we don’t backpack

Hong Kong: “prissy alexis” kicked in (although, she may always be “kicked in”) when we arrived at our shockingly gross project of a hostel. of course, we moved hostels, but this was probably just a smart maneuver on ryan’s part - every where we went after that looked like a palace!

Hong Kong island was like a little taste of “home” - hilly, foggy, condensed, yet with an awesome downtown and a great “big city” feel. of all the places we went, this is the one i like the best, and where i’d eventually like to live. it was so international and urban.

Beijing: ahhh … china. i think it was a perfect storm (literally and figuratively) that made us hate you. hate may be too strong. ok, strongly dislike. it was freezing, kind of ghetto, no one spoke english, it was communist and - oh yah - we got stuck on a train for three days.

i’m not ruling out going back at a later date and giving it another shot because i know that a lot of the reasons why i was less-than-impressed wasn’t really beijing’s fault.

one thing that WAS my favorite - the snacks. at home, i’ll venture into chinatown for their great drinks and pastries, so i was more than happy to chow down on sesame balls, boba, rice cakes, mochi and bean paste while in their native country.

thailand: i drank my weight in thai iced tea, then sweated it all back out. i got a wicked sunburn that is slowly (and somewhat disgustingly) turning into a wickedly awesome tan. (and probably also skin cancer).

we bypassed all the side-of-the-road foostalls  - some of which looked awful (basins of dirty, soapy water where dogs drank and pigeons landed, used to “wash” dishes) and some of which looked great (fresh fruit and drinks in coconuts!) - in favor of staying healthy and not contracting some crazy disease.

malaysia: taxis and shopping were cheap but i didn’t feel like there was a lot to see. it would be a fun place to live, but as a tourist there wasn’t anything phenomenal that stood out in my mind.

singapore: oh, singapore, you shouldn’t have been at the end of our trip! we’d run out of time, the will to tour, and money. Again, not a place that stood out as having awesome sights to see, but the lifestyle there was probably the best out of all the SE Asian cities we went to. everything was clean, well-organized, people were friendly, and everyone spoke english. it’s like the america of asia.

unfortunately, the prices are closer to those in tokyo and that made even having a drink with dinner difficult - especially after coming from super-cheap thailand and malaysia!

overall - i’ve loved my asian experience! from “living” in tokyo with my parents for six weeks to traveling around this last month, but i’ll be glad to get back home. i can’t say that the “extended travdling” bug has bitten - honestly, i don’t know how these backpackers do it, for months on end, moving all the time, with no real itinerary. And when we get back, i’ll probably be looking for a “real job” again - one that pays more steadily and yes, one that forces me to commit to staying somewhere for an extended period of time.

looking at it from my perspective now, i’d say that the next time we travel somewhere extensively, it’ll probably be when we move abroad - like, maybe to hong kong!

Day 1

(singapore is really known for its shopping - a lot of people throughout the rest of asia come there just for that. orchard street is one of the biggest shopping districts with everything from high to low-end, boutiques to chains)

(eating dinner outside - it was a little bit cooler in singapore, so we could actually stand to be outside at night!)

DAY 2

on our second day in singapore, we got passes to a hop-on-hop-off bus, since we figured that was the best way to see the city in a short amount of time:

(i know most pictures are of me, but i’m not super vain - ryan just never wants me to take his pic when i offer!)

(the mosque in the little india district)

(little india)

Our second - and last - night in Singapore we only had S$18 left and we didn’t want to have to get more cash out since we were leaving early the next morning. fortunately, we found a food court in a mall near our hotel, which actually had really good asian food options - at least i thought so:

(i had vegetables and noodles in broth - which is one of my faves - along with milk tea boba, another big favorite!)

(ryan on the other hand, thought he was getting sesame chicken, but it was really coffee pork ribs. this is how he felt about it)

(since ryan’s first meal wasn’t fulfilling, we went across the street to a streethawkers food bazaar. it seemed REALLY risky - hence the freaked out “i-might-spend-all-day-tomorrow-on-the-toilet” expression. fortunately, he was fine.)

KL Day 1

(the view of kuala lumpur from what i call the KL Space Needle)

(the patronus towers which - until recently - were the tallest towers in the world)

(double chin in front of the KL tower - AKA the KL Space Needle)

(gong xi fa cai! that’s “happy new year” in chinese. this was a big new years’ display inside Time Square - which is really just a huge mall with a hotel at either end!

we walked to Time Square from the Tower and accidentally went in the wrong shopping building and got totally lost and turned around. we asked someone which direction TS was, and she actually walked us through the building we were in, down three floors, and outside, the told us the direction we needed to go. wow. i should start being nicer to tourists in SF!)

(taking the monorail from Time Square)

(view from the monorail)

KL DAY 2

(at the royal selangor pewter factory. RS was started more than 100 years ago by a chinese immigrant to KL. this was one of the original pieces, now one of their signature teapot designs)

(making a handle)

(at the caves- BEFORE i walked up almost 300 steps!)

(climbing up the steps)

(inside the caves)

(this is what i meant about it not being a REAL holy site - yes, that’s a ginormous pile of garbage with monkeys playing in it)

(the monkeys were WAY too close for comfort for me!)

