mormon missionaries

everything but the name tags...

ari and my dad on the way to our second wedding

Chopsticks

Chinese people (in Asia) are often surprised and impressed that I know how to use chopsticks so well. There is nothing impressive about this. I've been dating a Chinese girl for nearly three years. What would be surprising is if I didn't know how to use chopsticks. But I did know how to use chopsticks before I ever met Janet..

I first used chopsticks when my father took me to eat pho (Vietnamese noodle soup; Americans - it's pronounced "fuh") when I was very young. He forced me to use them. I was very reluctant. Whining, I asked why I couldn't just use a fork. His answer: "One day, you might go on a date with an Asian girl, and you don't want to embarrass yourself!"

Wedding

The wedding was Saturday, and was my first Chinese wedding. Congrats to Cadence and Jacky! We're going to another wedding on Wednesday - I'm told it will be much more "local," so that should be interesting.


A couple of cultural differences..

Cadence changed dresses (and hair styles) five times during the reception, which I would have never noticed except that Janet pointed it out to me.

There was no entree at the reception, but instead about 10 small-portion dishes. I was getting full on "appetizers" and starting to think I'd never be able to eat the entree when I realized that there was no entree!

Hugh "Hefner" Ip with bride and bridesmaids

beee-e-a utiful wedding

cadence (bride) and reine (sister and maid of honour)

beautiful bride, flower girl and bridesmaids galore

congratulations cadence and jacky! can't wait to bai leen and get lai see (red envelopes) from you guys this CNY! haha

BIRTHDAY BOY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARI!

zhu ni shen ri kuai le

(happy birthday to you)

zhu ni shen ri kuai le

(happy birthday to you)

zhu ni shen ri kuai le

(happy birthday tooo youuuuuu)*

zhu ni shen ri kuai le!

*The happy birthday song in chinese doesn't have the line "happy birthday dear (fill in blank)" but is still sung in the same tune

Defeated

I like to think of myself as someone who appreciates food. I embrace the food of other cultures with open arms, even the items that most other Westerners turn their noses up at. Pigs feet, fish stomach, pig stomach, pig tongue, ox tongue, tripe, Durian, chicken liver, beef tendon, pigeon, fish eyes - I've eaten it all, and truly enjoy most of it. I saw a show on National Geographic about how Cambodians snack on fried spiders and crickets. I can't wait to get to Cambodia! So far I haven't come across any food that I couldn't at least get down.. until today.

During lunch with Janet's parents and their friends, stinky tofu was ordered. I can't speak Chinese, so I had no idea. When the waiter brought the plate over I thought he had a serious body odor problem. The smell is strong and overwhelming. I don't want to offend our Chinese audience, but the candid truth is that I thought it smelled like garbage. But I thought to myself: how bad can it be? After all, everyone else is eating it. After smothering it in hot sauce and some other type of sauce, I took a bite. I finished the bite, but couldn't finish the rest of it. It tasted similar to how it smelled: rotten. Demoralized, I admitted defeat.

The host of the TV show Bizarre Foods won't admit to disliking a certain food until he's tried it three times. I'll adopt the same philosophy. After all, if so many Hong Kongers enjoy it (including Janet), there's got to be something good about it.. right?

In Hong Kong, taking a break..

Apologies.. Our postings have slowed. We're currently in Hong Kong for two weeks on account of Janet's friend Cadence getting married. We're staying with Janet's parents, who live here. A short break from travel.

Janet has been busy with wedding preparations, getting her bridesmaid dress tailored, helping with various things. One of our main tasks for this week (aside for wedding stuff) is to get our Indonesia visas. We're planning to volunteer for an organization called ProFauna in their rural community development volunteer program for most of October. We'll use November to travel around Indonesia. In order to legally perform unpaid work and avoid unnecessary problems, we're trying to get the proper visa.

