First anniversary

We've officially been in Malaysia for 1 year and 4 days - although I spent a whopping 14 weeks travelling this year, so I suppose I've really only logged about 9 months here.

Realizing how much time we've spent outside of Malaysia - and taking advantage of a three-day weekend, we went to Penang. It was a harrowing 5 hour drive with high-speed tailgating at about 110km an hour the whole way - at one point we ended up immediately behind a six car pile up - no doubt due to the aforementioned high-speed tailgating.

Arriving safely and in one piece we opted for a night in Batu Ferringhi - an unimpressive so-called resort town just outside of George Town which backs onto the busy and polluted waters of the Straits of Malacca. It was nice to be by the sea (worth it just to see a woman in full burqua on a jet ski) - and our real goal wasn't a nice beach holiday but to score some first-rate Chinese seafood.

We cruised around town and as expected found a run-down, slightly dirty, packed little restaurant just meters from the sea serving all manner of crab, prawns and fish. We opted for one of our favourites - sweet & sour chilli crab and we were not disappointed. Stuffed and messy with sauce smeared all over our chops (and in my case, my clothes) we called it a night and primed ourselves for an exploration of George Town the following day.

Compared with it's sister-city Melaka, George Town is both bigger and dirtier (I saw 4 rats in 24 hours). On the plus side, it's considerably less touristy and certainly lives up to it's reputation as a culinary destination.

Rain kept us from wandering and exploring as much as we would have liked - so we hunkered down at some food stalls, stocked ourselves with beer and began several hours of taste-testing some of Penang's most famous fare - from loh bak (deep-fried minced pork wrapped in tofu skin) to Penang laksa and the local (spicier) version of the ubiquitous kway teow (essentially Malaysian pad thai).

After our feast we headed back to the streets and stumbled upon a delightful little bar that is (for those of you who are lucky enough to have been there) almost exactly like Duffy's - same size, layout, decor, and general atmosphere (just Chinese and no Chicago Cubs paraphernalia). We met an Aussie engineer in the oil business, a Dutchman who found himself in Malaysia after his holiday to Thailand was cancelled due to the floods, and a wandering 38 year old American with a penchant for Asian women half his age, an obsession with self-defence and the right to bear arms. We had a grand time.

We did of course squeeze in a couple of cultural attractions as well. We made a brief stop at the Snake Temple - which although not exactly as I envisioned (you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark) but there are a few pit vipers slithering (actually snoozing) at the altars.

We also made an attempt at a tour of the Blue Mansion - a restored home that once belonged to a wealthy Chinese merchant in George Town. While the mansion is certainly impressive, I would not recommend the tour.

For no discernible reason (other than there is probably a gift shop at the end) you aren't allowed to take photos (strictly enforced) and the entire tour is said to take an hour, but after 25 minutes we hadn't gotten out of the foyer and it was too crowded and too hot to hear anything the tour guide had to say anyway. So we bailed and played with the camera out front for a bit instead. The Blue Mansion also operates as a guest house, so clearly the best thing to do would be to plan ahead and just stay there.

The Midwest meets Mecca

I've successfully survived my third roundtrip from Kuala Lumpur to Chicago this year. As wonderful as it is to go home, there is quite simply nothing pleasant about the journey. Going east or west it's obscenely long and the 13 hour time change is painful for even the most well-adjusted traveller.

Two wonderful weddings aside, I couldn't have picked a better time to go home. With the exception of two wet, blustery days, Illinois was enjoying a truly splendid early autumn.

It's just possible that in the 22 years I spent growing up in the Midwest that I may have taken for granted just how lovely it can be at certain times of the year.

In any event, all good things must come to an end and on Monday I began my epic return journey. I'm well into my 7th year of living abroad and coming and going from home never gets any easier. The stress and anticipation going and the stress and sadness of leaving never change. Although coming from Malaysia rather than the UK adds a completely different dimension - there is of course the distance (the only way for me to get further from home is to move south) but the disorientation that comes with such a drastic and immediate cultural and environmental transition.

The long layovers in Abu Dhabi or Dubai only enhance the disorientation. Wandering Abu Dhabi airport in the wee hours of Wednesday morning there were two flights boarding for Saudi Arabia - one for Riyadh, one to Jeddah.

The Riyadh flight was 100% male and I would hazard 90% of the flight was new or returning migrant workers - mostly poor Bangladeshis and Indonesians. The other 10% seemed (at least in my mind) to be large, swaggering Saudis returning home from business.

