Taipei Layover

Toilet tourism!

My final leg on the 2-week, around-the-world adventure was a 24-hour layover in Taiwan. I arrived late in the evening and was really worried that I wouldn't be let in the country, despite having researched entry requirements three times. Why? Guess.

Luckily, I was let in without anything more than a sniff at my passport.

The train ride to Taipei from the airport was longer than I had expected, but it was clean and quiet (like much of the city), so I didn't mind much.

The youth hostel I stayed in was clean and quiet (and after the long trip I've had, I was looking forward to some quiet). One of the hostel volunteers offered to take me out to a night market nearby so I could try some street food before bed. I drank papaya milk and ate stinky tofu (I liked it) and a few other things.

Then I went back to the hostel and passed out for a night's sleep.

The next day was a whirlwind. My 24 hours was halfway over (thanks, sleep) and I needed to pad the end of my trip with an extra 4 hours to get to the airport in time for my international flight back to the US. I had to be very clear about what I was going to do for 8 hours in Taipei before I returned to the airport.

I wasn't that clear. Well, I thought I was clear, at first...until I went outside and felt the amazing heat early in the morning that was not mixing well with my stomach (I discovered after returning home that I was battling giardia). I improvised once I took notes on where I could be near toilets while adventuring (fortunately, that wasn't too much of a compromise).

I first hopped over to see some of the old temples around the Taipei Confucius Temple, which was also Confucius' original residence. Their toilet was very nice.

Right next door was the Dalongdong Baoan Temple, which was old and quiet and beautiful.

After the temple visits, I tried to hail a cab and go to some art village I had heard about. I never made it there; it seemed that it either wasn't open or was mythical because people had no idea what I was looking for and there appeared to be no English signs.

This was when I realized how disadvantaged I was visiting Taiwan without any knowledge of Mandarin. The signs were almost all hanzi character-based and many had no English translations or very poor translations that only confused me more. Also, despite many business people understanding English in the city, the cab drivers I happened to hail were not knowledgeable in English. With my inability to speak Mandarin, this led to a lot of confusion about wherever I was trying to go. Apparently there are translation services for situations just like this in Taiwan (it must come up a bit), and many of the cab drivers called a number, talked on the phone, handed the phone to me with a pleasant English speaker on the other line asking me where I was going to, and then taking back the phone with the other side of the line translating. In other attempts, I would show Google Maps on my phone to the driver to indicate the place I wanted to visit; this was only sometimes successful.

So here I was, with only a few hours left in Taipei, realizing I was at a real disadvantage to getting where I wanted to go. I decided to make things simpler and go to only big places that tourists were expected to visit and with easily-translated names. That worked!

So I walked around a few more temples and went to the Lin An Tai Ancestral House, which is an outdoor museum that educates people about older customs and living arrangements in Taipei back in the 18th/19th century. It wasn't crowded, which meant I got to take my time reading plaques, loitering bridges over ponds, and tastefully spying on a couple taking wedding photos.

The piece de resistance of my quick visit to Taipei - nay, my entire trip! - was the lunch reservation I had at a restaurant called Modern Toilet. The restaurant is, as you may have guessed, themed around toilets...and very tongue-in-cheek. The food was served in different kinds of toilet- and latrine-shaped containers and the food options were essentially curries and french fries (which means it looked like stuff that should actually be in toilets). And they had a little booth by the hostess stand that sold anything toilet or poo related - lighters, pens, erasers, legos, etc. It was kitschy, fun, and amazing. I had an absolute blast! The best part was the dessert - chocolate soft serve in a small squat latrine-shaped bowl. It was actually very tasty! And of course, was meant to test people's stomachs with its aesthetic. I saw another table order some monstrosity of a dessert with flan and jellies and all kinds of strange items - it looked like an overflowing toilet!

I've officially lived my best life.

After sating myself with toilet-inspired cuisine, I walked back to the hostel to pick up my stuff and head back to the airport. I passed by some popular-looking shopping areas. Amongst the shops included outlandish things such as penis-shaped pineapple cakes on sticks.

My trip to Taipei was too short, but I still found it interesting even when I was confused and lost! I think it's a place worth inspecting more in-depth at some point. I hope to visit again so I can see the areas outside of the city center, too.

A Malaysian Wedding Trip

Murals in Penang

Malaysia was Stop Three on my flight around the globe. Malaysia was originally going to be Stop One, as I was going to join up with a few friends to attend one of our (Denise's) weddings. But then my work trip was tacked on. And here we are.

Jetlag & Confused
When I arrived, I was confused about where I was ("Which country am I am? Who am I?"). I realized while in the immigration line that I had arrived a day earlier than I had thought and realized that the connecting flight I had to Penang wasn't until the next day.

My friends, mystified that I didn't know where I was or what day it was (and that I was a day earlier than I told them I'd be - surprise!), took me out for dinner at an outdoor market. We feasted on all kinds of fish and vegetables and chicken dishes. Eating with friends and soaking in the heat of KL melted my confusion.

