Malaysia Part 2: Quirky Langkawi

I saw more Poles in Malaysia [2, other than Kamil and Magda]
than I've seen in India so far [1].

Here’s the Part 2 post about my trip to Malaysia over New Year’s:

Quirky Langkawi:

So after a lovely time in Penang, Jocelyn and I headed over to Langkawi, an island known best for its beach resorts. Knowing we would spend New Year’s Eve there, we decided to pony up the money for a nicer resort for a night. Still on a student’s budget, we were limited to choices that didn't require paying an exorbitant extra fee for a mandatory New Year’s Eve gala, which left us with a place called Resorts World. Fairly removed from the main strip of resorts on the Southern half of the island, Resorts World really was a world unto its own, and a bit of a strange one, at that. There was nothing apparently wrong with the place at all, but everything felt a little… off. A massive complex, half the hotel seemed unoccupied. Its size along with its removed location gave it a strangely Hotel California-esque feel.

Resorts World, day...

... and night.

So with that in mind, we went off to our New Year’s Eve barbecue buffet on the boardwalk [see what I mean when I say the place was a little off?] not knowing quite what to expect. The invitation read like an invite to a college frat party, but for the fact that it didn't contain any Greek letters. It even advertised unlimited free wine and beer, and a happy hour… during which you could get more of the same free wine and beer, for free.
 As it turns out, the barbecue buffet spread was pretty impressive. Although it offered only one barbecue animal of indeterminate type [lamb?], there was a lot going on so our stomachs weren't empty by any means. Nor were our ears, on that note, because all throughout dinner, a local DJ supplied us with some great jams… had we been out at a club. Between him and the cover band [which consisted of a set of girls in go-go getups and an electric pianist], it was a weird selection for a group that consisted mostly of family reunion attendees and young couples with young children. At first, no one but an adorable ten-year-old dancing fiend was having any of it – the music or the New Year’s celebration goodies [read: glow sticks and masquerade masks] that the hotel provided us.

First photo of 2014!

But let the free alcohol flow and the dance floor runneth over. We rang in the New Year with a last-minute countdown at our table but afterward the dance party looked like so much fun that J and I couldn’t resist joining in. It had a very “my cousin’s wedding” feel to it, with the staffers and young hotel guests alike joining in on the fun for a while after midnight. Overall, it was a great, and amusing, way to ring in the New Year.

A water buffalo near the beach

As for other notable parts of our time in Langkawi, we got some QUALITY BEACH TIME in at a beach across from our second hotel there. As a beach baby at heart, this was a big deal for me. As I generally don’t really swim in the few beaches I’ve been to in India [due to pollution at beaches and what I personally would call restrictive swimwear/swimming norms], it was a big deal for me to get in some real beach time. Uncrowded, unpolluted, and quiet, this was one of the best beaches I've ever visited. And it came complete with a nearby path frequented by water buffalo. Who doesn't love water buffalo? Every one does [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltG37Bbx1qk].

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the cable car ride known as the SkyCab, or what I’d call the Nearly-Panic-Attack-Inducing-Scary-Ride-Up-An-Impossibly-Steep-Cliff. Whoever thought this was a good idea must have been sitting out in the sun for a little too long, because it was actually a terrifying ride. Granted, my friend was pretty much okay, but still…

No cable car ride is complete without

a display of wax hands for sale.

The good news is that it ended with a nice view of the sunset from the top of a little cliff, and not with a nice view of the tops of the trees below speeding towards us as we plummeted to our death. Totally worth it in the end, although we were almost left stranded taxi-less in the deserted theme park-like area built at the base of the SkyCab cliff. I guess it would have been better than being stuck in a cable car, though?

So scroll down for more cable car pics, and check back later this week for my final Malaysia update! 

We cabled up to that itty-bitty light at the top of the mountain on the right.

Malaysia Part 1: Tasty Penang

Hi!

I myself wasn't quite clear on where exactly Malaysia was before going.
Apparently I could have taken a car, but The Google told me there are tolls.

