a little bit more catchup!

hello! it's christmastime! and i'm not in malaysia! i'm home in america, sick as a bug, catching up on all my terriblewonderful tv, and being lazy. life is almost perfect.

but. i forgot to post after my last post! the week of thanksgiving, an old friend happened to be coming through KL. i was so excited because this would be the first time i got do be the tour guide, not just the tourist. so we did the following:


i finally visited batu caves. batu caves is an extremely popular hindu shrine, featuring an extremely large statue of the hindu deity Murugan. as you can see, it's pretty large. and features very many steps. over 200, which actually is not the most number of steps i have climbed in one place. poenari castle, in romania, requires one to march up over 1400 steps to reach the castle. it's worth it when you know it actually was vlad the impaler's castle. or one of them, at least. i digress.


we visited on a rather cloudy day, so i'm wondering what it's like to go back on a sunny day and see the view looking out again. it's pretty crazy though.




inside the actual caves, you'll find the home of not only many shrines, but many monkeys. and those monkeys, they are vicious. maybe i'm just a littttttttle bit skeeved after a monkey charged at me on tioman, but i am not about to mess around with a monkey. and the monkeys in the caves are literally all around you, all above you, you never know where they'll come out from. i felt uneasy. but still, it was a pretty magnificently beautiful place.


the steps coming down actually hurt more than going up. how does that work?



we then headed over to pavilion, where we had some dinner, watched some candy being made, and looked at the christmas displays. let me tell you what, now having been through every major religion's holiday in malaysia, i can say with 100% positiveness they go all out for every. holiday. pretty impressive.



finally, we headed over to view the fountain show at klcc park, and get a last nightly view at the towers.

running around my second home in tourist mode has only made me realize again what a beautiful place it is. sometimes i am frustrated, what with needing to go to five different grocery stores to find something that i could easily find at home, ordering an apple and getting an orange, having a $50 bottle of wine break because of laziness on the store's part and then having to buy another $50 bottle of wine with no customer service, but at the end of the day, it really is a wonderful place to be. there's not a single part of me that regrets my decision to be there. i am a lucky girl.

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a little bit of catch up.

i know, i know. i've dropped from weekly blogging to.... bi-monthly. i'll make it up. here's a summary of all that's gone on since september! please excuse my photo effects. the new photo editing service in flickr is more fun than the old photo editing service, and now i've gone overboard.


we celebrated halloween! it was a spooky time indeed. i learned that tearing a haunted house down takes significantly less time than building one.


i attended my very first marine corps ball, with my most delightful boyfriend. it was a fun time indeed.


i tried out a new restaurant called "circus" with my friends, and faced another case of what i call "malaysiafication," aka when a simple dish is ruined for no reason. salads are frequent victims of this. i ordered french onion soup. simple. so easy i could make it! i think what everyone looks forward to in french onion soup is the cheesy goodness on top, right? instead i got an egg yolk. and no cheesy goodness. everyone else enjoyed their food, and the cocktails were good, if not a bit expensive. that's typical though.



after weeks of me whining pouting begging politely asking, my compliant sweet boyfriend finally took me to the aquarium. the aquarium is located semi-underground, in klcc. we arrived right before the piranha feeding fest was beginning, so it was delightful right from the start (i mean, as delightful as you can feel watching fishes attack other fishes). because fishes make me SO EXCITED i was pretty happy about this. and as you can see, we saw bruce AND crush, so that was even better. we saw so many sharks. it was a pretty good aquarium. the only thing that really stood out to me is how different safety is outside of the us. this isn't something new to me, as i noticed it my very first day in budapest on my very first trip abroad. nobody cares about safety like america. in the case of the aquarium, you could easily stick your hand in numerous fish tanks, which had "please do not put hands in the water" signs all over them. who is to stop you though, when you can do it right there?? and it's not just accessible by adults, but also children. just kind of crazy to see. i guess people obey the signs though, or else i would imagine the tanks would be covered by now.


deepavali, a major indian holiday, came and went. the numerous beautiful rice/sand displays also went. i think i enjoy that holiday (not just for the four day weekend it brought).


thanksgiving also came and went. i had two dinners. i missed home more than i have the entire time here, i think. blah.

i actually do have more to post about (including doing the most touristy thing to do here in KL), but i'm a little tired and it's a little past bedtime. more later!

