lah?
hello again, loyal readers.
I know you've all been itching to find out about Malaysia and everything, so here's the dilly:
Travel with me back to singapore. We play all evening with Akaash and the green balloon that he got at the mall. Little kid with balloon is maybe the funniest thing ever on the face of the planet. We kick it, throw it, tap it, make sounds with it, and all other manner of things. In the process, when I crouch down and go "sumo" with him, he says, simply and clearly: "manatee." I, naturally, crack up. I ask Mahinth if that word means anything in Malayalam (his language), but it doesn't. Akaash has called me a sea cow. i mean, i know i've been eating a lot but come on! Hilarity ensued.
Dinner that evening was a smorgasbord [sp?] as usual, but with more eaters this time: Mullai (our first Servas host in Singapore) and her German friend Peter-just-back-from-six-months-in-India joined us. We had salad, ginger curry chicken, aloo ghobi (that's the cauliflower) again, idli (steamed rice/lentil flour cakes) and sambar (lentil tomato soupy thing), paratha, rice, and dosai/dosa/thosai. I even got to help make one of the dosa - using the back of the ladle to spread the batter paper thin on the wide iron plate set on the burner. it's like a crepe. but you fill it with indian food instead. deeeeeeelish. anyway, after our 10:00 meal and conversations, we sat around and chatted some more for the next several hours with just the ladies, discussing things like arrange marriage, Hinduism, Judaism, and religion in general. interessant, bien sur. We finally got to sleep around 3 am.
Next morning we finally cooked a little: we made french toast for Mahinth, Manjusha, and Akaash. We used the egg bread they had (reminded me a little bit of challah but with no air pockets) and topped it with banana, strawberries, and honey. they liked (even akaash). hooray!
Ok ok. get to malaysia already...
we took a long MRT ride and then the bus a short hop to the singapore border. we stood in line, removed our sunglasses, and held out our passports like good little travellers. back on the bus, cross the water to the mainland (if you're lost, look at a map- singapore's an island), and off the bus again to get stamped INto malaysia. why they have two stations, i'm not quite sure, but there it is. so we neglected to declare our strawberries (evil!) and moved along. Here i must pause to introduce you to a new friend of mine: the squat toilet. That's right. no more than 5 minutes into Malaysia and I'd already come face to face (well... not quite) with it. not bad. the only confusing part is the hose. no toilet paper, of course, and so they provide you with a hose out of a tap in the wall. I mean, as someone wise once said to me: "if you had poo on your face, would you wipe it off or would you wash it off?" From that perspective, water may be the more sanitary way to go. Still the logistics are somewhat difficult to figure out given the positioning. I'll be having lots more practice, I'm sure. Another bus ride to Johor Bahru and the main bus station where we'd be catching the next coach to melaka (our final destination for the day). Starving, we climbed the stairs to the food area and had our first of many meals composed of veggies with rice (due to food concerns including hygiene, avian flu, and kosherness, i'm for all intents and purposes now mostly vegetarian. with fish.). Hunger sated, we move on to the next problem: bus tickets to melaka. Downstairs where all the counters are, you can't walk two steps without being approached by someone with pad of tickets in hand yelling the names of Malaysian cities (at least that's what I think they were yelling). We braved through the masses and got some tickets, but the bus didn't leave for a while. We sat. we called a guest house in Melaka because now we'd be arriving late. No problem: double with A/C - 30 ringgit (3.8 ringgit to the dollar).
blah blah blah... long bus ride... LOTS of jungle... GORgeous red sun at sunset... arrival in Melaka/Malacca (they spell it both ways - i don't get it). We took a teksi to our guest house, Sunny's Inn Guest House. It's about 9:00. we drop our stuff in the disappointingly mosquitoed, poorly lit, noisy, dirtyish room and go to find some food. we end up getting bullied into seats at a "restoran" across the street where the woman brings us chicken even though we asked for veggies. we finally got and devoured our veggies with rice only to find they were 8.60 RM. more than necessary. ask first next time, eh? The night's sleep, as you might guess, was less than perfect. We each slept for the first time inside our mosquito bug bivvys - little net tents for one. the noise from the street combined with the plastic beneath me was not so comfortable, but eventually the night was over.
We decided, next day, to treat ourselves to breakfast at the big towering hotel nearby: Hotel Equatorial. I was feeling iffy so ate just an omelet with toast and some peach yogurt (artfully presented by our adorable waitress with a sprig of parsley as garnish?!). Nabia more adventurously sampled the Chinese fish porridge. she said it was good. i took her word for it.
On a lark, we decided to check the room rates at this shmancy hotel. they were not out of reach. we treated ourselves again. Bonus: 88 ringgit of the total was allotted for food at any of the 4 restaurants in the hotel. So we checked in, got our packs from Sunny's Inn, and relaxed out of the heat in our lovely room with nice full-bath room.
