Four Cities, Four Days, and Four Currencies in My Wallet

We had nice upper-level sleepers for the train trip from Bangkok to Hat Yai.

Unfortunately, the other people riding in our car were not as intent upon sleeping as we were. Their talking and laughing, combined with the fact that the car's doors didn't work (so it sounded like we were travelling through a hurricane) meant that we weren't able to get a lot of sleep that night. Nonetheless, we arrived in Hat Yai safely, which was our primary goal. As soon as we arrived I nervously approached the ticket counter. You see, we had not yet been able to get tickets to Kuala Lumpur. The only place in Thailand you can book these tickets (unless you have planned far ahead and used a booking agency) is in Hat Yai. Fortunately there was room for us on the train. Unfortunately, the sleeping berths were not available. Oh well, we thought, at least we'll get there.

Hat Yai is located deep in the south of Thailand. While Thailand's predominating religion is Buddism, the majority of the people in the south practice Islam. In recent years there has been a separatist movement on the part of some Muslims in southern Thailand. They have expressed their dissatisfaction in the form of terrorism. Last year they bombed the airport in Hat Yai, and the year before they were responsible for hundreds of deaths in bombings throughout the neighboring provinces. Needless to say, we were a bit concerned about travelling here. We were happy to read; however, that Americans and other foreigners are not currently being targeted.
We set up camp in the heavily guarded train station. There were barricades out front, and a large number of highly armed guards. I thought they were a little careless with there guns, but I was still happy that they had them.

We decided that it would be too much of a bother for both of us to go into town. So, at no time during our seven hour layover did both of us leave the station. I was the first to explore the city. I went looking for food, internet access, and of course (upon Larissa's request) bookstores. I found all of these necessities, and even stumbled accross a national Hula competition. I went back to get Larissa, who went to watch the show and get some pictures.

All in all, we enjoyed our time in Hat Yai. Outside of the train station it actually seemed like quite a friendly place.

In the early afternoon we boarded the train. We found our second class seats to be comfortable, but soon realized that they would not be comfortable enough for the 16 hours we would have to spend sitting in them. Again, I will make an appeal for sympathy: We didn't sleep much that night.

Finally, early the next morning, we arrived at Kuala Lumpur's beautiful and modern Sentral Station (their spelling). At Sentral Station, the trains, subway, sky-rail, monorail, and bus lines all converge. We took the monorail to the station nearest our hostel, which we had booked online while in Hat Yai. Since it was to early to check in to our room, we left our bags at the hostel and headed out on the town. We were most excited to visit the Petronas Towers, so that is where we headed first. These are the highest twin towers in the world, and were officially the tallest buildings in the world until the completion of the Tapei 101 building in 2004. We took the monorail within short walking distance of the towers. There is a double-decker bridge at the 42nd floor that spans the gap between the buildings. The upper level is used for workers (50,000 people work in the there) to get between the buildings, while the lower level is used for tourism. We immediately went down to get our free tickets to the skybridge. Only so many tickets are issued each day, so we wanted to be sure that we were able to get ahold of two of them. The elevator ride to the 42nd floor only took around 40 seconds. We bravely made our way out onto the bridge, taking comfort in the fact that the towers were designed by an American. In the middle of the bridge there are two outcroppings, one on each side. I will admit that I got a little weak in the knees when I stepped out onto one of them. I decided that it was not a place that I wanted to stay very long. Larissa managed to capture my sheepish demeanor before I leaped back to safety.

In the lower levels of one of the towers is a massive shopping mall. While I don't really like going to malls at home, I enjoyed our time in this one. We could almost trick ourselves into thinking we were back in America. We enjoyed some delicious veggie burgers at McDonalds, and returned that evening to catch the movie Tristan and Isolde. The towers were beautiful at night.

The rest of the day was spent touring the city of Kuala Lumpur. We were very impressed with both the cleanliness of the city, and with its' comprehensive public transportation network, the former in stark contrast to Bangkok. We used the subway, skyrail, monorail, and buses with ease. It was nice to be in a city without Tuk Tuk drivers hassling us. In fact, no one really hassled us. We are a bit jaded after enduring the Tuk Tuk drivers in Bangkok and other parts of Thailand. We are suspicious of anyone who approaches us. Yesterday, a man started talking to us on the street, we tuned him out and said "No Thank You," and promptly walked in the middle of a movie filming. All he was trying to do was to get us to walk around the set.

We toured Chinatown and Little india, coming accross a couple of beautiful mosques along the way. The official religion of Malaysia is Islam, though freedom of religion is practiced. Therefore, we have left the land of Wats, and entered the land of Mosques.

The next morning we took the train to Singapore. The ride was only supposed to take six hours, but some of the passengers got hung up in customs, and the train waited for them. Singapore is known for being a very clean place. To uphold this reputation, Gum, other than a pack or two in your pocket, cannot be imported. The Malaysian train dropped us a bit out of town, but we were able to hike to a subway station so that we could travel to our hostel. After about an hour, we made it to the Backpacker's Cozy Corner Hostel, which is in the Arab district of Singapore. We hope to explore this area today. Nearby are streets with names such as Baghdad and Khandahar. The hostel offers free breakfast, and free internet. Free breakfast turned out to be basically just free toast, and the internet has been too crowded to use. The only reason I have been able to get on is because the internet is down right now. I am just typing this out hoping that the connection will come back.

