penang & pirates

today, our last day in Penang, my plan was to roam aimlessly around George Town & see what I found. I ran into David & Phoebe at breakfast. They had just returned from Kuala Lumpur and we exchanged Malaysia stories and decided to head into town together. We started at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (Chinese Buddhist), which I’ve got to say totally challenged my notions of houses of worship. I found it hard to wrap my brain around. First off (as you might have guessed), there is a HUGE reclining Buddha. I couldn’t get it all in one photo:

The Buddha is also pictured here very female.

Other photos of the temple:

and there are many different places to pray for many different things:

And then there are walls of urns of ashes.

At UVA, we are written into the will of a faculty member at Yale who has a significant Asian collection. When he passes away, we will be receiving his collection to fill our new East Asian Reading Room. We will also be receiving his ashes. This was part of the deal, he wants his ashes in the room with the collection. Now, seeing all the urns of ashes in the Buddhist Temple, I better understand. Interesting, I had no idea.

And then we went across the street to the Burmese Buddhist Temple, where there was also a giant statue.

(that photo is not zoomed at all. I was very far away, it was so big.)

Then we went shopping (of course, last day in port …). Batik is the thing that is particularly Malaysian. There is also much Indian and Chinese dress, as would make sense.

and had lunch at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel (E&0). Like the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the E&O is an old colonial hotel. It was built in 1885 and it sits on the waterfront. According to the website: "among its more famous guests it has welcomed Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, Hermann Hesse, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham."

Lunch was delicious and the hotel was totally elegant. Walked around a bit more, did more shopping, ended up in Chinatown, and returned sweaty and exhausted back to the ship. I really loved Malaysia. I knew very little about the country before last week and had no expectations for it. But it is beautiful and multicultural and friendly and really interesting in all kinds of different ways. I would definitely like to come back someday to go to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or some of the other islands. Ho Chi Min City is our next port. I’m really looking forward to Vietnam. Vietnam and South Africa were the two countries that had me excited about this voyage itinerary. Three days at sea and then we arrive in Vietnam. We're headed now into the Straits of Malacca. This is where there is pirate risk! Wish us safe travels ...

rice & rubber & palm oil

Due to a stupid mistake, I don’t have a lot of photos of today. Long story not worth going into ... Today, I went on a tour called “prime commodities of Malaysia” -- it is a port full of agriculture and economics for me. Yesterday, orchards & spice gardens, today palm oil plantations, rubber trees, and rice mills.

Malaysia is a very large exporter of palm oil, which goes into an amazing number of products we consume. It’s the most widely produced vegetable oil in the world. We went to a factory, where we learned how they extract the oil. Palm trees bear fruit every three weeks all year around. Harvesters knock them off the tree with huge stick-like-things and then pick them up off the ground. During the factory tour, we saw everything. There are bundles of red-fruits attached to each clump that are processed first for their nuts and then the seeds are extracted into oil. Every part of the palm fruit is used for something. The large clumps (sorry to be so unscientific & it would help if I had photos!), once shed of the red-parts, are burned for bio-fuel. In the factory, we walked all around and climbed up to the top on very steep metal stairs. Holding on to the hand-rails, you feel the oil on the rails. The platforms up there were also all slippery. This is definitely something that wouldn’t be allowed in the U.S.! Tourists climbing up oily stairs & standing on oily platforms in the middle of a factory.

Then, we saw how they tap rubber trees. The itinerary made it sound like we were going to a rubber plantation, but really we just pulled to the side of the road with our guide and he took us back through a bit of overgrowth to the rubber trees. Malaysia & Indonesia are the largest makers of condoms in the world. And latex surgical gloves. In case that’s ever a Jeopardy question, you’ll be prepared. Natural latex is tapped by cutting into the side of the rubber tree and letting the sap fall into little buckets. Latex tappers are all women -- we’re told because the cut must be gentle not to harm the tree -- and the sap must be collected every day. A tapper can tap 500 trees in a day. A man will then come by and empty all the buckets. It’s very hard work and each bucket is only 60% usable latex, the rest is water. Many rubber plantations in Malaysia are now replanting with palm trees, because palm oil only needs to be harvested every 3 weeks. Rubber is much more labor intensive. The tree’s life is 20 years, they cut diagonally one direction on one half of the tree every day for 5 years, then diagonally in the other direction on that same half every day for the next 5 years. Then the same thing on the other side of the tree for 10 more years. After 20 years, the tree is cut for wood. Furniture and such.

After the rubber, we went to a rice mill and learned all about how rice is processed. We also got to walk all around that factory in hard hats and masks. It was very dusty. The biggest thing I learned is that white rice & brown rice are exactly the same kind of rice. White rice is just “polished” -- all the nutrients, actually, are polished away to make it white. The farmer arrives to the mill with his rice paddy which is weighed. The truck + the paddy are weighed minus the weight of the empty truck. From that gross weight is then deducted the estimated water weight and the estimated weight of the impurities. The farmer is paid on the net weight. First the paddy is dried in dryers that take 24 hours to run a cycle. They have 15 dryers in the mill. They also have what they call a LSU dryer, because it was invented by a professor at Louisiana State! After drying, the paddy goes into a husking machine where the husk is removed and then a separating machine, where the husk is separated from the rice. They opened the top of the husking machine for us to see and rice was hopping all around. Then there’s a sifting process that removes the “bran”. The outer layer is called the husk, then there’s a layer called the bran, and then the rice grain. After sifting, it all goes into a machine that cleans the rice and removes the impurities. After that, you’ve got brown rice. If you want white rice, you’ve got one last step of polishing. As with the palm oil, they use everything. So, the brown/white rice gets dumped out into giant 1 ton bags of rice that go off to a wholesaler. And the bran gets sold for animal feed.

