Malaysia

    New Zealand had a way of detracting people, or at least me, from going into any mall or shopping areas: the goods were quality, but terribly expensive ($100 USD for a merino wool shirt).  Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown is literally the opposite.  You don’t have a choice but to walk through the stores, there are venders yelling, “you sir come take a look sir I give you good price sir” with a speed that my lack of punctuation implies, and the wares are poorly made, super cheap knockoff brands.  I’ve never seen so many fake clothes, shoes, purses, watches, or hats in my life.  No price tags either, just haggling.  For a watch, a typical first offer would be 150 Ringgit ($50 USD), but after some scoffing, that would fall to 100 Ringgit, then when you try to walk away it goes down to 60. 

Curry chicken rice with a 100 Plus, drink of champions

Chinese "flower pot chicken rice"

Chinese reflexology - the idea that your entire body is connected to your foot.  Uh yeah, that's what the leg is for.  

    When I wasn’t shopping or eating, I was either by myself in my empty 6-bed dorm room or out exploring the town.  Downtown KL is a maze, but I eventually found my way to the Petronas Twin Towers.  No matter how dizzying the maze, it’s hard to hide the 6^th and 7^th largest skyscrapers in the world.  The towers were impressive and had a nice little place to take pictures, but even better than that were the other travelers taking pictures.  I could have sat there forever making fun of these people posing for the camera, and taking pictures of them was easy because they were in front of the thing that all cameras were pointed it. 

Do the Samson

No caption needed

When this guy took his shirt off and revealed the wife b, I almost couldn't contain myself

Perfect timing

Asian.

2 girls from the hostel wearing leopard skirts and "sexy me" shirts at 10 AM.  Look at the one on the left!

    I met another traveler at the hostel, a Japanese girl named Reiko, and we took a train to the Battu Caves – giant limestone caves full of small Hindu shrines, even smaller monkeys, hoards of trash, and teeth-grindingly bad Indian music.  It was cute seeing the monkeys fight over empty bottles of orange juice, until you caught another whiff of the trash and monkey poo that bottle was sitting in.  The best part was seeing small drops of water run off of plants hundreds of feet above you, then trying to get it to land on your forehead.  I was getting pretty good at it until I thought of how easy it was for a forehead my size, then a drop landed in my eye and the game was over. 

Mocking a 50 foot golden statue

272 steps.  We counted.  Slowly.

    The next day Reiko and I picked up a Californian named Barbara and went to the National Museum.  Note to self: art museums, cool; actual museums, lame.  We had worked really hard to get there, paid for it, and the girls seemed to really enjoy it, so I stuck it out.  The museum had on display some oblong stones that had seemingly come from any dry riverbed in the world and claimed that they were “hammer tools” used by humans 300,000 years ago.  Please.  The museum did cover the history of Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Japanese invasion and occupancy, which actually was interesting.

    After 4 nights in KL, it was time to leave, but the hostels at the Cameron Highlands were full for the weekend, so I went to Ipoh.  A town of over a million and the nearest city to the Highlands, I felt that I had stepped into the Waco of Malaysia, or something like it.  With no real city center, no hostels, and no reason to be there, I chilled at the local bubble tea shop and enjoyed their free internet.  The next day, I arrived 20 minutes late to catch the bus to Cameron Highlands, with the next one leaving in 3 and a half hours.  I took a 45 minute bus ride to another bus station to find a 2 and a half hour wait.  I was enjoying my book anyways, so I decided to stick it out at the bus station.  Thank goodness the bus got delayed another two hours or else I wouldn’t have finished the book.  I had told the Highlands hostel that I would be there around 2 or 3, and the bus didn’t leave until 5:30 and took a solid 3 hours to get there.  Miraculously, there was a van driver from the hostel there for somebody else and I got a quick ride and the last dorm bed in the hostel. 

    The Cameron Highlands is a breath of fresh air in the most humid/hot parts of the world, with the afternoon rain that usually brings pleasantly cool weather.  This morning I went on a hike that had some of the steepest terrain I’d ever hiked, held together only by a lattice of roots and the occasional rock.  The peak was… less than I had hoped, complete with mangled road signs, a lump of grass, and practically no view whatsoever. 

Strawberry plantations at the end of the trail

    The hike was some much needed physical activity in a country where all I do is eat.  I’m looking forward to Thailand, and I’ve picked up a lot of info from other travelers.  It seems that I might spent a week in Rai Leh or Ton Sai and another week in Chiang Mai.  Right now I’m trying to figure out a creative way to get around the 15 day visa that I’ll have (my flight out of Bangkok leaves in like 21 days).  My current plan is to go on a visa run from Chiant Mai to Burma and back, which will take all day, but better than going to Thai prison if I get caught over my visa.  I don’t want to be one of those morons on Locked Up Abroad.

