The Theory Disproved (the end)

Back in Vancouver at last.

The last time I returned home after a long time abroad was after spending seven weeks in Ghana, and there were a few days I spent marvelling at the weirdness of the once-familiar things around me, seeing it with new eyes.  So I was surprised that when I stepped onto the Canada Line at YVR two weeks ago, I felt immediately a profound sense of normality, as if I'd never left home, or had left only yesterday.  Nothing seemed changed, in itself or in how I saw it.  I wonder how common of an experience this is.  No doubt it's partly to do with having gradually been moving through more and more affluent countries, having more in common with home, before finally returning.

The final month-and-a-half was more of Europe - Paris, Amsterdam, Scotland, England and Ireland, before finally visiting an old UBC friend in her beautiful home on Cape Breton Island.  Paris and Edinburgh stand out especially, due to their beauty and to the people I met there, as does the all-night summer solstice party at Stonehenge, where some fifteen-thousand druids, pagans, and miscellaneous revelers gathered for the shortest night of the year.  All of this of course is amply documented in the photos linked below.

So what can I say about the trip as a whole?  It was a series of many meetings and partings.  It was an experience both of the diversity of cultures and of their commonality.  It was breathing the history of ancient places.  It was a powerful exercise in self-sufficiency.  It was fertile ground for inner growth.

While there were a few times when I felt I was nearing my limit and began to think about going home early, looking back at it, there is no part of the journey that I would have missed (and of course, I never thought about it very seriously).

And that's all I have to say on this blog, for now.  If you've followed me this far, thanks for reading!  I hope I made it worthwhile.

Germany and France (just Paris actually):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152504849675879.1073741865.514945878&type=1&l=3409eca29e

Amsterdam:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152567447655879.1073741867.514945878&type=1&l=1c906ad0e3

Scotland (two albums):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152581044055879.1073741869.514945878&type=1&l=75fdebf415

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152581061475879.1073741870.514945878&type=1&l=f3ddff9784

Stonehenge:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152583487095879.1073741871.514945878&type=1&l=cf6f6df710

England:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152579868290879.1073741868.514945878&type=1&l=052b579cfc

Ireland:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152606680240879.1073741873.514945878&type=1&l=3b2658a659

Nova Scotia:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152606711945879.1073741874.514945878&type=1&l=43c04cd03b

Central Europe

Has it really been a month and a half since my last post?  I've been lazy.

Since the Lycian Way, I've been gradually making my way west through a series of European cities.  Beginning in Istanbul, the traditional boundary between East and West, I've stayed in Bucharest, Budapest, Ljubljana, Katowice, Krakow, Warsaw, Berlin, Dresden, Marburg, and Frankfurt.  I've spent anywhere from one night to more than a week in each place

Not having very long in any one place, I haven't experienced as much of the culture as in previous places I've written about, so what has stood out has mainly been the kind of obvious things which can be captured on film - architecture, statues, and other forms of public art.  That's part of the reason I've been slow to write this post: I haven't felt I've had much to say to add to what's contained in the photo albums.

Something many of these cities have in common is that they were heavily damaged during the second world war.  Some, such as Bucharest, Budapest, and Dresden, are full of impressive buildings that look centuries old but in fact are almost all reconstructions built since 1945.  Other cities, like Warsaw and Berlin, took the destruction brought by the war as an opportunity to begin anew, and consist mainly of 20th- and 21st-century buildings in a variety of styles.  Hearing again and again how each city I go to was a war zone or a smouldering ruin seventy years ago is strange.  Seeing for myself how many of an entire continent's population centers were reduced to rubble drives home the appalling scale of the conflict, and seeing how little visible trace of that destruction now exists equally impresses one with humanity's resilience.

That's all I feel I have to add, so go look at the photos if you haven't yet.

Photos of Istanbul:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152383217290879.1073741859.514945878&type=1&l=e7336ae482

Photos of Bucharest and Budapest:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152388823005879.1073741860.514945878&type=1&l=f32102111f

Slovenia:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152423185180879.1073741863.514945878&type=1&l=f60541b31b

Photos of Poland:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152445567745879.1073741864.514945878&type=1&l=c467452a55

The Lycian Way

The Lycian Way is a collection of dirt roads, disused trails, and goat paths that goes from one end of the Turkey's Teke Peninsula to the other, starting in Fethiye in the west and ending in Antalya in the east.  The trails wind up and down between the Mediterranean sea and the mountains and farming valleys just inland.  Over every rise is a new panorama of the turquoise, island-dotted sea, or of farmland and small villages nestled between peaks.  I'm afraid I'll start to suffer from stunning-vista fatigue.  Much of the route is in regions that are still very rural, so I meet many farmers and goatherds as I travel.  While most don't speak any English, they're happy to say 'Merhaba' and offer directions, and will often invite me to stop for tea or even lunch.

