Garlic Cheese Naan Bread

Penang is an island just off the coast of mainland Malaysia. I got here today from another island off the mainland called Lankowi, best known for it being duty free! Needless to say Id spent the last 3 days in a drunken stupor with intermitent periods of food coma from all the tempting buffet style food stands. They lay all this amazing food on a buffet line and hand you a plate of rice to add what you like. So after getting at least a little piece of everything to try they somehow figure out how much you owe and it ends up being abooooouuuuuuut 2bucks. Then you wash it down with a REAL fruit juice like watermelon or papaya juice with ice, that might add an extra 50cents. But tonight I walked into an Indian restaurant that was buzzing with people. I asked the waiter just for a piece of garlic naan bread, if youve never had naan bread before then it sucks to be you :) Its an Indian bread that is similar to pita bread and they fire roast it in a tall cylinder looking ceramic thing by slapping it on the side of the cylinder. So I asked for one garlic naan take-away/to-go, somehow he got out of that two garlic cheese naans, which was fine by me after takin a look at these things, and they come with some kinda curry soup, to dip in maybe, im not sure but I did. Soooo goood with big chunks of garlic and some kind of cheese. So, yes, i ate both of them in one inhale at the table i was waiting at and didnt waist time walking them home.
I read that Peneng is a great spot for food because of all the ships passing through dropping off curries and other spices. So having a hotel situated between a China town and little India should work out juuust fine. All i gotta do now is figure out what to do between meals.

Curry Mee O My O

Curry Mee is an amazing soup unique to Malaysia. Mee means noodles, it has Hokkien Mee (egg noodles) and it also comes with thin mee-hoon which is rice vermicelli AKA really thin white rice noodles. It has a spicy curry base that also has lemon grass, garlic and coconut milk among other things. Added to the mix are prawns, cuttlefish, bean sprouts, chicken, and cockles (little shellfish).
From what Ive tried it is the best in Penang, there is this little man and what I assume to be his wife working nonstop from a little cart on the side of the street, dishing out these amazing bowls of curry goodness.

Thailand

Just got to Thailand (Jan 2010) and the bus system is crazy, they pack way too many people in a bus, they stop for random reasons, ie picking up fruit and vegies to transport for freinds, they dont susually speak any english so there is no explanation what your stopping for and then they also stop at tour shops so they can try and get you to stay at a freinds hotel or a freinds taxi or a freinds boat ride. One guy had the music blaring from his D-lux system with equilizer that he made special adjustments for each individual song. I waited at a stop with a huge many groups of tourists on a kind of bus layover, they pick you up at your hotel early then drop you off to wait for an undertermined amount of time then you wait attentivally for your destination to be called then you get cramed into a van w/luggage, i was proping a piece of luggage up with my head on the way here. etc etc etc This place is great! Its REAL, its not all prepackaged, you gotta stay awake so you dont get hit by a motorbike going the wrong way when crossing the road or so you dont get knocked in the head from falling luggage.

If the sweet spicy smell of Thai food was any less amazing then it might not cut through the random sewage smells that wonder around reminding me of socks boiled in piss.

Nauseous winding bus rides after a (too) long night of drinking

Met up with some CSers in Krabi and went on a short trek to Tiger Temple. Its a huge limestone cave with statues and monks living areas. I climbed into one of the caves and found some monks exploring deep into the cave. I would have gone further but some bats started flying at me and the CSers where waiting for me so I left it at that. The little huts on stilts that the monks lived in had electricity ran up to washing machines and to their huts, I saw some on laptop computers! Times are a changin. Tons of monkeys everywhere at the entrance, one of the girls bought some fruit to feed them and as soon as she took it out they all rushed her. She threw out some of the fruit and hid the rest in her shirt. We got a couple of pics but its not easy cause they are quick little guys.
From there we went to Phuket (Patong Beach) to visit our friend Carlos who now lives in Thailand and owns a Mex food place and guest house. He owns a guesthouse and he showed us around a couple nights. There are Thai ladies all over looking for travelers to hit on in hopes of a sugar daddy. Carlos showed us some games they play to pass the time and just hang out. One was connect four, you know the game that stands up and you drop your pieces down the slots to get four in a row, Im pretty ding dang good and would have liked to try my talent against the experts but not this time. There was also this hammer and nail game (mear coincidence?) there are these hammers with a wedge end and a big slice of tree, you take turns hitting, one hit each, who ever nails it flush first, wins. The girl we played with was pretty damn good, she could finish it off in about two hits, while I missed a majority of time. Im sure it takes alot of practice to polish off a nail the quickest, actually Im not sure if thats good or bad. Patong is a crazy place. Known for the nightlife. Hadn't really gone out much till here. Main street with bar after bar after bar with lady boys everywhere. Some of them looked more lady then boy, which is kinda scarry. Most of the clubs stay open till like 6 in the mornin. Had a blast and met some really cool people that we wounded up hanging out with the next few days.

