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?

The Taj Mahal

We are 'home' and our little spurt of holidays is (unfortunately) on hold as contrary to popular opinion, we do have jobs.  Anyway, it does give me the chance to go back and cover my time in India. I blogged a bit about Delhi and after an all too brief exploration of that truly enormous city we set out for Agra - or more specifically, the Taj Mahal.

We hired a driver and mini-van and despite some hair-raising lane changes we made it there safely in about 4 hours. Agra was the capital of the Mughal empire before moving to Delhi in the 1620s. Despite the presence of the Taj and other architectural gems, this relatively small city of about 1.7 million is a verifiable dump - a status confirmed by being the 19th most polluted city in India.

Aware of Agra's bad reputation we didn't plan to stick around for long. In fact, I was thoroughly prepared to be underwhelmed - envisioning the blistering heat of the Indian summer, vast crowds, relentless tour touts - all those standard elements that can suck the joy out of any large tourist attraction - but here, as with everything in India, I expected it to be particularly in your face.

We arrived and inevitably the anticipation started to build. The large onion shaped domes of the Taj were just visible from the hotel, and once we'd our first glimpse we were eager to be on our way. The Taj Mahal was built by the slightly unhinged and architectural-obsessive Shah Jahan. The Taj is a mausoleum built for his third and favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

 The perimeter of the Taj is surrounded by red sandstone walls and a covered walkway with ornate entrances and mosques at the front and either side of the Taj Mahal itself.  The rear of the Taj is left exposed to the Yamuna River, which is far less picturesque than it sounds as the Yamuna is the dumping grounds for 80% of Agra's sewage (the smell was considerably less bad than anticipated).

The story has it that this perimeter shields the Taj like a veil from prying eyes, thus maintaining modesty - an important characteristic of any devout Muslim wife, and apparently one that should be maintained even in her not-so-modest final resting place.

Shah Jahan's other, less popular, wives are interred in tombs outside these walls.

Eager to get to the main event we didn't linger outside.

We were all - even Ankit who hadn't been since he was a small child - completely amazed.  The Taj Mahal is by all accounts, impressive.

The size and the symmetry are the first things that strike you - like a much bigger and better version of Sacre Coeur in Paris. But it doesn't take long - even from a distance of a few hundred meters for the sheer attention to detail to set in.  The craftsmanship is easily on par with any European church, castle or monument. 

It was crowded, but not overly so, no jostling for that perfect photo.  It was even possible given the right angle to get a view completely devoid of people.  For this, we could thank the weather - it was hot - very hot, and apparently most sane people avoid travel during the summer months in India.  As a result, there were remarkably few Western tourists but plenty of Indians, who had come from far and wide to see their most treasured national monument.

We soon discovered that the Taj was not the only tourist attraction.  Like other tourist attractions in India, there is an Indian nationals and PIO (Persons of Indian Origin) price and a tourist price.  So whilst entry to the Taj set me back about $30, it only costs Indian around $0.30, thus making the entry fee affordable for all but the very poorest citizens (don't forget this is a nation with 1/3 of the population on $1 a day).

It goes without saying that I am more than happy to pay this price, I think it is completely fair - not only economically, but maintaining buildings like the Taj doesn't come cheap - someone has to pay and I'm certainly willing to do my part.

I digress. Given this low entry fee for locals, means that many people from small towns and villages make the trip - for them this is a real two-for-one deal - not only do they get to see the Taj, but for many of them, this is the first time they will have ever seen a white person.

It is easy to get annoyed with the staring, leering and photo-taking, but it's all part of the experience.  My blond-haired, blue-eyed travel companion easily had the worst of it, with entire families queuing up to have their photos taken with her.  She gracefully declined, if she'd consented, I suspect we'd still be there.

Back to Indochina: Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is quite possibly the backpacker capital of the world - and in my opinion it is rather unfortunate that such a spectacularly beautiful place has been hi-jacked by rowdy bands of 18 year olds. Not that I'm against a bit of fun, but the drawbacks of that being the main tourist demographic has some nasty consequences.

The backpackers turn up in droves to go tubing down the Na Song. This is not our photo, it seemed foolish in the extreme to bring our camera kit on a six hour booze cruise.