What makes this trail particularly special, though, is its ruins.  Four ancient civilizations had a presence in Lycia over the past 3000-odd years: the Lycians themselves, the Persians, the Romans and the Byzantine Empire.  The trail is dotted for most of its length with ancient stone tombs, collapsing castles, and the ruins of cities, in different architectural styles from each civilization.  A few of the biggest sites are officially protected and fenced-off, but mostly the ruins are just there in the wilderness, silent and empty, with the trail running right past or even through them.

Wandering daily through the decaying remains of the ancients who inhabited this place, I'm given to wonder how long our own modern constructions will last.  Will Vancouver's skyscrapers still be standing three thousand years from now?  Will anything built in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries remain by then?  Will hikers someday sit eating lunch on the crumbling edges of BC Place or on the fallen concrete and girders of the Shangri-La?

Some of my favorite places and sections:

The ancient city of Phellos might be the most beautiful spot I've ever seen.  Certainly it's the best on the Lycian way so far.  You rise to the ridge of a saddleback connecting two mountain-tops at about 1000 m above sea leve, and find yourself standing amid worn cut-stone blocks.  Turning back, you see the ridge rising toward the peak your trail had been skirting around.  This forested mountain bisects the vista: on your left, the pine forests rolling down over lower hills, dotted with bright green fields and red-roofed buildings, to the blue Mediterranean and its little islands; on the right, a vast valley with roads threading down through the woods and huge rocky outcroppings of the slopes to the fields at its floor, and beyond it, the far mountains rising in tiers, the rearmost and highest peaks wreathed in clouds and capped with snow.
These two very different views, each beautiful alone, give a truly sublime impression here, juxtaposed with one another, the green mountain forming the boundary between.  To think that this was once a living city!  It must have been marvelous waking up to this panorama every day.

In terms of ruins, my favorite site was the city of Olympos.  The city is better-preserved than most other sites, but nature is rapidly reclaiming it, hiding the surrounding signs of modernity and complementing the sprawling ruins with a sense of isolation and solitude.  Its buildings lie along either side of a river and are built up and over the tops of the steep rocky cliffs and foothills that surround the old center of the city.  One can climb up amidst the collapsing tower walls on one such cliff and look down onto the beach ten meters below on the other side, and take in (yet another) spectacular view of the sea.

The hike around the eastern point of the Teke peninsula, from Karaöz to Adrasan, was one of the loveliest sections on the entire walk.  It's mostly shaded by forest, and as it winds up and down the side of the costal mountain range it affords almost uninterrupted views of the sea for the entire six-odd hours it takes.  After one rounds the point, tall multicoloured islands rise out of the sea, lending variety to the scene.  There aren't any considerable ruins, but it's beautiful the whole way, and devoid of signs of development until one reaches the small beach town at the end of the section.

Sadly, after three weeks of hiking and with just three days to go my legs and feet began to rebel.  Their aches and cramps no longer subsided after a night's sleep.  The guidebook to the route indicated that there was very little in the way of ruins on the remaining sections and as the areas I'd been travelling through had been growing increasingly touristy.  I figured that I wouldn't be missing much by skipping these final sections, so I decided not to risk injury by pushing through the last few days, and took a bus back to Antalya.

The Lycian way is magical.  That's the best adjective I can find for it.  I'd love to do it again some day.  With a bit more preparation and with the knowledge I've gained from this first go, I'm sure I could make it all the way, and include the higher mountain sections as well.  Maybe in a few years, if I have someone to take along with me.

Photos from the way:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152336503940879.1073741858.514945878&type=1&l=51c33cf9d8

Antalya: 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152336323275879.1073741857.514945878&type=1&l=010c30628b

Endia

Well, I made it out alive.  My overall impressions haven't changed in the three-odd weeks since my last post, and as always the bulk of my experience in terms of raw details is best captured in my photos, so this will cover the broad strokes and additional impressions of my final days in this vast, strange, awful, marvelous country.

