Room with a View!!

As promised I'm putting some captions.

All of these pictures are from my mid-semester break. I travelled to the rainforest and Kuala Lumpur. The highlights were walking through the canopy of the rainforest (5om above ground, and it went on for 500m!) and the Chinatown night market in Kuala Lumpur.

During the day in Chinatown, there are tons of booths out with basically the same wares that are available at the night market. The main difference is the night market is actually on the street, and their prices are unlisted. So a smart shopper could look at the prices during the day so they wouldn't get hoodwinked at night. Here is an example conversation (paraphrased) between me (henceforth "Me") and a night market guy hawking t-shirts (henceforth "NMG"):

NMG: Hello! Friend! Hi! (he steps in front of me) You want t-shirt?
Me: Yeah, I guess.
NMG: OK OK come look! Hey mate, hey amigo!! Where you from?
Me: Canada.
NMG: Oh! Canada! Special price for you! (I took this to mean a higher price than normal)
Me: How much for this sweatshirt?
NMG: I give you my best price, 90 Ringgits (about $30CAD).
Me: Oh, that's okay then (then I start to walk away).
NMG: Ok wait wait! I give you even better price, 80 Ringgits! (I am still walking)
NMG: 79 Ringitts! Best price!
NMG: Ok, fine, lah, how much you want it for??
Me: I'll give you 30 Ringitts.
NMG: No way! No profit that way!!! (he turns away)
Me: Everywhere else sells them for 30 Ringitts.
NMG: But I have better quality. Look at my quality!
Me: It's the same quality everywhere in the night market.
NMG: Okay, okay, 30 Ringitts.
Me: Actually, it doesn't really fit very well, I'm going to keep looking...
NMG: Okay, you want 25 Ringitts?
Me: Okay, fine.

Phew! Repeat that for several times per item. It always panned out like this unless you didn't buy something, in which case they acted either really angry or hurt. But it was kind of fun once I got used to it.

Anyway, this is the view from Petronas Tower. In the pictures below you can see the Skybridge between the two towers - that's where we were.

Another view:
Cia, Tyler and I on the Skybridge:

Kuala Lumpur!!

Pic of the sleeping berth on the train I had from Jerantut (near the rainforest) to KL:
KL Sentral Station (where the buses and trains all meet):
View of Chinatown from near the Wheeler's guest house where we stayed:
Petronas Towers (we were up 41 floors in the Skybridge in the middle):
Petronas again:

Radical Rainforest!!

View from the boat on the 3-hour trip up to the little town of Kuala Tahan, which was by the rainforest entrance:
Another river picture, this time at the swimming area in the rainforest:
Kuala Tahan:
Some delicious friends that decided to show up overnight in the hostel:
On the canopy-walk above the forest:

Teman Nagara and Kuala Lumpur

Hello!

The mid-semester break starts tomorrow and goes until next Thursday! So you guessed it, I'm going away!

I leave Friday night on a night-train to get to Jerantut, a smallish town in the middle of Malaysia. Then I am cabbing to the ferry for 9am and taking a 3-hour boat ride up the river to get to the small town just outside the rainforest. P.S. the rainforest is is the national park of Malaysia, known as Taman Negara.

So Saturday afternoon I'll be trekking through all the leeches and trees. I think around Sunday night it'll be time to bus to KL (Kuala Lumpur) and I'll be there until Thursday, when I'll bus back home.

Booyeah! Again my cell phone should work, at least in Kuala Lumpur, but it might not. We'll see!

Mid-Autumn Festival

On Saturday I went down to Chinatown to check out the ongoing Mid-Autumn Festival. The big celebration isn't until the full moon (Sept. 18th) but there are still lots of things going on for the entire month, like lanterns!



There was also a bustling night market:


But the market closed at 10pm! So we went to Clark Quay, the trendy part of town:


There were lots of nice restaurants and clubs and bars. It was nice, as it all was on the waterfront. And there was lots of live music, and since everything was so open, you could hear everything on the sidewalks.


Booyeah!

Har Par Villa

Har Par Villa was a tourist destination that showed Chinese mythology through lots of statues. A big part of it was the journey through the 10 Stages of Chinese Hell (there are apparently actually 18, but this exhibit only showed 10). There are incredibly gruesome consequences for bad behaviour; it was quite graphic. For example, the penalty for rumour-mongering is either a) your tongue is pulled out, or b) you are thrown into boiling oil.

Below: Ox-Head and Horse-Face, the guardians of Hell who take your soul to be judged:

But the rest of the garden didn't always make sense. Like the following vignette. ???

Monkey Bizzness

I share a warm embrace with my new monkey friend! This was at Har Par Villa, near the university.

More to follow!

...(C)

Singapore Botanic Garden

Last weekend I went with Cia and Seung to the Singapore Botanic Garden, which is also the home to the National Orchid Garden.

It was a nice little excursion, despite the fact that we couldn't find the right bus stop so we decided to take a cab. But the cab driver thought we said we wanted to go to the "Chinese Garden", despite saying several times that our destination was the "Botanic Garden". So we ended up at the very edge of the earth, or at least the very edge of Singapore, which really isn't that far from the rest of Singapore, as the city isn't very big. But we had to take a bus, then MRT (like our Skytrain) then another cab to get to the garden. Phew!

It was interesting to see the gardens as I am using them in a case study for one of my courses, Changing Landscapes of Singapore. The case study looks at the use of nature in Singapore, and how nature is used for the betterment and development of the nation, rather than for conservation or nature preservation. For example, the main "goal" of the garden is to be known worldwide as a tourist destination, and all of the natural "green lungs" of Singapore have been transplanted and are man-made - little of it is truly natural. But more on that in another blog post, here are some pictures:

WAT'Z Upp Y000?

Just a quick update of what's up:

1) Group projects! As there is much more of an emPHAsis on Continuous Assessment instead of just a midterm/final format, there is always some fun assignment or two! But it's hard to juggle so many schedules! I have 5 classes, each with a group project that has started. And the groups are from 4-7 members in size. Assuming an average group of 5 members, with 4 other members per group (besides me) * 5 groups is 20 different schedules! That's CRAZY.

2) Supper. Mmmm starting this week the Hall started serving supper. I know you are probably thinking...wha??? They didn't use to serve an evening meal. Well, they did. But it was "dinner" from 6-8. Supper refers to a late meal, you can go and buy something from anytime between 10.30pm and 1.30am. That's CRAZY. They have lots of tasty treats too, like pancakes and chicken naan, which is basically a McChicken in a naan instead of a bun.

3) Western Food. Since we're on the subject of food, let me describe to you the standard "Western meal" we get about once a week on the ol' meal plan:
- french fries (unsalted)
- cabbage or mixed vegetables from the freezer
- a piece of white bread spread with margarine and folded in half (this one is key)
- fried chicken or fried fish, heavy on the batter
- a 5+ tbsp. dollop of mayonnaise on the fried chicken or fried fish (I ignzzre this for the most part)

Needless to say it is quite the treat! Well to be honest I prefer the Chinese food.