Kuala Lumpar and Penang

Thaipusam at Waterfall Temple in Penang. He's carrying a gift up to the temple.

Good Hindus can tolerate a lot of pain. Each bell is attached to a metal hook which goes into the chest and back of the worshiper. Sometimes these hooks are pulled by a string from a friend that follows behind...Most of these people have long metal piercings through the cheeks and tongue as well.

An ais kacang at Gurney Drive. It's got shaved ice, rosewater, corn, jelly, kidney beans...

Fried oysters with a chilli dipping sauce, and sugar cane juice, also at Gurney Drive.

Temple in Penang.

9 hr train ride from Kuala Lumpar (KL) to Penang (Butterworth, actually). Malaysia's got many beautiful mountains.

typical street scene. this one's in KL, Little India. The motorbikes are always beautifully parked.

View of KL from Petronas Tower near the sky bridge.

Little India, KL. Malaysia is a very diverse country, with the three primary races being Malays, Chinese, and Indian.

It's been less than a week in Malaysia but I have experienced so many sights and sounds that it feels longer. I flew to Kuala Lumpar, or KL, as it's called by locals and travellers alike, from Perth on Tuesday. I really liked this capital city which has great food and a diverse population with the main groups being malays, chinese, indians, in that order. It was a treat to be in a superclean and friendly hostel (something of a rarity in Asia, as I'm discovering), a retreat to look forward to every evening after a full day out, saturated by the heat and dust and noise. One thing I've learned on this trip is that you can't have a good day unless you know your body's going to hit a clean bed at night. Tonight's not going to be so good, but that's okay. I will survive, and I will appreciate the next superclean place a little more. This weekend is a big Hindu festival called Thaipusan (more on it later), so there are many many visitors in town and accommodations are hard to find.

I guess I should backtrack and say that I am Georgetown, the historic district of Penang, a large island off the northwest coast of Malaysia. Georgetown is a World Heritage Site, a designation jointly held with Malacca, for its "living heritage", a juxtaposition of the old architecture and the modern way of life. Here people are living in old buildings that moved to any other place would be a sight-seeing piece in its own right. But most of these buildings have not been properly maintained and many are dilapidated, with trees growing out of roofs and walls, for instance. It's kind of sad to see these formerly majestic buildings fallen to ruins, but that's the hand of time, I suppose, and it works on everything, if not constantly maintained by tremendous effort.

On another philosophical note, I came to the staggering conclusion the other day (...it may already be obvious to everybody else) that money may be thought of as a form of potential energy. Our efforts are converted to this form for storage, like a hybrid engine storing power in its battery...

Today I walked with thousands of people up to Waterfall Temple in Penang for Thaipusan, a big hindu festival for the god Shiva's youngest son Murugan when he was given a spear by his mom, the goddess Parvati, to fight off an evil demon (thanks, wikipedia). I was part of a throbbing mass moving at times systematically and at times chaotically and joltingly (or was that crawlingly?) up to the temple. It took about two hours to walk up a quarter mile. I have an idea of what travelling in India may be like now. I don't know how many arms I brushed (or more yukily, gallons of sweat - others and my own). I wasn't sure what was going to happen at the temple; I just wanted to see. What I made of it was that people were giving their offerings and being blessed at the top. I wanted to escape from this throbbing mass pretty much the whole time, but my curiosity won out. Now I'm going to need some quiet time to rejuvenate. There were devotees with pierced tongues and cheeks, and metal hooks all over their upper bodies, and often carrying large ornamental pieces on their heads as well. Hard to describe, but I will add some pictures when i get a chance. Basically this festival is an annual pilgrimage for devotees to renew their faith. Maybe that's just the definition of a festival.

Cradle Mountain Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania

Cradle Mountain, right, and Dove Lake. The rain got there just as I did.

I spent six days backpacking (tramping) in Tasmanian wilderness and loved it. I understand now why this place is so special and raved about, and yet it's only a small piece of it that I've seen in the 100 kilometers or so that I walked. Tasmania has been described to me as kind of a hybrid between New Zealand and Australia. I agree. There are beech forests and ferns and mosses and the weather is very volatile like NZ, but there are also eucalytus forests and crazy animals and snakes like mainland Aussie. I was on high alert for snakes, and to a lesser extent, leeches, throughout my hike. There are three species of snakes in Tassie, all are poisonous: copperhead, tiger snake, and a white-lipped whip snake. I saw a snake one afternoon, which was either a copperhead or tiger snake; the coloration of the two are similar and they are distinguished by head plates, which thankfully I was not close enough to see! The leeches here hang onto plants and drop on to unsuspecting hikers. I don't think I ever got one here, but plenty of people did. Enough about leeches though. :) I was really lucky to spend a week in this very special part of the world and the wilderness rejuvenated me completely. Now I am in Melbourne which is a fantastic city, and I've been sitting at this internet cafe for two hours, so it's about time I head out into the real world instead of blogging about it. I'm having lunch at a place called Lentil as Anything, and it's a really neat thing where you pay as much for the food as you like and feel it's worth. Crazy concept, eh?

