in no particular order or anything so it might not be that interesting. Wait for the bit at the end with the fish, and the bit where Suzie tries to eat sushi.
Yesterday, on Thurdsay morning, we woke up at five AM to get ready to go to Tsukiji fish market, the largest fish market in the world. We got dressed especially in old clothes in case we got covered in fish juice and brought our cameras to take pictures of the packed aisles between the stalls. We got on the train at 5:45 am and I told cautionary tales of people being run down by fish carts while we ate our convenience store sandwiches that would stave off our hunger for the long trek through the aisles. Later we would get sushi.
We got off at Tsukiji station and took the short walk the the market entrance. The truck docks were eerily quiet and not a soul could be seen. The real business happens inside the main building, I assured them. The wholesale people had already cleared off with their loads and now it would be local hoteliers and sushi shop owners striding the aisles with trolleys stacked with polystyrene crates.
We entered the main building and it too was a little quiet. In fact, it was a ghost town, with wooden trolleys abandoned in the little gangways and fishhooks swaying from the low rafters.
We had to eventually admit the possibility that after getting up at five in the morning to come here, it was closed. Our fears were confirmed when we asked the only person we could find (the guy from I Know What You Did Last Summer). He looked at us, with our cameras and sturdy shoes, and smirked. I became one of the few people to have pictures of Tsukiji fish market absolutely deserted. Other less fortunate people are not stupid enough to get up in the morning without checking it's open.
Then we went to try to find a sushi shop, but they were all closed too. We eventually found a 24 hour sushi shop with about twenty staff. Suzie had a great time trying to use two sticks to put slimy fish in her mouth (see the video I put up here soon), with all the staff watching her. As for me I've had sushi a hundred times, and it stills feels like eating a meal of phlegm and condoms.
After that we went back to bed for a bit, then we went to Shibuya and did a bit of shopping. We went to 109, where J-girls shop for clothes. It was way to busy for all of us and so we went to Shinjuku to see Spiderman 3. If you go to see it watch out for the ridiculous jazz part with Mascara Man.
In Shinjuku we saw this con man. Today, we're off to a hot spa - one with no water, strangely, but i'll explain that tomorrow.
On Monday Suzie, Ai and I went to Asakusa to check out the temples, and buy some souvenirs. Suzie got a small yukata, like a kimono, for Rosy. We paid five quid to get into an amusement park and then discovered that we were all too chicken to do anything: I didn't want to go on the machine that drops you down a tower and they didn't want to go in the ghost house (which apparently really is haunted). And the little girly rides that we could have gone on were completely mobbed. Who wants to wait fifty minutes to ride a teacup?
On Tuesday - yesterday - Ai went to dance lessons and me and Suzie went to Ginza. It's the expensive shopping district of Tokyo and we ended up
Today we went to Kamakura, which is a place near the seaside with a giant buddha and some nice temples. We went to a Japanese restaurant where we had to fry our own food on gas powered tables (rubber gas tubes snaking all over the floor). Eating next to an open window we had the living daylights scared out of us when a pigeon flew straight into Nick's head and then flapped around the restaurant before leaving through the window.
After that we went to see the buddha, even climbed up inside it, then took some sacreligeous photos, and went to the
Tomorrow, we are off to Sukiji - a fish market that has to be viewed at six o'clock in the morning. It's 10:38 now, so we'd better be off to bed.
I will try to upload another video tomorrow, if I'm not to knackered from waking up at the crack of dawn.