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there's no place like home.

in september, approximately six months and some days after i arrived in kuala lumpur, i sat myself on a plane and went right back to where i came. but, you know, not for forever. i had important things. i will get to those later. but first!



i ended up with a 13-hour layover in dubai (also flew on emirates' brand new dubai-dc route!). after looking at the airport, my decision to not spend 13 hours in the airport was pretty simple. i booked a hotel room and the hotel offered free transportation between the hotel and the airport, so it was easy to get into the city. the metro was super easy to use as well. i'm pretty much becoming a master of the metros worldwide.

i really only wanted to see the burj khalifa and then the mall.



inside of the mall, i found the "millions of milkshakes" shop. obviously it made me ecstatic to have a milkshake named after miley cyrus. obviously.



i watched the sun set before heading back to my hotel room to sleep for a bit before heading back to the airport. i only experienced a teeny bit of dubai, but i think a teeny bit was enough. the dubai mall is ranked as my #1 favorite mall, not for being so big (there are bigger malls here in malaysia), but it was big and relaxed. i enjoyed it. plus there was a dancing fountain to delight.

then i made it home, on to the most important things:



WVU football (and on my 25th birthday, no less!)



and the marriage of one of my dearest, oldest friends!! i was beyond happy to be able to see this.

home was full of my favorite foods, some of my favorite people, and only a little bit of rest. next time i go back, it will be the same, but more rest. much. more. rest.

eventually though, i had to come back to KL, and back to my boys ♥



see my cat? he is a new addition to my little kl life. he is sweet maybe 60% of the time. the rest of the time, i think he thinks he is a lion. he's still cute. and i don't say that about cats.

:)

finally, can you believe i said i have been here for six months? today makes seven months since i left the u.s. i have done so much in six months, so i am most positive the next 2.5 years will be full of even more. bananas!

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merdeka day!

august was full of holidays. aside from my self-imposed pangkor holiday, there was also hari raya (celebrating the end of ramadan) and malaysia's independence (merdeka) day. the last one was on august 31, and paired with u.s. labor day on the following monday, made the final of three four-day weekends in august. pure shenanigans.

i went with a friend to watch the merdeka day parade. it was way super early, and way super crowded. still, it was interesting to see how malaysians celebrate their independence. the parade was quite unlike anything we had ever seen. in addition to usual school bands, there was a stream of taxi cabs and buses, different characters from local kid shows, the police, and some other interesting things i'm sure except for we left after the police went through. it was really too crowded. and hot, but that's typical malaysia.


on the left, merdeka square, filled with people. on the right, a flyover for the armed forces.


the children were adorable.

happy merdeka day!

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a little island called pangkor

a couple of weeks ago i went to my second malaysian island, pangkor, to celebrate a very special birthday. pangkor has lots to do on it, but we stayed at a slightly secluded resort, pangkor island beach resort, which made it difficult to want to leave the little slice of paradise.





the water was not quite as clear as tioman, but it was still clear enough that we could walk out to chest level and see the bottom. which is just about perfect enough for me. the resort also had a lot of activities, such as the kayaks. it was just cute and fun. but my favorite part was the hornbills. they hung out at breakfast looking for scraps.



overall, it was a delightful weekend. getting to pangkor was relatively easy as well. the bus ride was about 3 hours, then a 30 minute ferry ride. much easier than getting to tioman! i think this will be the island i choose to take my family and friends to when they visit.

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a little hop down south to jakarta!

jakarta is a place (like bangkok and singapore) that is so close to KL that it's way easy to just go down. paired with super cheap airfare, it's crazy dumb to not go if you have the time. for me, i had two main reasons to go down that happened to be two people very dear to me! everyone told me before i went down that i wouldn't like it as much as KL. i can say that is absolutely true. KL is such an easy place to live. you can get a taxi almost anywhere, you can go out to eat cheaply and there's so much to choose from, and plenty to do to keep you occupied. maybe jakarta is the same, but i didn't see that. then again, i was there during ramadan and only for two days. still, i had plenty of fun.

we went to taman mini, a park which has lots of things to explore. part of it is an outdoor museum, with life-size replicas of each of indonesia's large cities. but the best part, the BEST part, was the reptile zoo. why? because there is a crazy 23-year-old komodo dragon named bima, who you can pet and sit next to and totally feel like you're going to die at any second if just a little bit of his saliva gets into your body. or maybe that's just me.



when we arrived at the komodo's area, he was fast asleep. i was amazed to see they could push him around to wake him up and he wasn't bothered by it at all. because. you know. this is a komodo in real life.



but then that wasn't all for the animals. there is also a large lizard section. and snakes. like this python. named jared. again. no problem. at all. not scared.



in the new guinea section, we got to meet a carving man. and he let us carve.



it was pretty crazy. but fun. i really enjoyed it. for the rest, i'll just continue to speak in pictures.


on the left, a silly little castle in taman mini. probably the only castle in indonesia. on the right, monas, or monumen nasional.


on the left, the view from my friend's hotel room. on the right, bargaining to buy a vehicle. for forever.


and then i was able to meet up with a friend from KL! so not only did i get to see two people i adore from the states, but another person i adore from malaysia. the world is crazy small you know. and then i ate delicious cake. really delicious.

and that was all of jakarta for me! there was some shopping (good shopping, too), but i do that everywhere. so. i maybe would go back to be able to explore more and experience it outside of ramadan, but this was a good time for now.

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