Tad Obsession!

I still have posts to do on NZ and several on Malaysia, but I'll skip those today because I'm an obsessive wee mite who simply can't help herself so thus NEEDS to indulge her new big obsession:

Random photographs and the possibility of some sort of universal significance:

So, let's do this again:  Photo program.  Eyes shut. Scroll down. Click!

Ahh, that's better.  Nothing strange and Jungian here. Just one of those fancy-shamzy toilets they have in Japan.  No meaning there, surely, but instead just check out those mighty incredible functions.  In fact, those toilets are so fancy you almost feel frightened to use them.

And if I thought I'd ever be able to find that shot again, I'd go down to the post where I talk about these Japanese toilets and post this photo into there too.


Was about to sign off to go out now but I'm all intrigued and want to do just one more of these random photo things, to see if this new obsession of mine actually does have significance and meaning:

Loloma Beach in Fiji.  

Where our beach-house is.

OK, now this is creepy again, considering that our beach has recently been taken over by nasty sodding Americans who won't let us set foot on our own sand, so maybe these two photos do make meaning together.  And not a very nice meaning either. Our beach is now in the fancy-shamzy toilet!

Hey, maybe this can be a new form of fortune-telling.  We can call it Photomancy and treat it like tarot cards.  We can do a three card draw and see what comes up.

OK, one more card just to see if this Photomancy thing actually works:

Ah, it's that gorgeous little wish-bird seller in Pak-Ou Caves in Laos sheltering from the rain.

So, do these three photos together make some sort of meaning?

Well, yes, and given what's been happening in HK lately, that meaning can only be  ...

... "Hong Kong is to rely on the Motherland and allow her to make all decisions."

While We Were Gone.

I've only just heard.  While we were in Malaysia something so funny happened that I can't breathe for laughing.  Hilarious, but also scary, creepy and sad, sad, sad.

BEIJING HAS DEMANDED THE RIGHT TO INTERPRET HONG KONG'S FORTUNE STICK FROM THIS YEAR FORWARD.

Can you believe it?

Do you know about HK's fortune stick?  If you don't, what happens is that every Chinese New Year over 70,000 folk flood Sha Tin's Che Kung Temple to watch Big Red Hat Sifu stick a windmill on his head, go into a trance and, amid much chanting, pageantry and incense, pull out HK's fortune stick for the upcoming year.

Everyone is always surprised at how often it's correct and it actually foretold SARS and the financial tsunami, which is probably why the Communist Party is now taking such a big interest.

However, no one this year is quite sure what stick was chosen because the Mainland Chinese Communist Party hi-jacked the stick and told everyone that it said ... wait for it ...  

... wait ...

"Hong Kong is to rely on the Motherland and allow her to make all decisions."

Do you LOVE?  Are you too laughing uproariously?  And do you too find this deeply tragic and almost downright frightening?

You know, this sort of stupid and ridiculous micromanagement is so sick and sad and scary, the Dalai Lama and Tibet should realise they don't stand a chance!

My George Harrison Story!

George Harrison's birthday yesterday and, in honour, I should tell you the best of my George Harrison stories, although this is actually a Bob story and I first heard it from the actual roadie involved who  related it at Bob's funeral.

Bob had a legendary guitar.  Although it wasn't that famous blues guitar that's handed down from old musician to 'the most worthy' of the next generation of young musicians, it's a lesser one with the same pedigree and history.

Anyway, Bob was doing a gig in a nightclub in Port Douglas, when his band took their first break and Bob dashed off for his free meal.  The instant he left, 'some old dude' crept up on stage and grabbed Bob's guitar, inspecting it closely.

"Hey, don't touch that guitar!" Young Roadie shouted at him. "Bob don't let anyone touch that guitar."

"I'm sure Bob won't mind me touching his guitar." Old Dude said.

And he then started to play it.

"Hey, don't play that guitar!" Roadie shouted at him. "Bob don't let anyone play that guitar."

"I'm sure Bob won't mind me playing his guitar." Old Dude replied and continued to play.

"Oh man, I'm telling Bob on you. Bob's gonna be so cross with you."  Young Roadie shouted.

He raced into the wings.  "Hey, Bob." Young Roadie shouted.  "This old dude is messing with your guitar."

Bob came racing out, furious, then saw the old dude and stopped in his tracks.  "Take a good look at that old dude." Bob told the Young Roadie. "That old dude is the only person in the world you can let play my guitar."

And George Harrison then stuck out his tongue at Young Roadie, and asked Bob if it was indeed the guitar he thought it was and when Bob said yes, George said "If you let me play this guitar, can I join you on stage for the rest of the night?"

And that's how it came about; the Legendary Night when Old Dude joined "Swag".

