Day 87- Have No Fear People: The Lost Art Of Scrotum Taping Is Alive And Well In Malaysia.

Never ones to unnecessarily wake up early, Colleen and I slept in yet again before heading down to the hotel restaurant for lunch.  Not surprisingly the restaurant clientele consisted of the two of us and 500 Chinese tourists.  How the two of us were not yet fluent in Mandarin I do not know.

Having visited most of the city's main tourist spots the day before, the one feather in our cap we were missing was a tour at the "Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion".  I know, sounds exciting.  Colleen and I showed up at said mansion for the lunchtime tour expecting there to be a handful of people.  Instead, we were greeted by a group of over 100 people.  It just goes to show the power that Lonely Planet travel guides have and how if they decide you are one of the "top ten mansions in the world" the masses will follow.  The tour itself was pretty unspectacular, as we had one tour guide for the entire group trying to yell over everyone with no microphone or voice amplification system.  Colleen and I both lost interest pretty quickly and before we knew it we were wandering off from the tour group and taking silly pictures in an attempt to entertain ourselves.  Eventually even this got too tedious and we decided to just walk out on the tour.  Problem solved.



All it takes is a Lonely Planet recommendation and BOOM! your boring attraction is a hit.



Let's just take selfies instead.



Clearly I was loving the tour. My eyes say it all.

Free from the mansion, we headed back to our hotel to attempt to map out the next day's travel plans (but not before we stopped off at...Subway of course).  Our plan was to head back to Koh Tao (the diving island) in Thailand as Colleen really wanted to get in some more diving before heading to Canada the following week.  Due to the Chinese New Year, all of the flights and more desirable travel arrangements were sold out or out of our price range so we headed down the street to the local travel agency.  While the shop had some very attractive prices in their windows, inside I was greeted by possibly the ugliest he-she (see: transsexual, ladyboy, etc) I had ever seen.  In the last couple of months I had seen my fair share of men who now "identified" themselves as women, and to be honest some of them weren't that bad looking.  I mean shit, you pump enough drinks in to someone and it's not surprising that you are constantly hearing stories of foreign men who pick up "women" at the bar and take them home only to discover that they are packing some taped up heat in their thongs.  Anyways, no amount of drinks was going to make this boy pretty, but at least he, or should I say she, found us a good deal for the next day.  For $55 each we would have to take a 4 hour ride in a minibus (large van), followed by an 8 hour overnight bus ride, and then finally a 2.5 hour ferry ride before arriving in Koh Tao.  Not exactly ideal, but hey it would get us there.



A final addition to our collection of pictures of Penang's spectacular street art.



In preparation for our big journey the next day, we spent our last and third consecutive night at the Red Garden Food Paradise.  It was pouring rain all night so we took refuge there and just enjoyed the good, cheap food and beer.  To top it off, we got the best service we had had in Malaysia at the only place that wasn't charging an automatic service charge.  Hell, the guy sweeping the floors even stopped to fill my beer glass for me!  Now that's service. 

I spent my last night in Malaysia watching "Armageddon" back in the hotel room, a sure sign of what the  next day was going to feel like with all of the less-than-first-class-travelling that awaited us.

~Brentski~

Day 86- I Love When A Grown Man Pedals Me Around On An Oversized Tricycle.

Due to the ill effects of either the street food, jumbo beers, or some combination of the two from the night before, Colleen and I both slept in and were not feeling particularly hot when we woke up.  To make matters worse, I discovered in the newspaper that morning that we had missed a free performance the previous the day from everyone's favorite South Korean pop star, Psy.  Yes, Psy, the Youtube legend himself was in town and we missed it. Damn it!  Fearing street food for the time being, we opted to play it safe and have, you guessed it, SUBWAY for breakfast! 



Everyone loves Psy!
 

Happy Chinese New Year!



Just like at Winner's.



Penang's less glamorous side.



