Siphandon, Lao.

I stayed about five or six days in Coron, so I didn’t have much time to go anywhere else. BUt I had fun. Snorkelling, diving, going up the mountain with a friend and some cold San Miguel beers to celebrate the first 6 month of my trip in front of the sunset, and then going back up again for sunrise, and go all over town to see when was the boat to leave. I didn’t find it so I took a plane, but it was fun.

Coron, on Busuanga island, in the Calamian Islands archipelago, northern Palawan.

A few thousands inhabitants, some diving centers, and if you look well, a lodge with rooms at 150 pesos (3 US dollars). Coron isn’t known for beaches or crazy nights out : if you want to have fun, you’ve got to know how to play pool, or you’ve got to have filippino friends to drink Matador brandy or Ginebra San Miguel.

In the daytime, it’s something else : for 650 pesos you can go island hopping, from paradise island to shallow reef with incredible fish, you can also go snorkelling in a lake and see barracudas, or dive in japanese WWII wrecks. Lots do do during the day.

But at night…

… there’s pool.

Now go to bed, I’ve got some work to do and a bottle of Ginebra San Miguel.

So I have some troubles with my netbook : the power supply is dying. I’m on a public computer without all my french accents. Zis iz ‘orrible! Ze worst ssing ever!

But yeah, It’s all right cause I planned to spend these three weeks without a computer, just a light bag, for my adventures on paradise islands near Coron and Palawan, and in the North of Luzon Island, the historical center of Tagalog culture… so yeah, all my stuff will be in a locker with a lock and I’ll go with my sandals on adventures!

And I’ll take care of the postcards, I’ve been very late in February, so lots of things to do! Don’t worry, sponsors. I still love you, you’ll just have to wait a little bit for your postcard :)

You first hear the percussions and gongs from the street corner, and when you get there, past the little crowd, you can see them : the New Year dragons, dancing on a doorstep to bring wealth to the home. During the Lunar New Year week, dragon dancers troupes are paid by chinese families to come perform for luck and prosperity.

Malaysia has a big Chinese minority. In every major city there’s a Chinatown and you can hear hakka (Hokkien dialect) and Cantonese (from Guangzhou), and you really get a feeling you’re back in China, lah!

Neighbors came from all around to see the dances, the yellow or white dragons jumping on pillars two meters high following the crazy rythm of drums and cymbals. And at the end, kids give the dancers a red envelope with money inside, you know, to bring luck and wealth. Right, why wouldn’t you offer money to bring more money?

So yeah here in Kota Kinabalu, New Year’s week is over, but people are late. It’s blurry and contrasty because my 800iso isn’t so great.

For the last month, I travelled almost exclusively with some friends : a frenchman from Normandy who played Brassens on Thai beaches, the sweetest japanese-argentinian girl ever who likes to go to museums and discuss philosophy, a student from Toulouse who likes parapente (my thesaurus says it’s also an english word), and his two friends who work in Kuala Lumpur… My days were therefore filled ; and I don’t find time to care about things of the Internet, even if I still spend some time on it.

Of course, I’m not saying it’s my friend’s fault, but it’s sometime hard to have a day off and say “ok mate, piss off, I got some bloody important things to do now”. So yeah, not only I don’t write my blog anymore, but there’s also the postcards problem. I don’t want to hide nothin’, I’m 2 or 3 weeks late on the drawings/souvenirs/things I have to send to people who helped me for my project. Not very serious is it? And then, I also don’t take pictures because I’m not satisfied of the images I make, because I’m tired in the morning so I can’t wake up, because of the Wii and the guy at the hostel who wanted his revenge on Wii Boxing. Once again, he bit the dust. Best hostel ever, they have the Wii.