 George, Hero of Dafen too!

Another Random Photograph!

I'm wondering if these random photographs I've been choosing with my eyes shut are in some way the universe trying to tell me something.

So far, I've got:
1) Lucky Luck from Laos,
2) Yellow and purple flowers symbolising health and longevity,
3) Coloured ribbons from Ap Lui Street - which may not symbolise anything at all.

Interesting, huh!  So let's do this again to see if the universe is indeed deep and meaningful - all collective unconscious, synchronicity and Jungian tingly ancestral memory and such - or if the Nihilists and Existentialists have it right and everything that happens is random and meaningless:

OK, this photo is a reference to the ancestral tree of the NZ Maori; a tree not unlike the sacred tree in Avatar.

Let's do it again and see what we get:

Novice monks in Thailand.

Religious theme happening, decidedly, but is there any meaning emerging here? 

Worship the tree?  No?

 
OK, one more just to be sure:

I have over 10,000 photos in that program, and look what I've just got.  AGAIN!

Frankly, I'm finding this very disconcerting.  Obviously I need to give something - and god only knows what - some deep deep thought.

What Kills Us This Week

This week HK is very cross that, "just like Princess Diana", their most famous Cantonese opera star, Chan, was killed by paparazzi.

Of course it was nothing like a chase through a tunnel or anything big and dramatic like that. Chan had just done an entire opera and was 'paped' at the stage door, returned home, said she wasn't feeling well, went to bed and just died.

"Those reporters are to blame." everyone is now saying.

She was 98 years old, folks, however no one appears to be taking it into consideration. 

And everyone is now mourning the passing of A Golden Age of their own home-grown art form. Well, that Golden Age went on for a long, long time!

Oh, and reading through her Obits, I also find it astonishing that she was once a little orphan baby in Mainland China who was found and adopted - adopted!!! - by two of HK's greatest opera singers ... and she went on to become the greatest Cantonese opera singer who's ever existed.  Fortuitous, huh! In fact, way, way, way too fortuitous! I suspect there's something here we're not being told.  Like, what exactly did daddy get up to with another opera singer who wasn't his wife? 

And it's astonishing to me just how old famous Hong Kongers get and how long they continue to work. Like Run Run Shaw continues to run Shaw Brothers Films to this day and he's like ... let me check:

Lordy, Sir Run Run was born in 1907.  He's 103.  And he's still running his company. Amazing, huh!

And Stanley Ho. Let's see how old he is?  Born in 1921, so only 89. Not quite so amazing, but to be still heading up his enormous gambling empire is some going.

But still, for Chan to still have been doing opera at her age - and some of those plays last five hours - is truly astonishing so I think that HK shouldn't be throwing around blame this way.  Sure, a dozen or so reporters crowding out such an old lady wasn't a kindness, but I think, all in all, Chan has died exactly the way she would have wanted to.

Chan, RIP!

Another Conversation with a Saudi.

Completely different Saudi fellow, this one a chance-met old man, I briefly chatted with, and what happened was so funny I must share.

He told me that Charles Schultz, who wrote the "Peanuts" comics, was one of the world's truly great unsung geniuses of philosophy, and that when he was a child he once stumbled across a strip where Linus says "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness." and it struck him as such a  powerful idea, he's lived his entire life by that philosophy.

As we all know, it's actually a quote from the Christian Bible, but there's no way he would know that ... and would undoubtedly be very angry if he found out ... and so I decided that, this time, for once, I would play nice and not attempt to enlighten him so just said "I understand! It is indeed a very powerful thought." and left it at that.

Malaysian Massage.

Everyplace I ever go I try the local massage. In fact, when Ela K. was asked to write a series of magazine articles on traditional massages of the world, she chose me as her Designated Expert and I was even able to direct her to bizarre and different therapies she had never heard of.

Traditional massages are amazing. I've often thought of doing a PhD thesis on the subject because more than anything else I've come across they tell the story of human migration.  Truly, they simply reek of social history. Like, I knew, from the moment I had a Tanka massage, that this was the source of Polynesian massage; they share so many of the same moves, each is like a Chinese Whispers version of each other. I thought "Mothers passed this down to their kids a long, long time ago." so wasn't at all surprised when DNA tests revealed that the Polynesians descended from Tanka mothers, between five and six thousand years ago. 

And there's the harsh and brutal Cambodian massage sharing all the same basic moves as the sweet and gentle Thai massage; so different yet so alike I guessed - and confirmed later - that Thai massage descended from enslaved Cambodian masseuses, taken captive in a war and so, in their new environment, too scared to inflict the pain they usually did.

