Days 70-73: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The train from Singapore to KL starts off very oddly. The train station is Malaysian property, just like an embassy, so you go through Malaysian customs then and there. Then you get on the train and travel through Singapore for 30 minutes until you reach the border, where you disembark, go through Singaporean customs, then start off on your journey once again. The transition from Singapore to Malaysia is quite abrupt; fancy suburbs are exchanged for miles upon miles of palm trees (palm oil plantations) and occasional shacks. The train ride takes about seven hours and is quite comfortable, at least in our first class train with AC.

The best parts of KL are the night markets, filled with vendors selling food and knock off goods. The city is quite large and switches from run-down buildings that are ready to collapse to the Petronas Towers in the blink of an eye. The people are as diverse as the buildings, with a seeming even mixture of ethnic Chinese, Indian, and Malay peoples. Apparently the British brought in the first two groups less than a hundred years ago, but despite some earlier racial tensions, things seem very well integrated now. The muslim heritage is very strong, and many of the women walking down the street wear head scarves, and some cover their faces too. We’ve seen many more tourists here than I expected too. I knew very little about Malaysia before arriving, and still have a long way to go.

We’ve walked through the beautiful Lake Gardens, Chinatown, Colonial District (yes, another one), and the Golden Triangle (business district). KL’s downtown is relatively small (if not highly walkable), but the city stretches out for miles. The Petronas Towers were closed the day we tried to go up, but even from some of the hilltops you can see the city stretching out quite a ways. There are quite a few interesting museums here; due to time constraints we only made it to the Islamic Arts Museum, which had a good collection of pieces from all across the Islamic world.

Days 66-69: Singapore

Singapore is a shopper’s paradise. It feels like every other building you pass is a shopping mall, but in reality it’s EVERY building. In a lot of cases, the malls are interconnected and you can walk from one to the next for up to four or five malls, leaving you entirely disoriented when you emerge. Rooms here are very expensive (partially due to the fact that we arrived at the trailing end of Chinese New Year, which is a month long event here), but the food is cheap and excellent.

There were double-decker tour buses with open-air seating on top driving all around Singapore (motto: Be Hip/Go Topless). While we appreciated the sentiment, we decided to walk around with our guide book instead. We’ve had a great time here, going from one end of the city to the other. Our hostel was in Chinatown, near the CBD (Central Business District, seems to be a British term), and from there we’ve walked to Fort Canning Park (where the British surrendered the island to the Japanese), Little India (a little slice of Mumbai), and Orchard Road (the shopping mecca, with the fanciest stores and biggest malls). Singapore is very much a first world country, and we enjoyed having sidewalks again. Mary got some new jeans and now feels civilized!

The Singapore Art Museum had several very good exhibits. There was an impressive collection of seals (for signing papers, not the animals), a collection of Chihuly glasses, and some amazing weavings. The rest of the (British) Colonial District was also a lot of fun. However, after three days in Singapore we were ready to move on, as there’s not much to do after you’re done shopping.

Days 62-65: Sanur, Bali

We’ve spent our last couple days in Bali resting up in preparation for continuing on our travels. Neither of us was feeling great (the infamous Bali Belly got us in the end), but we still managed to enjoy the last of our time here. Sanur is another gorgeous stretch of beach, and I found some Swedes to play volleyball with. We also dealt with sending back many of the presents we bought here. And we forgot to take any pictures...

Days 55-61: Ubud, Bali

Ubud is the artistic center of Bali, and the skill of the artisans here is incredible. There are several towns that make up what is usually referred to as Ubud, and each town has an area of specialty, with families there practicing a craft for the last couple hundred years. Mas is devoted to woodcarving, Ubud to painting, Batubulan to stone working, Celuk to gold and silver smithing, plus assorted weavers, kite makers, and others thrown in for good measure. These artists are both skilled in the traditional artistic styles of Bali, as well as having learned from others from around the world that have traveled here. We met a very nice man by the name of Wayan Darma who turned out to be a very talented woodcarver and part of a collective of around 130 woodcarvers with a large compound just south of Ubud. He was a master level woodcarver, creating some truly amazing pieces (even by the standards of Ubud), but ended up making most of his money working as a taxi driver. We hired him as a guide since his English was good and he was very straightforward and never tried to pressure or fool us. He was a university graduate and had very in depth knowledge of all the arts, proving to be a great teacher as well.

