Nickeled & dimed

My number one rule of international travel is that with a credit card and a passport you can get yourself out of (or into) virtually anything.  My second rule is the old Douglas Adams maxim, 'have towel will travel.'  After that, everything pretty much boils down to common sense and a bit of luck.

I turn 30 this January and we've decided it's time to take the plunge and visit Myanmar (Burma).  My travel philosophy is going to need a bit of reworking.  While rule number two will likely continue to serve me well, rule number one  is out the window.

Incredible changes have been sweeping through Myanmar over the last year (hence our decision to go), but one thing that hasn't changed is that it is a truly 100% cash economy.

The Burmese currency - the kyat - cannot be exchanged outside of the country and once in Myanmar  there is literally one hotel in Yangon (Rangoon) that will give cash on a credit card (at a whopping rate of 12%) and there is not a single ATM in the entire country that will take an international credit or debit card.

 This means we not only need to budget carefully and bring all the currency that we want to exchange into Myanmar with us, but they are also rather fussy about what you bring along to exchange.

We will need to bring - brand spanking new - completely flawless- no wrinkles, folds, tears, or spots US dollars.  These pristine dollars will also need to be post-2006 (the bills with colour on them) and not begin with the serial numbers CB (rumour has it they don't take the other US currency because the North Koreans successfully counterfeited the older bills - many of which found their way into Myanmar.)

On top of that - we will get the joy of haggling to exchange on the black market as the black market rate is actually much, much better than the 'official' rate which is roughly 1/10 of what it should be!

I think the money situation will probably be the most challenging part of our trip - I can survive power cuts, no internet, bad roads, slow travel and bureaucracy.

We've got until January to learn all we can and get visas, but this is one trip where we are really going to need to do our homework.  If anyone reading this has been to Myanmar - any travel tips and advice are extremely welcome!

Super sweet-tooth

When people ask me what I like most about living in Malaysia,  I have two answers ready: the weather and the food.

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The weather bit is pretty self-explanatory, what's not to like about a year-round tropical climate where you only need a wardrobe for one season and can spend every weekend lounging poolside or go to the beach on a whim?

Now not everyone would enjoy the food as much as we do - particularly if you have an aversion to spicy food (or fried stuff).  The food in Malaysia is much like the people - diverse.  It's an amazing blend of Chinese, South Indian and Malay cuisines - everything from deep-fried yam baskets stuffed with chili chicken to banana leaf curries to rich, spicy coconut-based soups full of ginger and lemongrass.

My preferences for Malaysian food definitely reside with the spicy, savoury stuff - but Malaysians are quite famous for having a bit of a sweet tooth and their deserts range from the bizarre to the truly disgusting.

Let me start by saying these people love sugar.  Love. They put it - in vast quantities - in everything.  Breads, juice, coffee, tea, even batter for frying. The sugar craze is so out of control that there are actual public service announcements telling people to limit the amount of sugar they put in their tea.  I've even heard that there are restrictions on how much sugar one can buy in a single trip to the supermarket.

Just yesterday, we went for a Sunday stroll in the park which was brimming with all sorts of vendors selling cold drinks, chips, popsicles and in once instance, what was quite literally an ice cream sandwich - a hot dog bun filled with three scoops of ice cream.

It gets worse.  Another common dish is a tropical fruit salad that has a dressing comprised of sugar, peanuts, chili and  . . . . shrimp paste.

Creamed sweet corn and red beans are also frequently featured as a topping for desserts like cendol (chen-dole) which is essentially shaved ice with coconut milk and these slimy, green worm-like noodles made from rice flour and pandan.

A lot of what I find so off-putting about Asian deserts is that they lack the sweet/savory distinction that is so  prevalent in Western cuisine - there is also often an issue of texture, I think the photo says it all.

I'm not a remotely fussy eater - and frequently blindly put myself into the hands of my Malaysian friends and trust that they aren't going to feed me anything that will kill me - but I drawn the line at slimy desserts. 

There's plenty of scary savoury stuff out there too, I was chatting to a colleague from Spain the other day who said, 'I quit eating wildlife after some tribesmen fed me monitor lizard.'  We all have our tipping point.

