4/10/02 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (just) Phillip
I only have a few more hours in Malaysia and so much has happened since I last wrote! I ended up bumping back into the cool Candian guys in KL while crossing a street. Much more of a coincidence than it may sound. So we all hung out for a night and they convinced me to go back up to Thailand (they only crossed into Malaysia to get a new Thai visa) with them. So they left expecting me to follow the next day, but in typical phillip style I ended up meeting more people which changed my plans. In between I said goodbye to Sinead and Mel. They're definately the coolest people I've met along the way, totally down to earth but tons of fun. I'll have to go visit them in Eire next year! Anyway, Sinead and I did some touring of KL, we went up the world's tallest buiding (Petrona's Towers) and I visited some temple's (Hindu and Muslim). I chilled out in a Hindu temple for a while and just watched the going's on. Definatley one thing I'm learning is that I've been conditioned to have some sort of fear or misunderstanding of non-Western religions. It's amazing how similar the Muslim's and the Christian beliefs are... Did you know that Jesus is a prophet to the Muslim's? Crazy stuff, I wasn't planning on coming to Malaysia at all after September 11th becuase it is sucha Muslim country and I was told it would be dangerous. Totally wrong. In fact I spent quite a bit of time yesterday talking to a Muslim guy about his frustrations with the Western misconceptions.
Anyway, back of my soap box, while at the National Mosque of Malaysia I met a nice Dutch girl, Eve. Since I'm heading back to see the Monk in a week or so I invited her to come with me. And somehow in return she convinced me to change my plans to go meet the Candian's and go visit the world's oldest rainforest: Teman Negara. It was crazy how fast all my plans changed, it was only 30 minutes from my bus leaving that I changed my plans and went with her. We had a great time though, our guide, Herman, was awesome. We could ask him absolutely anything and he would answer so we spent out time asking about how September 11th has affected his little village (which rely's on tourism). We went on a night safari with him and saw some crazy big spiders and insects, then I convinced him to let us all walk back in the pitch dark with no torches. Obviously, since it's a rainforest no light reaches the ground and this is especially true at night. We were tripping over roots and vines and hitting our heads on the same branches we had previously seen the spiders and ants (the size of your finger...). Cool stuff. The following day we did a canopy walk which is a rickety rope bridge 80m up in the rainforest, it was great. After this we went to meet a local indignious group and that was certainly interesting. They still hunt for their meat and move around every few months but it you could tell that the money from tourism was certainly having an impact. I got to use their blow darts though and hit the target first time. I didn't get to use the poisioness arrows though :( Finally we floated down the rapids in old inner tubes, the water seemed really brown but apparently it's because of the fast flowing river not any 'other' reason! I hope not..
Eve and I finally returned back to KL this afternoon and I finally got a hold of my friend Jamie who lives here. Turns out (typical me again) that I had written her phone number down incorrectly. Jamie lived in Austin and moved to KL last year so it'll be good to see her.
In 3 hours Eve and I are on a bus to the Thai border and eventually to Ko Phi Phi to meet the Candian's for a day, then up to Kanchanaburi to spend a peaceful week with the Monk learning meditation and Thai cooking!
I think that's all, hope you're all enjoying work/school :)
Posted by Admin at April 10, 2002 05:27 AM