By the way, I found this at a 7 Eleven in Ipoh on my way out the door.  I did a double take when I saw the hat.  Even in Malaysia, nobody likes Tech.

No helmets or TTech hats

New Zealand behind, Southeast Asia ahead

    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.  

Dunedin

    During the few days in Queenstown before heading to Dunedin, I found an excellent little coffee shop (Vudu Café) with a great nook for reading in.  It had great coffee too, but the music… oh the music.  I felt like I was in a circus, or at least a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  I literally almost offered to make a playlist on my iPod for them, but decided to just use my headphones. 

    There was a flyer around town that said, “Ultimate Frisbee, Thursdays at 7 PM, at the fields.”  I’ve been dying to play, so I headed to what I thought to be “the fields” (a vague description by the way).  Only 5 or 6 people showed up and the advertiser didn’t even show, but we threw the disc around anyways.  The Austrian girl I had played with before showed up, as well as a girl from Chicago who played club, a local bro,  and some foreign guy who insisted on only throwing no looks.  The grass and weather was perfect, the snowcapped mountains loomed to the East and the setting sun to the West.  I didn’t have my camera, but it was a joke it was so nice.

    I had to catch a 6:55 AM bus to Invercargill, an intermediary town to get to Dunedin.  I almost missed my transfer bus because I was asleep, which would have sent my backpack to Dunedin and me back to Queenstown.  Thankfully, I got to Invercargill with all my stuff and waited for the next bus.  On this bus, we made a stop to pick up a few people and I got off with another guy to go to the restroom, with me going in second.  I came out just in time to see my bus about 3 blocks down the road, leaving me stranded in a town I didn’t know existed until that moment.  Thankfully, it braked, turned, and made a loop around to pick me up.  The driver said something and I couldn’t quite tell if he was trying to make me feel stupid or trying to make himself not feel stupid, but either way I thought he was the stupid one. 

    The hostel that I had booked online for Dunedin was full – so full that my online booking didn’t go through and they didn’t decide to tell me until I got there.  The receptionist said I was the 40th person looking for a room because of the rugby game.  He made a last ditch call to another hostel that had just freed up one space, and I got it.  When I got to the hostel, there were a few guys in front of me looking for one room, and all of them got turned away.  I had gotten super lucky – and this hostel had free wifi too, which I haven’t even seen yet!

 Local train station - not my hostel

    I made my way over to the brand new rugby stadium, built for the Rugby World Cup a few months earlier.  I guess it was big, a quaint 30,000 person stadium, but once you’ve seen Jerry Jones’ Death Star in Arlington, “big” becomes pretty damn small by comparison.  Let’s just say it was big for a sport that nobody in the USA has ever thought twice about.  People would say, “the USA did well in the World Cup,” and I would say, “we have a rugby team?” or “there’s a rugby World Cup?”  I had pretty bomb seats, and sat next to two local women in their 30s.  I knew from the get go that they would be worthless at helping me understand the game – they sat there with a glazed look and clapped when either team made a big play or try (touchdown).  But even they knew that this was a big game: first home game of the season, against bitter rivals, and in a brand new stadium.  I had picked a good one.  The home team, the Otago Highlanders, won by a narrow margin, even though the scoreboard clock was off by 5 minutes and almost cost them the game. 

    The next day, I slept in, went to a coffee shop, read for a while, then did a tour of the Speight’s beer brewery, “The Pride of the South.”  It’s a pretty unique place in a couple of ways: it’s a gravity brewery (raw ingredients go to the roof, are processed on each floor, then beer comes out the bottom floor) and sits on its own fresh water aquifer.  Super neat.

    I went back to the hostel last night, and this was what I saw in the bed across the room from mine.  The German guy staying in the room baked some bread apparently.  I don't know why it's in his bed.  Bread bed.  Also, I found out yesterday morning that somebody stole a few of my sausages and one of my premade grilled cheese sandwiches from the hostel fridge.  They even put the rest of my stuff back in the wrong fridge.  Whatever.  

Queenstown and Routeburn

    About a week ago today, Dustin and I arrived in Queenstown, the self-proclaimed adrenaline and party capital of New Zealand.  We tried to book ahead for the weekend, but the good hostels were all booked, so we had to stay at Base.  The Base hostel has a great location, meal deals, and is pretty cheap, but is also known to be the party hostel for 18 and 19 year olds on their gap year.  Thankfully our room was full of pretty reasonable folks and made friends with a few of them (3 Canadian girls and a German guy) and decided to stay a few nights. 