And so, given my abiding interest and being in Malaysia, I had to try what they had on offer. Terepi Ikan, which I've already told you about, was mighty interesting and different, but as for the rest, mmmmhmm ...

I'm sorry if I'm wronging Malaysia here but I think they don't have traditional massage.

When I was a child, my father would only read to me if I rubbed his back, and, sincerely, when I got those series of massages around KL, I really felt I should be reading aloud to the masseuse.  It was truly that ho hum and nothing!

Is this true?  That Malaysia doesn't have massage?  Or did I just stumble upon a series of particularly bad and ill-informed folk who had no training and no idea of what they were doing?

If there are Malaysians out there who know better, please do let me know. You may even get a mention and thank you in my "One-Day" PhD thesis.

Shhh! We'wre Hunting Wabbits!

Bob took us up the hill at the royal city of Kuala Selangor outside KL to feed the monkeys. It was fun so let me take you through it so you can feel you've done it too:

THE HILL

Bukit Melawati

WALKING THE ROAD

Actually took this shot long 

after we found the monkeys.

I'm just including it so 

you know what the road looks like.

HUNTING FOR MONKEYS

No monkeys.

ONLY A FEW MACAQUES

We don't like macaques. The ones around Quarry Bay in HK hang around outside McDonalds and attack folk to steal any McBurger that comes outside.  They are always so mean, we think the McDonalds there should start serving McAque Burgers.

FINALLY, MONKEYS!

These are Silver Langurs
aka the Silver Leaf Monkeys.

MORE MONKEYS

OBSCENE NUMBERS OF MONKEYS

This is where they choose to 

live these days rather than trees.

Kinda worried about 

brain tumours from that EMF.

THE MONKEY FOOD WARS

China, with their one child policy, is creating a monster future problem for themselves with all their spoilt-brat overly-entitled "Little Emperors":

This one was rather a sweetie 

however, but, lordy, the junk food!

I got cross because of the amount of junk food they were feeding to the monkeys so, childish as I am, I went to war with these kiddies, and the moment I'd spot anyone feeding pocky or twisties to a monkey I'd race over with the asparagus stalks:

Spotting another family of 

monkey junk-feeders.

"Here! Throw away those twisties!"

"Yayyy! I win!!!"

BABY MONKEYS

Spotted a monkey holding this really strange golden something ...

... so raced in to figure out what it was:

It's a baby monkey.
I wonder how she explained THAT
to her husband.

A better shot!

Silver Langurs have golden babies. Isn't that strange. And they're so beautiful too.

Tried to take heart-warming shots on a "mums and babies" theme, but none of the photos are very good:

What do they say about never 

working with children or animals?

And so, after only an hour, we're done!

TOTALLY OVER MONKEYS

Waiting for the others to finish.

When I googled to find the name of this monkey, I came across another blog where the guy has fed these monkeys too. If you want to check it out:  here.   And, if you do check it out, please note that I'm the one spelling Bukit Melawati correctly. And also please tell me that you like my photos better, even if you have to lie.

Chatting with Saudis

Had lots of conversations with nice Saudi folk all over Kuala Lumpur but one in particular is memorable and worth recording:

Nice young fellow I met in the lounge at our hotel and we started talking about his fabbo crocodile skin shoes, but then it slewed off into dark territory.

He said he was checking out KL because he thinking of moving his family there because "Saudi Arabia is not a place anyone can live." He then told me that no one with money lives there anymore, and the whole point now is to bring in Indonesian and Filipino workers so that even the middle classes can flit off and live someplace else that's nice; and since only the filthy rich can now afford to live in Paris and London, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur are the new destinations of choice.

I didn't say anything, however, until he pointed to the Malaysian "Kung Hei Fat Choi" sign on the wall and said "But it shocks me that Malaysia allows the Chinese to celebrate their festival here. As a Muslim country you'd think they'd know to be more hard-line."

Well, that's when I saw red and completely lost it, and adopting my brutally-Machiavellian father's low scary voice I went for it. "You have turned your own country into such a hell-hole, you have no right to tell other countries how to run themselves."

He was very taken aback, so I went for it: "For sixty years now, because you have petrol, you've been given all the money in the world.  Where is it? What have you done with it?  Where are your great hospitals?  Where are your great scientists?  Your great doctors?  Where are your great universities? Your great libraries? Your poets? Your artists? Your composers?  Where is your great literature? Your great music? Yes, you have none. You have nothing!  You have done NOTHING! Your country does not deserve to have money.  Any other people on earth, given only a fraction of what you've been given, for only a fraction of the time, would be already filling the world with their greatness.  Instead, what has your country given the world?  Nothing but hate and violence and lies.

Even Muslims from other nations say that Hajj is very unpleasant because your country doesn't even have basic hygiene.

