badasia time: 5/28 3:15pm

We’re in Kelantan now. Kelantan’s one of the ‘more-Muslim’ states in Malaysia, which means no pubs anywhere, and way more covered women.

We were in my dad’s hometown a few days ago and just got to my mom’s hometown last night. My mom’s hometown is a small village surrounded by jungle. We’re staying at her brother’s house now, but they don’t have internet there because copper thieves made off with their telephone/dsl lines a few weeks ago. I’m at another uncle’s house right now to post this entry.

Not much changes around here, even after ten years. My baby cousins are ten years older now and my uncle stopped fishing and carries a shotgun around now. When he took us out to breakfast this morning, he left it in the backseat of the car next to his ammo belt. Pimp move!

I’ll try to take some pictures soon. I’m a bit hesitant to whip the camera out because I get this vibe that we’d get robbed if that ever happened.

I’ve also got this irrational fear of being destroyed by a cobra while I’m here. I was scared of it back in Honolulu, and now that we’re here I’m even more paranoid about it. Before I went to use the bathroom this morning, I spent nearly half a minute peering in and making sure it was clear first. They found a cobra in the bathroom in the past but I think it was only one time, and a long time ago. I’m still scared though. COBRAAA!!!

badasia time: 5/25, 12:20pm

On Saturday (crap that reminds me; I need to re-set the time stamps on wordpress to reflect our timezone), Uncle Mike dropped Evan and me off at a touristy area near the Eastern Oriental hotel. We spent the next few hours wandering the pubs and discos (or, ‘bars and clubs’, in Americanese) drinking gin/tonics and Tiger Beer (that stuff’s 5% here!)

We also talked to wahtever random white people we happened across to find out if there was anything else to do (there wasn’t). They’re mostly Australians and Europeans, though I did run across a group of Canadian exchange students on vacation from Kuala Lumpur (who were less than thrilled that the girls’ bathroom didn’t have any soap), and one guy from Arizona who was here on business. I told Arizona that it was good to finally run into another American. We shared a brief ‘God-Bless-the-USA’ moment before I lost interest and walked off.

Anyway, we’re leaving Penang in a few hours and will be heading southeast to the state of Kelantan, where my parents are from. We’re going to a medium sized town called Kota Bharu, where my dad was born and staying with one of my mom’s sisters. One of her daughters is actually studying here in Penang now and came out yesterday to meet us. When I asked my cousin what there is to do in KB, she said there’s very little. It’s going to be good times.

Note: I was having some trouble logging into my Wordpress account earlier today. I don’t know if they filter sites around here, but I’ll try to keep posting whenever I can.

We made it. We’ve arrived in Badasia (that’s what Evan and I call it - ‘mal’ means ‘bad’, you see). We took a series of flights over to get here. It was something like 8 or 9 hours to Japan, a half-hour stopover, 4 hours to Taiwan, an overnight stopover, and then 4 more to Malaysia.

We’re staying at my aunt’s place in a city/island on the Northwest called Penang. It’s been ten years since I’ve last been to this country, and even longer since I’ve been in Penang. It’s still hot like I remember it, though. It was a shock actually, coming straight from Vegas’ dry heat (10% humidity there vs. 89% here).

We’ve done a little sight seeing here and there. I don’t have too many pictures yet, though. But here are a couple of the ones I do have:

Evan and I checked out one of those ‘doctor fish’ spas yesterday. I remember seeing them on Bourdain when he visited Shanghai or something. You stick your feet in a pool of water and get your toes sucked on:

Sorry the picture’s kind of grainy. They had a big ‘no cameras’ sign posted up so I had to sneak that one through. Anyway it cost about 6 bucks (USD) to sit there for half an hour. There were about 20 seats but Evan and I were the only ones there. We giggled like little girls the entire half hour while passerby gave us funny looks. They were probably just jealous.

After it was done my feet felt amazing!! Nah not really - they pretty much felt the same as they did before. I’d still do it again though. After we were done there, we walked around and saw another place that had it for cheaper AND the fish were twice as big. FAIL!!

Besides that, we’ve eaten a lot of different foods and gone to a few shopping centers. I just picked up a local prepaid sim card earlier today and we got our phones unlocked (thanks for the tip, Andrew).

