Malaysia

The city of Kuching in the state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

This was my first visit to a Muslim country! I did not know that before I arrived. In the Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia I saw for the first time in my life women wearing burqas! Of course I knew about them, but I thought only women in Afghanistan and Pakistan wore them. I guess Muslim women outside those countries have the option of wearing burqas. Others choose to just cover their heads, and others choose to not cover their heads. I don’t know how much of it is actually the sole choice of the woman. But also in Malaysia there are Chinese people living there who are not Muslim (mostly Buddhists) and some native people who have their own religion. So not all of the women were covered up.

When we jumped into the taxi at the airport, a funny thing happened! The car started moving and there was no one in the drivers seat! After a few seconds of thinking, “is this some sort of robot car that drives itself?” I looked over and saw the driver and the steering wheel on the right side of the car.

Anyway, Malaysia is much more developed than Vietnam. It is also much more expensive to stay there, which is why we were only there for two nights.

Another first for me on this trip was being so close to the equator! It was really hot there. First thing on Tuesday morning we woke up and took a van-bus from our hostel to visit a nearby wildlife refuge where wild Orangutans go to eat in the mornings. It was my first time seeing Orangutans in real life! This was I think one of John’s most favorite parts of our trip.

Next we took a bus to Bako Park, another one of the many nature reserves in Sarawak. Bako was only accessible by boat so we rode out there on a little rackidy motor boat and decided to go on a shorter hike because we didn’t have much time. It was right around noon time when we were starting out, and couple of the park rangers we talked to told us that we probably wouldn’t want to go on that hike because most of it was in the sun and it was really really hot. They told us that if we did decide to go we would need to bring three of those big 1.5 liters of water with us. So we decided to do it, and they were so right! I almost died I was so hot! It was definitely the hottest I had ever been in my life. It was at least100 degrees, and (the park ranger said) 100% humidity. In the sun!!!! I still can’t believe I did it. Anyway, after an hour and a half we finally made it to the end of the trail I was so delighted to find a beautiful sandy beach!! I was so happy. Then we discovered that motor boat taxis were giving people rides from the main park entrance directly to the beach. I couldn’t believe it!!!!! Anyway, at least we got to ride a boat back instead of hiking all the way.

And the best part of this story is that we didn’t have sunscreen with us. We were both bright red by the time we got back to our hostel that night. But surprisingly the sunburns didn’t last too long. Maybe because we were at sea level, and further away from the sun? I don’t know! Normally my sunburn would have lasted for days. Hmm.

The driver of our boat taking us back toward Kuching was a villager who lived along the banks of the river we were riding through. He told us that recently one man and a 3-year-old child were eaten by a crocodile and the village had to get a permit from the government to kill the crocodile! Crocodiles are protected animals in Malaysia.

Also while at Bako we saw lots of monkeys of different sizes. Some of them were mean and tried to steal things from people.

I will post some more pictures soon! The people in Malaysia were really friendly and most of them spoke English at least a little. It was a nice stay!