Pictures part II

Cameron Highlands part II

Quick review of Cameron Highlands before I leave for the Pehrentian Islands. Its been said that internet is fucking expensive over there so I'll probably stay clear of the rip offs cafes for a couple of days. The lonesome junkie talking to himself on the beach, that's me in dire need of internet. 2mg Google. Liquid Hotmail. Little purple blog pills. Ugh, maybe I can find repentance in Malaria tablets. Sweet overdosis.

As I said, Cameron Highlands is just a collection of hills. Up the mountains. And a jungle, a mossy jungle (that means with moss included). Guided tours are available at Father's guesthouse but we're talking about a walk in the forrest here. I'll pass on the tour. Well yeah I do have better things to do with my money. Like internet, and laundry, and chinese food. Anyway me and Maoro the Italian guy and Peul the Czech guy went on a walk by ourselves. Well Paul was lagging behind cuz he's a semi-proffessional photographer and he takes about 13 pictures of every thing so he can select the perfect one later on. You know, the kind of people that care about F-Stop numbers and ISO levels and exposure milliseconds. Obviously not me. The hike was really nice but not that special since the forrest was so crowded and after having seen the first 362 trees, well I guess the next 8542 ones are pretty much similar.
We did see one bug though. Poor fella, we pretty much photographed the shit out of him. And he was barely coloured anyway. One does what one can. Then walked further to the already polluted waterfalls. The way Paul said it, it's barely worth a photo. Though seeing the clumsy japanese family climb down the rocks to pose for yet another serie of 50 pictures was nice.

Heading for the tea plantation up the hill was great. We got picked up twice on the way up and twice on the way down. Hitchhiking rules in these little towns. People no friendly. Never asked for even one ringit (which is already 1/4th of a euro). First a young guy who didnt speak a word of english. Then another who was bringing schoolkids back home. The local kids are so cool. They're often shy and sometimes huge fans of digital cameras and will pose for you in every power rangers positions imaginable. Up the hill we went where the tea plantation was already closed but the view where breathtaking and Paul was in heaven I guess. We left him there for his next round of endless picture taking. me and Maoro hitchhiked back downtown. First with a foursome of jeeps from a touring company. They were communicating with eachother by walkie talkie and the driver insisted I started a conversation with another driver whose face I never saw. Then dropped us off and we were picked up by a canadian guy who does consulting here on hydro-electric powerstation. Didn't spend one dime on tranportation nor touring that day.

Eaten indian food twice in a row and I think I'll have a break now. Told the shopkeeper we should see other people. He cried and then I cried but we're still good friends and he still shakes my hand like an old pal (and even though Ive seen him do this with other tourists as well I guess I dont mind :-). I had disgusting spaghetti tonight at our hostel and I guess I learned my lesson. The Naan bread at the indian restaurant is still the best thing I've put in my mouth since that godblessed bagel I had in Antwerp before I left.

Today I just chilled and we hitchiked our way up another hill to the tea plantation. The last guy to pick us up was so nice he brought us all the way up there. When the guard told us the plantation is closed to tourists after 4.30pm our driver spoke with him (they know eachother) and agreed on letting us do a quick tour inside the field of tea. Drove around, took more pictures, sat with the driver at some view point and then he drove us back to the village.

Tomorrow I'm leaving to the islands and you probably won't hear from me for another 5 days. I'm in for some amazing diving and partying on the beach and ranting about how everything is so damn more expensive on the island. Good fun.

Umpf

Tal

Cameron Highlands

First of all Blogspot sucks.
This internet blog website is so damn slow,
I get to Cambodia on a donkey faster than I get this page to load.
Dunno if they're gonna kick me out of their database now...