Watched some TV, including "wow wow world" which seemed to be a food scavenger hunt around singapore. 2 celebrity teams (i think they were local celebrities - one of them was miss singapore) are given a letter of the alphabet. They have to find a food that starts with the letter and eat a meal of it. There are four rounds that go like this: For example: If the starting letter is "k", one team might go eat Kaya Toast. Next they have to find a food that starts with the final letter of the last food they ate. so continuing the example, they find a tart or something else with a "t." Then they are given the final food, maybe it's Nasi Ayam (chicken rice). That means they have to find the missing piece: something that starts wtih the "t" from tart and ends with the n from nasi ayam. Then they eat the last food and race to the finishing point.In any case, it was really funny to watch and we learned about some foods. One of the players was a larger man and ate his food pretty quickly, but his partner was stick-thin and ate more daintily. Each time he had finished and was just waiting for her, he'd yell with his malaysian accent "eat! why are you so SLOW!" it was funny.
OK. with that amusing anecdote, i will leave you and make my way to Kuala Lumpur. I know I know. I've left you with no description of Melaka itself, with no history about the Chinese or the Portugese or the Dutch or the British here, with no information about yummy Malay desserts, not to mention much much more about the food. I have much to share. but i'll write some more later to try and catch up. For now, happy reading.
new vocab: sama sama = "you're welcome"
that is all.
ta.
amy
i lied: a quick note about this title: local malays seem to insert "lah" in the middle and ends of their sentences sometimes. Think of it like the Malay answer to the Canadian "eh?" or the American "y'know" maybe. and the last title, mom, about the quacking... no significance really. na and i had just been doing the "wanna buy a duck?" "a what?" "a duck." "a what?" "a duck." "does it quack?" "of course it quacks." thing, so i picked that. at random. sorry for the confusion :).
-a
email me
I know you've all been itching to find out about Malaysia and everything, so here's the dilly:
Travel with me back to singapore. We play all evening with Akaash and the green balloon that he got at the mall. Little kid with balloon is maybe the funniest thing ever on the face of the planet. We kick it, throw it, tap it, make sounds with it, and all other manner of things. In the process, when I crouch down and go "sumo" with him, he says, simply and clearly: "manatee." I, naturally, crack up. I ask Mahinth if that word means anything in Malayalam (his language), but it doesn't. Akaash has called me a sea cow. i mean, i know i've been eating a lot but come on! Hilarity ensued.
Dinner that evening was a smorgasbord [sp?] as usual, but with more eaters this time: Mullai (our first Servas host in Singapore) and her German friend Peter-just-back-from-six-months-in-India joined us. We had salad, ginger curry chicken, aloo ghobi (that's the cauliflower) again, idli (steamed rice/lentil flour cakes) and sambar (lentil tomato soupy thing), paratha, rice, and dosai/dosa/thosai. I even got to help make one of the dosa - using the back of the ladle to spread the batter paper thin on the wide iron plate set on the burner. it's like a crepe. but you fill it with indian food instead. deeeeeeelish. anyway, after our 10:00 meal and conversations, we sat around and chatted some more for the next several hours with just the ladies, discussing things like arrange marriage, Hinduism, Judaism, and religion in general. interessant, bien sur. We finally got to sleep around 3 am.
Next morning we finally cooked a little: we made french toast for Mahinth, Manjusha, and Akaash. We used the egg bread they had (reminded me a little bit of challah but with no air pockets) and topped it with banana, strawberries, and honey. they liked (even akaash). hooray!
Ok ok. get to malaysia already...
we took a long MRT ride and then the bus a short hop to the singapore border. we stood in line, removed our sunglasses, and held out our passports like good little travellers. back on the bus, cross the water to the mainland (if you're lost, look at a map- singapore's an island), and off the bus again to get stamped INto malaysia. why they have two stations, i'm not quite sure, but there it is. so we neglected to declare our strawberries (evil!) and moved along. Here i must pause to introduce you to a new friend of mine: the squat toilet. That's right. no more than 5 minutes into Malaysia and I'd already come face to face (well... not quite) with it. not bad. the only confusing part is the hose. no toilet paper, of course, and so they provide you with a hose out of a tap in the wall. I mean, as someone wise once said to me: "if you had poo on your face, would you wipe it off or would you wash it off?" From that perspective, water may be the more sanitary way to go. Still the logistics are somewhat difficult to figure out given the positioning. I'll be having lots more practice, I'm sure. Another bus ride to Johor Bahru and the main bus station where we'd be catching the next coach to melaka (our final destination for the day). Starving, we climbed the stairs to the food area and had our first of many meals composed of veggies with rice (due to food concerns including hygiene, avian flu, and kosherness, i'm for all intents and purposes now mostly vegetarian. with fish.). Hunger sated, we move on to the next problem: bus tickets to melaka. Downstairs where all the counters are, you can't walk two steps without being approached by someone with pad of tickets in hand yelling the names of Malaysian cities (at least that's what I think they were yelling). We braved through the masses and got some tickets, but the bus didn't leave for a while. We sat. we called a guest house in Melaka because now we'd be arriving late. No problem: double with A/C - 30 ringgit (3.8 ringgit to the dollar).