No crazy travel stories this week. Just living comfortably. Yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival (a Chinese holiday), and Janet's parents had dinner here with a few guests. Janet and I have been hanging out with Janet's friend Katie who just returned to Hong Kong after several years abroad and is currently unemployed, and with our friend Jo Ann, who's husband James is here for several months for work, and is working crazy hours.

hong kong haikus

preemptive haikus for the upcoming formal nuptials we will be attending:

humid, scorching heat

sweating like a shower on,

full suit will be fun.

and

heavy rain and tiles

high heels not made for walking,

tight dress, difficult!

hopefully ari's suit pockets can fit some extra deodorant and maybe some flip flops....

In Brunei, couch surfing

So we're in Brunei, couch surfing...

Brunei Darussalam is a small Islamic country best known for money and oil. The guidebook calls Brunei "highly Islamic," and we flew here on 9/11, the day that some crackpot church and their idiotic minister from Florida planned on burning Korans. Add to this the fact that technically to get a visa on arrival we are supposed to have onward tickets, which we didn't have. Luckily my American passport didn't cause any problems and we easily passed through immigration.

We took a water taxi to Kampong Ayer, the world's largest water village. About 30,000 residents live in this centuries-old community.

Many of you have probably already heard of couch surfing. The basic idea is that its a network of like-minded people, building a global community. There is a host, someone with a spare room or couch available, and there are surfers, travelers looking for a place to sleep (for free) in a foreign land. But it's more than just a free bed - couch surfing is an in to the society and community that you're visiting. The experience is so much different than just walking around as a tourist.

Since Brunei is much more expensive than other countries in the region and we're on a strict budget, we decided that it was a perfect place to do our first surf. From the airport, we grabbed a taxi and headed to a residential address in Bandar Seri Begawan (the capital). The taxi drivers at the airport seemed a bit confused. It's not every day that a couple of Westerners with backpacks take a cab to a residential neighborhood in Bandar.

We lucked out. Rudy (our host), his girlfriend Amelleia, and his entire family are so welcoming and have made us feel right at home. It's almost as if we are temporary members of the family, or as if Rudy is an old friend that we're visiting.

Amelleia and Rudy

After consulting our guide book and other travelers, we decided that we could "do" Brunei in just one or two days. Perhaps if we were staying at a hotel and were on our own for touring, we might have been right. But we were totally wrong. In fact, we're enjoying our stay here so much and Rudy and his family have been so kind in inviting us to stay longer, that we decided to stay until Thursday (6 days total).

Jame’ Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque

Rudy has a passion for sharing everything about Brunei; culture, history, cuisine, politics, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He's taken us to some his favorite places to eat, and taken or directed us to all of the important sights and museums. We've hung out with some of his friends, had home cooked meals with his family, and harvested coconuts from his yard. The sale of alcohol is illegal in Brunei, but its legal for non-Muslims to take small amounts over the border (Rudy is Catholic), so we've even gotten to drink a bit.

Janet plucking coconuts

Our timing was perfect. September 10th was the first day of the Muslim holiday of Hari Raya, when the fasting ends and feasting begins. This is significant for us non-Muslim travelers for two reasons: open houses, and meeting the Sultan.

Queued up at the palace

For the first three days of Hari Raya, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (once the richest man in the world) opens the palace up to the public (including foreigners) for a free lunch and a chance to shake hands with the Sultan and royal family (if you're male) or the Sultan's wife and female royalty (if you're female). We decided that the novelty of it was worth waiting in line, so we went to the palace, ate lunch with thousands of Bruneins, Malaysians, and migrant workers (Bruneins don't do other people's dishes), and queued up. I waited in an orderly queue for an hour and a half and anticlimactically shook his hand (its only a handshake, after all). Janet was not so lucky - she struggled through a disorderly line of women, all pushing and shoving, screaming children, and cramped quarters for four hours. I was pretty concerned that she had disappeared, since she entered the palace and never exited, and ran all around looking for her. Finally she emerged, exhausted.