Lake Hanson

I knew what this was once, but not anymore. Rain sure makes for some beautiful pictures. I don't have many pictures of rain mostly because I don't want to get my camera out when it's wet for obvious reasons. So no, my pictures are disporportionately of nice weather. Don't be fooled - NZ and Tasmania are wetter than they appear to be by my blog!

A pademelon, smaller than a wallaby, with a face like a mouse (a giant one).

A wallaby feeding in the evening (most of the native animals are nocturnal). He says, "What do YOU want?" Wallabies are basically small versions of kangaroos. A baby wallaby is a joey.

an echidna, a monotreme (egg-laying member of mammals), like a platypus. I didn't get to see a platypus, but other hikers did. It's said they swim just like fish and very much resemble them in water. Platypus sightings are rare, although the animals are common, because they are very shy.

Echidnas are awfully cute. Their noses are seldomly seen - they are often buried in the ground rooting for food. Hard workers they are.

Mt. Oakleigh. I hiked right up top to the left edge where the pillars are. This is the view from the Pelion Hut, where I stayed for a night. This is where I was woken in the night by a possum tapping the window next to my head.

View from Mt. Ossa, highest peak in Tasmania at 16xx meters. The peaks in the park are all intrusions revealed through the magic of erosion, and shaped by the long period of glaciation (which covered most of the earth) ending 12,000 years ago.

One of my absolute favorite areas in the park - the Mersey River is magical. A different world down there, and not much explored.

Ferguson Falls on the Mersey River.

Mt. Geryon, a splendid mountain.

Neat cairn in the labyrinth, and of course, gum (eucalypus) trees.

From atop labyrinth lookout.

Sydney and the Blue Mountains

I could tell Sydney is a beautiful city as the plane started its descent. It's called the Emerald City for a reason! Trees, green everywhere contrasting beautifully with red rooftops. And then there's the harbor and river and beaches. It's walkable and the public transportation is great (expensive, but great). Eccentric, electrifying neighborhoods (like Newtown), creamy soft beaches, coastal walks...Then there are the beautiful urban parks, one of which, Centennial Park, is larger than Central Park. No wonder so many Kiwis live here. I could very easily live here! And two hours by train to the west lies the Blue Mountains, and that in itself is a gem. I went hiking there today. I always need some nature time after city time. and Wow. I was very impressed by the ancient red canyons, sheer walls that dipped in with waterfalls and curtains of soft mist, hanging gardens...I admit I was a little more cautious in my walk than typical, with visions of poisonous snakes and deadly spiders and even crocodiles on my mind. I wasn't in Kansas...er,New Zealand...anymore. There hardly anything could hurt me, so I walked with that comfort and confidence in mind. Here there are a great number of things that could hurt me, as I learned in the Australian Museum...where they helpfully listed the ten most poisonous snakes in the world, nearly all of them living here, it seems. Even in today's paper that I read enroute to Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, there was a picture and article about the huge rise in numbers of this one spider in Sydney and Blue Mountains that's highly toxic - funnel something spider. Anyway, nothing happened to me beyond sore feet, speaking of which, I got a little shock when I looked down at my right foot at one point on the hike and saw that my toes were coated with blood...yes, blood. I thought maybe I got a leech on me and look around for it, but no. Turns out it was a small cut under a toe, but it continued bleeding profusely for a long while. weird that a small cut like that could result in so much blood. (1/20: I now know it had to have been a leech.)

Highlights of animal sightings (alas, no crocodiles) included two water snakes in a pool at the bottom of Wentworth Falls, lots of a creamy white parrot with a beautiful tuft on its head, and a spectacular red and purple parrot that I watched for a long while. It was feeding on a red blossom that resembled one from the Strawberry Tree back home...I wonder if that's an Aussie native. Of course, as soon as I decided I wanted a picture, it moved farther away. Oh, and a teeeeeny red spider with a black abdomen. I don't know if it was poisonous; I'm guessing yes.

My eyes are dancing with all the beauty and new visions - speaking if vision, did you know that a nail clipper in a first aid kit comes in awfully handy as a back-up mirror when you need to find where in your eye your contact lens is? I discovered this delightful tidbit today. I'm weary in a good sort of way and now I'll go back to the hostel to pack for a very early morning start tomorrow when I fly to Tasmania!

Australia!

Hello all, I arrived in Sydney yesterday. It's a beautiful vibrant city and I hope to share some of it with you soon.