It has been a long time coming for a new blog post, and ironically, this one won’t even be about my time in Kolkata [Calcutta] teaching English in a local school. Rather, it’s about my recent travels to a place not only outside of Kolkata, but outside of India itself: Malaysia. 

 Before the start of my time in India back in June, I remember telling a college friend that I probably wouldn’t get to visit any other countries during my grant period as both my time and funds were limited. However, lucky am I to report that this is already my second time traveling in a new country outside of India during the past month [the first was in Sri Lanka, stories to come soon].

The streets of Penang [and our favorite stop for nutmeg juice]

Anyway, I had the time between Christmas and 6th January off from teaching, so I decided to spend it visiting a friend, J, who is currently doing research in Malaysia. J and I were in the same study abroad program that sent me to India the first time around [and to China, too], so the thought of travelling with her again after about two years was too exciting to pass up. Luckily my program agreed and approved my travel plans!

So first, I met J in Penang, a city which ranks eighth in terms of population size, but perhaps first in terms of charm. After spending three nights there, we jetted off to the popular beach resort island of Langkawi for two nights, and then finished off our trip in Melaka, another city complete with its own Old City area.

Tasty Penang: 

Jetty time

UNESCO World Heritage Site

   

So colorful!

J and I spent our days in a quirky area of the island known as Georgetown, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Although the area contains within itself another UNESCO World Heritage site, Chew Jetty, the biggest draws of this area were its many and varied food options [hence the nickname "Tasty Penang"], its adorable shops, and its art galleries. It was a good meeting point for us. Whereas J loved to plan our days so we would  be in the right places at the right times to try the best local foods, I never travel to eat; I eat merely to have enough energy to travel. So it was an eye-opening experience to travel with someone who cares about where she spends her food budget; I am certain I would not have tried half the dishes I did had it not been for her enthusiasm. Meanwhile, I served as an art-buying advocate, often reminding my friend that she was investing in her future when she bought artwork [which is an activity which frequently and rapidly drains my souvenir budget on trips].  Who can say no to that logic?

My memory of Penang will be filled with images of various street stall foods, including noodles, laksa [a kind of a fishy soupy dish and my least favorite of the trip and perhaps of all time], and dumplings. I got a chance to enjoy again some of my favorite Chinese dishes, including bao/pao [buns, typically filled with pork] at the first of many dim sum breakfasts and dan tat, flaky egg pastry cups. And I now have a new favorite drink: nutmeg juice. And a new favorite way of doing fast food: hawker centers. These are large, bustling centers filled with street food stalls, so you have many food options all in one place. [Options that I didn’t really take advantage of, as I was obsessed with the first Thai dish I tried there.]

C is for Cat. Also, Creepy.

It will also be difficult to forget our beloved Armenian Street, which we walked so often, it felt like home before we left. On weekend nights, Armenian Street awakens and hosts a lively spattering of street stalls and street performers. Oh, and also a creepy cat-covered parade float that glows ominously from a dark corner of a wide alley.

MONSTER CAT

Cats, although sort of a city symbol for another city in Malaysia, appeared frequently around Penang. From the smallest key chain to the MOST MONSTROUS OF MURALS, cats were popular here. Interestingly, many other murals made their way onto the walls of Penang’s buildings only a few years back; they now are a major sight to see for tourists. Many of these scenes speak to peoples lives in Malaysia, including those of the bicycle rickshaw drivers and children, for example.

 

The most famous of Penang's murals,
a pair of kids posing with a pair of kids.

Perhaps the most famous mural depicts two small children riding a real, three-dimensional bicycle fastened to the wall beneath them. Despite the fact that the mural is a fairly new installation, it is fading and the bicycle, too, looks like it has seen better days. One can’t help but wonder if this speaks to how what seems like the previously quiet life on Penang’s old cobblestone streets is giving way to the hustle and bustle that accompanies an increasingly large tourist presence in the area. 

 

China House's awesome wall "graffiti"

Oh hey.