 

We decided we were going to run the full gauntlet of tourism activities that day, so after inhaling our subs we ventured out into the stifling Malaysian heat.  Being the ever diligent walker that I am, I forced Colleen to navigate the city on my foot with me, although as the drink breaks became more and more frequent we eventually caved and hopped on the free tourist bus that does a loop of the city.  We were attempting to head towards the UNESCO world heritage site and historic downtown  area of Penang, George Town.    Being the ever-pathetic navigator that I am, I somehow led us to get off at the wrong stop on a bus that is supposed to make such things easy for tourists.  This is turn led to the two of us having to hike over a kilometer to our first official stop of the day, Fort Cornwallis.  Colleen and I did the requisite quick self-guided tour, grabbed a few pictures and then made the executive decision that getting some ice cream was the far more satisfying thing to do.



Not as exciting as this picture would have you believe.



Outside Fort Cornwallis.



My fair lady!



Sadly our run of picking bad tourist sites didn't end there as we next stumbled upon the  "House of Yeap Chor EE", which with a $4 admission price, seemed like a fair price to pay for some air conditioning at this point.  Not surprisingly, the exhibits themselves were quite boring and I never did manage to figure out who the hell the guy was.  I assume he was some kind of prominent local business man, but why they turned his former residence into a shrine I will never know.  I can only assume that this was of moderate interest to the Chinese tourists, but alas I shall never know.



Most exciting house ever.

Colleen clearly loves it.

 



Keeping with the theme of Chinese tourism, we next stumbled upon one of many local temples, which as expected was quite busy with people celebrating the Chinese New Year.  Having had enough of walking in the sweltering heat, Colleen and I decided that another form of transportation was in order: the trishaw!  The trishaw (pictured below) is basically an oversized backwards tricycle that has a pedal-powered driver on the back and can accommodate a couple of passengers in the front.  We quickly negotiated a price of 40RM ($13 Canadian) with a driver who appeared to be on the plus side of seventy years old.  Between my vacation-sized ass and Colleen, the two of us could barely fit in the seat and we were both feeling bad for our driver who was having some trouble pedaling the two of us around.  In fact, the old man had to keep getting off the bike to push it!  I was going to offer to switch places with him but then I remembered that I was a lazy oinker and nixed that idea.  Our limo trishaw driver gave us a great hour-and-a-half tour of the city, although we could only understand about fifteen percent of the words coming out of his toothless mouth.  One unique thing that really stood out were these graffiti style paintings that were randomly placed around the downtown core (see below).  Each painting would incorporate something from its surroundings, whether it be a motor bike, window covering, or something else that was present in the area.  The paintings were obviously quite popular and well known as each one usually had a group of tourists nearby waiting to snap some pictures.



Colleen and our friendly, toothless driver/slave.



Poor guy has to push US around!



By the ninety minute mark I was starting to feel bad for our driver and thankfully he dropped us by the Chew Jetty.  I can only assume his back was feeling terrific that evening.  The best part about the Chew Jetty was our discovery of freezies for the first time in Asia.  Yes, glorious, glorious freezies!  As had become the norm in Malaysia and Singapore, we got our daily afternoon rain storm and Colleen and I quickly made our way to the bus stop.  After waiting over thirty minutes for the "Fifteen Minute Bus" my cheap ass eventually caved to Colleen's wishes and we got a cab.  One thing we noticed in our first couple of days in Penang was that all of the cabs are metered, but none of them actually use their meters.  So be warned travelers, if you find yourself in Penang make sure to bargain your price before the cab starts moving.  

Best discovery of the day; definitely freezies.





 

 



 

.

 

 

Since we had such a good time the night before at the Red Garden Food Paradise, we decided why not do it again.  While we passed on the "Claypot Frog Porridge", we did manage to secure ourselves some excellent teriyaki chicken and steak complimented by a bucket of double-sized Carlsberg beers; and not to mention a table beside a group of dudes who had a combined tooth total of 6 between the five of them and were just getting absolutely shittered!  Being the gluttons that we are though, that was not enough and we had to dial up a round of watermelon and mangoes for our second course.  Oh, and then waffles and ice cream on our third go round to send us into a full on food and beer coma.  Heavenly bliss!



Sounds promising.





Course one of three.



~Brentski~

 

 

Day 85- Off To Penang, The Night Food Market Capital Of Malaysia (Solid Claim To Fame).

