The good, the bad and the ugly.

2 posts in under a week! I'm really hoping to get this blog back on track for awhile. I've been pretty lousy at it lately, but we had a huge summer (literally, we both came back from a three-week trip to America significantly heavier than when we left) and then the start of the academic year was upon us and so it goes.

Anyway, as our time in Malaysia grows shorter (61 days!) I'm starting to see everything in two categories: what I will miss, and what I will not. Let's take a look:

Things I will miss:

The lovely, lovely weather. 90 degrees every day, guaranteed.

The food. In no particular order: yam basket, banana leaf curry, laksas of all sorts, hokkien mee, steamboat, Chinese pork ribs, salted chilies, the list goes on . . . .

Cheap stuff. Especially: food, haircuts, the vet, gasoline, (really nice) hotels, taxis, the cinema, massages.

Regional travel. So much to see and do, in three years we have covered: Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, Myanmar, Singapore, Indonesia x 2, Thailand x 4 and several good romps around Malaysia including a few trips to Borneo and some totally gorgeous islands.

Cheap regional airfare. Or how else would we have managed the above? AirAsia, I love you.

Under the sea. This part of the world has possibly made snorkeling my new favourite activity. Rays, octopus, starfish, clownfish, amazing corals. Can't get that just anywhere.

Wildlife. Orangutans, elephants, proboscis monkeys, hornbills, giant lizards, sea turtles. Even the little geckos.

Having a swimming pool. There is a very nice pool about 20 feet from my front door.

Thunderstorms. Totally epic, torrential, noisy, tropical thunderstorms.

Never ever being cold. You know what it's like to get out of bed at 7am in January in Illinois? I don't.

About a billion public holidays. When you observe Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and national/state holidays that adds up to a lot.

The diversity. There's a lot of different people here. I like that.

*And this really goes without saying, but of course all of our amazing Malaysian and fellow expat friends who we've met along the way.

Things I will not miss:

Driving. Everything about it.

Trying to get stuff done. It's so hard to get the simplest things done here sometimes. Want to pay your internet bill? Must call them up and do it over the phone (Oh! The irony). Need a plumber? Take three consecutive days off work and pray he shows up by the third day. Want to deposit a cheque? Good luck finding the 'special' deposit machine for foreigners.

Calling strangers on their mobile. See above. Lots of businesses and tradesmen are not online, so you can't look them up online or book an appointment. Instead, you ask around, you get some guy's mobile number and hope for the best.

Bureaucracy. There is a form and a supplementary price for everything.

Negotiating. I hate haggling and negotiating, I don't want to be ripped off and I don't want to rip you off. Just tell me the real (fair) price.

Sugar. It's in everything.

Spitting, hawking, chewing, slurping. I know it's a cultural thing, but I don't like it.

Littering. Is there really no space in your car for that empty packet of crisps? Really?

Cockroaches. Really big ones.

Lack of personal space. The pushing, shoving, me-first battle of boarding a plane, train or just standing in what passes for queue here.

No means no. If I said I don't want to buy it, I really mean it. Also, don't follow me around the store.

Palm oil plantations. Please, please stop destroying your beautiful country.

Sopping wet toilets. With or without footprints on the seat, this really irritates me. If part of your bathroom ritual basically involves taking a shower, that's fine. Just please wipe up the mess.

And did I mention DRIVING?

Pachyderm Playtime

No trip to Chiang Mai would be complete without spending at least a day with Asia's largest mammal.

The hills around Chiang Mai are full to bursting with a wide range of elephant parks, sanctuaries and trekking agencies. As ever with Asia, animal welfare is rarely top priority and it's worth doing a bit of homework to make sure you are supporting a place that properly looks after the elephants.

We settled on the Elephant Nature Park which is home to 38 rescued and rehabilitated elephants - mostly former work elephants that sustained serious injury or elephants that were orphaned at a  young age.

The Asian elephant is endangered with only 25,000-33,000 elephants left in the wild.  Their once vast habitat covers a huge area expanding from India and Nepal in the west; east to Vietnam and south to Malaysia and Indonesia.

 Much smaller than their African cousins, the Asian elephant still weighs in at about 11,000 pounds when fully grown. Despite their massive size, these animals are truly gentle giants - even the most wary visitors are boldly feeding, petting and even bathing with the elephants in no time.

The park is in a lovely setting, surrounded by hills, lush jungle and a shallow stream - which is essential for elephant bath time! The park gets busy, but they have pretty effective crowd control by limiting numbers and by breaking visitors up into small groups.

The park allows you to spend a lot of time with the elephants - and a lot of that time is spent feeding.  These massive vegetarians eat for 16-18 hours a day and take in well over 300 pounds of fruit, vegetables and grass each day.

