My last few days in New Zealand were spent in
Wellington. This city is way cooler than
I first thought, and I first thought that it was really cool. Tons of great coffee shops and restaurants
and even some hiking. From Mount
Victoria, you can see a 360 panorama of the whole city and it’s beautiful. On the way up the hill, I found a real proper
wizard staff that I carried the rest of the way. Even though it look liked Gandalf the Grey’s
staff, I felt like Saruman of Many Colors.
Thank goodness nobody came up as I was setting up this picture.
Outside of coffee shop, Wellington
Pancakes with bananas, blueberries, cream, and bacon
Kiwi breakfast - egg, cheese, and ham pie with tomoatoes
Last view of Queenstown, NZ
Queenstown airport
Typical male (note the shorts and tank)
I arrived in Singapore at rush hour on Thursday afternoon
and went directly to the house of Twiggs and Michelle Reed, the local YoungLife
regional directors for SE Asia. I knew
them through an old summer staff friend, Abby Mangritch, and they put me up in
a spare room. I could go on forever
about the Reeds, but just believe me when I say that they opened up their home
and their hearts. Over the course of the
4 nights, we ate American food, drank coffee, talked family and YoungLife, and
watched a bootleg version of This Means War (I loved how Hugo Stiglitz was the
bad guy). They were YL regional
directors for years in Southern California and moved out to Singapore 7 months
ago. Twiggs and Michelle truly love
their family, the city, and the Lord and I could not have asked for better
hosts.
Having been to Singapore 4 years ago, I’ve already seen the temples
(the eye sore idol monstrosities), so I skipped them and went straight for the
food. As cool as New Zealand was, I’m
glad to have left when I did for one reason: food. The reign of PB&J is over and the age of
chicken curry rice has begun. Avocado
milkshakes, murdabach, lime juice, curry, masalah, 100 Plus, guava juice, and
some weird fried doughy squid with bbq sauce and mayonnaise. A full plate of the local specialty, Hainanese
chicken rice, costs about $2.5 USD and is just amazing.
Sri Mariamann Temple
Must be god of the mustache. I approve.
Chinatown, Singapore
Just cool.
Chicken rice
Maxwell hawker food center
Everyone in SE Asia is selling something. It became instinct, almost necessarily, to
just not look any vendors in the eyes and walk right by them. I bought some scarves for my sisters and the
seller looked me right in the eye and said, “Ok ok, I sell you scarves. THEN, we look at rugs!” while in the midst of
literally a thousand giant Persian rugs.
Another guy in a market pointed at my legs with a distressed look of
concern on his face, but I was listening to my iPod. I looked down and saw nothing, but he was
still indicating that something was wrong, so I took out my earbuds. “Sir sir sir… you are in need of an excellent
pair of pants sir!” After I told him he
was killing me, he asked me if I was Australian, hoping to wedge his way into
my heart based on my accent. I guess it’s
hard to detect the accent of a language you just barely speak yourself. If he had asked if I was from Texas, I might
have considered an excellent pair of pants that he was selling.
Abby at lunch
Shopping for scarves
Straight out of Gotham City
Bonsai trees growing out of a rock
Wild Komodo Dragon, no big deal
On Sunday, Abby and I went to her local church, which
quickly made me realize that I hadn’t gone to any church in over a month. It was similar to churches back home and good
for the soul. Just like back home, we
played some ultimate Frisbee afterwards, which was also good for the soul. I was sweating like a monster while everyone
was telling me how cold it was. The
field that we played on was strange in that it was the left curve of an
abandoned horse race track converted into fields. The grandstand was huge, derelict, and loomed
in the distance. It wasn’t entirely
abandoned either – after the game 15 of us walked over to the back of it and
ate at an Indian restaurant and slammed a few lime juices. I had spent the last few days with some of
the people there, and as we sat talking and laughing I was filled with that
feeling of “it is good for us to be here” a la Peter.
A thousand lasers pointed at a mirror in a smokey room...
Singapore Art Museum really sucked, but this was cool
Like Peter, I had to leave the mount for the valley
eventually. My next step was to go to
Malaysia. That was literally my entire
plan: Malaysia, then Thailand eventually.
The whole “no plan” thing is cool, but kind of stressful. Either way, I got on a bus to take me to the
border, passed customs, and got another bus to the city center. When I say I “got a bus,” I mean that I went
up to random people, said, “Melacca,” and then they would point and say, “bas.” I would say that 30% of Malay words are
adopted from English. Bas = bus, teksi =
taxi, sentral = central, and so on. Kind
of convenient really. The 4 hour bus
ride to Melacca was $6 USD. I got to Melacca
Sentral haphazardly and just stood there thinking, “what the hell am I doinggggg.” Everywhere I went, guys would come up to me
right in my face and say, “teksi?? teksi!?”
I waved them off like I did everyone in this continent and just walked
around.
Eventually, I saw a huge crowd around a bus that was pulling
up, and in the crowd I saw like 8 whities with big backpacks. I figured they knew something I didn’t, so I
got on the bus too. I was sitting next to
this cute Swiss girl (as if it was by chance, hah!) and asked her where she was
going. I ended up going with her to a
hostel in China town ($5 USD for a night with free internet and breakfast…
unreal) where we met a Romanian guy and Spanish guy. We went out with them for dinner and walked
around the town. Melacca is cool, but
also kind of the lamest place ever. Tons
of western malls, tons of banks and hotels, some cool Portuguese/Dutch/English
history, and little bicycle carts all decorated up. We made our way up to an old church and sat
down at an overlook with a horrible view of the city. It was funny to sit there with strangers and
just laugh at the situation. We made the best of it.
Rahel and me
Eder and Chris
We almost stole this, but thought "what would Becaman do?"
I’m starting to have the first indicators of being tired of
traveling. I’m almost 40 days in, so I’m
surprised it’s been this long, but either way I have at least another 120 days
ahead of me. Again, I just keep
reminding myself that I need to just enjoy this time and push/pray through it. It was really good to be able to talk to the
Reeds and Abby about some of the things that I’ve been thinking and feeling,
just to air them out. Again, it was good
for the soul.
This huge bag of sweet, creamy, coffee goodness costs a little less than 80 cents... addicted
I’m currently in Kuala Lumpur for a few days. I’m hoping to go to the Cameron Highlands and
then up to southern Thailand. But maybe
if I meet another cute Swiss girl I’ll ask her what she’s doing and say I was
going to do that too. I just need to
keep all this damn curry out of my mustache long enough for her to think I’m
not a fool. Nothing is worse than a
curry stache.
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