I found a KL boutique hotel for the night in Chinatown that was beautiful and had outdoor bathrooms, which was delightful. My toilet and shower were in a private courtyard! There were shades that kept any guest staying above or below me to peek at me. There was rain falling down on the courtyard next to the courtyard when I showered.

The next day I hopped in a car with friends from Colorado for a road trip to Penang. We had decided to remove ourselves from the wedding chaos so Denise could have one less thing to worry about...and so we could travel around the country some.

Once we got out of KL, driving to Penang felt a lot to me like driving through much of the US, aside from the tropical vegetation everywhere. There was a lot of open space with small towns hugging the highway. Much of the drive to Penang was pretty uneventful.

In Penang
We got to the island of Penang and drove in the rain to the UNESCO town of Georgetown and waited for our Airbnb host. Our Airbnb was outside of the tourist areas, which meant that it was quiet and had a nicer view of the water. After we checked in, our host insisted on cramming us into his car and give us a tour around town for a while. While it was a nice gesture, we were starving and really weren't interested in getting a full-on tour. We wanted to gorge on street food, which is what Penang is known for! We finally got let out in a food alley, ravenous and eager to eat something. Anything.

Luckily for us, "anything" in Penang is worth trying. And so we did. We ate a lot of great things while in Georgetown: assam laksa, duck sausage noodles, chendol, laksa regular, nasi lemak, and so many other things of which I don't remember the names. Everything was fresh and bursting with flavor. I didn't know half of what I was eating....but I was pleased as punch with all of the the tastes.

We seemed to arrive there on a quiet day for the town. We saw a lot of tourists (which, with its UNESCO status, isn't very surprising), but things were not open for tourists to do. We managed to find a small museum - the Museum of Glowing Image - where we walked around under purple lights for an hour. It was ridiculous, but we had fun being silly while glowing in the dark.

We were still fighting off jetlag, so we went to a night market for a bite to eat and quickly walked back to the Airbnb to crash hard.

The next day we decided to drive around the island to see what is happening in Penang outside of the tourist-centred area. We visited the local snake temple (it is a temple with snakes in it, and you can hold them!) and got lost driving around because Google Maps gave us directions to roads that didn't exist (or were lost to the jungle overgrowth). That's when we stumbled upon the Tropical Fruit Farm. The title of the farm tells you exactly what the attraction was - a farm of tropical fruit...but we had a blast on the tour, tasting and learning about the plants along the farm.

We spent another day in Georgetown before heading back to wedding ceremonies. It was a supremely hot and exhausting day. We walked around to see all of the tourist sites like the murals, ate some not-so-local cakes, visited the Cheah house, and walked around the port neighborhoods with drop toilets on the edge of the docks. Walking around in 90F degree heat and 95% humidity, though, can be trying on the body. We slept early and hard that night.

Back in KL
The next morning we drove back to KL to get ourselves fitted in saris for the wedding and have amazing ice cream with the bride-to-be and some other international people. The couple had a group of us foreign friends attending their wedding, and we quickly became an international group of friends (I'll call them "The Friends"). We agreed to go touring around the next day to stay out of the couple's way while they ran last-minute errands for the wedding.

Batu Caves
The Friends arranged to visit the Batu Caves in the morning. We got there before it was too hot outside, which to be honest isn't saying much because it was still very hot.

The Batu Caves are an impressive sight because there is (1) a large, steep staircase to the caves (there are two) that loom above the tour buses and (2) a massive statue of Lord Murugan that guards the height of the stairs. The climbing....was treacherous. Not because of the number of stairs to climb - I mean, I'm a New Yorker and we climb stairs a lot - but because the stairs were narrow and uneven. To make our trip up to the caves more precarious, there was a mound of sand next to the stairs and a pile of small plastic buckets next to a sign requesting tourists to carry full buckets of sand to the top (for construction...which, of course, we did).

Once we reached the top of the stairs and went into the cave temple (the popular cave), we were all appreciative of the gaping hole in the mountain, but I kept thinking "...was this why I lugged two buckets of sand for?!" My travel partners agreed to go to the more sciencey cave (the other, less popular cave) and take a tour that walked us deep into the darkest crevices inside the mountain. We were loaned hard helmets and penlights, and off we went with a tour guide into the depths of the cave. It was beautiful and so well worth the expense. We got to explore different rock formations and got to an area where there was a skylight into the cave that lit up a gorgeous, quiet, mossy nook of the cave that made me think of some kind of magical backdrop to a fairytale.

Upon leaving we saw an armada of tour buses coming to the caves and watched hordes of tourists drip with sweat as they crawled up the stairs. I'm so glad we went early.