OK, let me tell you about Danielle. We started on a pretty innocent basis. I go to Singapore, she happens to sleep in the same dorm as I do. Fine. I leave her there, take my bus to Kuala Lumpur. Walk around, go up the KL Menara tower where you can get make some pretty nice pictures of the city. Somebody taps me on the shoulder. Yes. It is Danielle, together with Wendy, the other british travelling girl I met in Singapore. At first I thought she was one of those self-hating travelling type. The kind that complains about other travellers, all going to the same places, sleeping at the same places, and never leaving what is commonly referred to as the Gringo Trail in south america. Ze path. The one crossed by every traveller who doesn't go 'off the beaten track'. Like what, I come from fucking Holland, I consider some hole named Penang pretty much of the fucking beaten track :) But no, Wendy you see, she really connects with the locals. She takes a full month to see a country the size of my iPod. She stays a whole week up in every hole on the way until she knows the number of tiles at the Inn Crowd's bathroom. Wendy if you're reading this I love you ;) OK, so that was my first impression. But I decided to have a chat with her. I guess I get her point of view. She has time. She likes to meet people, local people, and get more than a feel of the place she's at. I can understand. But some of us have only five weeks to see SE ASIA, only one holiday a year, and no cash growing amongs the weed plantation. So yes I kind of breeze through a whole country. And no I haven't met the local chief's daughter. Hell, maybe I'm just pre-viewing south-east Asia. Maybe I'm just getting a taste of everything so that when I will have the time, and the money, I'll know where to go. Besides, isnt it my duty as a child of the beloved zapping-generation to just fast-consume travelling the way I'll multi-watch television and simultanously talk to people on msn and browse three websites at a time? Alright, maybe travelling is like speed-dating, and there are about 192 ladies I have to pay a visit, so no I can't stay for another month in Malesia cuz Ghana sounds like an foxy lady as well.

Oh I lost track of Danielle. Anyway, so she was there in Kuala Lumpur again. Now here I am at Cameron Highlands. It's up in the mountains where they have many tea plantations (imagine vast hillsides striped by neatly tended plants). Makes for great pictures. And it's really laid back. And apparently you keep meeting the same people there cuz guess who I saw coming through the door about 20 minutes ago? Senorita Danielle. She plans to hit the Pehrentian Island the day after tomorrow, just like me. Guess we're going together. And to think that I thought she was slightly bitchy when I saw her the first time at the hostel in Singapore. (Danielle if you're reading this don't strangle me in my sleep with my own socks please, I kinda got to like these socks) Well there you go, I corrected my prejudices twice already. See if I can keep it up.

Umpff

Tal

Kuala Lumpur Pictures

The famous Petrona Towers at night...

Sunset seen through the binoculars at the Menara tower
(Didn't think that picture would work, actually ;-)

More modern architecture, KL is really ambitious...

Ze Petrona towers at daytime.

SingaLesiaThaiBodia and 'Nam

First things first,
I changed my plans.
WOOHA!
Very exciting cuz I had to commit to a date.
Rendez vu at Honoi Vietnam for an inland flight back to Singapore.
Guess I'll have to change my blogs name now.
Too bad, I really liked the sound of Singalesiathaibodia.
Now its going to be crappy sounding SingaLesiaThaiBodiaNam and back.
Argh, the whole thing is ruined... ;-)

What else, please, if you're one of the people Ive met on this trip,
Im an idiot and I forgot to ask you email adres. Please contact me and give me yours, Im simply an idiot. You can also leave a comment on this blog. Preferably something starting with 'Hey dude you're the coolest person...' You know the drill. Seriously though, contact me.
Vaughan, Sara (from Spain), Sara (from Germany), Crazy English Queen of Cancers (should have asked your name), Stockings tattoo meditation girl, Justin, Irish guy.
You know the deal though, we can't promise we'll keep in touch, but minimum is
you can come visit and have a place to sleep in the Netherlands/Belgium maybe even Paris.
Looking forward to that.

Ok, other news. I'm now in Kuala Lumpur. been to Singapore, left yesterday night. Singapore is what Disney's wet dreams must look like. All planned, all ready for tourism and everybody speaks english. Don't ask me what there is to do in Singapore. Got no idea.
I've heard something about a fake island, a night safari, cocktails at some Raffles hotel, many many many malls for everything you could think of buying and the usual 7 Elevens.
The airport was scary. I landed on a Boeing 737 or some, I mean those huge planes with a second floor for christ sake. Got to the passport checking desks and there were no lines.
Not only that, I could choose from 5 different desks. It seems the way Singapore deals with people is overcapacity. I could have had the airport shuttle for myself if it wasnt for the australian guy and his vietnamese wife.