The Jeddah flight was nearly 100% full of pilgrims embarking on the Hadj bound for nearby Mecca. There were large delegations (at least 50 people each) from Kazakhstan and Malaysia, all in matching outfits and roughly equal numbers of men and women. There was another large delegation of entirely men - I couldn't tell from where, but I would guess another gulf state.

The Kazaks looked old, tired and poor; the Malays diminuitive in both size and disposition. The all-male delegation, wrapped entirely in loose, open white robes were laughing, smiling and snapping photos to the point where they were in danger of missing their flight - if you didn't know better you could have sworn they were all off for a stag weekend.

Watching these flights board, I struggled to think of any two groups of people with which I had less in common. I would go just about anywhere given the opportunity, but Saudi Arabia isn't one of them.

Finally my turn came to board and I ended up sitting next to a friendly, middle-aged man who asked me in good English, where I was from and what I was doing in Malaysia. I explained and asked in turn what he was doing - he said he was visiting his son who is a student and wants to send his other son to study in Malaysia as well.

I asked if he was from the UAE, he said, 'No, I work in Abu Dhabi.' He hesitated a moment then told me he was from Yemen. He added, 'There is a civil war now, I want to get my younger son out of Yemen. The situation is very bad.' The conversation faltered, what do you say to someone who tells you they are from Yemen?

I dozed and watched the Pirates of the Caribbean III for the rest of the flight. As we began our descent there was a bit of rain, my Yemeni friend said, 'Oh, I love the rain.'

Cambodia: Around Angkor

Following our short, but pleasant stay in Phnom Penh we made for Siem Reap, gateway to Angkor Wat and the rest of the Angkor Temples.

Again, I had done my homework and was thoroughly prepared to be awed. Angkor Wat was constructed early 12th century, so it's roughly the same age as Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It took about 300,000 people and 6000 elephants to construct.

It is by any account impressive and all things considered - incredibly well preserved. Naturally, the place is packed and long gone are the days, where even if you get up really early can you count on having the place to yourself. So you do have to tolerate the crowds - but there is some respite, it is amazing how many people (especially those in obnoxiously large tour groups) just plow straight through to the middle and don't explore the perimeters, courtyards or even all the incredible bas-reliefs. Angkor Wat is vast - we made two trips spending about 2.5 hours this first time and went back again for another 1.5 hours.

Angkor Wat was (and is) the crown jewel of the Angkorian Dynasty, which ruled from roughly 800AD to 1400 (and encompassed most of modern-day Cambodia and a great deal of Thailand). Spanning nearly 600 years, the Angkorian period left dozens of other temples - none of the others as big as Angkor Wat, but some equally if not more impressive. None of the other temples are nearly so well preserved as Angkor Wat, and some have been left to jungle for long periods of time.

Some of them have been left for so long that there is some emergency work being done and countries and foundations from all of the world are chipping in to sponsor work - the Chinese and Koreans and pouring money into Cambodia (and not just in temple restoration), but being Hindu temples, the Indians have also taken a great deal of interest in their preservation.

At the moment you are still allowed to wander pretty freely around the ruins and even climb them. I can't help but feel these days are limited, the number of tourists is clearly steadily increasing and it seems to me unlikely that the temples will long be able to sustain the current amount of traffic, wear and tear. People generally seem to be pretty respectful, there is mercifully little graffiti, but the mainland Chinese tour groups are pretty blase about scattering their empty water bottles wherever they like (and there's no shortage of rubbish bins).

Still there is so much to see and as we had 5 days in the area we had plenty of time to explore some of the 'lesser' temples in the area - which is a ridiculous really - if all of these weren't piled one on top of the other, they'd each be famous in their own right. Also amazing is the variation between the different temples, I fully anticipated 'temple fatigue' setting in after about a half dozen or so, but they are all so different and the detail so astounding, that I could have gone for another couple of days easily.

We hired a tuk-tuk driver for our time there and he dutifully carted us round to all the sites and kept us supplied with cold water (it was hot, but mercifully the humidity is nowhere near as bad as in Malaysia). Travelling by tuk-tuk was of course novel, but it also gave us a chance to see a lot of the Cambodia countryside, which is by any account idyllic and I daresay even greener than Ireland.

