360 in 365 – Joachim voyage autour du monde

Malaysia, Singapore and I know I’m late.

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.