Malaysia and Singapore

It’s taken me a little while to get to writing this. I’ve spent the past three days trying to catch up on sleep. It’s been quite an exhausting trip. And we had no break at all, but jumped right back into classes after Malaysia.

So anyway, we arrived in Malaysia last Monday. We ported in Georgetown, on the island of Penang off the northwest coast. I only spent one day in Malaysia, and didn’t make it off the island. But it was a really nice place. I went on an island orientation tour which was a great way to see a lot on the island for having only one day there. We first went to a butterfly farm where my red shirt seemed to attract all kinds of butterflies. Our next stop was the snake temple. This is a Chinese Buddhist temple that has live snakes around the alter. The snakes were so calm, lying on wooden frame things up around the alter. After a Chinese lunch, we stopped at another Buddhist temple. This one was a whole complex. To get to the top, we walked past all kinds of shops and even a few restaurants. I could have spent all day exploring this temple and shopping. I had never seen anything like it. It was more than just a temple. Our final stop was a park where many people go to relax or take a leisurely walk after work. It was a real nice, relaxing place, with monkeys wandering all over, much like we see squirrels all over the parks in New York. Later that night I went to a welcome reception with Malaysian students. They put on a shadow puppet show for us. These shadow puppets are quite intense. They have moving joints that the puppeteer controls with the sticks they’re attached to.

Tuesday morning I was off for Singapore for a few days. Singapore is the cleanest city I have ever seen. It was a great trip. The road that we drove from the airport had a divider of potted plants that could be moved out of the way in 45 minutes so the road can be used as a military airway. After checking in to the hotel, we were given a tour of Raffles landing site and Clarke Quay. We took a bumboat ride down the river past all different kinds of architecture. We also saw the mer-lion fountain that is a symbol of luck in Singapore. Later that evening I had a chance to meet up with Seth, who graduated RPI last spring and is now in Singapore for grad school. He showed me all around. I experienced the MRT, which is the nicest, cleanest subway I’ve ever seen. There’s no eating allowed on the MRT, and with the hefty fines for littering, there’s no trash either. We also wandered around China town for a while.

The next morning we took a trip to Sentosa Island where we got to pet stingrays, saw a pink dolphin show, and spent time in a wax museum. The museum was quite interesting as it went through the history of Singapore and the different cultures that are present there. There’s a real strong Chinese culture, as well as Indian, Malay, and some British influence. Later that afternoon I headed down to the East Coast Parkway to rent a bike for a while, and discovered not only could you rent bikes, but you could also rent rollerblades. So I rented a pair of rollerblades, and skated along the coast for a couple hours. It was a really pretty area. I would love to be able to go and skate there every day. Then I met up with Alicia who’s studying at Singapore Polytechnic for the semester. Seeing her dorm was interesting. Everything is so open. And there were racks with clothes all over the place since they don’t have dryers in Singapore. We spent the rest of the night out dancing.

After meeting Seth for breakfast Thursday morning, I met back up with the group, and we headed back to the ship. Since we couldn’t actually dock the ship, we were taking lifeboats from ship to shore, so it took nearly 2 hours to get back on the ship, at which point I decided it wasn’t worth trying to go back out in Penang.

So now, after three days at sea, we are arriving in Vietnam.