And now even you Saudis don't want to live there anymore. You know, in the very near future they are going to develop the electric car and no one will be giving you money anymore.  And then what will you do? You know what you should do?  You should stay! You should all stay! From all over the world, you should go back and use the last of your petro-dollars to build and rebuild and develop so you can turn your nation into a country you can be proud of and then none of you will want to leave."

At that point, I ran out of steam so shut up to hear his reply but the lovely fellow didn't say anything for the longest time. Then he stood up "You have given me a lot to think about." he said and he and his fabbo crocodile skin shoes left the room.

I floored him, I think. And, just looking at this now, I think this is an argument we should all be throwing at Saudis we meet everyplace, so feel free to use it or to adapt it to your own purposes.

Blue Eyes!

Ages ago, I wrote about how startling it is to suddenly see blue or green eyes on a Chinese person, and how, after thinking about it long and hard, deciding that I realy liked the current craze for coloured contact lenses among Asians.

I also regretted back then that I had no photos to show you how unexpected it is.  However, in KL, I came across a young Malay girl with pewter eyes:

Such a sweetie!

And, yes, since I have been rescued 

so many times in China by Starbuck's staff, 

I'm a great fan and try them out everyplace.

And I found a KL mug in here I meant to buy 

for Lady R. only, dammit, I forgot.

Sorry, honey!

I told her how unusual it was and how much I liked them, and she said they were contacts she bought in the arcade next door and told me exactly where I could get a pair for myself. I immediately went in only the stall was shut since, it seems, they were Chinese traders and, you know, Chinese New Year and all.  Meant to go back only I forgot.

And when I got back to Starbucks, she told me that she finds it very strange that most folk in Malaysia explode with rage when they see her wearing them and always tell her to stop trying to be something she's not.  I asked if that's why she's wearing them and she said no, she just likes the way it makes people stop in their tracks and enjoys that, for the first time in her life, people notice her; that she's not invisible anymore.

In fact, I think a lot of people in Asia feel like they're invisible and I strongly suspect they don't like it.  I'm always surprised at how many people, often elderly Asian ladies, who will come up to me and gesture that they want me to take their photo. I should show you one day because I've got dozens of these shots.

And at Bulik Melawati there was this lovely Tamil guy who was so thrilled I wanted to photograph his tiger (post below) that I asked if I could photograph him too, and he literally beamed with delight.  Let's see if I can find that shot:

 Such a bad shot.

You'll have to double-click to see his beaming smile.

It's universal, I think. Everyone just wants you to see them and acknowledge them as a fellow-traveller on this beautiful planet we all share.

And if blue eyes make it happen for you, why the hell not!

Petronas Twin Towers

As a tourist in Kuala Lumpur, you feel obligated to visit Petronas Twin Towers since it featured large in that film with Catherine Zeta-Jones - what was it called? - and because, until Dubai completed it's own mega-structure about a fortnight ago - the Burj Khalif, aka "The White Elephant" or "The Accident Waiting to Happen." -  it was the tallest building in the world.

However, when Rahjit, the hotel concierge, mentioned that if you arrive at 7 am you may only have to queue up for two or three hours, we decided to be totally original and ignore it.

Thus, this is the closest we got to the Twin Towers:

From our hotel window.

Batu Caves

I will be posting about Batu Caves only not now because I don't have any photographs.  There's a story there but it's so embarrassing I may not tell you what happened. However, Christie and Bianca will be sending the photos they took of us exploring these sacred caves only they're jaunting around A.E. Asia for the next two weeks thus we'll have to wait until they get home and have access to their photo program before we can see it for ourselves.

In the meantime, I'll just tell you there was this really creepy moment in those caves when an army of macaques came down the ... gosh, what do they call that geological feature when part of a limestone cave collapses and you can see the sky? ... heading straight for us and it was exactly like that really eerie scene at the end of the film "Congo" when the grey killer apes come down the same-geologicial-thing and attack the scientists.

Let's see if I can find the film:



Just found the movie trailer, but you can make out a little of it towards the end.

However, unlike those grey killer apes, this army of Batu Cave macaques just went around grabbing everyone's plastic bags and running away to look through them, eating whatever they found in there.

Hey, I just found a short film on youtube that shows the place, so I can talk about it here afterall:



See those steps? 275 of them and so steep? In order to be a credit to heavy smokers everywhere, I was determined to get up them climbing fast and without stopping.  In the end, I did stop six times, but five of those times were because my knees hurt and the sixth time it was that my heart was pounding.

Keith, Christie and Bianca (two young Australian girls in their 20s), none of them smokers, stopped as many times as I did, and with them it was because they couldn't catch their breath whereas my lungs were well up to the task.  Yayyy!