Ko Phi Phi was next, a really small island with lots of scuba diving, rock climbing, parties, and really great looking tourists with not a car in sight. Just a huge walking maze of shops, bars, restaurants, etc. Took a 1 day snorkling tour to surrounding islands which was really great. Even went to the beach they filmed "The Beach". But on that trip I saw some of the best snorkling!

There was some night time fire dancing shows with guys spinning sticks, jumping rope on fire, and some limboing (w/ the lite stick). They asked the audience to join in and some people I was with jumped in, I was tempted to join but I watched when the guy tourists tryed it, they would speed up and lift up the rope to make it more difficult for the guys. A couple of them landed on the lit rope and scrambled to get away from the fire. Not my thing without med insurance, but the participation bucket of mixed cheap alcohol was very tempting.

I moved to a dorm room for a few nights and it ended up being party central, I got woken twice in the same night by couples "quite wrestling". It was fun to party for a bit but there is hardly any culture there just parties and tourists. If you really like parties and beaches then this part of thailand is heaven. I think i got burned out with partying for the moment, which is too bad cause Ko Phi Phi is the place to do it. O well, cant have everything, so then I headed south back toward Kuala Lumpur island hopping.

Java (Indonesia)

Got to Java after a long ride by Bus/ferry/train and got into Yogyakarta, Java. Cool little city and much more forward thinking (from what Ive been told and read) then other parts of Java. I met a girl staying at the same hotel the second morning I was here and she told me all about suggestions for the rest of my trip. She was coming from the north of SE Asia down through all the places Ill be going so it seems that it will help out quite a bit. She was also traveling on her own so we decided to hang out for a couple of days to see the sights. We wondered around the streets people watching while we where being watched by either local "merchants"/hawkers calling out "hey mister, where you go?" "you need transport" or "batik" (more about batik later), or by locals gawking at you like a celebrity.



Later: Batik is the art of using wax on either cotton or silk in a pattern then dieing the fabric then wax then dieing, etc until it is completed. Really cool stuff but the question is where to get it and what is authentic??? The first day I was taken to a little shop by one of the hawkers, "trusting but verifying". He said it was the last day for the exhibit and that they would give me good price, heh. So I was met with tea and showed around, I was showed the whole process of how they where made and shown around the exhibit. Very nice work, I dnidnt really feel comfortable taking anything from them cause I knew i wasnt gonna buy anything, partly cause it was only my first day there and i needed to get an idea of the scams that this particular city had going. But of course they insisted and of course they where upset when i didnt buy anything. Anyways I was walking around the next day with another traveler and we got propositioned, by another guy, to go see a galary that was also ending that day. I thought we could give a go mostly to see if it was the same place, aaaaand it was, aaaaand they insisted on tea, aaaaand they haggled us insistently, again. Well that afternoon we found out by someone working at the post office that all the "galleries" where just places they resell the Batik that is made at the art research center (not sure what they are researching but whatever) so we go there and its paintings made by students (or so they say) with much lower prices then the galleries. We got a couple and they where well worth the price. So the next day we visit some palace and i guess there is an area around the palace that for whatever reason does not pay anything for their houses or taxes, so we found yet another place selling Batiks that was cheaper then the "research center" and of course they told us the same thing, they where the ones who really make them, they just buy Batik cheap from them and sell higher priced. The one time i actually saw anybody making a Batik painting was down some alley a lady with a stack of fabric making multiple, near identical prints. Im sure if i would have stayed any longer i would have found at least one more cheaper place to buy Batik. But none the less we got some great stuff for great prices.



We visited a really cool Buddhist temple and got treated like celebraties from all the asians on holiday trying to take pics with us. We met some cool locals along the way and on the return trip. One guy took us out to eat, on his dime! And he helped us with the language barrier to organise our future travel plans. Plenty of merits to earn a spot in my much sought after facebook "Friends" list (heh, yea right).



Got pretty sick for about 3-4 days with diarrhea and nausea and all, Im sure part of it was moving so much. The spanish girl helped out and it was nice because I couldnt stray far from the toilet!

Well as soon as I got better I was ready to go go go....

To Thailand!!!

Rough rider

I spent the roughest part of my traveling so far, took a van for an hour, cramped with smokers, took a big bus for 4 hours cramped with no leg room and my legs pinned in one position, then a ferry ride that was pretty cool, watch some grotesk japanise movie with a buncha kids, then a train ride, then waited for a train for 5 hours (wasnt too bad though, found hbo playing in the train operators office and they where ok with accomidating a white boy, but had to lay on the floor), train ride for 6 hours overnight in humid vinyl bench seat with no good way to sleep with always just not quite enough leg room. (you know when its humid and your skin is wet all the time and against vinyl it starts to hurt after a while just to touch it to anything). Then to another train, same seats, for another 6 hours during the hot humid morning, and this was all in "business" class! Economy your not even promised a seat! Would have been fine laying on the floor instead of that sticky vinyl. It was rough but now im in the island of Java, at Yogyakarta or jokja or something like that, sposta be a prettty cool spot, ill attempt that after a long day/nights sleep in my AC!!! Only 10$,. heh, suckers......