Having successfully survived our first few days in Malaysia, it was time for us to move upwards and onwards.  Our goal was to travel back to Thailand via bus, but before we made it back we were going to spend a few nights in the northern Malaysian city of Penang.  Before leaving Kuala Lumpur, Colleen and I hit up our local one-of-the-world's-largest-malls for some grub.  Keeping with our theme of super exotic eating we settled on a combination of Booster Juice, jumbo pretzels, and a mandatory visit to the local Subway.  Rather impressively it was the sixth time in the last nine days that Colleen had eaten Subway, and two of the days she didn't have any were because we were on a cruise ship!

With our bellies full we headed over to the bus terminal, which like many such things in Southeast Asia was a complete gong show.  There were people hassling you left, right, and centre trying to sell you bus tickets and it appeared that there were dozens of bus companies operating out of this one terminal.  Eventually we found what we thought was our bus and lugged our heavier-by-the-minute backpacks over to the platform.  After our departure time had come and gone, we were a little nervous and started asking around if anyone knew anything as there were buses constantly coming and going.  Not surprisingly, no one had a fuckin' clue and the wifey and I were left wondering whether or not we would make it to Penang. 



This bus ride is so enjoyable. Not tight at all.



 

Amidst much confusion and chaos our bus did eventually show up.  Keeping up with our run of good luck, Colleen and I got seated behind the world's two biggest assholes who decided to put their seats ALL THE WAY back and effectively pin Colleen and I to our seats for the entire six hour journey.  Of course six hours wasn't enough time with the two Sleeping Beauties in front of us so the transportation gods decided to throw in some Chinese New Year traffic to lengthen the drive and really test our meddle. 

By the time we pulled into Penang with our crushed lower extremities, all we could think about was getting off that damn bus!  Well that, and the fact that it seemed there were no actual "Malay" people in this part of the country.  Every person seemed to be of Chinese or Indian descent, which upon further inquiring I was told was quite normal for this region.  Hmmm, good to know I guess.  Colleen had again enforced her womanly charm will on me and forced us to book into a large Western-style hotel, the Cititel.  I know I shouldn't complain about staying in nicer accommodations than I had originally planned for, but damn was my now non-existent budget taking a beating.  No straw huts and backpacker dives for this broad!

Once we were settled in we headed out into the streets to check out Penang's regionally famous street food.  There are a number of night markets that are chock full of vendors hawking all sorts of food from various regions of the world.  Initially we decided to skip said markets and settled on some good old-fashioned hot dogs and hamburgers (sad, I know).  After filling our guts with the street grease, Colleen and I wised up and headed over to Red Garden Food Paradise, one of the more famous night markets in the city.  The place was full of Malaysian Chinese people as far as the eye could see, which again just seemed odd to me because I was completely ignorant to the large scale immigration that had occurred here.  Never ones not to eat even when we are full, the lady and I tackled a banana split and some jumbo beers to wash it down.  Colleen eventually decided that she was still hungry (even though she hadn't finished her original dinner) and went out and scored herself a second round of supper.  I must say I hear the same thing almost every night when Colleen (who inevitably never finishes her food) thus proclaims herself to be hungry not one hour after dinner.  The nerve I tell ya!  Love is a funny thing.

 



Colleen striking her model pose outside the Red Garden Food Paradise.



Just your typical, everyday Malaysian food market.



Jumbo beers will get you every time!



~Brentski~

Day 83- Nothing Excites Me More Than A Visit To A Telecommunications Tour. Well, With The Exception Of Bruce Willis Movies.

We are SOOOO bringing some of these broads back to the hotel room.

Never being ones to break form when it comes to eating, Colleen and I hit up the ever-exotic Papa John's Pizza at the local shopping mall for breakfast/lunch.  Following up on the dreadful service from the previous night, I didn't think it would be possible to receive worse service in a restaurant.  Boy was I wrong!  It took them over twenty minutes to bring us two cans of Coke from around the corner...and that was with us asking multiple times.  I have seen a lot of people who don't give a shit in the workplace, but the service staff in Kuala Lumpur was unlike anything.  Naturally they also tacked on the mandatory 10% service charge, just to add insult to injury.



Monorail!!!!!!!!!