 As previously mentioned, the Penang tourist scene has resulted in the appearance of quirky art and coffee shops in the Georgetown area. Our favorite one, China House, even sold both coffee and art, and also some of the best cake either of us has come across in the past few months. And it also provided us with the amusement of a pretty awesome localish cover band one of the multiple times we stopped by. I love and miss live music, so that was a great night! [And did I mention the cake?]

 At the risk of overloading this post with info and pics, I will finish up here for now and include the rest of my Malaysia stories in a Part 2 post.

[As is popular for the young’uns of India to say,] 

Tata,

Rach

Disneyland India

Back-blogging as I just recently regained internet access, but I hope to be current in a few days:

A panicked "last shot" of sunshine on
the way to the airport in Delhi

Onward and upward... or eastward, at least - that's right, I officially moved onto my new home base, Kolkata! The fifteen of us dispersed after our initial three days in Delhi - five moved south to Chennai, five (including me) went to Kolkata, and the remaining five stayed on for their assignment in Delhi. Splitting up was a strange situation - between the initial orientation in D.C. earlier this summer and the Delhi orientation, it's safe to say we felt like a unit, and breaking up that unit was not a particularly fun experience. Also, the thought of resettlement (or settlement, rather) was still a stressful one, not in the least because a few of us Kolkatans remembered during the ride over to the airport that the Delhi sunset may have been the last one we'd see in months (or so we feared) due to MONSOON. Monsoon season strikes much of India to varying degrees, but it seems to leave Delhi relatively dry. And as a particularly big fan of Vitamin D, I was a bit concerned about the rain situation in Kolkata before arrival... but more on monsoon in a future post.

What doesn't Wikipedia have these days?
[For reference, New Delhi is in the middle of North
India, northwest of me/the red dot on the map.]

The trip to Kolkata went smoothly. Notable, though, were my expectations, particularly those I voiced to my Fulbright friends in preparation for our trip to our new hometown. Of the five of us Kolkata ETAs (English Teaching Assistants), I was the only one that had been to Kolkata before. And in my infinite(ly limited) wisdom, I felt the need to share these two tidbits of information about Kolkata to my friends: 1] that the airport leaves A LOT to be desired (in that it's old, run-down, and a little sketchy), and 2] that the city is EXTREMELY crowded, and the traffic situation is insane here.

With images of my last trip in mind, I was poised at the window upon landing, ready to point out the teeny airport of my memory as soon as it came into view. So, shocked was I when our puddle-jumper finally turned on the tarmac, revealing a nice, large, glass-encased terminal! Seriously. I'm certain whoever coined the phrase "I couldn't believe my eyes" must have gone through a similar experience. My friends joked that I must have very high standards if I considered this airport run-down. My response? I'm pretty sure I further insisted they just wait until they saw the intensity of Kolkata traffic... which only ended up being another false claim! Our plane got in late so by the time we cabbed it to our hotel, it was just about midnight and Kolkata looked like nothing but a ghost town. There was nearly no one on the streets (but for the people that sleep there, a permanent fixture on a lot of Kolkata streets). I'm pretty sure I even saw some papers blow across the road as if they were tumbleweed. It was so insanely quiet, it was eerie.

View from my hotel window: night...

... and day.

I don't know why I was expecting otherwise, as I know Indian cities quiet down at night like nowhere else. The vivacity of an urban street in the evening versus that of one at midnight is literally as different as night and day. But as I was travelling alone the last time I was in Kolkata, I didn't make it a habit to go out at night so I think I never really realized how radically different a place it is then. Nothing hits you quite as hard as rare moments of silence after hours (or weeks) of the constant humdrum of a city that contains some 5 million people (and what seems like a million cars with functional horns); the silence hit me hard on that initial ride through the city that would soon become home.

Street view of the scene outside my
hotel room window [see above]

But those moments, as all, were fleeting. Just as quickly as I lost my credibility for "lying" to my friends about Kolkata's streets and airport, I regained it back (or most, at least) when the city's people woke up and emerged from its nooks and crannies, repopulating and re-bustling the streets. And also when one of the city's people told us that Kolkata just completed the construction of a shiny new airport terminal. So phew, I wasn't going crazy after all.

