Malaysia!

Wow, since my last blog post I flew home for 10 days, came back, taught for two weeks, flew to Malaysia for four days, and came home barely missing a record setting typhoon.  Minnesota was great as always, although I somehow managed to book my return flight for the wrong day and missed a day and a half of work.  I got some really dirty looks and a deeper understanding of the meaning of “nonrefundable ticket” (turns out you can’t even change the little bastards).  So then I worked 10 out of 11 days and got up at the ass crack of dawn to fly to Kuala Lumpur on day 12. 

My friends Emily and Sam found $300 tickets and an air B&B on the 22^nd floor of a high-rise for like $40 a night.  Our place had a pool and restaurant on the 37^th floor roof top.  The place had four towers and so many people we had to wait 5 minutes for the elevator to come.  We had a studio with a mattress on the floor for me and a semi-broken AC unit.  It worked out though.

I was a bit nervous going with friends that I hadn’t traveled with before, but we got along well and didn’t have any emergencies except when a monkey stole a bag of souvenirs from us.  We did a bunch of touristy stuff like going to temples, mosques and shrines and going to the top of an 88 story tower.  We did a food tour one night with a random local guy we found on the internet.  He fed us Chinese street food and we got caught in the middle of a huge Chinese ghost festival parade.  (I didn’t know before going that the gates to the spirit world were open in early September).  Other highlights included feeding parrots an aviary and visiting an enormous cave guarded by a 100 foot golden statue of a Hindu war god. 

Overall the city was super huge and built up but it was easy to get around with uber and nearly every one spoke English.   The people are super diverse and there are very active Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist communities.  The city was also super developed and we didn’t have any problems with scammers, feral dogs or human refuse being thrown out of 2^nd story windows.

Now I’ve been back taking it easy and gearing up for another work week.  We have a meeting tomorrow before work for the full staff 200+ Shimon staff, then on Wednesday I teach at my new branch for the first time.  I’ll be in touch.  Tootles.