last night, Michael & Mary had a birthday cake for yet another one of their adopted daughters. I’ve had a LOT of cake since I joined Michael & Mary’s family! They’ve sailed before so I asked them whether Malaysia was worth waking up for -- to watch us come in to port. I’m willing to get up at 6 am if it’s worth the view, but otherwise I really needed sleep. We lost another hour last night and we’re now officially 12 hours ahead of the east coast. Michael & Mary said they couldn’t really remember but they always watch us come into port and so Mary volunteered to call me if it was pretty. This morning at 7 am the phone rang & I completely forgot & honestly my first reaction was “who the hell????” When I picked up the phone, the voice said: it’s Michael, it’s pretty, wake up.
Ok, I guess the view was worth it:
I couldn’t go back to sleep because I had an early trip and the ship was tendering. We’re anchored here in the middle of the water and our life-boats are tendering us back & forth to shore. It’s adding a good 45 minutes to arrival & departure times. There is a cruise ship next to us doing the same thing. Their main pier is under renovation.
The first stop on our day-long island orientation was a butterfly farm. There’s one of these in Richmond and I keep meaning to go, but I’ve never been. This was very nice & pretty.
Then we went to a snake temple, where they have live poisonous snakes:
Lunch was at a Chinese restaurant on their fisherman’s wharf:
After lunch, we went to Kek Lok Si Temple and Pagoda (and monastery) and climbed a million steps up in horrid horrid heat (have I mentioned before that I don’t so much like the heat???). The temple, though, was well worth it.
This is called liberation pond. They buy tortoises in town and then set them free in the pond.
And this is a gold-plated Buddha:
Next we went to a botanical gardens where monkeys where roaming around. I now have monkey pictures in most countries we’ve been to.
We got hissed at by one monkey who looked very angry at us & scared us away. So, I've also continued the activity of pissing off the monkeys ... And, finally, we went to the Khoo Kongsi Clan House. This was the signature building built by early Chinese in a small neighborhood. When the Chinese immigrated to Malaysia they established neighborhoods of single family lineage or for all those coming from the same village. Everyone from that village would move to that same area and the clan house was a central place where they would worship their ancestors. The Khoo Kongsi Clan House is for Malaysian Chinese of Khoo ancestry. Gold pates on the wall indicate the family members and their institutions of higher education. Clearly, they were very proud.
It has beautiful paintings & sculptures:
And then we got back on our tender-boat to get back on the ship:
Like Mauritius’ place as a bridge between Africa and India, Malaysia is a bridge between India and China. All trade passed through Malaysian ports. For the most part, we saw Chinese influences today. Malaysia has three very distinct ethnic communities: the Malays, the Indians, and the Chinese, and the country is about 60% Muslim. It consists of a peninsular mainland and 200 distinct islands. Penang is one of those islands and Georgetown is its capital.
Our Malaysian interport lecturer for this leg of the voyage told us that we shouldn’t ask people how the different ethnic groups in Malaysia get along. Ethnic identity has begun to be openly discussed only recently, and then only after significant trust has been established. She also told us that, while the Malaysian people will understand that we -- as individuals -- may disagree with our government’s foreign policy, we should not ask people what they think about Americans nor should we ask them what they think about U.S. foreign policy. She let us know that Malaysians are very friendly and won’t be hostile towards us, but that we should stay away from any such controversial topics. The whole cultural pre-port emphasized that we should be agents to help Malaysians change existing negatives stereotypes of the U.S. … or … it was alternatively suggested that we starting talking with Canadian accents … ugh ...
