Penang

Holy cow, I'm in Penang! Specifically, in a not very air-conditioned hole in the wall lined with 10 computers on Love Lane (basically backpacker's alley). The price of online here is RM$2 an hour. Which is about US$0.65.

Yes I have finally made it here. It is kind of strange since in a way I feel like i have been here for a while. Penang really, REALLY reminds me of Hong Kong in the 80s, at least the Hong Kong with the old shops, temples, hawker stalls, and really hot weather. There are Chinese signs everywhere and I can speak English or a mix of that with Madarin slash Cantonese all the time. I don't have any jetlag that I can feel... most of the time I don't feel it when I'm goign somewhere, I feel it when I get home.

Anyway, I should try to be adhere to the timeline here, so I am not massively off tangent. I'm going to try to write here everyday, since typing is SO MUCH FASTER than writing in my journal. I tend to get frustrated when I try to write with a pen when I just want to spee it off my fingers.

ANYWAY.
I got to SFO at about 00:15am on Sunday morning 7/27. The China Airlines was delayed til about 2am. It was an OLD 747. I mean, there is that big projection screen every 20 rows in the middle kind of old. China Airlines is actually a Taiwanese airlines, which makes sense that we're going to go to Taipei then. Flight time to Taipei was 12 hours almost exactly. They fed us "dinner" at about 3am, and then I konked out. Thank you, whichever saint who invented soft foam ear plugs. Thank you. I love you. So much. I konked out so well that it was about 11:45am when I woke up when the crew turned on the lights. YES. Then they fed us breakfast, and then I was off the plane at Taipei's Taoyuan (Peach Garden) Int'l airport at about 2:0pm SF time, which was 5am Taiwan time.

The airport terminal I got off at, was incredibly, incredibly shitty. I was in fact, in shock at how horrible it was. It reminded me basement skanky fake-CD malls in Hong Kong that wasn't doing so well. It was godawful, and I was like, shit I have to spend 3 hours here?? Thankfully I was curious and so I walked around and after some maze like route, I somehow managed to get into the NEW wing which was, omg, it was like suddenly we advanced 3 decades into modern above-ground electronics mall. It was bright, upbeat, and there was free internet and oh, free massage chairs and cute information booths about the culture and nature of Taiwan. Apparently a typhoon was getting close, and some of the flights were cancelled but thankfully mine to Kuala Lumpur was not affected. I ate a bowl of pork chop noodle soup and had some Oolong tea and before long I was sitting in my 2nd flight to KL, scheduled at 8:30am. Now it's been some 16 hours since I left SFO.

The flight to KL was actually quite pleasant. I had an individual touch screen that let me pick what movies I wanted to watch. Man. You woudl think they would have that on a cross-pacific flight, and maybe not so much in shorter intra-Asia flights right? Nope. Well I was glad coz I wasn't going to be able to sleep again after that 8.5hrs of massive miraclous plane sleep, so I watched The Bank Job which totally did the job of killing 2 hours out of my 4 hour flight.

When I stepped out to see KL, omg. I was in love with the airport. It made me feel like I was a country mouse, seeing city lights for the first time. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Petronas towers but no luck, since the airport was actually 75km from KL. But shit. That airport, is amazing. Apparnetly it was named "Worl'd Best Airport" by some airport international body, but man, dude, they deserve it. It was soooo easy to navigate around, and people were super friendly, and the airtram that linked the two massive buildings were super swank and sweet. It reminded me of the Hong Kong international Airport, but nicer. I basically spent 2 hours that gawking at how awesome that airport was. As I was walking around with my mouth open, there were plenty of women in headscarves and even full on burkas walking around. Somehow though, this felt very different than in Egypt. I dunno why. Maybe it's the general vibe of the airport screaming "We are doing so well economically and life is great" that it didn't feel oppressive. Not that Egypt felt oppressive but it did feel more tense on my skin than in Malaysia (then again, I was in Egypt when Danish cartoons made headlines). In Egypt I didn't feel comfortable saying I lived in the US, I said I was from Canada and they would give big thumbs up and then say, yeah we don't like the US. And then they would correct very quickly, we like American people, especially peopel who would even come to see Egypt, we don't like the US government and we dont' like Bush. Oh, and every sign in KL airport had like 5 languages on it, English, Malay, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's the apparent ethic and cultural diversity made the burkas seem like it's just part of a big mosaic. Now that I'm in Penang though, I have not seen anybody in Burkas. Perhaps those are people in transit from other Muslim countries. But anyway, in short, I couldn't help but think in my head, very loudly, man, this is "Islamic country done right", and also "This is oil revenue done right".

At about 3:30pm, it was time for me to get on the plane to Penang. At 4:30pm, we landed in Penang. Talk about a short flight. We literally ascended to 20,000 ft and immediately descanded. The Penang airport was simple and straightforward. I managed to get my luggage in 5min flat and got my money changed in 3min flat and then got my Malaysia sim card purchased and activated in another 10min. That was simple. Then when I was in the taxi line to get the "official we wont' screw you" taxi ticket to get into town, I met 5 of my other teammates that I didn't know was there at the same time. We shared two cabs and got into BayVew hotel.

Wow I have been in this chair for 45min, cooled down and ready to go again. Maybe I'll come back to write more at night later but right now I want to catch a local bus to see the Kek Lok Si Temple, oh, and probably to look for a charger for my camera which I regretably forget to bring, and even more regratebly my battery is already low. :(

More later!