(on our way out of KL, waiting for the train, o’dark:30 does not make alexis a happy girl)

i know i have a lot of catch-up blogging and picture-updating to do, but we’re in the airport getting ready to head back to tokyo.  i can’t believe it’s been a month already and yet i can’t believe we fit all we did into a month!

looking back, sitting on that train out of beijing, for example, seems like a long time ago. but at the same time coming into HK for the first time (our first stop) feels so recent. it’s an odd feeling!

i was thinking about it last night and we took six flights, three trains, and stayed in 11 hotels. no wonder i feel travel weary!

we made it safely - and quickly - by train to singapore, and have spent the last 24 hours trying to cram in a whirl-wind tour before we leave for HK tomorrow afternoon.

it’s a little bit cooler here (though still hot) compared to where we’ve been the last few weeks, though it’s a lot more expensive! ryan thinks it’s comparable to tokyo, but i think it’s more along the lines of SF - maybe a little worse. it’s just that we’ve been spoiled by the insane cheapness of  SE Asia.

since the internet in our room is (not surprisingly) pretty steep, and we’ve been trying to find random hotspots here and there, i don’t really have the time or the bandwidth to update pictures, etc. maybe when we get back to HK, and if not, i guess i’ll have to wait till we get back to tokyo.

i can’t believe our trip is coming to and end, though i have to say i am getting travel weary, and will be ready to wind down at my parents, and then to eventually make it back to our shoebox in the sky!

The last couple days have been kind of a whirlwind as we tried to squeeze in what we wanted to see in the two days we had here.

Yesterday we went to the KL Tower - it’s the fourth tallest tower in the world - and of course provided a great view of the entire city!

We went back to Times Square for more cheap shopping (me) and reading at starbucks (ryan, of course). We then ventured to the central market - which is more of a crafts bazaar - where i picked up an adorable “mixed medium” piece of artwork that included a print of an elephant. after our elephant trek, i really wanted something elephant-related!

Today we went to the Royal Selangor factory which is a malaysian-based pewter factory that’s been one of the foremost pewter manufacturers for over 100 years. my dad went there when he was in malaysia on business a few years ago, so it was one of the things on the top of my list while we were here.

After that, we checked out the Batu Caves which were actually kind of disappointing. You have to climb up almost 300 steps and then you’re inside some pretty crazy caves - which is pretty cool - but it’s supposed to be an islamic shrine and that part was kind of a let down. you could totally tell all the shrines and statues were only put up for the purpose of tourism. It wasn’t like a monk refuge, or place where they’d excavated ancient religious ruins - it was all put together for tourists which made it lose some of it’s cache.

(ryan and i then had a conversation about whether tourism helps or hurts developing nations. )

anyway, i know all these things aren’t super exciting without pictures, but it’s late and we’ve been busy! ryan promised he’d upload them tomorrow.

tomorrow morning we leave (early!!) for singapore. we’re taking a TRAIN ( i know, i know) but it’s only for six hours - and it doesn’t snow in SE Asia - so i feel a little bit better about taking it.

“Marhaba” is actually arabic - but it was the only “hello” word i could find that started with “M” and since “ta-ta” isn’t thai, it’s not like i was going for authenticity, here. Arabic is actually more fitting for Malaysia than you might think, since the country’s national religion is Islam.

We got into Kuala Lumpur this afternoon and so far, i’m liking it better than thailand. i liked thailand - bangkok more than phuket, which surprised me, since phuket is a beachy island - but there’s something about it where i could see myself living here, and i really couldn’t see myself in thailand. maybe that shouldn’t be my test for how much i like a place, but i tend to have reactions centering on my feelings of livability!

one huge bonus is that english is so widespread just about everyone speaks it fluently. i hate putting that as a big reason why i like a place because it sounds so ethno-centric, but it helps a lot when you’re traveling and getting to know a place.

also - and this is another shallow “alexis” reason - but the fashion is way better here than in thailand. in thailand, the stylistic choices felt sort of “blah.”

plus, here, your cheap shopping isn’t relegated to the markets. we went to “times square” today - a huge, 8-story mall - and i had to relegate myself to one floor lest i completely flip out over all the cheap clothes and shoes.

we have two full days here, and only five full days left on our tour. i can’t believe it’s gone by so fast - though there were parts that dragged for sure (a certain train incident comes to mind …) - but at the same time, i am getting a little travel weary. i’m glad we decided to go for a month, and not longer.

we went snorkeling (me) and diving (ryan) today. the visibility for both wasn’t as good as other spots we’ve been to in the past. plus, i was the only one snorkeling and i’m not going to lie - i’m a little afraid of the open ocean!

tomorrow morning we leave for malaysia - we’ll check in then! in the mean time here are some “left over” photos from our drive along the coast:

The name of our elephant wasn’t actually Harry Elephante - that’s a reference to Friends and Ross’ pet monkey who has an elephant toy named Harry. Anyway … our elephant’s name was Yeerah:

When i found out that you could go elephant trekking in southern Thailand, i of course absolutely had to go. and ryan did due diligence to make sure that the trekking company we went with was completely humane. The place we used had won a bunch of awards and it contributes some of its profit to helping deter the extinction of the Asian Elephants. When they bring in new elephants - ones that aren’t born in captivity - they also bring in the elephant’s mahout. The mahouts are tribes of Thai people who have lived their lives with elephants and have often been with their specific elephant since it was born. that was the case with our mahout:

anyway, once i was completely sure that elephant trekking wasn’t just a crazy tourist gimmick to make money (although i’m sure it is in part that, too!) i was super excited about riding a three ton beast with ears 500 times the size of bailey’s!

(riding Yeerah)

(that’s not us, but it’s a good picture)

(a look-out spot)

There was also a baby elephant show which was so cute!

(with the baby elephantes)

(the baby elephants doing tricks)

New Year’s is a HUGE deal in Asia - starting in january - with “western” new year’s, and continuing through chinese new years (the start of the chinese zodiac calendar) which is officially celebrated today!

The rat is the first animal in the chinese zodiac (which is used throughout asia, not just in china). He outsmarted the buffalo and cat, (among the other members of the current zodiac), to take first place in a race to see what animals would make up the zodiac, according to legend. i love cultural legends, traditions and icons - and you can read more about the legend of the zodiac here.

Happy year of the rat!