Inside? Batu Caves, unlike Pak Ou Caves in Luang Prabang, don't feel sacred.  They feel commercial and despite a large number of cleaning crew, working constantly, they are littered and dirty, although I think we should blame the macaques for that.

And the oddest thing I found about these sacred caves is that they're Hindu.  Since the British brought the Indians out to Malaysia only 150 years ago, and these caves are 400 million years old, why weren't they claimed by some religion much, much earlier.  Odd isn't it!

The geology of the place, however, was stunning and halfway up those steps there's an entrance to another set of caves that are blocked off and which you can't enter without a guide because they're dark and dangerous, and touring them apparently involves rafts and life-jackets and wet-weather gear and I really wished we had longer in Kuala Lumpur so we could do that instead.

Which means we have to go back to Kuala Lumpur soon.  Yes?

Best Photo

Selected the very best photo I took this entire trip:

The Mean Macaque

Was trying to photograph the old cannon and gun carriage in the ruins of the British fort on the hill at Bukit Melawati, and this sodding macaque wouldn't let me.  The cannon was his and I wasn't allowed to go near it, so there!

The Fireflies of Kampung Kuantan

Promised to tell you about the fireflies, didn't I!

 You can't take photos 

because the flash frightens them 

and they switch off,

but here's what it looks like,

only vastly more spectacular.

If you read the previous post, you'll know I was blase about fireflies since Baby Jane has a whole colony of them in the jungle around her house and whenever you switch off the veranda lights there's dozens of them everywhere; flashing green lights all over the place.

But this was nothing like that.  In fact, it's nothing like I could ever have imagined.

These aren't the same creatures as those other fireflies we're so familiar with, but I won't bother to explain how they're different.  Double-click on this photo below if you're interested, or visit the website I've linked to and that will tell you all about it:

And what happens at Kampung Kuantan is that you stroll through a small park out to a jetty over the river where the local villagers give you life jackets ...

 These two were such little cuties.

 ... and you line up to wait your turn for one of the small local boats ...

 

It was raining, as you can see, 

which apparently meant the fireflies 

weren't as bright as they usually are,

but it was spectacular anyway.

... and a nice old villager quietly punts you up the river along the line of mangroves.

There aren't any more photos beyond this point but I did attempt to video it because that doesn't have a flash, but nothing appears to have come out, so you just have to trust me when I say it was a truly amazing and spectacular experience.

 

Visualise it: You're quietly punting upstream and the moment you're out of the circle of light from the jetty, you're plunged into total darkness, except that on every mangrove bush there are millions upon millions of fireflies, all flashing green lights in unison, three times a second, and the sight going up the river like forever.

Oh, and here's something really funny.  Bob told us beforehand "Whenever an American sees them, he will always say 'Humph, they're just Christmas tree lights in the trees.'" and we shared our boat with a lovely American guy called Tony, and the second we came out of the light and saw all this, he said "Humph, they're just Christmas tree lights!"  and the nice old villager rolled his eyes and punted us straight into the mangroves.

And right up close, we could see them clearly, all sheltering from the rain beneath the leaves. These fireflies are winsy small beetles, about the size of a pinhead, and the males flash three times a second while the females only flash once.  Apparently it's a mating-call thing.

And that's when one of the fireflies landed on me and I kinda freaked because I'd seen this sign:

I imagined the firefly police waiting for me back at the jetty to arrest and charge me, but our nice old man said "Don't worry. He can fly. He'll go when he's ready." but then the tiny little beetle crawled up my sleeve to escape the rain and you could see it flashing under the fabric, and I felt so proud that I'd refused to put on mosquito repellent because I thought it may kill them and it turned out that was exactly the right thing to do and that's why it had landed on me and not on one of the others.

So I allowed myself to feel All-Avatar and The Chosen One and I wanted a heap more to land on me, but they didn't.

So that's what happens.  Just that. You are punted upstream for about ten minutes and then down again. However, simple though it sounds, you cannot imagine how nice it is, even in the rain. You come away feeling like you've just had a glass of especially nice red wine, and you're all mellow and quietly happy, and know deep within yourself that you've just seen and done something very, very special.

But if you need another reason to do this trip, how about the knowledge that this venture is part of the Malaysian government's effort to find ways to let local Malay villages make a living while maintaining their way of life and without chopping down forests or selling out their natural resources and things like that, so it's a program well worth supporting.

However, all that aside, the trip itself is amazing; just a beautiful experience and I highly recommend you take this trip for yourself.