We’re in Penang a few more days, and then driving down to the state of Kelantan, where my parents are from, and where my cousin’s getting married later this month. I still remember him as a little kid. Like I said, it’s been ten years since I’ve been here. While a lot has changed, I’ve noticed that a lot is still the same.

Like rats. Because they use an open drainage system here, these guys are all over the place. And they’re still as hard core as ever -check this guy out; we found him just sunbathing on the side of the road!

Dude didn’t even care that we stopped to take a picture of him. STRAIGHT THUG!!

Anyway, I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to post, but check back periodically. I hope everyone’s doing good back home.

For now, anyway..

We’re flying out tomorrow morning. It’ll be a 13 hour flight to Taiwan, and then 5 more hours to Malaysia after that.

My past few days in Hawaii have been kind of nice. I missed the dogs and also got to hang out with a lot of old friends I haven’t seen in a while. Good to see Andrew the other day; I think the last time I saw that guy was Hong Kong - that was like, four years ago.

I also went out to dinner last night with Ryan, Scott, and Chad. We went to Akinono. It was the first time we’ve been there. We were going to eat there a few years ago, but the pervy dude who was running Sun Bistro a few doors down convinced us to eat at his place instead.

I’ve been helping mom with a lot of errands here and there. The house is still full of old stuff that we should clean out, too.

When I first got back, I noticed this wooden calendar sitting on top of the computer. It’s one of those ‘perpetual’ ones where you just re-arrange the square blocks to match the current month.

My dad bought that a few years ago from Goodwill. He thought it was the coolest thing and would faithfully update it with each new month.

It was a little sad seeing that calendar again, still set for August of last year. That was the last time dad changed it before he went to the hospital. I think I’ll go and re-arrange it now.

So my flight was supposed to leave at 2:30 yesterday morning. Around 2:31, I was wondering why no one was boarding, and an announcement came up apologizing and stating that our flight would be delayed until 8:30.

Apparently something was wrong with our plane and ‘for our safety’, they were going to wait for the next one to come in.

On hearing that, I walked over to the bookstore and bought a copy of The Last Templar, which I hadn’t heard of before, but who’s cover touted that it was being adapted for an NBC TV series. I thought it’d be a nice, easy, trashy read.

It wasn’t. The book was poorly paced and boring at times. Thanks for nothing! I read it for most of the 6 hour delay, but toward the end, I put the book down and blew a few dollars on the airport video poker machines.

Anyway, I’m back home now! At least until Tuesday. There’s a lot of stuff mom needs help with - and I never realized how cluttered our house is. I really took for granted how much neater of a person Kerri’s made me (even though I’ve still got a long way to go).

So I’m packing my bag just now and this is the first time I’ve used the thing since we first moved back in September. At the bottom of the bag, I found one of Kerri’s necklaces!

We thought a plumber stole it back in September when we first got here and reported a leaking toilet to the property managers. It was a little sadder because it was one of Kerri’s favorite necklaces that I picked up for her in Taiwan.

So it turns out the necklace was never stolen after all. Good thing we never made a complaint!

We took this pic off our 24-hour forecast channel yesterday:

It looks like we’ll be hitting the year’s first triple digits this weekend. Not that it hasn’t been getting hot already.

The other day, I tried leaving the AC off to see how bad it would get. I took cold showers all throughout the day to cope, and it went up to 95 degrees in the house. It only worked because the weather was so dry.

Anyway, I recently tried the Guinness float, which I had heard of, but thought was a weird combination, not to mention a waste of Guinnness. Turns out it’s really good stuff, though.

The one I have this afternoon will be the last one I have in Nevada for a while. later today, I’m going to start packing up, and will be flying back to Hawaii for a few days before going to Malaysia (Or, ‘Badasia’, as Evan and I like to call it) to visit family. Kerri will be holding down the fort here in the meantime.

It’ll be nice to be in Hawaii again. There are a lot of friends I wasn’t able to spend time with the last few times I was back, and busy tending to family matters. I miss the dogs, too.

Malaysia’s also going to be interesting. The last time I was there was the summer of 1999. I’m ten years older now, and so are a lot of my cousins who I remember as little kids (we’ll even be watching one of them get married). It’ll be interesting.

