Rocking in Hakata

Ok. So this video opens up at the Petronas Towers, obviously. You get two views of the towers at night. Then you see me riding the bus from Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Tembeling. At Kuala Tembeling, we hopped off of the bus we’d ridden for 2 hours and got on a boat for 3 hours. It headed upstream into the heart of the rainforest to Taman Negara. You see Kathy and me on the boat with the boatman.

Suddenly we’re in a Jeep-like SUV riding on a dirt road. That’s part of the 8 minute journey from Kuala Tahan to the lodge we stayed in. Just before eating dinner, our newly made friend Sonja spotted a Hornbill in the tree just outside. We watched it making its unique call a few times before being summoned down to dinner.

The next morning sees another boat ride, far heavier this time, across the river to the national park. We did the canopy walk first and then trekked up into the jungle for 2 views. We spotted a few different columns of ants marching frantically through the underbrush. You can see a view of Kuala Tahan from the rainforest side of things at this point in the video. That night, we went on a night safari through some palm plantations and spotted wild pigs, a leopard cat, a flying squirrel, and probably 3 or 4 run of the mill house cats.

Again, we start the day by riding on a boat, past the floating restaurants on the bank of the village. We’re headed to Gua Telinga - “Ear Cave” - for some casual spelunking. We know there are bats. We didn’t realize how much guano there’d be. Afterwards we pulled back up and docked with the same restaurant and headed back inland. We did so just in time, because it started to rain for the first time during our visit to the rainforest. We spent that afternoon planning our departure for Pulau Gemia and the beach…which will be posted tomorrow, if everything goes according to plan.

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I just bought tickets to see Disney’s 「美女と野獣」 (Beauty and the Beast) in live musical form in Hiroshima in 2 weeks. Yay! This video is a promotional / commercial video for the Shiki (Four Seasons) Theatre Company, which I’ll be seeing. See if you recognize the characters and songs. I’ve always been a sucker for musicals, and it might be my favorite Disney film to start with. It’ll be really interesting to see it in Japanese, too. Kind of jarring to see a familiar song reworked into Japanese, actually. Ha ha. Easier than going to a different play, since I know the story and some of the music already. Maybe I’ll pick up the soundtrack in Japanese just for giggles. Who knows?

Also - side note - I am splitting the Malaysia video into two and posting it to close this week out. Next week is Golden Week. Enjoy it!

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Alright, the gallery of pictures from the second half of my trip, all of which were taken in Malaysia, is here at last! You’ll see shots of Kuala Lumpur, Taman Negara, and Pulau Gemia. Impressive, primordial, and gorgeous. The video clips will be coming soon. For now, continue reading to see the 60 shots.

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Alright! Here’s the video recap for my 2 days in Singapore. Just in case you’re totally lost, the first clip is a taxi driver discussing local cuisine. He’s saying that Singapore has such a tendency to incorporate their cultures, that authentic dishes are hard to come by in spite of living among genuine ingredients and people. Singapore has a tendency to blend, you see. I found that to be true. He’s taking us to the Singapore Night Safari. I cannot recommend it enough - it was too cool! The idea is brilliantly simple. Lots of animals are nocturnal or just more active in the dark. Let’s bring people through when it’s dark. The animals are not likely to be asleep under a rock in the corner of their pens. And they weren’t! We saw all kinds of cool animals. I saw my first live hippopotamus there.

The one thing I’ll quip about with the Night Safari is that it had the most incredibly kitsch shows. We caught the one featuring a “tribe from Borneo.” They may have belonged to one of the tribes in Indonesia or Eastern Malaysia (can’t really imagine them being from Brunei), but they seemed pretty well adjusted to their carnival-type tourist trade. They danced to techno music while breathing fire and dancing with Maori poi. Cool? Heck yeah. Authentic? Ha ha ha ha ha. Seriously? It was fun, but the animals were way cooler. Oh - I lied - I’ll quip about one more thing. The tourists at this place were hilariously irresponsible. There were posted signs everywhere asking people not to take flash photos. And yet, loudspeaker announcements were required like every 2 or 3 minutes because someone would take another picture. I was shocked that people around the offenders weren’t intervening to help explain! The poor announcer got really frustrated. Ha ha.

You’ll also see a clip of me making an espresso in my hotel room - obviously, I was way too thrilled by the prospect of a complimentary espress machine. Sorry. Next, a brief pan of the Buddhist temple in Chinatown that surprised me - it was airconditioned! It was really geared for tourists as well. I asked if photos were allowed, and they told me to shoot away. It has to be the most modern Buddhist temple I’ve ever been in. After that, you’ll see some quick clips at The Long Bar of Raffles Hotel. The Singapore Sling was just as sweet, fruity, and outrageously expensive as I had imagined. The peanuts were even better, though. Singapore’s famous stringent laws on littering (and everything else) are jovially suspended in the bar, where you’re encouraged to cast your peanut shells on the floor. The result is a crunchy underfoot puddle of shells around each table. And while I’m convinced that the mechanized frond-style fans do nothing, they are pretty awesome.

The Singapore Flyer makes its appearance next. It is billed as the world’s largest Observation Wheel, which led me to wonder whether it was true - if only because I know of no other observation wheels…only ferris wheels… It was really pricey, too. But I’m still glad I rode it. The time wasn’t half rotten, actually. My only gripe is that all of the interesting stuff is visible on the climb up…the other side is rather…dull. And the muzak could go too. And the green screened photo… Ha ha ha. It was far from perfect, but some other people thought it was cool enough that they rented the whole thing out for a corporate dinner. As each cabin came to the dock, they load another course on for the passengers. Fascinating idea. I dunno if I’d enjoy it in practice. Anyway, the last clip is of my first fashion show, which I caught at the Esplanade area mall. It was fun…for a few minutes. The red chili crab dinner afterwards was much better. But alas, no clips to share of that! I’ll update again soon about the Malaysia portion of the trip. Hope you’re looking forward to it!

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Alright, alright. I’m getting around to it! Here’s a quick gallery of snapshots from my 2 days in Singapore. There are comments in the captions. I’ve tried to make them succinct, so they won’t truncate on low resolution browsers. But really, I have to suggest that you go with a high screen resolution, that will at least let you view 600 x 800 vertical shots without autoscaling! Yes, I’m one of those annoying people who sets mine to the max. Ha ha. If you want to see a better version, you can open the picture in a new window instead of in the overlay. That way it will be viewable in its entirety. I really don’t like the autoscale feature of this overlay script…but I like it a hair more than the old one. Hmmm. Anyway, enjoy!

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