Malaysia

There's a horrible commercial that gets played a lot here encouraging tourism in Malaysia. It has a bunch of shots of jungles and plates of food, and then for some reason a random white lady doing yoga on a beach. And there's a song in the background with the tagline "Malaaaaaysia.....truly Aaaaaaasia!" Like I said, it's terrible. But I guess it somehow worked its way into our subconscious, because when a couple friends invited Mike and I to Malaysia for the day, we jumped at the chance.

We had to wake up at 6 am to get to the harbor in time to catch a boat. We got there around 7 and had to wait till around 8:30 to get going. Mike and I learned very quickly there's no use asking how much longer, because no one actually knows what's going on, they just take your passport and put it in a line. There's not really a system set up, the boats come whenever they feel like coming and you wait till you see your stack of passports is next. Helpful! But eventually we got on a boat, and about an hour later we arrived in Pengerang, which is a small post in the southeast state of Johor.

From there we went to Rengit in one of the most terrifying cab rides of my life. The driving rules are apparently pretty flexible in Malaysia; things like staying in one lane, driving on the correct side of the road, and going at a reasonable speed are all optional. I'm just glad we made it alive, but we were going so fast I couldn't get any non-blurry pictures of the trip there, which was a really beautiful ride with the sea on one side and thick hills of jungle on the other. I couldn't actually tell you HOW fast we were going, because everything in is damn kilometers here. Foiled by the metric system yet again.

So Rengit is a small town just off the coast, and it's perfect for a day trip. Eventually I'd love to visit Kuala Lumpur or Malacca, but those places are farther away so you have to fly or take a bus and spend the night. I think the only downside is that since Rengit isn't as touristy, we got quite a lot of stares. Some guy saw Mike and just started laughing his ass off, which was a little disconcerting. Poor Mike, he does tend to stick out. As does yours truly.

In a lot of ways, Rengit reminded me of the Texas coast, it looked and felt like parts of South Padre (minus the white kids on Spring Break, thank god). Lots of rotting wood and rusted metal, the way a town gets when it's close to the sea. Malaysia is a lot messier than Singapore, more unkempt and wild, it has a much more lived in feeling. Like an old boot that's molded to your foot, and who doesn't like an old boot? We wandered around the town a bit, taking pictures and looking for a place to eat lunch. Malaysia has a reputation for great seafood, so we settled on a restaurant called the Jade something-or-other that looked promising. We got three dishes, which were all freaking delicious.

The first one was really simple and clean, just fresh white fish with soya sauce and ginger and onion. Then we got salted yolk crab, which was kind of like crab in an orange hollandaise sauce that was devoured in record time. And finally we got cereal shrimp, which is exactly what it sounds like, just whole shrimp rolled in cereal and fried up. They're crunchy and sweet, you just have to get used to eating the shells. We also got coconuts to drink, which are always refreshing and fun to eat once you've sucked up all the juice. They gave us plastic spoons, though, and I broke mine trying to pry out all the meaty bits.

After eating, we walked through the main part of town and then through the neighborhood out towards the sea. Some of the houses were beautiful and painted bright colors, and then some of them were so old and run down they looked abandoned.

We wandered around for awhile, but it was so humid and it looked like it was going to start raining so we headed back towards the main street and ducked into a little shop. While our friends enjoyed refreshing and unappealing ice kacangs, Mike and I were introduced to li hing mui, which are these crazy salty sour dried plums covered in orange powder. They're super strong but also strangely addictive, like a Chinese version of sour patch kids that have the added benefit of turning your mouth a smarting shade of orange.

Since the last ferry back to Singapore left at 4, we had to be back in Pengerang before then, and after another frightening cab ride we made it back to the post. Just in time, too, since it started pouring rain as soon as we got there, and we got absolutely soaked on our way to the boat. And since the boats don't have windows, it wasn't that much dryer inside. Still, there was something kind of soothing about being wet and hot, sitting on a newspaper on a wooden bench while the rain beat down on the tarps. It was like being in a really cheap sauna that smells like gasoline.

I fell asleep on Mike during the ride back, and even he had to shake himself awake a few times. By the time we got back, we were so tired we peeled off our wet socks and napped on the couch, which is really too small for the both of us. As it always goes, one of the best parts of traveling is getting back home.