blah blah blah... long bus ride... LOTS of jungle... GORgeous red sun at sunset... arrival in Melaka/Malacca (they spell it both ways - i don't get it). We took a teksi to our guest house, Sunny's Inn Guest House. It's about 9:00. we drop our stuff in the disappointingly mosquitoed, poorly lit, noisy, dirtyish room and go to find some food. we end up getting bullied into seats at a "restoran" across the street where the woman brings us chicken even though we asked for veggies. we finally got and devoured our veggies with rice only to find they were 8.60 RM. more than necessary. ask first next time, eh? The night's sleep, as you might guess, was less than perfect. We each slept for the first time inside our mosquito bug bivvys - little net tents for one. the noise from the street combined with the plastic beneath me was not so comfortable, but eventually the night was over.
We decided, next day, to treat ourselves to breakfast at the big towering hotel nearby: Hotel Equatorial. I was feeling iffy so ate just an omelet with toast and some peach yogurt (artfully presented by our adorable waitress with a sprig of parsley as garnish?!). Nabia more adventurously sampled the Chinese fish porridge. she said it was good. i took her word for it.
On a lark, we decided to check the room rates at this shmancy hotel. they were not out of reach. we treated ourselves again. Bonus: 88 ringgit of the total was allotted for food at any of the 4 restaurants in the hotel. So we checked in, got our packs from Sunny's Inn, and relaxed out of the heat in our lovely room with nice full-bath room.
Watched some TV, including "wow wow world" which seemed to be a food scavenger hunt around singapore. 2 celebrity teams (i think they were local celebrities - one of them was miss singapore) are given a letter of the alphabet. They have to find a food that starts with the letter and eat a meal of it. There are four rounds that go like this: For example: If the starting letter is "k", one team might go eat Kaya Toast. Next they have to find a food that starts with the final letter of the last food they ate. so continuing the example, they find a tart or something else with a "t." Then they are given the final food, maybe it's Nasi Ayam (chicken rice). That means they have to find the missing piece: something that starts wtih the "t" from tart and ends with the n from nasi ayam. Then they eat the last food and race to the finishing point.In any case, it was really funny to watch and we learned about some foods. One of the players was a larger man and ate his food pretty quickly, but his partner was stick-thin and ate more daintily. Each time he had finished and was just waiting for her, he'd yell with his malaysian accent "eat! why are you so SLOW!" it was funny.
OK. with that amusing anecdote, i will leave you and make my way to Kuala Lumpur. I know I know. I've left you with no description of Melaka itself, with no history about the Chinese or the Portugese or the Dutch or the British here, with no information about yummy Malay desserts, not to mention much much more about the food. I have much to share. but i'll write some more later to try and catch up. For now, happy reading.
new vocab: sama sama = "you're welcome"
that is all.
ta.
amy
i lied: a quick note about this title: local malays seem to insert "lah" in the middle and ends of their sentences sometimes. Think of it like the Malay answer to the Canadian "eh?" or the American "y'know" maybe. and the last title, mom, about the quacking... no significance really. na and i had just been doing the "wanna buy a duck?" "a what?" "a duck." "a what?" "a duck." "does it quack?" "of course it quacks." thing, so i picked that. at random. sorry for the confusion :).
-a
email me
posted by theonetheycallamy at 3/17/2005 12:51:00 AM
3 Comments:
Thanks for the explanation about the "does it quack?" title, and
(frankly) about the "lah" one, too.
Your mom is a bit more brave than I am.....I was emabrassed (I'm never sure how to spell that!!) to ask....fear of looking stupid!
Glad those questions are answered, and that things seem to be going well so far. Looking forward to more elaboration, as promised at the end of this last segment, about this leg of your journey. Have fun, and write more soon.
Elaine
Well, that had me laughing out loud (that happens quite often when reading your entries). The "manatee" story and the squat toilet description had me going. Thank you for that. And the rest was just as much fun. Wow wow world sounds hilarious.
How can this be YOU doing all this? Where's my Amy???? You're where????
I'm sure you're feeling this way alot as well, but we're all loving your travel tales and sharing them with you. I hope you'll continue to have the frequent internet access we've learned to expect!!
Love, mom
Hmm..some challenges and some delights. Hope this next leg of your trip goes well and that we will hear from you very soon again.
Barbara
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