Delhi

Arriving in Delhi, a fight almost broke out between two autorickshaw drivers over which of them I'd agreed to have take me to my hostel.  Violence was narrowly avoided.  This surreal experience gave weight to what I'd heard about Delhi being made up of rootless people engaged in desperate mercantilism, but the following five days, happily, didn't reinforce this view.  Certainly there were hawkers and cheaters about around the guest houses, but no more than in other Indian cities I'd been in.  By happy coincidence, I got into the city just in time to attend Comic Con India, which was fun.  I also spent the my last evening in the city with an Australian expat friend I'd made in Varanasi, drinking beer, talking about comics and watching (and making fun of) The Wrath of Khan.  Not exactly an authentic Indian cultural experience but a nice break from the near-constant novelty of travelling.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152276025245879.1073741852.514945878&type=1&l=328c7f5573

Rishikesh

I'd heard about Rishikesh from one or two other travellers as being a much-needed respite after the frantic chaos of Delhi, and though I didn't find Delhi as bad as they seemed to, I still figured it would be worth visiting.  As it turned out it's a small city remarkable mainly as a nexus of yoga and meditation practitioners and Hindu gurus.   The upper reaches of the Ganges flow through the town, and it's surrounded by forested mountains inhabited by peacocks and large monkeys.  The scenery is quite beautiful, and in fact reminded me a lot of BC.  But unless one is planning to stay for weeks or months to study yoga or meditation, there isn't much to do here, not even any real hiking trails to which I could find reference.  By the second day I was ready to leave, and would have, had I not then come down with a flu that kept me in bed for most of the next three days.  As India goes, it was a decent place to recover at least - peaceful, but a bit chilly.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152301270235879.1073741854.514945878&type=1&l=120dbd68e5

Jaipur

This was the only city in Rajasthan I visited, and I was there for not quite two days.  Like Agra, it's full of gorgeous heritage sites, the best of which in my mind was Jantar Mantar.  As a physics geek, for me this collection of preindustrial astronomical instruments had special appeal.  Though I'd seen pictures before arriving, I was stunned for a moment or two when I first entered the complex and saw it for myself.  That each of its towering buildings was in fact a functional machine for studying space made them more wonderous than any of the larger and more ornate temples and palaces to be seen in India.

Have a look!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152301295420879.1073741855.514945878&type=1&l=b1cdc4751d

Mumbai

The most populous city in India, and the first place where I did any couchsurfing.  Anu Sharma, who put me up (and put up with me) in her home for six days, was a great host with a lovely home.  She generously let me stay the full six days I was in Mumbai instead of the two originally agreed upon when my follow-up host cancelled on me.  A large chunk of my time here was spent reading research papers and communicating with professors at various universities about potential graduate appointments, but the time I did spend in the city was fascinating.

I wrote in previous posts on this blog about the economic disparity evident in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, but they were paragons of egalitarianism next to Mumbai.  The city contains forests of high-rises and a fairly active nightlife, which I got to experience first-hand thanks to some contacts made through couchsurfing.  One particularly avant-garde skyscraper I saw, according to a native friend, was occupied entirely by one billionaire family as their downtown home.  They'd had it built for the purpose.  Meanwhile, some 9 million of the city's inhabitants - three times the entire population of Vancouver - live in the sprawling slums that occupy the larger part of the city's area, and which are visible almost everywhere outside the core affulent region.

I've also never been on a train as packed as the local trains in Mumbai in the morning, unsurprisingly given the city's general overcrowding.  At every stop, the crowd on the platform begins shouting and pushing into the train, compressing the already-squished passengers still further until there is hardly enough room to breathe.  Riding these trains, one gains a deep and nuanced understanding of the spectrum of body odours of the modern Indian city-dweller.

One thing that surprised me were the many cross-dressing beggars who inhabit the city.  I'd observed this phenomenon nowhere else in India.  They wear saris and head-wraps but make no effort to disguise their deep voices, and many have highly visible stubble on their faces.  A Russian expat friend explained that they form a community in the city; that transgendered people come to Mumbai to join them and to make money to afford castration operations; and that some of them make tens of thousands of rupees per month from begging (a substantial income).  I wasn't sure what to make of this in the context of India's quite conservative culture, but they were so common and so flamboyant - and apparently so successful - that I suppose they must be generally accepted by other Mumbaians.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152303194580879.1073741856.514945878&type=1&l=e7a03bfc6f

Final Impressions

I don't recall mentioning this previously on the blog, but one thing I noticed throughout the rest of Asia was that in the static ads I saw for clothing and other fashion items, the models were almost invariably European in appearance.  Very few ads had models of the same ethnicity as the people being advertised to.  This apparently top-down enforcement of a Euro-centric ideal of beauty was unsettling.  India, happily, was an exception.  Most of the models pictured in Indian fashion ads were Indian, though predominantly on the pale end of the Indian skin spectrum.