With that debacle behind us, we decided we needed to get out of the mall and see what the city had to offer.  We headed over to the monorail (you have to sing the word "monorail" a la The Simpsons when saying it) and booted over to KL Tower, which is one of the five tallest telecommunications towers in the world.  I can now say I have been to three out of the top five tallest telecommunications towers in the world (CN Tower in Toronto and the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai being the other two).  I know, it basically makes me a legend.  While we were there we did the usual tourist duties consisting of taking an elevator to the top, taking some goofy pictures and admiring the skyline of the city.  I must say, I was quite ignorant to Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur before we arrived and it was fascinating to see the construction going on everywhere.   There was a crane building some type of condo or office building on seemingly every block and there were luxury cars and stores abound.  It really is a city with its sights set on the future. 



Colleen on tiny people watch.



Tourists!

KL Tower.  It will never be as cool as the CN Tower.



 

Now that we had done the requisite "tallest tower/building in town" visit, we were free to do as we pleased.  Colleen decided that she needed to get her archery fix, so we trekked back to Berjaya Times Square and before we knew it we were firing arrows directly into the dead centre of the targets.  And by that I of course mean into the netting behind and away from the targets.  My girlfriend also deemed this to be her new addiction, along with scuba diving and I am still trying to figure out if these are cheaper dependencies than shopping and unnecessary baking.   Before this trip I hadn't fired a bow and arrow in probably twenty years and now here I was for the second time in a month testing out my archery skills.



There is a suspiciously low number of arrows piercing the actual targets.



After archery our plan was to hit up the amusement park, but we quickly nixed this idea when the smoothies we consumed weren't sitting too well.  We took this as our cue to head back to the hotel and relax instead of riding roller coasters with a bunch of ten year olds and barfing all over them.  Being the restless fart that I am, I cannot sit still too long in a hotel and before I knew it I was on the monorail by myself headed to check out Chinatown while Colleen relaxed in the hotel.  Somewhere along the way my non-existent navigation skills let me down and instead of finding Chinatown I found Little India instead.  Having never been to India, I can't tell you if this is what India is like, although I imagine it is pretty similar.  There was chaos everywhere, loud flute-driven music (we shall assume for snake charming purposes)  playing from many of the stores and just wall-to-wall people as far as you could see.  It was total pandemonium! 



Uh oh....



Thankfully I am allowed to enjoy the sweet sweet nectar.



 

I made it out of Kuala Lumpur's re-creation of Delhi intact, but I never did find Chinatown.  Instead, I went back to the hotel and found Colleen waiting for me to take her out for a romantic dinner; to Wendy's naturally.  We washed down our greasy burgers with a couple of games of bowling where I had to remind Colleen that men are just inherently better at sports than women.  It's just a fact ladies.



The best part of bowling is always the shoes.



Better watch out Kingpin.

To wrap up our night we went to see the cinematic masterpiece known as, "A Good Day To Die Hard".  It was not yet out in North America, which was kind of odd as most movies tend to come out in the US before they reach our fine friends in Asia.  One unique thing about going to the movies in Malaysia was the excessive subtitling.  The movie was shown in English with both Malay and Chinese subtitles underneath.  It became even more distracting when a character in the movie was speaking Russian and they then added English subtitles into the mix.  Yes, at some points there were three different languages of subtitles on the screen.  Also, many swear words were censored out in the movie and if there were any sex scenes those were most definitely edited out.  I'm hoping there weren't any though, cause nobody needs to see Bruce Willis scoring some tail.  Not surprisingly, Malaysia has some of the strictest censorship laws in the world.  In conclusion, DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE.  UNLESS YOU WANT TO LAUGH A LOT, THEN YES WASTE A COUPLE HOURS OF YOUR LIFE AND WATCH IT.



Happy Chinese New Year!



~Brentski~

Day 82- Welcome To Malaysia. Where Most People Are In Fact Not Malaysian At All And More People Speak English Than In Most Canadian Cities.