Oberoi Grand's grand chandelier 

It's impossible really to describe how crazy/lively/ busy/crowded Kolkata streets are. I've retroactively gathered that I didn't know the meaning of crowded until I got to India (and later, China). But an even stranger feeling than experiencing the crazy streets is experiencing them through a window - particularly through the window of the nicest hotel in Kolkata. That's right, Fulbright put us up at a 5-star business hotel that makes it on the list of places to see in many travel guides about this city. It's called the Oberoi Grand Hotel (one of many Oberois around this part of the world), but I began calling it Disneyland India because of the weird, sheltered impression it began to give us of India as we got comfortable there. (All in all, we spent about 10 days in Oberois in Delhi and Kolkata.) Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful place; I could easily have stayed there for much longer (on someone else's dime, preferably). But it was so intensely odd to be in my cushy hotel room, looking out at the street below at a guy sleeping on a mat on his bicycle trailer right outside my window [see photo above of the view from my hotel room at night for some idea of that scene]. I must say, though, that people-watching in the hotel's lobby was a fun experience - the clientele was an odd mix of businessmen, pilots, wealthy Indian couples, American teachers (us and another group), and the occasional young woman in a crazy party outfit (an infrequent sight around town).

That's all for now, folks. Tune in next time for a post about apartment-hunting, our first outings in Kolkata, and settling-in stories.
Bhalo thakben ("be well" in Bangla),
Rach

Déjà Vu in Delhi

Back-blogging as I recently regained internet access, hope to be current soon: 

Well, Delhi was a whirlwind of an experience; the threeish days (give or take some jetlag recovery time) went by super quickly. With no more initial orientation events to go, we were allowed a morning of scheduled sightseeing at some of Delhi's biggest tourist locations, both of which I got to see at the beginning of my study abroad stint last time I was here in early 2012. Regardless, here's a gloss on the two sites we went to see, as they are both a part of India's interesting history (and both UNESCO World Heritage sites - love collecting those!):

Look vaguely like Taj Mahal?
Taj was also built by the Mughals.

The first, Humayun's Tomb, is just that - the tomb of Humayun, the second Mughal emperor. Humayn reigned over what eventually amounted to over 1 million square kilometers under his rule, which spanned about 20 years in the mid-1500s. The Mughals were a group of Central Asian Turks, direct descendants of Genghis Khan, who presided over much of North India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan between the 1520s and mid-1800s. Their influence was immense; I learned that much while I was in Rajasthan (my "home state" during my last stay in India), which was never really unified until under Mughal rule. 

The great lattices that cover the "windows" of the mausoleum.

Anyway, Humayun's tomb is the first garden-tomb to be built in India, which makes it a good example of the Persian influence on the Mughals. It also has several Persian Islamic architectural details, including the Qur'anic script chiseled into several archways in the mausoleum itself and inner chambers arranged symmetrically around the large central double-dome. And apparently, it housed many Muslim refugees during the tumultuous Partition of India in the 1940s (by which Pakistan and Bangladesh was formed), for which much restoration was later required when it became an Indian heritage site.

At least the Minar is taller than me.

The second location of our Delhi sightseeing adventure? Qutb Minar, a 238-foot tall minaret also located in modern Delhi. Minars (minarets) are a typical part of Islamic mosques; they're often used for the call to prayer and to serve as a visual reminder of the mosque's location for the community. This one is cool because it's the tallest in India, and also because it contains in its grounds both Islamic and Hindu elements. The Minar itself, although certainly an impressive structure, is almost too unwieldy to truly be appreciated. This is particularly true if it's even a slightly sunny day and you're not wearing sunglasses - I spent much of my time there crying; unfortunately they weren't tears of exultation. Whatever time I didn't spend crying, however, was spent talking a group of cousins that had come out to the Minar on a family trip. Of varying ages between 13-20, they were a fun bunch, and generally were pretty willing to try out a little English on us bideshi (foreigners). And I was a fan of the fact that I didn't tower over these kids in the photo we got with them as I've found I tend to do in pictures with native Asians.