More broadly:  I had a rough idea of a schedule of things to do when I started my month-and-a-half in India, but by the time I was half-way through the items in that plan I had just one week left in the country, so I had to drop most of the later destinations.  I kept hearing from other travellers about other destinations along my route, and usually decided to spend a few days checking them out.  Makaibari Tea Estate, Bodh Gaya, Khajuraho, and Rishikesh were all places I hadn't heard of before arriving.  One thing every traveller I met seemed to agree on was that India was packed with far more places to see and things to do than could possibly be done on one trip.  A Brit I met in Kolkata said it best: India is an acronym, standing for "I'll Never Do It All".

I think this is to do with the fact that India isn't really one country.  It's dozens of places with distinct cultures, histories, and languages, all lumped together as a single political entity.  And while my feelings about the country were conflicted, I find that despite myself I'd like to go back someday, to see things I'd missed and revisit some things I didn't.

I'm writing this post from Turkey, where a new wave of anti-government demonstrations have kicked off at about the same time I arrived.  Antalya, the town I'm in, seems unaffected, though there was a very peaceful and orderly march two days ago.  Most of my time here will be spent trekking, and it will probably be a month or so before my next post.  Until then, thanks for reading!

India

Long gap since the last post.  I've been in India for nearly a month now but haven't yet brought myself to take the time to write about it, partly because I wanted to wait until I had uploaded some photos to go with the post.

So - What to say about India?  I'll start with immediate impressions.

There are low standards of quality of all things - the pervasive attitude seems to be, why do better than just good enough?  Sheets on beds are rarely fully dry; toilets don't work properly; easily fixed problems like broken bathroom fixtures or loose door hinges are left to decay or given jury-rigged fixes, and get steadily worse.  Trains usually run hours behind schedule.  People urinate and defecate on the sidewalk.  Garbage is thrown into the street or the river, the nearest possible place that its owner can not have to immediately deal with it anymore.  Animals flourish in cities and towns as a result - cows famously, but also stray dogs and large monkeys.

Thieves, cheats, schemers, of all ages, predominantly male but not entirely.  Is this true of Indians generally?  Or is it only a property of those who gather around travelers, drawn to the easy money promised by naive people with fat wallets?  One cannot generalize from this self-selecting sample to the whole, but at the same time I have not encountered this in other countries to nearly the same extent.  What about Indian culture makes this kind of exploitation so common?  Does it share a common root with the widespread corruption in the country, itself stemming from the culture of "backsheesh"?  Or could it just be a product of India's exceptional poverty?  This doesn't seem right - I don't think India is really any poorer of a country than Ghana, where I recall the scammers were considerably fewer.

The food is generally very good, and very cheap.  When I leave it's going to be tough not being able to have Indian food for every meal of every day.

But all of these are minor factors, the kind of things which after a week one stops noticing much, and which then fade into a kind of third-world background noise.  So what are the more enduring impressions, the things that matter?

The one thing I really hate about India is related to the pervasive cheating I describe above.  The 99 people who approach you to get money from you make you suspicious of the one who genuinely wants to get to know you.  And the 98 of those 99 who try some scheme or want to grossly overcharge you harden you towards of the one honest businessman in the bunch.  If all one hundred were cheaters I wouldn't mind nearly as much.

On to more positive things.

For many Indians, just seeing and meeting a Westerner is a strange and marvelous thing.  Everywhere one goes one is stared at by half the strangers they pass; many smile, many others just look shocked.  Some want pictures with you ("Proof that I really saw a white guy!"), while others are happy to just take pictures of you as you pass, without asking - though I've only seen this happen to women travelers so far.  Some people, charmingly, want to add you on Facebook after five minutes of broken, language-inhibited conversation.

The best experiences I've had with people have been in public transit, specifically while riding trains and waiting in train stations.  Mass transit throws people together who otherwise would probably have no interest in one another.  The person across from you on the train isn't there to sell anything, they're there to get somewhere just as you are, so when they try to start a conversation, you know they're being genuine.  And Indians are more friendly and outgoing to strangers than people anywhere else I've been*, so there have been a lot of great encounters.

