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On day three we took a tour.  

• We got a nice hour-long ferry ride.  
• We got to wander through a rural town, which was clearly set up to intrigue tourists.  It was nice.  
• We got to see cows; we're still not sure whether or not that was a joke.  
• We got to ride on a little boat through a fishing town, which was also clearly set up to intrigue tourists.  Even so, that was pretty neat.  
• We got to see the foot of a Giant Buddha; unfortunately, there was so much mist that that's all we could see.
• We got to enjoy an all-vegetarian Chinese-food meal, which is always interesting (well, for us meat-eaters, anyhow).
• We got to wander around a Buddhist temple.  
• We got to ride a tram down a mountain side.

It was very touristy.  It felt pretty silly at times, but it was still fun.

By day two, we were starting to drag a bit.  We took things a bit slower.  We had a taxi drop us off at Stanley beach where we were going to watch some dragon boat training races.  The cabbie dropped us off at the Stanley Promenade, which is this cute little western-style touristy row of shops and restaurants, and a semi-permanent open market of touristy crap.  We wandered around and wandered some more looking for a bunch of dragon boats.

We asked around, but most people didn't know anything about the races.  Some said they were next week.  One said, "wolf races?"  (Bwahuh?)  Finally somebody pointed us up the hill and said, "Up," with an up gesture, "Down," with a down gesture.  Yeah, up and down gestures are pretty much international.

So, we went up the hill, then down the hill, and finally, we found the races, and just in time to see Chuck's team do a run.



Later we took the subway over to... uh, I'm not really sure what that area is called.  I think we went to Mong Kok, where they close off the streets to car traffic and have a huge outdoor market.  We wandered through that market for quite a while, picking up food and drinks here and there.  Wow, that place was a bit crazy.  Whole streets crammed full of people on foot.  Good fun.



We thought the light show at the Hong Kong Cultural Center would be fun, but it was a bit disappointing.  It could have been amazing, and the potential for it was very intriguing.  But it was just a couple buildings turning on and off their lights to music.  Still, we got some cool evening shots waiting for the show.

We arrived in Hong Kong after an approximately twelve hour flight from San Francisco.  We left just after midnight local time and arrived around 6 AM local time.  None of us managed to sleep very much on the plane, so it was effectively an all-nighter for us.  But that didn't stop us!  After checking into the hotel and freshening up a bit, we met up with Chuck, Serene's cousin, for dim sum and a guided tour.

I wish I had taken some pictures of the route we took to the dim sum place.  I'm sure it wasn't that confusing but to us foreigners (pronounced fehr' nehrz) it was like winding through building after building, walking through foyers, down side-hallways, over skybridges, then finally, through a large unmarked door to find the entrance to the restaurant.  Great fun, that.

We spent the rest of the day walking around downtown, playing on the escalators, walking through open markets, and generally just hanging out in Hong Kong.  Oddly, being awake for 30-something hours didn't really bother us very much with all the walking, eating and sites to see.

The escalators are great fun.  It's fascinating to see that as a major transportation mode.  Of course, we had to clog everything up by taking pictures of us making faces.



We walked through an open market which had fish flopping around on the tables.  I guess they really want to prove that it's fresh.



Later on we went up to Victoria Peak and got some amazing views.



Finally, we topped it off with a fantastic dinner at a plastic table in the road next to a hole-in-the-wall place. And yes, cars did drive down that road sometimes while we were there (though not often).



I tell you, we slept well that night.  Zonk!

A few weeks back we wandered up to Calevaras County with my parents. We stayed in a nice little time-share condo in Angel's Camp. It was pretty nice, that time-share thingy. Better than I expected anyhow.

Samual Clemens (nom de plum, Mark Twain, yes that guy who wrote about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn) apparently stayed in Angel's Camp for a few months on a personal pocket-mining adventure. He wrote a story about a jumping frog which was based in Angel's Camp. Now the town is a living, breathing tourist shrine to Mark Twain and the Jumping Frog's he made so famous.

There's even now an annual Frog Jumping Contest. Yap. They call it the Frog Jumping Jubilee. They put the frogs on a launch pad in a circle, then try to get them to jump in any direction. The one that jumps the farthest wins. I'm not making this up!

All in all, we had a good time. We went up to the Big Trees forest. We went to the Stanislaus river. We wandered around Angel's Camp and Murphy's and Columbia. We saw a play. We went wine tasting. We descended into the Moaning Cavern. We ate, drank and were merry.

Pictures ensue:


The Pine Cone of DOOM!


Big Pine Cone, Big Pine Cone Maker


Topher Viewing Trees


Mom Hiding in Trees


Serene Making the River Look Good


Father and Son Getting Ready To Empty Them Barrels


Mom and Dad Slightly Tipsy


Serene in My Hat Va-Va-Va-Voom!

I often refer to myself as a "Honky White Boy." Thus, my ass is, quite understandably, often quipped as my "Honky White Ass."

I attribute my fond embracement of my Honkiness to my father. See, my dad was born a poor white boy in Texas, working the farms and praising the Lord. I guess you learn to value those unique qualities that get you razed in some circles, because no matter how much we teased him, he has never lost his fondness for cowboy boots. (Though we have managed to get them gallon hats toned down to a fedora or a John Deere cap.) And he often referred to himself as "just a poor honky white boy."