I’m going to make a parenthesis here. It’s not my habit to speak about the places I stay in. But well, when I have a good experience, I guess I can say nice things about them, it’s the least I can do… If you ever go to Singapore and look for a budget accomodation, go check A Beary Good Hostel, in Chinatown, just outside of the A exit of the subway. It’s a new hostel, and I mean, new, I was the 3rd client to check in, ever. On the first day it still smelled paint! But the odor went away! The dormitory is confortable (perhaps a bit too cold in the nights, the AC is sometimes playing tricks) The staff is lovely. I mean, really incredible… A brother and his sister run the place, and they really care about their hosts. It’s not the kind of “I don’t give a shit as long as you pay NOW” staff you have in some hostels in Little India. It’s people who’ll go with you to the post office or to the best Dim Sum place in Chinatown if you want to know the way, just because, yeah, they’re basically awesome. And there’s Nutella in the free morning breakfast. I mean, isn’t it pure awesomeness? And I know what you’re thinking, but no! they didn’t pay me to write that parenthesis. They just gave me Nutella.

Anyways, I’m going to travel more alone soon, and it’s going to be like vacations in my trip. I’ll be able not to bore my friends to death with my talks about how she’s so awesome and the things I should do instead of doing nothing and things like that.

So I spent the 3 last weeks between Malaysia and Singapore. It was nice. I took a few pictures but they’re not very beautiful. And my film camera has a little problem I couldn’t see when I bought it in Bangkok… I can still use it, yeah, but it’s not really practical.

Penang is an island on the Indian Ocean just a few hundred meters away from the Malay coast. There’s a nice little town, called Georgetown, an old Brittish port with a Chinatown, a Little India and mosques everywhere. It’s peacefull. You just have to let yourself wander in the streets, cross an avenue and see gifts for the Chinese New Year instead of Tamil music stores or saree boutiques. And there’s also a beach so it’s nice.

Then, the Cameron Highlands, a lovely region filled with mountains and tea plantations, but a tad too touristy. And too much of the land is covered with greenhouses to grow strawberries, the pride of the region. The other pride of the region is the jungle, where they bring tourists by carloads to see the things you see in the jungle. It was nice enough, but the weather wasn’t really friendly… too bad.

The plan was to go then in the real jungles, but my friend from Normandy had a problem with his Indian visa, so we had to wait one week in Kuala Lumpur. We had the birthday of a russian, a visit to the Islamic Arts Museum (a really incredible place, you have to visit it next time you go to Kuala Lumpur, ok?) with a special exhibition by Steve McCurry, and also a visit to the contemporary arts museum, where one of the artists told us about his astral travels, and how butter-tea-drinking monks ruling the world told him the best thing possible : “You’re doing fine”.

After one week of KL, I went to Singapore. Chinese New Year in Chinatown, with all of China in the streets of Chinatown. Last time I saw so many people was during the National Holiday Celebrations of the 60th Birthday of St. Mao and the PRC, on Tian-An’-Men square, in Beijing, on oct.2 2009.

Singapore is awesome if you need to eat and want to do it with high quality cuisine. All of the best regional specialities of China can be found… Dim Sum from Xi’an, spicy stuff cooked with spices from Sichuan, Beijing Duck, Hui spicy bbq meat on sticks and so many more things… You can aslo find some south-indian cuisine or malay or thai restaurants. And everything’s cheap. 7 euros for the most incredibly somptuous dim sum EVER, that’s cheap. I know now I should have gone to Xi’an and eat there, it would have been better and cheaper, but still. Singapore’s great for food from all around Asia. And I also wish to commit to this blog the fact that the climate in Singapore is particularly joyful, and allows the young ladies of the city to participate to the happiness factor of the whole city in a positive way by showing off their legs, thanks to ingenious pieces of clothing called shorts. The name of this piece of bottom equipement is aptly named, and from my careful observation and calculations, is just enough to cover what is illegal to show off in the street. If parisian girls were to wear this kind of stuff and have their legs that bare, the net happiness quotient would rise dramatically.

Next step, return to Malaysia, but this time in Borneo, in the province of Sabah, the city is Kota Kinabalu. By far, the city with the most komikal “K”s in its name.

On the occasion of the last day of the year!