Before we made our train back to KL, we visited the only other tourist site nearby - the Ramayama Cave. This cave was ground level, and a wild(ly strange) sight to behold. There, the Hindu community took a natural cave and carved it out so that the inside of cave walls became platforms all along the perimeter to showcase a life-sized 3D display that unfolded the story of the Ramayama. With statues and paintings. Most of The Friends didn't know much about Hinduism, but even my knowing smatterings of the story didn't keep me from being bewildered and amazed.

Once back in KL, another friend of Denise and mine - Alicia - joined us getting our hands henna-ed for the wedding and partaking in essential tourist shopping in Central Market. Later on, she led us to a local restaurant that served Chinese food and ordered us a whole lot of foods that were delicious and fascinating and things many of us had never eaten before - smelly fish soup and congealed pork knuckles. It was family-style and a local hangout. We had so much fun we shut down the shop.

Wedding Time
The big day finally came - the day for Denise's wedding! And it was all day, so it was a big deal. Why was it so long? Because of the cultural mash-up that was going to happen; she is Chinese and he is Hindu, but both are also Malaysian. We had three different chunks of wedding celebrations to experience before the day was over.

The first part was Chinese. We arrived at Denise's family's house before the sun rose. We met a lot of bleary-eyed family members setting up the buffet (it felt so weird to eat spring rolls so early) and prepare the festivities. This part of the day was when the groom had to play games with the bride's family and friends and persuade them to let him into the house to find his bride. This took a few hours and a number of different "obstacles" for him to overcome. It was all in fun, luckily, and he was successful in retrieving his bride.

Once that happened, The Friends (and some of the bridal party) shuttled over to another home to get changed into saris and kurtas for the Hindu festivities, which were scheduled around lunchtime (based on the celestial alignments the Hindu priests deemed appropriate). The sari changing took a while - by the time we were fitted and ready to go we hurredly drove into town to the temple.

Once we got to the temple, we were pleasantly surprised to see one of our other girlfriends (Pritha). She flew just that morning there from India with her husband to attend this part of the weddings.

A few hundred other people also decided to observe the wedding at the temple.

It was fun to watch the Hindu wedding because it was a whirlwind of noise and processions that none of us understood (and apparently not even the couple fully comprehended). There was flowing music and vibrant colors that made it still exciting to witness. AND we all got snack bags during the ceremony. The Friends sat in a clump and were fortunate that a few of the older aunties sat near us and explained in English as best they could what on earth was going on. The rest of the crowd seemed just as bewildered about us being there as we were watching the ceremony.

The public wedding processions ended after a while and people grabbed plates of buffet food before heading off. The Friends slowly shoveled food in our mouths as we sweated it back out again and left for a long break before we rejoined the now-married couple. I napped the entire break

The final part of the wedding was the reception in a restaurant and felt a lot more Western than the rest of the day. There, we ate even more food and danced the night away. We also watched some of the FIFA World Cup game when we needed breaks from the dancing. It was a wonderful ending to the wedding, and more intimate than a lot of the rest of the day.

But I was exhausted and burned out. Not as burned out as the married couple was, of course.

The next day I requested a day alone. I went to the Patronus towers mall (oh the irony of finding quiet time in a big mall). After my break, we met up for dinner one last time with the married couple before my flight out. The dinner was a lot more low key than the rest of the wedding festivities - we hung out at tables in the groom's front yard and talked about nonsense, and caught up on each other's lives. What was so extra wonderful about this trip and wedding was that we ended up making more friends.

End Thoughts
The trip to Malaysia had a few themes that I will reflect on more as I continue my life of travel:

• I prefer slow travel. This trip, albeit fun and action-packed, was not slow. A lot of my fellow travelers wanted to see everything, exploring all of the things and walk all of the roads. That path is not for me - I was exhausted so much of this visit. Instead, I like taking my time while I travel. Maybe I won't see everything (read: all touristy things), but I get to go at a relaxing pace and see the things that really mean something to me. And often, I don't find the touristy stuff very interesting. This does mean that I do more research about where I am going before I get there, normally. Oh yeah, and mid-day naps are the best, even when I'm missing out.
• I love SE Asian food. I love the unique flavors smashed together in one dish. I love that the desserts are funky and not chocolatey (even though I love chocolate). I love the comfort in even the spicy soups. I love everything about them. It is amazing.
• Hot and humid is hard. I already knew this from my previous trips in SE Asia, but it bears a reminder, especially after scaling Penang in 95% humidity and 95F heat. Hydration salts are my saving grace on those kinds of days.
• Malaysia? It's Okay. Surprisingly, Malaysia is not my favorite place, despite it having amazing food and some very interesting spots to see. For me, it was culturally not too far away from the US, which to me is a mix of a bunch of cultures to the point where there is a missing keystone to the culture. It is an odd place of rigid laws and lax customs, which is a bit confusing. I can't say I would ever want to live in Malaysia, but I was glad I got to see more of it with my friends and see my friend at a joyous occasion in her life.