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One of the four nights between Vietnam and Malaysia we had a 70's and 80's night. The sea with the most people dressed up
got points toward the upcoming Olympics. Kelly had a 70's shirt, but I had to throw together the old trusty tight-rolled jeans and
side ponytail for my 80's do. The first day in Malaysia I went on a tour of Penang Island where we saw a lot of the different sights
in Penang in about 7 hours. One of our first stops was the Snake Temple where they used to have thousands of vipers hanging around.
Now there are only about thirty. Becky and I held several vipers that they had defanged so they could make money on tourists taking pictures.
We also visited several temples. The Buddhists consider turtles a sign of longevity; they believe that as long as the turtles are alive, the people
will be in good health. There were over 3000 turtles in this pond leading up to the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas. |
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Another stop was this butterfly farm. There were thousands of butterflies of all different kinds living in
a beautiful garden area. The butterflies seemed to love these red flowers on the right; No comment on the left-hand
picture. |
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Monkeys were everywhere in Malaysia. We saw these Monkeys on the side of the road close to the Botanical Gardens.
Most of the monkeys live outside the Botanical Gardens because they can get more food from tourists that way.
We learned not to look the monkeys in the eye because eye contact is a sign of aggression to them. I had to fend off a
couple of crazy monkeys who tried to attack me when I looked at them. |
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Inside the Botanical Gardens we saw several more monkeys hanging out in the trees or playing around on the grass. |
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Thursday evening I went to a Shadow Puppet performance at a local university. The shadow puppets are made of thin
colorful leather with one moving part, usually an arm. The master puppeteer manipulates the puppets behind a thin white
screen witha light shining through the puppets. There is also a small ensemble made up of an oboe and several percussion instruments
sitting behind the screen. |
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On Thursday I took a ferry to Langkawi Island with Megan, Shane, Maria, Marije, Sang, and Becky to go snorkeling.
There are 99 Langkawi islands, but only 3 are inhabited, so we found a place to drop us off on one of the 97 uninhabited
islands and pick us up three hours later. They drove us over on a small motor boat and we got completely soaked and barely
kept our cameras dry. We came in at high tide and went snorkeling over a beautiful coral reef. After snorkeling for
about an hour Megan and I took a walk down the beautiful white sand beach. |
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The boat to pick us up was almost an hour late, and by that time we started making survival plans because we
were sure that we'd be left on the island overnight. There was absolutely no one around on any of the islands that we
could see, and there was no way for us to get back to civilization without our rescue boat. While we were waiting for
the pickup we found a rope swing on the beach and passed the time away swinging like Tarzan! |
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Our last day in Malaysia I hiked Penang Hill which is they highest point on Penang Island. We had this
beautiful view of the city during several points on the hike and again at the top. We were going to be in India
on Halloween, so we celebrated early on October 26, before we got to India. Most people didn't bring a costume with
them, so we had some very creative costumes. Jen, a girl who lives down the hall from me, dressed up as a mummy.
She wore a sign that said, "Gone to Vietnam, Cairo Bound." |
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Kelly wore a bunch of plastic bags and called himself "white trash;" I dressed up as the easy fall back, Pippi;
and Shane borrowed my overalls and dressed up as a hick or something like that. I found out that other people had my same
idea, Megan (and a few other girls) also dressed up as Pippi. |
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