Later:  Oooh, just remembered something else that was really cute.  When we were waiting for our boat, one of the villagers asked Keith where he was from and when he said "New Zealand", the old man looked like he was trying to mask his excitement as he asked "Have you been to their firefly tour?" When Keith said yes, the old man forgot to mask the excitement and began to ask many questions about how they did it there - and Keith was saying how they weren't fireflies, they were glow worms, and they were in underground caves and you were put into a wetsuit and the inner tube of a rubber tyre and simply drifted downstream - and that's when I noticed all the other old villagers had slunk up and were secretly listening hard in the background, exactly like they thought Keith was spilling state secrets or revealing insider trading information.  Fuunnnny!

That Sodding Delay!

My camera has developed a delay of a couple of seconds, which means I frequently lose my shot.

Like, look at this quite-probably-amazing photograph:

Twins!

You should have seen this shot the way it would have been only seconds earlier. These two were side by side and, with that hair, it was like a mirror image. 

However, there's another side to this delay.  Shot a picture of the view of the date palm plantations below through the window of the van we were travelling in, and instead I got this:

Like, huh?

I cannot imagine what is going on. Double-click on the photo and see if you can figure it out.

Interesting, huh! The delay means you never know what you'll get. But, all in all, I think I'd prefer to discover a way to take it off.  Anyone can help?

Burkhas

Many Saudis holidaying all over Kuala Lumpur and I could tell you several stories, only I won't just yet and instead I'll show you something I found genuinely disturbing:

The temperature was 33 degrees too. 
And see how she's checking her hubby doesn't notice
while she takes a surreptitious scratch 
in the crook of her elbow

which had me wondering about

the extent of her prickly-heat rash.

There were many Middle-Eastern tourists in these brutal mega-burkhas but the one above was more than most since it was extra-extremely long and came with woollen gloves too.

I was already thinking "Oh, you poor honey!" because of the heat but they got off at the same stop we did and, walking behind this pair, I noticed something I'd never known about these veils: these women can't see a damn thing because that narrow eye slit shifts when they move and is constantly covering their eyes.  

And the dirt-trailing length of that "modest" veil just made everything so much worse.

First, she tripped on her skirt stepping onto the escalator and only just managed to catch herself in time, which almost didn't happen because she could barely get purchase on the handrails with those sweat-slicked gloves, and then she tripped again getting off, and then she tripped again on her skirt walking down the steps, stumbling down two of them, and again she stumbled stepping off the pavement to cross the road. And all the while, hubby stalked on ahead, totally ignoring her.

I kept thinking how stupid she was that she didn't hoick her skirt up and then realised she wasn't allowed to; that it was Against The Rules.

They passed out of our lives at that point, but I couldn't stop thinking about how, surely, it was only a matter of moments until she tripped and fell in front of traffic or down her next flight of stairs. And the only joy in that was the thought of her husband right in front of her and that she'd undoubtedly take him down with her and then land on him.  Yayyy!

Allah only said women should "be modest" but just look at that veil.  That isn't modesty.  That is ridiculous extravagance. And forcing a wife to constantly risk an accident, or even her life, this way surely also constitutes spousal abuse.  

And surely it doesn't have to be this way. Just look at how Malaysia does Islam:

 I thought this lady was gorgeous.

See! Nothing all-black and threatening. Just a very pretty veil. And no nonsense about those extra-long skirts. Of course, there's always the problem of prickly-heat rash around the neck but that's always so much better than that awful rash you get under the arms and other places where it's embarrassing to scratch. 

And these mega-burkhas are NOT traditional. Remember those photos The Redoubtable Walker's great uncle took on his jaunts through the Middle East a century ago?  There wasn't a brutal black mega-burkha anywhere in sight.  All those ladies were in elegant ankle-length white veils that they held up to cover their eyes whilst walking in public.

So what on earth are these modern Middle Eastern Islamic-types thinking? The Sisters of Islam should get onto this, shouldn't they: either demand the burkha eye slits are made bigger so these ladies can see or shorten the skirts so they don't continually step on them.  Or at the very least they should be permitted to hoick them up while walking.

 

It's logical.  It's sensible. It's sane. So how difficult can it be to institute that?

Year of the Tigger!.

You remember that line from Oscar Wilde about "Two countries divided by the same culture."?  Yes?

Well, that's definitely what's happening here in Kuala Lumpur with the Chinese New Year, Year of the Tiger celebrations!

In HK and the rest of China, tigers are highly respected and always depicted as huge, powerful, charismatic, dangerous etc, etc etc.

 Chinese tiger-perception.

 Hong Kong Tiger-perception.

Not in Malaysia. Let me show you just a small sample of their Tiger-perception before I delete these photos forever:

 Smiling despite the teeth.

And that's how they say 

"Kung Hei Fat Choi".