Sinking ships?

Monsoon season is nearly upon us - as evidenced by the massive thunderstorms that have begun rolling through most afternoons.  Here on the west coast things don't get so bad, but the east coast gets the full brunt of it and as such slowly closes down between October and November.  The east coast is home to Malaysia's best beaches and islands so it seemed sensible for us to make a quick trip before the end of the season.

We're off to Pulau Tioman - where one has the option of either flying or going by ferry.  It's a short flight and thus a very small plane (I don't do light aircraft) so I convinced Ian that going by ferry was surely the best option.  Then yesterday I got a vague email from the proprietor of our hotel that there was about to be 'severe disruption' to the ferry service.  At first I assumed he just meant that the monsoons were early and that was causing delays, oh no - according to Bernama (the Malaysian equivalent of Reuters of the AP) this is the problem:

PULAU TIOMAN, Sept 10 (Bernama) -- Four of the eight ferries serving Tioman Island were grounded since they did not comply to safety requirements and equipment required under the Marine Department rules.

East Coast Region Marine Department director, Wan Endok Wan Salleh said the ferries, which were en route to the island via Tanjung Gemok-Tioman-Mersing, would resume service after the ferry operators had fulfilled the safety requirements.

He said their non compliance of safety requirements was found after the department held a four-day awareness campaign, that commenced last Friday, in collaboration with the marine police, Marine Park Department and the Maritime Enforcement Agencies.

"About 44 summons were issued to ferry and passenger boat operators during the campaign," he told reporters after a safety campaign for jetty, ferry and passenger boats here.

He said the summons were issued for operating without license, employing incompetent captains, overloading and insufficient safety equipment.

Splendid.  This is what my fear of flying gets me - and this is particularly worrying because:

A. I (alongside two cousins and a friend) have already been on this ferry service twice this year (on the bright side I'm alive to tell the tale).
B. As you may have guessed, Malaysia isn't exactly at the top of the public health and safety charts - so my fear is things must have been quite bad for this to happen.

Oh well, we're off . . . .  hopefully for a weekend of snorkeling and relaxing in the sun - not floating in the middle of the South China Sea as shark bait. 

Dirty laundry

We have the luxury of having a laundry service in our condo and as a result I never have to iron anything.  Brilliant, right?

Well, we recently got some new ironing ladies. (I don't know what happened to the old ones, but they were very good).  The new ones are both painfully slow and don't do a very good job.  And much like their predecessors the new staff do not speak any English, but what does it matter?  It's not an act that requires a great deal of communication.

I picked up some shirts the other day and as usual the receipt was taped in some bizarre place, just waiting for Ian to set off with a piece of paper fluttering from his wrist or shoulder.  To save him this embarrassment I pulled off the tag and without even looking at it handed it to him to put in the bin.

I then heard a peel of laughter and Ian handed me back the receipt:

Orang Putih translates literally as 'white man.'  So just imagine if you went to the dry cleaners and picked up your laundry and it said 'white man' or 'black man' or 'latino man.' (For the record our previous ironing ladies just wrote our condo number on the receipt.)

At least they didn't write 'Mat Salleh' which is a more derogatory term used to describe white people - which roughly translates as 'mad drunken sailor' and has it origins in describing the bad behaviour of sailors on shore leave in Borneo in the colonial era.

This incident is so typically Malaysian.

Malaysia is often thought of (and frequently is) a pretty racist place.  Throw together a healthy mix of Malays, Indians and Chinese (and as a result Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists with a sprinkling of Christians) not to mention a healthy aboriginal and expat population and you at once have a truly wonderful cultural and ethnic diversity but also a recipe for much conflict and strife. 

Malaysia does certainly not rank high on the politically correct scale (ahem, see exhibit A above) - and sometimes I think that's a virtue, it's an easy thing to overdo.

Anyway, we got a good laugh out of it.  My Malaysian friends and colleagues also got a kick out of it (but only after I assured them that we were not offended - then they too thought it was hilarious.)