Yes, that is a giant slide, and yes people have died on it. We did go tubing one afternoon and certainly had a bit of fun. Once was enough.

The idea is that you get a tube and float down the river stopping off at various bars along the way and risking your life on various rope swings, slides and zip wires. So what was once a beautiful stretch of pristine river and wilderness is now besotted with ear-splittingly loud music and litter. I repeatedly saw kids putting out cigarettes and dispensing beer bottles into the river - which quite frankly I find unforgivable. Make no mistake these are, without exception, middle-class Western kids who are all on a gap year or their winter break. They know better and I suspect the vast majority of them would never do that at home.

Unfortunately the bad behaviour is not confined to the river.  Dress in Laos is generally conservative, the locals do not particularly appreciate girls in skimpy bikinis and shirtless 'bros' strolling around town.

The lack of confidence in their own cuisine, coupled with the catering to 18 year-old white kids leads to a pretty dire food scene. Every restaurant tries to do every cuisine and they don't do any of it well. We did manage to get our hands on some nice bbq river fish and find some decent soup stalls - but I was overwhelmingly underwhelmed. At least cold beer was readily available.

My last gripe before I get to the good stuff - the TV bars. The town is packed with bars showing infinite re-runs of Family Guy and Friends. It's depressing. I mean who travels halfway around the world to watch re-runs of Friends? Hungover teenagers apparently.

It would be easy to think that this was all there was to do in Vang Vieng and that there is no escape from the hordes of teenagers, but respite is remarkably easy to come by. In fact, all you have to do is go across the bridge.

The other side is like stepping back in time, there are small villages and rice paddy fields tucked in amongst the stunning limestone karsts. We rented a small motorbike and spent perhaps the best day of our entire trip winding down dirt tracks taking in the scenery, checking out a few caves and even stopping for a swim at the blue lagoon. The further out you get the fewer the people, in fact we shared the road more often with large (slightly intimidating) herds of water buffalo than people.

Even returning in the evening, it's fairly easy to escape the crowds. Vang Vieng is so saturated with food and accommodation outlets that it would virtually be impossible for every place to be busy at any given time. So after a solid day of exploring (and with remarkably sore posteriors from bouncing up and down on a cheap Chinese motorbike all day) a cold beer in a quiet bar as you watch the sunset over the Nam Song makes for a pretty good ending.

All in all, it was a pleasant few days, very well spent that more than justified the 4+ hours bus journey to go the 96 miles from Vientiane. This is by the way, the best road in the entire country and aside from only being two lanes the entire way and winding through the mountains, I would estimate that - at best - only 2/3rds are paved.

Travel sickness medication highly advised.

When it rains, it pours

Our heatwave was finally broken yesterday by some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen, it was literally just walls of water falling from the sky. We had the misfortune to be out and about in Bangsar with no tools for combating the weather, so we bravely or foolishly - depending upon how you look at it - made a break for it. We only wanted to get across the street, but we were instantly drenched and the water in the street came up over my ankles (it had probably only been raining for 10 minutes at this point). We then thought we'd sit it out, but the sky had taken on that rather permanent look of rain and we seemed doomed to wasting our Sunday afternoon milling around the mall soaking wet and freezing so we broke down and took a taxi the three blocks back to the car. It was perhaps the best $1 I've ever spent.

On the upside, the rain really does seem to have broken the heat a bit, it's 7:55 am and I suspect we haven't even hit 90 degrees yet. It has been hot, ferociously hot, hot enough to even make the locals complain.

It's also been horribly hazy and smoggy. A lot of people (mostly Europeans) here complain about the smog. Typically I don't find it to be that bad - excellent by Southeast Asian standards and frankly far better than London and Los Angeles, let's not even go there. In any event, the smog and haze has been particularly bad and I assumed it just had something to do with the heat. Apparently, according to both the news and locals it's that the winds have shifted and it's all the smoke blowing across the Straits of Malacca from all the rainforest that the Indonesians are burning down (for oil palm plantations) on Sumatera. This of course provides the perfect excuse for the Malaysians to remind everyone that really it's the Indonesian's fault (everything is) and how Malaysia's environmental policies really aren't so bad after all . . . .