I’ll be gone for about a month. I’m not sure how the internet’s going to be up there, and I’ll try to update every now and then, but we’ll see how it goes. If not, then I’ll see you guys again when I get back.

While walking down the strip this past weekend, we actually decided to start taking those porno cards that the mexicans hand out on the sidewalk. The stack on the left is mine, the one on the right is Kerri’s:

It’s hard to tell from the pic, but Kerri ended up getting a few dozen more than I did, from the exact same guys that handed out the cards to us. What’s up with that discrimination?

Anyway, that collection was just walking from Planet Hollywood to about Caesar’s Palace. Also, it was a really hot day this past Sunday, so there actually weren’t as many of those guys out there. On a ”regular’ day, those stacks would literally be two or three times bigger.

What’s kind of amazing is that no two cards seem to be identical. Not that I looked them over that closely.

We ate at the Palms buffet again last night (those 2-for-1 coupons keep suckering us!) I didn’t eat as many crab legs this time; I think I’m almost starting to get tired of them(?!?!)

After dinner, we played slots. I put 3 bucks into a machine and dumbfoundedly watched it turn into $17! We put it all back in, though. Hahah.

In other news, yesterday was “odd” day (5/7/09) - they say it’s only one of six this century where the date has consecutive odd numbers. I spent it playing Call of Duty 4. Mark just introduced me to the Hardcore HQ mode the other day and I got hooked. I gotta get to prestige level 10 before modern warfare 2 comes out!

Anyway, weather’s been real nice (though kinda hot lately). I think I’m gonna go outside for a bit and walk off some of last night’s buffet.

Remember how I saw a hummingbird the other day? I never saw one again for a while and started questioning myself, wondering if it was just a big bug or something. Anyway, I saw another one this morning!

Before I go into that, though, I’ll apologize for the lack of entries lately. I started playing Oblivion (yeah I know, I’m late to the game) and totally got sucked in. About 70 hours of gameplay later, I got all the achievements, and didn’t want anything to do with it anymore, and now I’m free!!

So anyway, I was walking around outside today and saw a hummingbird in a tree near our house:

We actually saw hummingbirds around this same spot this past weekend. That tree in particular has an empty hummingbird feeder that no one fills and has probably been there for years (and that I’ve thought about stealing).

Anyway, I saw this bird, and ran back to the house to grab the camera.

He was still there, and didn’t seem very scared of me. I think I stood there for over 15 minutes trying to get pics of it in flight, but this is the best one I managed to get:

The sucker was fast.

Anyway, he didn’t seem very scared of me. A couple of times, he even flew right up to me and gave me a few soft chirps. It was like he was asking me for food! I was tripping out! So I ran back to the house, mixed up some sugar water in a dish, and then ran back outside to see if he was still there.

And he was! But I found out why - there was this little cluster stuck to one of the branches that I at first thought was just a big egg case some insect left behind. But then I found out it was actually a nest, and the bird was just relaxing in it.

My whole spiritual ‘bonding with nature’ experience was really just a bird screaming at me to GITOUTTAHERE!!!

Still good times, though. I ended up just unscrewing the empty bird feeder and filled it with my sugar water and left him alone.

I don’t know why I’m so thrilled about these things. But I remember there was this one time when I was maybe nine or ten, I just finished watching Marty Stouffer’s Wild America. The episode was about hummingbirds and ended up with Marty showing you how to make your own home made hummingbird feeder. I remember grabbing a pencil and paper and scribbling down the instructions. It was something about getting a jar and wrapping bits of red tape around it. Of course, I didn’t know Hawaii doesn’t have any hummingbirds.

My mom saw me diligently writing something down and I guess that surprised her, because she came to me and asked what I was doing. Caught off guard, and for some reason embarrassed, I told her it was nothing and ripped the paper up into pieces.

She collected the pieces and put them back together. I was still embarrassed but pretended not to care. When she discovered what I had written, she looked at me and said that we could make the feeder together (mom probably didn’t know Hawaii doesn’t have any hummingbirds either — which just made me realize that my mom’s only lived in America about one year longer than me).

We never made though, probably because I forgot all about it a few days later because kids are fickle like that.