The backapckers place was everything you'd wish for. A good old portion of western comfort in the middle of an asian jungle. Toast and eggs for breakfast instead of squid with noodles. Friendly english speaking staff. Enters Justin. The man. I had belgian chocolates for him given to me by my belgian travel agent and friend named Karel who had been to Singapore in november and knew it was Justins birthday the 23rd and they're going to Madagascar together for the summer and I can see why Karel thinks they're similar and they're both just cool people :-) I liked talking to Justin so he could give me an insider point of view on Singapore. Seems its famous for its diversity in food. And prostitution. Didnt know that. It's so modern you don't expect it to have a sleazy neigbourhood or some. Surely not at the airport where even the free internet computers are empty and begging you to use em.

It seems Singapore is the Switzerland of Asia. No one has a problem with Singapore really. They're friends with everbody and such that they need to visa for most countries, pay no entry fee or get no hassle. I guess the night safari thing just conquered everybody's heart. Also, Justin scratched the backpacker's dream a bit off. Behind the friendly clerks are hard working people who DO have better things to do than clean up our cigarrette butts and magazines and dishes and toilet paper. And though we're just travelers enjoying our freedom, we're still kind of representing our countries and the impression we leave isn't always good. But I'll pay attention to that now, be extra nice to clerks and the local people and say thank you and try not to be rude or disrecpectful.

I tried meditation too but it didnt work out because the stockings tattoo girl was supposed to teach me and the queen of cancers but she seems to have forgotten that because at some point in the temple we wondered where she was and by the time we found her she was way past consciousness or something and I had to meditate on my own. As if.
I closed my eyes, breathed, tried not to fall asleep, focused on my nose or chin or something very not distracting and I barely managed to stop asking myself 'is this working?'.
So I just looked at stockings girls meditating and I couldnt figure out what she was doing so I left and went to chat some more about family guy with the irish dude and the english queen. Apprently you can take a free course of buddhism even in your home country. Something about not speaking for whole days and stuff. Hmm, maybe... I could give it a try. Nothing's too bad when you have your iPod.

Ok I'm really getting carried away here.
Quick summary:

Country - Malaysia
City - Kuala Lumpur
Plans for the day - Visit some caves and find an adaptor for my electic stuff
Slept at - Nighttrain
People of the day - Three canadian girls

Soundtrack - Arctic Monkeys and Donavon Frankenreiter
Lessons Learned - When the taxi driver says 'not worries', start worrying
Clothing - Red Allstars and white hat

Diarrouah - Zero
Gonorrhea - God no
Malaria - The doctor said I only need the pills for Cambodia, other travelers say I'll be dead by the time I left Malesia. Maybe I can get a burqa and walk around like the women; ambulant mosquito nets.

That's it folks,

Umpff

Tal

The great escape

Let's do this quick.
I barely got the time for you.
One hour left before the great escape.
Houdini style.

People ask me when and why and how and where.
Don't.
Taking their hats off when they hear about my travel.
Don't.
Requesting post-cards. That I travel safe. And call.
Don't Don't and Don't.

I'll keep it brief.
Packed slightly less underwear than I'll need in between laundries.
More money than I plan to spend.
An Ipod. Electric rasor. Immodium pills.
Condoms, six. Hat, one. Mobile phone, zero.
What else.

What this is, in my friend's words, is writing-exhibitionism.
Funny, I thought, hours much too late;
Ain't that what every writer does?

What this is, I don't know.
The big unknown and randomizing.
Happiness beig found in the small stuff and all that crap,
I say this is doing what I can while I still can.
While 2000 euro's need not be spent on car insurances,
gas bills and mortgage (whatever that is).




Umpf