Faster than we could say "Singaporean-Malaysian Cruise" our two night cruise was over.  We awoke bright and early at 6:30am and headed down to the main dining room for our last all-inclusive meal.  In keeping with the theme of the cruise, the wait staff managed to get our order wrong and the food also happened to be rather crappy.  I think it was safe to say that we wouldn't be sailing with Royal Caribbean anytime soon again.  Making our way off the ship we had to scan our "cruise identity" cards so that they could keep track of everyone leaving and to make sure everyone's accounts were up to snuff.  As Colleen went to exit, the card machine started beeping rather excessively and everyone was staring at the two of us.  This was in turn followed by her being whisked away by a handful of employees who told her that her account had not been paid.  It turned out that Visa had decided to put a hold on her credit card, which in turn caused her to become the centre of attention for everyone within gawking distance of us.  Thankfully after a quick phone call we got everything sorted out and the crew released Colleen with her sparkling clean criminal record sheet still intact.



If that doesn't look disgusting, I don't know what does.



Now that the cruise was in the past, it was time for us to lug our backpacks across the city to the bus stop.  Luckily we had a few hours to kill before our bus ride to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which was a good thing as the two of us weren't moving too quickly with our 35-pound backpacks in temperatures that were approaching 40 degrees Celsius.  After much pissing and moaning (mostly from Colleen I might add!), we made it to the bus terminal where Colleen immediately sent me on a mission to find a magnet and post card to commemorate our visit to Singapore.  I figured this would be easy given the fact that we were near a major transportation hub.  I was severely wrong.  I marched around for over an hour trying to find her these God-forsaken mementos.  Let me just say she better not ever lose that magnet, cause I lost a lot of bodily fluids to track that fuckin' thing down!



Street feline trying to kill me!



By the time our bus arrived and started to load up a little after noon, I was looking forward to the air conditioning more than anything.  The bus had some of the most spacious accommodations  I have ever seen for this mode of transport and the seats even had some massage mechanism built into them (I couldn't figure out this technology).  The bus ride itself was pretty uneventful, minus the fact that we had to get out with all of our luggage at the Singapore-Malaysia border to clear customs.  This was definitely a hassle bitch, but on the positive side Colleen added a couple of stamps to her passport which excites her almost as much as topless pictures of Charlie Hunnam.  The bus ride ended up taking a couple of extra hours as the traffic was quite heavy due to the Chinese New Year holiday and the fact that we had our daily dose of torrential rainfall. 



I'm not making any promises.





We made it to Malaysia!



 

Arriving in KL (Kuala Lumpur) a little later than we had anticipated, the bus dropped us outside of Berjaya Times Square.  Berjaya happens to be one of the twenty largest shopping malls in the world and its vast amenities include over one thousand stores, a multi-level movie theatre, a bowling alley, an amusement park, an archery range, and a ton of other stuff that I can't be bothered trying to recollect at this exact moment.  Our hotel (Furama Bukit Bintang) was supposedly located only a couple of minutes away, although it probably took us closer to half an hour to find as we were extremely disoriented and overwhelmed by our new surroundings. 

 

Colleen seems unimpressed with one of the largest shopping malls in the world.



...But Colleen they have a roller coaster.
 

Getting in the spirit for the Chinese New Year.

Some interesting things I observed in my first couple of hours in Malaysia:

1) Since it is a Muslim country many of the women wear head gear.

2) The actual percentage of "Malay" people is quite low.  In fact Chinese immigrants make-up 30% of the population, while Indian immigrants make-up a further 15%.

3) I was ignorant to how widely spoken English was.  Just about everyone spoke English and the signs for all the stores (at least in Kuala Lumpur) were in English.

4) Our hotel room had an arrow on the ceiling pointing towards Mecca.  You know, just in case I need to make a pilgrimage.

5) It is not the easiest country to find a beer in! Because of the fact that it is a Muslim country (albeit a liberal one), all of the convenience stores that did sell beer would have signs on the refrigerator doors stating that Muslims were not allowed to purchase it.  But what if the Muslim wears a disguise?

 

Once we got settled in to our room, we headed over to the mall for some good old fashioned Western food.  Unfortunately for us we decided to eat at Nando's, where we received some of the worst service I have ever seen.  I had read that most restaurants in Malaysia tack on a 10% service charge to your bill, so none of the staff seemed to give a fuck if you actually got served or not.  I mean, like 10-15 minutes to grab me a Diet Coke that was ten feet away.  And it's not like they were busy, they just truly did not give a fuck.  We would discover in the coming days that this was par for the course in just about every restaurant  around and my patience (or lack thereof) was being thoroughly tried.

