Penang, Malaysia

Family and Friends,
I had absolutely no expectations about Malaysia, and I honestly didn’t know much about it going in, but I was pleasantly surprised with the trip that I had. The ship socked in Penang, which isn’t an extremely large city but had plenty to do for the few days that I was there. My first night in port I had an SAS sponsored trip to a Malaysian shadow puppet performance. The set up of the audience and the performers is much like that of American theater, with the exception being that all of the performers and musicians are behind a large sheet that is drawn across the stage. There is one puppet master who manipulates the puppets and does the voices of the characters and there is a group of musicians that accompany him throughout the story. The puppets are intricately made of cow hide and resemble the fancy paper snowflakes that people make around Christmas time. It was interesting to hear from the performers about how the art form has changed very little over the 500 or so years that it has been practiced.
The next morning I boarded a train for Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The countryside of Malaysia was very different from that of India. It was essentially a jungle of lush green trees and plants. There were times on the train where it seemed like we were moving through a natural tunnel of foliage. Considering the fact that the large cities in India didn’t resemble anything I had every seen in America, I expected that Kuala Lumpur wouldn’t either. It ended up being very much like a large American city. It was a very clean city full of skyscrapers, mosques, and beautiful gardens. I stayed at a hostel in downtown Kuala Lumpur, which was my first hostel experience. I lucked out because the hostel had opened for business two days before I got there so everything was brand new and my friends and I were essentially the first customers.
My first morning in Kuala Lumpur, I visited the most famous building in the country, the Petronas Towers. They are the tallest pair of twin towers in the world and are truly a marvel to see. They are composed of glass and stainless steel, which gave them a surreal appearance because I had never seen anything like it. I went up to the sky bridge that connects the two towers at the 40th floor and pulled out my best Sean Connery impression as I crossed from building to building. Alas, I had no Catherine Zeta Jones to accompany me on my bank heist and I was subsequently apprehended by the Malaysian police (I hope at least one person picked up that reference). While the towers look cool in the day, they look even better at night when they are lit up. They look like they are their own light source, and on a cloudy night, all of the surrounding air is illuminated and it has a ghostly effect. I plan to post a picture so you guys can see what I am talking about. The entire skyline lit up at night looked like Gotham City.
I was in the city at the same time as the Formula One racing circuit’s annual stop in Kuala Lumpur. I met a lot of people from all over the world throughout the weekend, and almost all of them were there just for race weekend. I watched the entire race on Sunday with George because he is a big time follower of the sport and especially Felipe Massa who is a Brazilian driver who races for Ferrari. Sadly enough, Massa crashed about half way through the race and Dani and I spent the rest of the day trying to console George and bring him out of his misery.
The most interesting observation I had about Malaysia was that I didn’t find it to have any particular national identity. I never ate anything that was specifically Malaysian and other than the shadow puppets, I didn’t see or experience much that I would say was identifiable with Malaysian culture. This may be because of the fact that Malaysia has a large number of people from other countries that would rather identify with where they came from then where they live, but it was interesting to see after coming from India where many of the things that I saw I have never seen anywhere else. Well now I am on my way to Vietnam for five days, but for three of those days I will be traveling to Cambodia. I can’t believe how quickly all of this is going by, it seemed like so long ago that I was imagining being in all of these Asian countries, and now I am in the heart of the trip. I am so excited for the experiences that still lay ahead of me in these countries. I hope everyone is enjoying the blog and doing well at home. I look forward to hearing from you all soon.

Conor