And how offensive is this frontpage shot:

 How you make real tigers "cute"!

The only image of a strong tiger we saw the whole time was in the window of an Australian shop, with an image designed and executed back in Australia:

 What do they say about "using local knowledge"? 

These Oz guys obviously didn't.

And this toy owned by a nice Tamil man, who obviously doesn't share the Malaysian-born-Chinese tiger-perception:

 Only winsy-bit cute.

Even the photo in their Sun newspaper of Rio's Carnivale tiger-float showed a stronger and fiercer tiger-perception than any in KL:

 Only borderline cute.

Wondering about this strange view and thinking all sorts of profound thoughts about psycho-sexual whatchamacallits and stuff like that. Or maybe this:

 Celebrating a traditional festival 

within a large group of alien cultures, 

so staying very nonthreatening and low key.

... but in the end decided maybe it could be because the almost extinct Malaysian tiger is just so gosh-darn cute.

Hey, remember how I met one in the Singapore Night Zoo and when it would itself around my legs and "meowed" up at me, I felt all "If this is a tiger, we've been lied to our whole lives?"

Posted that story.  Should really link you to it if you haven't read it already.

Mmmm, just read the post and that was a Malaysian Clouded Leopard. Honestly, my memory!

Anyway, isn't this interesting. Two countries: One tiger: Two perceptions!  Oscar Wilde really nailed it, didn't he.

Terepi Ikan

I just had fish eat my feet.

No, seriously!

We were walking along Bulik Borang when we saw a sign in a shop window saying "Terepi Ikan" and a poster showing a woman with her feet in a vat of piranhas and it was instant "Say what?" and "Who on earth would do something like that?"

Then Keith pointed out the word "Ikan" and said "That's very like the Polynesian word for "fish"" and then we noticed the word "Terepi" and both went "That's pidgin for Therapy! So it obviously means "fish therapy"."  and we both laughed at such a bizarre concept. Then, right at that moment, an elderly Chinese gentleman came out of the shop and said "25 ringgit. Half hour." and Keith saw my face and said "Don't be such a bloody idiot!" and that sold it for me.

So, for 25 ringgit I stuck my feet into an aquarium full of about 50 of these strange albino Oscars, a type of piranha, and they all dived onto my feet and started eating the flesh.

What it felt like?  Eerie. Strange. Creepy. Uncanny.  At the start, it's all so strange and yuck you can't stop shuddering, but within five minutes ... it's quite pleasant and you just tune out and it's all very ordinary.

And my feet now?  It's like they've never touched the ground or worn shoes or done anything mundane EVER. Feet like a baby's bottom.

So, yes, it's a great thing to do and a really lovely touristy thing to do while in Malaysia, so ... Terepi Ikan all round?

Later:  And just so you believe me, I've gone out and taken a photo, although it's of a sign much closer to hand to save myself the long walk:

  My Terepi Ikan fish were 

sooo much bigger.

A Day Later: P.S. Many folks have sent me photos of themselves with their feet in fish, so I guess I'm the last to know about this.

Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is a real city. At the risk of being yelled at - and I'm used to that, so fiddle-de-dee! - I want to offer greatest kudos to the British Empire for the fine work they did building their colonies all around the third world.

Like HK, KL was built by the British from scratch on some empty land at the confluent between two rivers  and thus the place is well laid out and fundamentally SANE.  Here, the streets are clean and wide with nice wide pavements, the sewerage system works, there's good clean water supply,  a nice range of very pretty parks, the services are all in place and still function to a high degree; trains, buses, ports, highly functioning communication networks, democracy, the people have good schools and universities, good health because the health system is great, and it is totally clear that the British Empire was amazing and isn't congratulated nearly enough.

Though kudos too must go to Malaysia for realising what a treasure they had inherited and thus kept the whole thing going for so long after the sun has set on the British Empire.

Naturally, there's much more to come but we're now off to book for the riverboat tour down to see the fireflies.  Apparently it's amazing, but Baby Jane's place in North Queensland is frequently  inundated with fireflies so I'm used to them - we don't even bother to turn off the lights for less than two dozen - so I sincerely hope that we get to see something rather more special than that.

Will let you know what happens!

Hello from Kuala Lumpur

Keith's surprise turned out to be five days in Kuala Lumpur.

Stories will have to wait because this computer only gives me a space after I wrestled with the spacebar for about three minutes per space ... andit'sreallybuggingmebigtime.

See you later.

Later:  Realised I posted about Kuala Lumpur over a year ago:  Big Brother Gerald's letter; you can find it here.

Photo Chosen By the Universe.

Leave tonight, but in the meantime, let's do another random photo thing.  Again, if it's an interesting one I select with my eyes shut, I'll talk about it.  If it isn't, I won't.