As for Siem Reap, well it serves a purpose in terms of catering to the tourists with a truly overwhelming amount of accommodation, restaurants and watering holes. We'd heard surprisingly good things about it, but I thought it lacked entirely the charm of Phnom Penh and it largely struck me as the Cambodian version of West Yellowstone (although it is probably a bit better than West Yellowstone.) The airport is surprisingly nice, but that's pretty much all I have to say about it.

Cambodia: Phnom Penh

You'll forgive me for not getting round to this earlier, but no sooner had I sorted the photos from our trip then I was (and still am, now on day 4) struck down with a viscous stomach bug that Cambodia was kind enough to give me as a going away gift.

Dysentery aside, we had a wonderful trip.

We flew in Phnom Penh, expecting a hectic, dirty, still-recovering capital of a desperately poor country. The city is neither dirty (I think it's significantly cleaner than KL) nor is it particularly hectic. I can't quite put my finger on it - or think of a better way to articulate it, but there is a certain 'lift' that is nearly automatic when one departs and Islamic society and arrives in a Buddhist one. Even in the face of pestering tuk-tuk drivers and begging children, there is an undeniably laid-back aura that in my experience is simply non-existent in peninsular Malaysia.

I did a lot of reading about Cambodia before we came, and poor, very poor though it is (the average annual income is around $480) it is already difficult to grasp how far Cambodia has come in the past 30 years. Phnom Penh is teeming with excellent local restaurants, bars and cafes (no chains - yet, get there now!) and the Royal Palace, National Museum and other main city attractions and monuments are in tip-top condition.

Save for the number of street children and a very visible UN presence (child protection, land mine victims, human trafficking, world heritage and of course the ongoing Khmer Rouge trials) it would be just about inconceivable that that just over 30 years ago this was a country that lost 1/7th of its population to the Khmer Rogue, had more bombs dropped on it than were dropped in all of WWII, and that Phnom Pehn itself was nearly entirely evacuated, ransacked and looted.

Indeed given Cambodia's tragic recent history, we made the obligatory trip to the Killing Fields of Tuol Sleng. One of the most striking things about Tuol Sleng, like Auschwitz, is that, it is just a place. A place where people live and work - it's largely surrounded by rice paddy, and rural winding lanes; it is just such an ordinary place. Unlike Auschwitz, none of the buildings still stand, however, it does somehow feel less sanitized than Auschwitz.

The only real monument there is a tall narrow pagoda which has been filled with unearthed human remains and clothes; otherwise it's an area not much bigger than a large backyard by American standards, that has several pits and rather crude wooden signs to point out and describe atrocities or asking you, 'please do not walk through the mass grave'. They have not even paved the path around the Killing Fields - nor have they exhumed all of the mass graves (roughly 10,000 people died here) so that when it rains, bits of clothing, bone and teeth frequently come to the surface.

It was heartbreaking and grim and about all we could take. You can also visit the prison in Phnom Penh, Prison S-21, the most notorious of the Khmer Rogue and where most people who were eventually executed (not so much executed as bludgeoned and beaten, they did not want to waste the bullets) at the Killing Fields were first held.

Having done our duty and soured our morning, we headed for the Russian Market. Like most markets in Asia - it's dank, cramped, sprawling, and full of junk - it's also full of really, really, really cheap clothes. If you look through your wardrobe, you'll probably find a fair few items are 'made in Cambodia.' And if you are prepared to dig, bargain and take a chance that it might not be a perfect fit - you can walk away with a lot of top end designer goods - for literally 90% of the regular retail value. Ian came home with $400 worth of Lacoste & Ralph Lauren shirts (real ones) for $40.00.

We also packed in a trip to the royal palace, had a nice stroll around town, a few drinks at the Foreign Correspondents Club and ate plenty of delicious food (avoiding the platters of deep-fried spiders though!) The food in Cambodia really is terrific and in Phnom Penh you really are spoiled for choice.

A growing trend in Cambodia at the moment seems to be 'charity restaurants' - which are really brilliant - they are proper restaurants, in fact usually very, very nice restaurants. The idea is that they take in street children and rehabilitate them teaching them how to cook, serve, host etc. All profits go to the child rehabilitation programmes and the food and service were outstanding; although, the nicest part was that all of the children (mostly teenagers) seemed really pleased and really proud to be working there - it lacked entirely that horrible patronizing, post-colonial feel.