All those people and their damn "Paking".

~Brentski~

Day 81- So You're Saying That Wearing My Man Thong And Nipple Piercings To The Shopping Mall In A Muslim Country Is Frowned Upon? Bummer.

She loves the towel animal more than me!

In keeping with the theme of shitty food, our room service breakfast arrived at 9am and we decided to make the most of our free balcony upgrade and enjoy our breakfast out there.  Thankfully, eating your food overlooking the ocean on a lovely day can make bland, tasteless food seem not as bad as it really is.

That morning we had pulled into port at Melaka, Malaysia, our sole port of call on the two-night cruise.  There was nowhere for the cruise ships to dock so the ship just anchored a few hundred meters off shore and they boated us in on smaller vessels.  Immediately upon disembarking the boat, Colleen and I realized that we had not taken into account the fact that we were in a Muslim country (this was a first for both of us, so it was an excusable offence in our minds).  Colleen was wearing short shorts and a shirt with no sleeves, both of which are frowned upon.   She did get a few stares here and there, although we did see other women who were dressed more "inappropriately" and the fact that Melaka is heavily touristed meant that she would probably not be stoned to death.  Well at least not today.



Colleen in her "slutty" Malaysian attire.
 



This guy apparently went to the "Brent Moreau School Of Working".



With my "slutty-by-Malaysian standards" girlfriend in tow, we headed to the local shopping mall to try and grab some local currency from one of the bank machines.  We tried at least six different machines, but alas our Canadian debit and credit cards were apparently not welcome.  They must have been warned that Colleen was coming!  Thankfully we had a bit of American cash on us that we were able to trade in for some  Malay ringgit (what they call their funny money).  Now that we had our pockets lined, I did what I always do: force Colleen to hit the tourist trail with me!  We hit up some big spinning wheel thing that takes you a few stories up for views of the city.  Supremely underwhelming if I say so myself.  Next I dragged Colleen to the Maritime Museum where we I got educated on the history of Europeans in the area and naturally the forced enslavement of the local people that followed.  Our last couple of stops so that we could officially say "we saw Melaka" were some church and fort that had been built on a hill.  Typical tourist stuff, and by this point all Colleen cared about was getting out of the heat and visiting the not-so local A&W for an ice cold root beer.  I'm still not sure what Allah thinks of A&W.  I'll ask him next time I see him.



The big wheel thingie. We shall just call it that.


Overlooking the city from said wheel.

Colleen not so pumped up for the Maritime Museum.
 

Future husband perhaps?

Old fort overlooking the city. No doubt used by white people in their enslavement of the locals.

Back on the ship, we hit up the lunch buffet before testing out the mini putt course and rock climbing wall.  I had never had either of these on a ship before, so it was something new and exciting, although I fear that Colleen's career as a rock climber stopped that afternoon (see: quitter!).  Because of the previous nights' debacle in the main dining room, we decided to fork out a few extra bucks and have dinner in one of the specialty restaurants.  My lovely girlfriend treated me for Valentine's Day, which was still a week away, but hey I wasn't about to complain.  The steakhouse was not overly busy, but again there were some issues with the service.  After being seated our server did not come over for ten minutes (again, the place was near empty).  It took them over twenty minutes to bring our bottle of wine and in fact our appetizers arrived before we got the wine.  I will say though, it wasn't all bad and the food itself was terrific.  So terrific in fact that we both felt like Humpty Dumpty afterwards.  After dinner we took in the nightly entertainment, which was standard cruise ship far as I can remember!  Since it was only a two night cruise we wanted to go out and experience some of the nightlife, or lack thereof on the ship, but alas we deemed ourselves immobile and spent the rest of the evening watching "Jerseylicious" on the boob tube.  Pathetic, I know.



Putt putt all-star.

My nuts were not feeling so good at this point.



We'll just say Colleen made it all the way to the top...
 



We opted for the private dinner on the second night of our cruise after the previous night's debacle.



Scoping out the action on the ship.



Chinese people sure love singing and dancing!



~Brentski~