So there I am, thirty-something years along in life, thinking I'm the definition of "Honkiness." I'm sitting in some cheesey rice place (that is to say, a place which serves rice covered in cheese) under the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, a happy honky white boy. My oh-so-lovely girlfriend, a Chinese-Malaysian who speaks English better than many Americans, points out a table of rather loud and raucous Chinese and says, "See them, they're all Honky's."

"Ruhr?" I eloquently grunted. "They're what?"

She giggled, "We call them Honky's because they're from Hong Kong."

And there I was, amazed again at how ego-centric I so often am, and realizing that Americans often are. Which, of course, made me realize that I'm the definition of "American." ... Woe.

Yeah. For those of you thinking about elk, burritos and other such things, just keep on thinking.

Oy! So much has happened! Of course, it's been so long, so I guess that's only to be expected.

Ok, so a quick synopsis:

I moved to Malaysia. (Actually, all yall should already know this since I was writing about it for a while.) I had a great time living there, and really enjoyed the local culture. I lived in Kuala Lumpur, which is a nice big city. I lived in a high-rise building, on the 20th floor. To go to work I walked through 2 malls and an underground light-rail station, then went up in another high-rise building to the 34th floor.

You remember that movie with Catherine Zeta-Jones (drool) and that guy where they jumped off the top of these two huge towers and parachutted down, as part of some grander scheme of course... That was Kuala Lumpur. Those towers are the Petronas Twin Towers. I could see those from my living room window.

Over time, my job degraded me into a puddle of drooling stress. So, about eight months later I moved back to California. It wasn't my choice, but it was by far the best possibile thing for me right then. Well, getting out of that cesspool of a job was, anyhow. I do miss Malaysia, though.

And here we are today! That wasn't so bad, huh? Yeah, ok, I glossed over all kinds of good stuff, but maybe that will just have to be fodder for a future post! Cheers.

. Topher

You have not lived until you've seen a Malay Liza Minnelli Look-Alike.

. Topher

It seems that Malaysians are afraid of napkins. Almost every non-western influenced restaurant (which means any place with Good Food) does not provide napkins or tissues with the meal. Perhaps they think that their country will become a swampland of partially used servlets, with bits of thin white paper smudged with greasy lip marks being blown around the palm oil plantations by a brisk tropical breeze.

I have learned to carry a little pocket pouch of tissues with me everywhere I go. What insanity!

. Topher

You know that jarring stumble that happens when you get to the bottom of the stairs one step sooner than you expected? Yeah, so...

There's this little stall place nearby that makes pizza. It's a nice looking place in a mall, not like the roadside stalls, or the car trunk stalls. And they make the dough right there in front of you, so you can see that it should be good.

After passing by it several times in favor of more local cuisine, I finally tried it. I ordered a chicken sausage pizza with pineapple on it. Apparently all their pizzas have pineapple on them.

The faltering step, though? The "chicken sausage" turned out to be balogna.

I staggered for a moment.

Melaka was a hoot. It's a very touristy place, in sharp contrast to Ipoh, which was just a back-water town. In Ipoh, my friends dragged me around to all their favorite haunts and tried to pass me off as just another friend. Nobody was fooled. My whiteness shines like a the thousand candlepower lighthouse on a moonless night, even notwithstanding the shiney bald head I have.

But we were talking about Melaka. In Melaka, I got to join the hordes of tourists scampering through the streets and crawling all over the town. It was fun.

Right down the street from our hotel was this old temple that had been converted to a Temple of Holy Desserts. I think I laughed for a whole block. Then I noticed some flowers and had to take another picture.

The streets in the inner town part of Melaka don't even bother with lanes. But they decorate nicely. There are trishaws all over the place. Most of them have nice plump white folk on the cushey seat and some skinny baba leaning into the pedals like they were a harsh winter wind.

Walking along the touristy street, there were a whole swarm of shops, all selling touristy junk. They had various clever things out in the fronts of their establishments to lure people in. There were also several temples. They all had these beautiful ornate carvings and inlays all over their fronts. I only went inside one. It was basically a house with a big fat alter in the front room.

As we were walking up and down this touristy strip, I noticed a little alleyway snugged between a couple of well-decorated shops. The whole scene completely entranced me for a moment. I swam in my head off to some science fiction world where the entire community of Asian cultures was just a big production, a lot like Westworld. But I got hungry, so I came back to this world.

We went and found a little resturaunt that served rice balls and fish balls and beef balls and nice cold drinks to go with them all. (I know, I know, you didn't know rice had balls, har har.) There was this one old guy behind the counter who was taking whole roasted chickens and a big huge knife and chopping them up. It was cool to watch him. And a little freaky, in a horror movie sorta way.

That resturant had a hole in the ground for a toilet. Granted, the hole in the ground was tiled, but it was still a hole in the ground. With a hose. Don't forget the hose.

By the time we were done munching on all those balls, the touristy strip had magically transformed itself into a night market. So of course, we had to trapse up and down the same strip a few more times. Oddly, it was fun.

The next day we went to another touristy place. It was a famous place. I know this because it was called "A Famosa." There was a canon. Yeap. Couldn't resist.

And that was my trip to Melaka.

. Topher