Age is Just a Number: Malaysian Travelog

My niece, very smart and creative young adult that she is, travels frequently. I mean travels. This isn't Samsonite. This a trusty old backpack - and that's it. It's living cheap, working hard and saving well. It's researching and being brave and adventurous. It's Rick Steves on a piece of dental floss.

To set the stage, she and my sis-in-law planned for her surprise arrival on Saipan. They pulled it off - to the complete and outright surprise to my brother - and she spent several weeks there, and readying herself to jump to her other adventures. She will eventually head back to Saipan after 6 weeks of travel elsewheres. Here is the first half of her e-postcard:

of all places. i'm sitting in steamy kuala lumpur, capital of malaysia: it's huge, commercial, congested, too modern to feel exotic and too bustling to feel quite comfortable. i'm in a sixth floor hostel in a cement building mashed between a roaring four-lane street, a bus station, and the elevated light-rail track, within 100 yards of four mcdonald's and three KFCs. and a starbucks. and chinatown! i'm sharing an 8x10 windowless box of a dorm room with three strangers: one a PhD candidate in theoretical physics, the other two thwarted drinkers who failed utterly to do their research on the party scene in a muslim country. the common room features duelling bigscreen TVs and fluorescent lights, and is perpetually crowded with zoned-out tourists who can't seem to find anything better to do than watch pirated action movies and chain smoke cheap malaysian cigarettes. the stairwell, too, has an ample population; they collectively seem to have drug use predilections which are rather surprising considering their indigence and malaysia's notoriously intolerant drug laws. AND we have a team of seven visiting filipina prostitues who appear to be here on working holiday: all this for four bucks a night, and alas, it's one of the nicer hostels in kuala lumpur. so it goes.
this first week of travel has not been ideal. i keep putting off writing until i hit my stride and have something lovely to relate, a glowing travel picture to paint..but why wait? lest this be taken as complaining though, be assured that i am in good spirits, would still rather be stepping over malaysian drug addicts than shovelling snow. laugh with me..
first off, why am i even IN malaysia? i was meant to be trekking through the jungles of borneo even as i type, and the first (and biggest) disappointment was having to give that up for this trip. my own last minute planning, the difficulty of booking travel over the internet, and indonesia's byzantine and exasperating visa regulations are to blame. details, details. i arrived in bali last sunday, had to book an onward ticket and be out by saturday, and here i sit: in the cheapest place i could get to on short notice, with ten more days to kill. it's an interesting new way to view travel, if nothing else.
the first week in bali was up and down. i landed late enough at night to get screwed on both cab fare and a hotel room, always a good tone-setter, and the next day found myself in the armpit of indonesia: kuta beach. it's a surfer's paradise...i guess..to everyone else, a filthy, hassley tourist trap with few redeeming qualities. the waves are nice, but the predominant surface feature of the beach is washed-up plastic, seconded by indonesian women trying to find people to manicure or massage, by force if necessary. you can't get six feet down the street without being offered "transport?" by one or more guys with motorbikes looking to make a few rupiah, or optimally to score a green card in the process. the surfers are by and large assholes who would sooner shoulder you off the sidewalk than say hello, and the spaces between them are clotted with japan's tittering, feckless youth. (girly hair barrettes are IN this year, for men, in case you are wondering, and old-school panty hose with toeless white high-heels for women.) i had to spend a whole day there, sweating, figuring out how i was going to leave the country in time, getting bad-to-worse news from each travel agent, until i found a qatar air flight to KL arriving at the bracing hour of 3 am, and that's how, eventually, i got to be here!

To be continued....

Comments

Sounds fascinating. I mean, the reading about it is fascinating anyway. What a fabulous adventure. She should write a book! I hope she's keeping track of it all. Her style is awesome. Looking forward to part 2.

Posted by: Stephanie | Mar 01, 2008 at 02:28 PM