So went our time in Phnom Penh, we both really would have liked another full day there but everyone and everything we read was so down on it that we thought a day and a half would be plenty. I suppose coming straight from the West one might find it a bit of a shock, but considering we live in KL and my last holiday was to Chennai and Delhi, Phnom Penh was indeed relaxing by any account.

I shall wrap up there, plenty more to come on the temples at Angkor . . .

Hot fun in the summertime

Well we are surviving our first Ramadan without too much disruption. The only real change is that the driving is even worse than usual. Our drive home from work is plagued by starving, dehydrated maniacs trying to get home so they can overdose on food the moment the sun sets.

Fortunately we'll be escaping the chaos that descends with the end of Ramadan by nipping off to Cambodia for a week. Should be a good time and hopefully the fact that it's the middle of the rainy season won't be too much of a hindrance. Rumour has it that the rain confines itself to torrential downpours in the late afternoon and it is otherwise hot and sunny. They say Angkor Wat looks best in the rainy season too as the jungle is extra green and lush.

The food should be awesome, but I have heard tales of eating tarantulas, crickets and duck foetus so I suppose one much choose wisely. In any event, cheap beer should more than make up for any culinary mishaps.

Ramadan

Well, Ramadan is off to a roaring start (courtesy of the AP & New York Times)

Malaysia Ramadan TV Ads Axed Amid Racism Complaint

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian television station has axed a series of commercial to mark the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan after angry viewers complained the ads insulted non-Muslim ethnic minorities.

The commercials began airing recently to remind viewers of Ramadan, which began Aug. 1. Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn until sundown during the month.

The three 30-second clips depicted an ethnic Chinese girl eating in public, wearing revealing clothing and being loud. It ended with messages urging viewers to avoid doing such things in respect of the Muslim holy month.

The ads sparked outrage in the Muslim-majority country, with many slamming private station 8TV on its Facebook page.

The TV station withdrew the ads and apologized late Tuesday.

News and events

So you may recall that some months back I did a post about a corrupt customs official who fell to his death from the third story of the anti-corruption building - it was (is) largely assumed (known) that it was either murder or suicide.

However:

DSP Sharul Othman Mansor, who was recalled to the witness stand Friday, told the inquest into the death of the Selangor Customs assistant director that, in his professional opinion, Ahmad Sarbaini fell while trying to climb out the window on the third floor of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) building here on April 6.

He said this when questioned by MACC lawyer Datuk Seri Muhamad Shafee Abdullah.

Muhamad Shafee: So this means that it was not a suicide.

DSP Sharul: Yes.

Muhamad Shafee: And this would also mean that it was not a homicide?

DSP Sharul: Based on my analysis of the evidence, yes, I agree with you.

DSP Sharul had testified earlier this month that Ahmad Sarbaini had fallen some 10m to his death while trying to jump from the said window on to nearby roof "which looks near when you're standing at the window".

The roof, however, is actually about three metres from the window.

Right.

This is a stretch even for Malaysia - I can barely believe they actually printed this.

But Malaysia has been making other headlines here as well. Last Saturday saw some major protests that did attract some international attention:

For those of you who missed this, Malaysia is in the most technical sense a democracy, yet the same political party has run Malaysia since independence - so pushing 60 years. Opposition parties have done increasingly well in recent elections - and there have also been accusations (lots of them) that the current government isn't playing fair in elections, corruption etc. - which is of course largely true.

So a lot of opposition groups got together, formed an organization called Bersih 2.0 (Bersih means 'clean' in Bahasa Malay) and decided to hold a protest.

The government freaked, said the protest would be illegal; Bersih said fine, give us a place to have the protest (a stadium); government says OK; Bersih applies and is rejected because the group is then deemed to be illegal.

So protests go as planned, about 20,000 well-behaved protesters turn up, police fire tear gas and set off water cannons.

Not your average day in Malaysia certainly. All in all the protests were certainly a success; the protesters behaved; the police didn't and there has been much discussion about how the protests successfully brought together a wide cross-section of Malaysian society and did wonders for race relations etc.

And one final piece of rather disconcerting news. The state of Kedah here in Malaysia has ordered the closure of all evening entertainment outlets throughout Ramadan to curb immoral behaviour. Not only is this ridiculous (and has at least caused a lot of controversy and uproar) but potentially catastrophic for businesses - this has been decided with about two weeks notice! It's also redundant because it's illegal for Muslims to drink anyway.