Last night we went to explore the primary shopping district of the city, centered around Orchard Road. There was shopping plaza after shopping plaza filled with things I didn't really want or couldn't really afford. One plaza, called Lucky plaza, was filled with photographic equipment stores. So, in this case, the plaza was filled with things that I wanted, but still couldn't afford. Apparently Singapore used to be THE place to buy photographic equipment. I guess it is not the deal it once was; however, because all of the prices I was quoted (and bargained for) were higher than those in the States.

Larissa is apparently feeling better, because she is once again demanding that we start eating local foods, rather than fries from McDonalds or Pringles from 7-11. I am not really ready to go back to ramen. So, last night, we comprimised. I ate at McDonalds, and she ate some kind of mushroom noodle soup.

We are impressed with Singapore thus far. It is indeed a clean place, though probably no cleaner than Kuala Lumpur. It also has a very extensive public transportation network. We are going to explore as much as possible today, before having to catch our flight to Paris tonight.
Okay, I wrote the above paragraphs this morning, it is late afternoon now. The internet never did come back up, so I will update you on the day now.
First we took a walking tour of Singapore's Arab district. It was quaint, clean, and well planned. The nicest mosque we have seen thus far is located near Baghdad Street,

it is called Sultan Mosque. We wanted to go inside, but I had an immodestly dressed wife by mosque standards.

Then we took the subway to Little India. This seemed like a poor neighborhood in comparison to the Arab district. It was dirty, and the buildings were not nearly as nice. Unfortunately, it was lunch time, and we were both getting hungry, and a bit cranky. Not really the place to be, seeing as how we had both vowed to avoid Indian food for awhile. After buying some oranges at the market, we broke down and entered a vegetarian Indian restaurant. I thought we'd just get some naan and samosas. We ended up getting a full meal, even though we thought we had just ordered a couple of appetizers. I am happy to report that are stomachs are feeling fine.

After little India, we made our way to Chinatown. There we walked to some nice temples, and Larissa enjoyed looking in some shops. Then we went to the Singapore river, and to the local bay. This was the best place to take in the views of the city.

During our walk Larissa noticed a huge sign indicating that there was a book fair going on.

She jumped up and down excitedly and informed me that I was in big trouble. I knew what she meant. We would be spending lots of time, and lots of money at this book fair. There was indeed a lot of books at this fair and they were priced very reasonably. Fortunately for our budget, and for our time constraints, many of the books were written in Chinese. I was proud of Larissa. She only bought one book, and we were in and out of there in less than an hour.

We enjoyed a nice celebratory dinner following our departure from the book fair. Larissa had fungi pasta and a Mango shake, and I had fungi pizza and a blueberry muffin. It was our most expensive meal since eating at an Indian place in Palau. Prices in Singapore are comparable, though probably slightly less than those in American cities. While we have enjoyed ourselves here, we are glad that we didn't stay here very long. The only things we can really afford here is transportation, eating, and walking.

Yesterday we broke down and bought some chips and salsa. We are waiting for the perfect moment to dig in. The time will probably come sometime in the middle of the night when we are bored, hungry, and tired of flying.

Our journey from Bangkok to Singapore has turned out to be an experience to remember. We are proud of completing the 1500 some kilometers by the land route. It will take us much less time to travel the thousands of miles from here to South Africa.

Soon we will be taking the subway to the airport. I think we are looking at about a twelve hour flight to Paris. We will have a pretty full day there before boarding our flight to Johannesburg. We will then have over twenty-four hours in Johannesburg before flying to Lesotho.

Larissa wanted to add a few of her observations, which will hopefully be more entertaining and to the point than mine have been.

Well, I don't think that will happen! Anyway, I just wanted to say a couple things about the cities that we went to. Kuala Lumpur has the distinction of being a democratic Muslim city. Everywhere we went, there were women wearing head scarves. You could also see the men wearing the lace caps they wear if they have made the pilgramage to Mecca. It was interesting because while the younger generations still seemed to be traditional in the sense that they wore head scarves, many of the young women would wear very stylish and sometimes sexy clothing. There headscarves were defintely not dowdy. They fastened them with beautiful brooches and they mostly looked very trendy.

Kuala Lumpur was a very trendy city indeed. Everything seemed new and big and clean and very busy. The streets were wide but beautiful with trees and bushes lining them everywhere. The traffic wasn't bad at all. It was obvious that Islam is a very important part of life there. The sidewalk tiles each have the intertwined squares of Islam. Indeed, even the Petronas towers design is based on the Islamic intertwined squares.

Everyone was really nice to us. I went to get a sandwhich and the two Muslim women who worked there asked me all about my vegetarianism. They were very impressed. And they gave me extra avacado on my sandwhich. :]

Singapore is amazing! When we walked out of the train station, I wasn't too imporessed and I thought that I would like Kuala Lumpur better. But Singapore grew on me and now I really love it. It has a more sedate stlye than Kuala Lumpur. It is high class and bustling but much more relaxed. Both cities are very clean and it is hard to decide which one is cleaner. The river is not clear but it is clean and Jaosn and I witnessed how that came to be. We were standing on a bridge when we saw this weird contraption in the water. It was the boat thing with a conveyor belt. It goes around and scoops leaves and other junk out of the water. That is how is stays so clean. I thought that was really cool. More cities should do that.

Traffic seems to be almost non-existant here as well. Public Trans must really help . I have never ever experienced a city with so little traffic.

By the way, Singapore is a country but also a city. I was confused but I fianlly figured it out. Anyway, there are tons of cute kids here. Yesterday there were a bunch of kids playing in a fountain and I got a picture of an especially cute little girl:

Well, hopefully we will be able to write more soon but we don't know the internet situation in Lesotho. Good to hear from you all!