Janet mentioned in a previous post that during Hari Raya people will open their houses to friends, family, and neighbors to come socialize and eat. We went to one open house in KL, and we've been to three here in Brunei. People dress in traditional (Malay Islamic) attire at these events, which is very colorful. We've had an amazing cultural experience.

At one open house, two older guests told me about a friend of theirs who, dressed in traditional attire, was detained at an American airport for 11 hours with no food or water, and then deported solely due to his clothing. The two men were clearly upset about the issue, and let me know it as if I were complicit in their friend's mistreatment. I completely agree that the way their friend was treated is wrong, and told them this. American immigration officers tend to be rude, even to Americans. And I don't doubt that a couple of ignorant a-holes would [illegally] mistreat someone in that manner. It's a shame that their actions follow me around. People like those immigration officers and the Koran burning idiots have probably never left the country and have no desire to, but their actions affect those of us who do.

On our last night, we prepared a meal for our hosts to show our appreciation

What do you all think of our couch surfing experience? Are you more inclined to do it now? Do you think we're nuts?

KL - round 2

thinking we had a pretty good idea of KL from our first few days at the beginning of our trip, we arrived from Melaka into KL at a bus station we had only heard of in passing, in a part of town we'd never been to and pretty much clueless as to how to get to where we were staying. We dug out our map that had been securely and snuggly packed into Ari's backpack.

If you're wondering, I won't keep you in suspense - we made it! (even after navigating the first train during rush hour and then after weighing the pros and cons, decided the comfort of not having to cram into the next train with all our gear (infinitely) outweighed the cost of a taxi)

as you may have read, we have the Liew's and Chien's to thank for a great local experience! The night we arrived we had an incredible dinner (Ari and I had only had breakfast at this point - granted it was half a steamed chicken with chicken rice balls, we were still pretty hungry)!

The next day, acting as our personal guides, they took us hiking through the regenerated forests of KL where unfortunately, the 200m high canopy walk was closed for Hari Raya. (if you zoom in, it's not raining - i am sweating. awesome, i know)

to several (incredible) local food stalls. We indulged in roti canai (indian fried bread that comes with an assortment of curries),

nasi lemak ("fatty rice" that is rice soaked in coconut milk, with a fried egg, peanuts and a spicy sauce and all steamed in a banana leaf)

and tea tarik (tea with condensed milk and poured or literally translated as "pulled" in a way to add frothy bubbles), Bak Kut teh (a hokkien-malay dish of pork ribs marinated and cooked until the meat is falling off the bone)

And our first Hari Raya Aidilfitri open house celebration at Hilda's friend's home. The festival marks the end of Ramadhan (month of fasting) and from our experience so far, is filled with family, friends and (lots of) food! Families have open houses and serve a ridiculous amount of food for their guests. We had local dishes particularly roasted lamb and beef rendang (please see wikipedia for mouth-watering description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendang)

but let me take a break from food...

the people of Malaysia are incredible. Everyone is a polyglot - our taxi driver spoke four languages and all his children spoke five. While the minimum here seems to be three. They live in a society that has individual customs and separate values and yet appears seamlessly integrated.

We can't thank everyone we've met enough! Everyone has been overwhelmingly generous and welcoming. All the people we've met from guesthouses to local food stalls to the random family that picked us up on the side of the road in Cherating (thank you whoever you are!) have been genuinely friendly and without hesitation, have shared their food, experiences, culture and lives with us.

Malaysia was definitely a soft-king-sized-tempur-pedic-mattress perched on top of a water bed- cushioned landing for our trip. Brunei next!

***

We're in Brunei. Today is day 34 of our trip and we've discovered one month was barely enough to cover peninsular Malaysia! We're almost on our way to Hong Kong and due to last minute itinerary changes we're skipping Borneo Malaysia and (after hearing from a persistent source - Rudy), we are discussing the logistics of making a quick trip to Penang. Who knows what else we missed?!

For you Dunkin lovers out there - apparently Malaysia runs on Dunkin too - I mean "cafe dunkin" (i believe it's pronounced dun'kinnn)