    During the day time, Queenstown is a super active town right on the lake with a Zilker Park kind of vibe.  The first few days I explored the town, drank goon (local box wine) at the beach, slacklined with randos, and tossed the frisbee around with an Israeli guy and Austrian girl – pretty much perfect days.  The nights were a different story.  Everyone in our room partied and pregamed in the dorm until about 1 AM for the first two nights.  It was a bit tiring and annoying, but we knew most the people in the room so it really wasn’t that bad.  But, every day, old people move out and new people move in.

    Enter Ben, the Chilean douchebag.  I had heard stories about people having sex in hostels and just hoped it would never happen in my room.  Well it turns out Ben was pretty keen on the idea, you know, because he’s a douchebag.  I won’t go into too much detail, but I woke up to Ben and some girl going for it, along with two Canadian girls giggling nonstop.  After Ben left, the whole room erupted with laughter, and I didn’t really know what was so funny.  Turns out they were laughing at me - “James, you were sleep talking to them while they were doing it!”  Apparently, I had sat up and said to him, “You need some help down there?”  Then I laid back down and said, “I could go for a pint of beer right now… you know, maybe a cocktail or mixed drink, but definitely no shooters.”  We were all wide awake afterwards, talking and crying laughing – it could have been such a bad experience, but turned out to be one of the funniest things that happened.  I’m just glad they weren’t sharing a bunk with me, or things woulda gotten real.

    It was clearly time to get the hell out of Queenstown, and the Routeburn track was the perfect escape.  With a mere two hour drive to the trailhead, the Routeburn is a 2 night trek through the glaciated mountains of Fjordland National Park and is considered one of the “Great Walks” of New Zealand.  Dustin had done the track a few days earlier while I chilled in town to rest my knees.  For the first time, I was able to hike at a very leisurely pace, with nothing to hurry to the end for, and without having to overwork myself. 

    The first day of the trek went through a beautiful, mossy forest with a half dozen large rivers and millions of ferns.  After having lunch at the bank of one of these rivers, simply watching the super clear water rush around, I found a dried up riverbed that the path crossed over.  Thousands of people probably pass right over it without taking any notice, but it was one of my favorite parts of the hike.  I ran around, frolicked, found some premier skipping rocks (with no water to skip them in) and then devolved into throwing them as hard as I could into mosses, logs, or other rocks.  As I explored, a small, curious little bird started hopping towards me.  I crouched down to take pictures and it eventually stood on my boot, about a foot away from my face, until I scared it off trying to get a good picture of the scene.  I also got to get within almost arms reach of 2 Keas, the only alpine parrots in the world.  I spent the first night in the Routeburn falls “hut,” which seemed more like a lodge, complete with gas stoves in the kitchen and beds for up to 50 people.

    Day two was a much steeper ascent to the Harris Saddle and, being above tree line, also had some of the best views of the area.  At the saddle, I took off my pack and went up the optional Conical Hill hike and was rewarded with a spectacular of mountains, valleys, mini-glaciers, lakes, and a small glimpse of the Tasman see in the far distance.  The way down was a bit rough, but I had picked up a companion, a 29 year old doctor from England, which made the grind seem easier.  And he gave me some ibuprofen.  The Lake Mackenzie “hut” was just as nice as the last one, but featured about 15 beds directly next to each other, without any barriers, along a long wall.  I opted for the bunks. 

    The forecast for the third and final day called for “rain, some heavy; snow above 900m.”  My English friend and I decided to set off early to try to avoid it and were rewarded with a light and manageable drizzle the entire way.  We had two days of absolutely perfect weather, so we didn’t mind taking a little bad with the good.  I had to wait 3 hours for my bus, 4 hours more to get back to Queenstown.  I checked into my hostel, grabbed some ice cream, and chatted up a few of the 9 girls I was sharing the room with.  The room smelled like roses and sunshine until my crusty-crust self walked in.  I felt bad until 7 AM this morning when four of them were screaming in Swedish as they packed their bags, then I wish I had smelled worse. 

    This morning, I saw Dustin off as he got on a bus to the airport, and just like that I was on my own again.  As I was on the hike, I again had the thought, “why am I here?”  This time, I came up with an answer – to listen.  I’m pretty much free from the normal distractions of life and have more time to simply listen to God than I probably ever will.  It also struck me as odd that, back home, my obedience is divided between several things: YoungLife, school work, friends, and spending time with God.  Out here, I’m more or less limited to the last thing on that list.  That time has been really fruitful and good for my soul so far and I’m excited that I’ll have to lean on it more and more.  Tonight was the first time I came back to my hostel and just didn’t care to meet anybody in my room – you can only skim the surface with so many people before you stop caring about all the countries they’ve been to or whatever.  But like I said before, I’m praying that I see the people I’m meeting as God’s children and people to be served, instead of just random encounters. 

    I only have a week left in New Zealand, so I have to make the most of it!  I’m headed to Dunedin in a few days to catch a Super 15 rugby match and I’m pretty stoked for it.