Bath time is of course of the highlight.  These elephants bathe everyday to rinse off and cool down, but no sooner are they clean than they go and roll around in the very mud they just rinsed off.  The sun is strong in this part of the world and a good coat of mud and dirt makes for a pretty effective natural sunscreen.

On the whole it's an incredible experience (if a bit pricey - even by western standards at around $75.00 a head) but it's all for a good cause and a great way to support a local business.  Just be prepared to get a bit dirty and maybe even get covered in a bit of elephant snot.

For those of you accessing this from the Register Mail, you can view the rest of my photos from the Elephant Nature Park and read the full blog at www.wherecanigetadrink.blogspot.com.

It's a jungle out there

'Marissa, Marissa wake up! It's time to go see the elephants!' No joke, that was Ian at 7:00 am sharp this morning.

So off to the elephants we went.  An hour and half drive deep into the jungle, with the last 12km or so down a two-lane road dotted with shacks and traditional Malay homes, we arrived.  Ian couldn't keep the grin off his little face.

Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary

The sanctuary was a fair bit more sophisticated than I expected.  Lots of information about the elephants, a cafe, plenty of toilets and shower and lovely grounds.  Lousy gift shop though, it consisted of tacky tee-shirts and a few souvenir coffee mugs that said 'save the elephants' - done in permanent marker.  No one knows how to make a buck like the Americans.

I digress.  We followed the sounds of elephants trumpeting away and soon armed with peanuts, were able to feed the babies.

We got well and truly covered in elephant snot, but it was fun anyway.  We then had some time to kill before the fun really got started, which is when we got to ride the elephants and then join them in the river at bath time. (I'm pleased to say that on a subsequent visit they had eliminated the rides, which are bad for the elephants and have improved the bathing process significantly so that it is far less stressful for them.)

So we had a great day and learned a lot.  The Asian Elephant is an endangered species due to deforestation and urbanization - although in Malaysia that is called 'forest conversion'.  Most of this 'conversion' is the result of palm oil plantations - which destroy the elephant habitats. The elephants then take to raiding plantations, costing farmers lots of money.  Herds also get split up or trapped in small parcels of land often surrounded by plantation or other obstructions.

Malaysia gets really defensive about palm oil and (perhaps fairly) think it's a bit rich for the US and European countries to be lecturing about environmental policy.

The entire west coast of Malaysia from Penang to Johor is pretty much one giant oil palm plantation. It's heart-breaking. The problem with palm oil is not just simple the deforestation, it's the destruction of primary rainforest, that will never grow back. Oil palms grow very quickly, but they also have a relatively short life cycle, so once they are no longer productive, plantations are abandoned and the land is good for little else other than building on.

While Malaysia is pretty naughty, it pales in comparison to Indonesia - and Malaysia likes to remind you of that any chance they get. 

Back to the elephants. Kuala Gandah looks after 'displaced' elephants not only from Malaysia, but Thailand, Burma and around Southeast Asia.  Some are re-released others remain at the sanctuary.  The sanctuary is remarkably uncritical of the plantations and farmers.  Whether it is because they count on their cooperation to be notified of raiding elephants or they simply just view it as an essential part of Malaysia's development plan, it's hard to tell. 

Either way, they are certainly getting part of the equation right (and it's a great day out). We left what we thought was a fairly generous donation and will certainly be taking visitors there.

TGIF

It's 18:35 Friday, I'm home, sitting outside with gin and tonic in hand. Ian is in the pool. First time all week we've been home before 7:00 and it feels good. Big weekend ahead.  Off to elephant sanctuary tomorrow morning to spend day feeding and splashing about in the river with baby elephants.  I'm excited, Ian is really excited.  Birthday celebrations to commence on Sunday, think we'll spoil ourselves with steaks and red wine.

Have officially survived week two of the new job.  Phew.  Not only have I learned a lot about Malaysian work culture, but the commute is teaching me many lessons as well.  I thought I had the rules (or lack thereof) of the road pretty figured out, but highway driving is it's whole own thing.  Apparently, and infuriatingly the middle lane is the slow lane - so there is no elegant way to change lanes, you just gun it or slam on the breaks about 3 times in 15 seconds, awesome.

Now I generally do not support the bashing of women drivers, we all know men get in more wrecks and far more devastating ones.  But the women here, particularly the Malay women, are shockingly bad and I've figured out why - it's because they can't bloody see.  Very few women here wear full burkahs, but a great deal of them do wear headscarves.

And as you can see, they don't have any peripheral vision! It's like driving with the hood of a parka pulled over your head. It's entirely hopeless, not to mention that nine times out of ten they've got a baby on their lap or a 3 year old bouncing all over car - or both!

Needless to say, every trip to and from work is indeed an adventure.