We visited both his woodcarvers collective and a painters collective, both of which were amazing. They each had about 10 large rooms full of works, ranging from student pieces up to works of the masters. We learned a lot about the styles of Balinese art and the traditions and got to see works by some of the same artists that appeared in the Neka Art Museum, which we enjoyed greatly. It was incredible seeing the range in quality and complexity between the student and master pieces. We ended up buying some woodcarvings from him, and an amazing painting at the art gallery.

We’ve seen several Balinese dances, including the Kecak Dance (Monkey dance, with a hundred or more men doing an a cappella chant in a circle, with the dancers in the middle), the Legong Dance (with female dancers and a traditional gamelan orchestra), and the Barong Dance (Lion dance, featuring a two person lion much like those used during Chinese New Year). They’ve been amazing, featuring both very talented musicians and dancers. And being in the front row, ten feet from the dancers is pretty incredible too.

Ubud is much quieter and less hectic than Kuta, which was a welcome respite. The locals claim this is because there are fewer people from Java there, but I also got the suspicion that they blame everything bad on the people from Java.

One of my favorite things to do while walking or driving around Ubud was to watch what was being carried on the mopeds that crammed the streets. There are probably 3 or 4 mopeds for every car, and very few of them seem to be single occupant. My favorite sights include

• Two adults, three kids
• Three teenagers
• One person, one surfboard
• Two people, two surfboards
• 20 geese
• One large (8’x4’) painting
• Two fifty pound bags of concrete (sitting on them)
• Two large bushels of greenery

For Valentine’s Day we went to Mozaic, a French-Asian fusion place whose food would fit amongst the best restaurants in NYC, but whose prices are more at home in Bali. Even amongst all the great food we’ve had on the trip, this was a true standout!

Days 47-54: Kuta, Bali

After resting for a while, we’re ready for some more adventure, but at a slower pace than before. We’ve moved to a hotel closer into Kuta, closer to where more of the action is. One of our first orders of action was to take some surfing lessons, since Bali is one of the surfing capitals of the world and the lessons are cheap. We both made it up a bunch of times, with Mary being the standout of the class! The beach here is pretty incredible; it stretches on for 8 km, and is pretty wide the entire time. It is much more crowded and a bit dirtier than the beaches near Tanjung Benoa, but there is decent to good surfing for the entire stretch.

We’ve also walked up and down the entire section of the island, through the towns of Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak, checking out the thousands upon thousands of small shops that line the streets. It’s a mixture of outdoor markets with small stands, indoor but rather bare shops, fancy boutiques, and a few shopping malls. The level of pressure the sellers use is inverse to the fanciness of the store – the small markets will have people up and down the street, showing you wares, nearly pulling you towards their stands, and the smaller stores will shout their wares and offer bargains from inside. Combined with the constant offers of “Transport, transport!” and “Massage here” it makes for a noisy and somewhat exhausting walk. There sure is a lot for sale though, mostly clothing (a lot of surf gear and tropical wear), CD/DVDs (all copies, $1 a piece), and food (Balinese, Indonesian, Chinese, Thai, Italian, you name it)!

Everyone is very nice, although some of them use it in their attempt to sell you stuff, trying to become friendly in hopes of making you feel guilty of not buying anything. Mary and I, for the purposes of simplifying many conversations, married and on our honeymoon – it makes the locals happy, and they one and all wish us luck on having kids soon! The vendors have good memories – I quickly learned not to say “Not today”, since the next day they’d ask me if today was the day!

We took a day trip out around a large portion of the island, visiting the beautiful temple of Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, on the shores of Lake Danu. We also stopped at one of the several Monkey Forests to feed the monkeys, which were much better behaved than the ones I remember from my last trip to Bali, when the stole my bag of feed right out of my hand! We also hiked down to Gitgit Falls, a beautiful set of waterfalls, as well as a coffee plantation, the northern town of Lovina with its black sand beaches, and over several of the central mountain ranges with their beautiful views. There are lots of new photos in the Bali section, although we haven’t been quite as good at taking the camera with us recently.

Another highlight was going to Jimbaran for seafood on the beach. There are tons of local fishermen based off the beach and there are almost equal number of small restaurants up and down the beach waiting to grill up whatever you want from the catch! We probably ate 3 pounds of seafood (2 pounds of crab, half pound each of clams and prawns!) while seated on the beach, with the local equivalent of a Mariachi band singing in the background.

I lost a couple days to an ear infection, due to swimming every day with all the local bugs, but after we figured out what was going on, antibiotics took care of it pretty quickly. Our hotel had very limited internet access, and there were surprising few internet cafes around, so we’ve been disconnected for a while, save for briefs connections.