The Malaysian government heavily subsidizes rice production and they still import a huge amount of rice from other countries. Particularly Vietnam and Thailand. China is the largest producer of rice in the world but they consume most of what they produce. The company we visited (Bernas) is a former government agency (now privatized) that is the only company in the country licensed to import rice. As a result, there is also rice smuggling on the border with Indonesia, which goes up and down (down now) based on what the cost of rice is on the world market. The Malaysian government provides input subsidies to the farmers (free fertilizer), output subsidies (on the sale to Bernas), and also sets the market price. Since it is Malaysia’s staple food, they take the stockpiling of rice & goals of self-sufficiency pretty seriously. Also rice farmers are the poorest paid workers in Malaysia and there is a conscious effort to help improve their conditions.

After the trip, Dawn & I walked around George Town a bit (I misspelled it yesterday, you might have noticed). We went up to Little India, which felt a little silly since we just came from the real thing.

On a segment of the street that forms an F, we passed an Indian Hindu Temple on the bottom street, a Chinese Buddhist Temple on the left side street, and a Mosque on the top street. All a stone’s throw away from each other. We were lingering outside the mosque wondering if we could go in when a man came out to get us and told us to come in. We could hear the call to prayer as we were walking up. We took off our shoes, he walked us in, told us to sit on one of the carpets and told us to watch. He said he’d come back and get us after the prayer was over. He even said it was ok to take photos. Many of the mosques in the area won’t let non-Muslims enter at all.

After the prayer (Muslims pray 5 times a day and this was #3), he gave us a tour of the mosque. It was quite beautiful. Originally built in 1801 with some more modern renovation.

Then, he took us back to his information center and talked to us for a very long time about Islam. He was very interested to learn that I was Jewish. He said that Jews don’t very often come to Malaysia. People carrying Israeli passports are not allowed into Malaysia nor are Malaysians allowed into Israel. He said, up until a couple of years ago he "didn’t know what a Jew looked like". He was quite nice and very informative and answered all of our questions. I asked whether the Muslim community here spoke Arabic, but he said no. They can follow along and read the Arabic characters in the Qur’an, but they don’t know what they mean. I said for very many of us that is true of Hebrew as well. He asked me a number of questions too, but his command of the Old Testament was wayyy better than mine. I was only able to answer some of his questions. I’m not sure I’ve been in a functioning mosque before. I’ve been in several in Spain, but all are now historical museums or such.

Finally, we walked along the “clan jetties” by the water, where Chinese fisherman live and work. It’s like a boardwalk with homes built on top of it.

Another nice day, if very very hot. I like Malaysia very much. I’d add it to the list of places I could totally see myself living in … if it weren’t so !@%$#%@ bloody HOT! One more hot country (Vietnam) and then we should hit more temperate climates. I can’t wait! …

I’ve finally created flickr sets for each country’s photos. I’ve linked to them at left, in case you like that better than using the map’s navigation. There are more photos on flickr than I’ve included in each blog post, so go there if you want more. I’ll put up new sets as we leave each country.

fruit & spices

today, we went to an orchard and spice garden. We saw so many plants & flowers and I have so many pictures and no ability now to identify them all. Penang is know for durian, a fruit that "smells like hell but tastes like heaven." Smells so much that hotels have signs in the lobby telling guests they are not allowed to bring durian inside. We were all a little relieved to find that it is not currently in season! Our guide told us we must return to Malaysia in June or July to taste the famous durian. Will do ... It is referred to as "King of the Fruits". Mangosteen is "Queen of the Fruits" and Rambutan is "Prince of the Fruits", but they are also currently out of season.

We saw bananas:

pineapple:

nutmeg:

(did you know that you can poison someone with nutmeg?)

some weird kind of apple:

asian figs:

ginger:

and lots of pretty flowers:

At the spice garden, there were also lots of beautiful plants, again most of which I can’t remember to identify:

some kind of endangered palm, maybe?:

There was also a tsunami memorial. Our guide yesterday told us that 47 people perished in Penang in the tsunami, the guide today said 68. Low, by all comparison but very sad nonetheless. There are many hotels along the beach here too, but they had time to be warned. Hotel managers in Bande Ache had notified folks here and they were able to clear the beaches. The people who perished were all fisherman. Like the stories of other areas, here in Penang, the water receded before the tsunami arrived. Fisherman went further in to catch the fish that were hopping around on dry land. They were not warned. When the wave hit, they were dragged out into the sea. A lot of fisherman here are still living in temporary government housing over two years later.

it's pretty, wake up

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 ...