Lady Luck from Laos.

Lady Luck wood carvings from that "rediscover traditional skills" workshop in Luang Prabang in Laos, taken Christmas holiday last year. And I've already talked about her in here so I won't do it again.

Have a fabbo holiday folks and Hung Hei Fat Choi to you all.

Jaunting!

Am off jaunting so may not be around much over the next week or so.

And no, it's not Chieng Mai. Keith rocked home with completely different tickets to a completely different destination but I'm not allowed to know beforehand where we're going.

Nice, huh!  My comment was "As long as whereveritis has sacred caves, I'm fine with it." and he assured me there are indeed fabulous sacred caves and a great many of them, so now I'm very happy and excited.

So see you when we get back.

Later:  

Keith says to pack for HOT and for Islamic fundamentalist types who dis on sexy ...  so  ...  Indonesia? Dubai? Malaysia? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Yemen? London?

What Kills Us This Week!

OK, this isn't about HK this week but over the most totally outrageous ruling in a Los Angeles court. Men At Work lost the most ridiculous and stupid court case of all time. If you've missed this, here's the backstory:



And they LOST.

Like, huh?  I mean, just listen to the two songs:

And then:

Not a chance, right? But the ridiculously stupid and tone-deaf courts disagree and their ruling now says Men At Work have to give 60% of any money they've ever made on it to the folks who own the "Kookaburra" copyright.

Unbearably stupid, right? And 60% of everything EVER?  Wrong, huh!

And when you consider what happened with  "Wimaway"  it just makes it all the more wrong.  Do you know about that? That an already long-existing South African recording of this song was stolen by some New York tosser and renamed "Lion Sleeps at Night" or something, and when the children of the original African artist (who was then dying of cancer and couldn't afford treatment) sued the American - who held up court proceedings for so long the old man died - which is just so cringably evil I hope that Yank burns in hell for all eternity - the courts ruled that only 21% of all future earnings had to be paid to the family in South Africa.

And now this?  And wouldn't there be something about precedent or something? Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! And stupid too!

"A.S.C.R."

"Another sodding curly roof!"  

It almost became official. Yup, as well as long being over wats (Thai temples) ...

 One of the many wats 

at the King's Palace in Bangkok, 

Thailand,

... and stupas ...

 Stupas in the ruins of Thailand's old capital, 

Ayutthaya.

... I realised only recently I'm also over Chinese temples.  Sad, isn't it.

This has been a slap in the face twice recently: hearing Beccy say, at Big Buddha as we walked back to the car, in a tiny little voice "Do you mind if I just quickly run in to see the Monastery?"

Then two months ago, in Taiwan, walking around the Longsham Temple in Taipei:

I'm kinda ho hum and thinking "It's an exact replica of Six Banyans Temple in Guangzhou, only with better workmanship ...

 Beautifully carved details.

 and that that ...

 Stockmarket reports?
Some sort of ticker tape thing 
under the entrance eaves.

 
... would have to be the most interesting thing here." then noticing Alexis' awestruck face ...

 Alexis.

... aglow with wonderment at her very first Chinese temple, and then thinking I had to be the most awful and cynical person EVER.

I mentioned this problem to Chris who said it was very common among ex-pats living in Asia. Because we have no spiritual connection with these places, they are just tourist objects to us, so after we've lived here a while we become very bored and blase with them.

Though, mind you, I'm sure folks touring the cathedrals of Europe quickly feel much the same way. "Another sodding spire.", "Another sodding apse." blah, blah, blah.

But Chris then told me that, whenever she feels this way, she visits a particular temple in Hong Kong that always touches her: Ten Thousand Buddha Temple up in the mountains of Lantau; not to be mistaken for the significantly more popular and touristy Ten Thousand Buddha Temple in Sha Tin.

And very kindly, she took us there the other day:

She's right.  It's almost completely different from any other temple I've been to.  Let me show you a small selection of the pictures.

The Approach:

 Sublime colours!

Gorgeous detail!

Everything right about the place.

The Temple:

Look, Lois. A ting!

It's in the temple back there 
they house the 

10,000 buddhas on

the great many stairs
going to the top!

No photographing allowed.

The Nunnery:

 The kindly nun who invited us in, 

even though it was closed for the day:

The gate into the jungle walk 

down the side of the mountain:

And in the light of so much extraordinary kindness and perfection, how on earth can anyone remain cynical about Chinese temples?  I mean LOOK!

Isn't it just gorgeous.

And, no, since I think too many tourists would spoil the place, I won't tell you how to get there.  If you want to visit a Ten Thousand Buddha Temple, go to the one in Sha Tin.  The directions are on the link above.