A quick funny story from the Minar: I asked my fellow Fulbright friend Christine to take a quick photo of me near a set of columns I like, knowing that I had gotten one somewhere in the area during my last visit. I particularly like these columns because each one in unique; they each depict different Hindu gods and figures. When it came time to snap the photo, I was dissatisfied with the original column I had chosen, and also the next two (there were people lurking in the backgrounds of each of the proposed positions!) So finally, we settled on one and Christine took a photo. Lo and behold, 18 months after my original trip (and probably nearly a year since I had seen photos from said trip), and it turns out that I ended up choosing the exact same location for my columnar photo opp as last time! At least I'm consistent (if consistently forgetful)?

I promise it's not a "spot the differences" game.

All in all, it was really odd to walk through these sites again. It was a strange experience revisiting a place I didn't necessarily expect to have the opportunity to see again, never mind doing so a mere 18 months after my original trip. But at the time of that first Delhi visit (a week into my first trip to India), I apparently still wasn't fully aware of the strength this country's allure and its effect on my plans. So I find myself here again, in so far what has felt like an eerily familiar situation, but I know I'm about to be hit with a whole lot of newness - what a frightening and exciting thought!

Bhalo thakben ("be well" in Bangla),

Rachel

GUESS WHO'S BACK??

It's official; I'M BACK! After a fourteen hour red eye from JFK (not to mention the eight months of wait time since I submitted the Fulbright application), I landed in Delhi on Tuesday evening. Certainly, the sleeplessness and restlessness associated with a long overnight flight makes for a surreal post-flight day, but my whole time in Delhi has felt very surreal - that is, until a few hours ago when we took OUR FIRST AUTO(RICKSHAW) RIDE this trip. Finally, we left the comforts and confines of our oddly Disneyland-esque, grand, and sheltered hotel and got to experience a little tiny bit of Delhi as we made our way out for our first unsupervised dinner trip. Albeit short, that auto ride was great: A) because I got to experience it through newbies' eyes, as it was the first auto ride for the friends that I rode with, and B) because it got me really and truly excited to be back. I feel it now in a way that I didn't before, for whatever reason.

By and large, the flight went well. Two movies and a long conversation with a Fulbright friend and her new local seat buddy later, we landed in Delhi up one Indian tentative wedding invitation already!! (Fingers crossed that it works out for us!) We're here in Delhi for Fulbright orientation, which is not a particularly noteworthy experience - it's been a lot of preparatory lectures on teaching, culture, and safety. What I perhaps should do, however, is take a step back and say a few words about Fulbright:

US Senator William J. Fulbright founded the Fulbright program in 1946 as part of a diplomacy project to promote mutual understanding between Americans and people of other countries after World War II. To my knowledge, the U.S. has been sending Fulbrighters  of some capacity to India for quite a few decades now, since Fulbright's early years. As a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, I'll be an English Teaching Assistant (read: English teacher... not assistant) at a school here in Kolkata for the next nine months.

But first of all, when I get to Kolkata I'll spend the first month getting oriented (believe me, it may in fact take that long) and learning Bangla, the regional language of my state of residence, West Bengal. (It's the same language that's spoken in Bangladesh, which was once a part of India, and a few other small Indian states in the area like Tripura [although regional accents/dialects may be cause for some variation here and there].) Hopefully it goes well!

More on Delhi sight-seeing to come!

Bhalo thakben (or "be well" in Bangla),

Rach

Calcutta Capers - One Post Down, Many to Come!

In five days, I leave for Calcutta (also/more recently called Kolkata, a name which I will also use), where I will be teaching English as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant for nine months. I will be updating this blog as regularly as possible (I promise!), so you can stay current on my travels and daily life in Kolkata.

Any blog entry posted under (or prior to) this one refers to my time in India in early 2012, including my brief stint in Kolkata itself; so any post above this one will be a current one.

Happy reading!
Peace,
Rachel

Bristol Press article (thanks, Steve Collins!): http://www.bristolpress.com/articles/2013/06/19/news/doc51c12047e60aa153635631.txt
Villanova press release: http://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/media/pressreleases/2013/0506-1.html