There is a pleasant, mildly comical rhythm to daily life in the cities and small towns.  Clusters of ragged-looking old men sitting around drinking chai, chatting and joking with each other.  The streets populated by both people and all manner of animals living, if not in harmony, at least in a kind of hierarchical equilibrium based on grudging mutual respect.  An unceasing background noise of honking horns from autorickshaws and motorcycles (cars aren't very common) as jams form and unform in the absence of anything resembling traffic lanes. Paintings of Shiva and other deities hanging in almost every room.  Sadhus on street corners.  The occasional cacophony of a nighttime wedding party, drummers and horn-blowers leading a groom on horseback and a procession of relatives and lamp-bearers.  Fun stuff.

Particular observations about the places I've been...

Kolkata

Exploring a city neighborhood in the morning; a market consisting of blankets spread out on the sidewalks along a street; vegetables, poultry, nine-inch prawns with whiskers still twitching.

Tremendous air pollution.  Spend twenty-four hours in Kolkata and when you blow your nose it will come out black.

Astonishing poverty.  Anywhere you look, in every nook and cranny, someone has taken up residence.  Elsewhere as well - homes made of plastic sheets stretched over bamboo frames.

The most memorable thing I saw in the city, more than the stately old British graveyard, was the "trash mountain" of the municipal dump, the subject of a recent documentary; a toxic, smoking five-kilometer-long wall of garbage inhabited by a community of trash pickers.  I was literally dumbstruck for about twenty minutes after seeing it up-close.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152257978435879.1073741846.514945878&type=1&l=895d5ad110

Makaibari Tea Estate

Leaving Kolkata, a homestay at this tea estate was the next stop.  Emotionally worn by the often grim spectacle of the city's life and trying to get over a head cold, this turned out to be a perfect remedy.  High in the mountains in the Darjeeling region, far from anything resembling a major city, surrounded by spectacular scenery and genuinely friendly people, this was probably my favorite experience in India thus far.  For the whole stay I ate authentic Indian-Nepali home cooking which was taken with lots of tea grown almost right outside the door, all generously prepared by the mother of the family I was staying with.  I learned about the tea-farming business, played soccer with the local kids, and was taught to play carrom (badly) by my host family's son.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258009175879.1073741847.514945878&type=1&l=9e6315fea8

Bodh Gaya

Cool temples, nice vibe; more relaxed than big cities but more energetic than Makaibari.  Coming in to town I saw an elephant going down the road with some crops and a man on its back, but I was on the back of a motorcycle so I couldn't take a picture.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258027010879.1073741848.514945878&type=1&l=f6c29a046f

Varanasi

Varanasi is a sacred city in Hinduism due to its location right on the river Ganges, itself an object of reverence.  It's considered highly auspicious to die in Varanasi, and if one's body or ashes are put into the river it supposedly gives one's soul a direct path to Nirvana.  Consequently, there are lots of temples along the waterfront, and at two spots, bodies are burned on funeral pyres out in the open for all to see (though not to photograph).  The burning goes on night and day without ceasing, and hundreds of bodies are burned daily.  Lots of weddings are also held at the waterfront, with all of the pomp Indian weddings are famous for.  The whole cycle of life is thus brought together here (or nearly - I didn't see any births).

While the narrow streets make avoiding underfoot garbage and feces a constant effort, it's still a beautiful place down by the water, and I spent a good week mostly just drinking it in.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258050330879.1073741849.514945878&type=1&l=8b629ac02f

Khajuraho

Decided to make a quick stop here after hearing about it from a friend in Varanasi who was going this way.  Lots of temples covered with intricate carvings illustrating deities, animals, and sexual positions - often all three at once.  Worth seeing.  Couldn't say much about the town itself, except that I lost my passport and it was found by one of the guards from the main temple, who got it back to me.  Lucky break.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258095155879.1073741850.514945878&type=1&l=a5d654f5ef

Agra

Agra was another one-day stopover so not much to say.  The Taj Mahal is worth the hype, and the Red Fort is very cool too.  Photos of this will come later.

That's all for now.  I'm in Delhi at the moment, and tomorrow I'm going to check out Comic Con India, which by total fluke I arrived just in time for.  Thanks for reading!

* With the arguable exception of Japanese girls in Roppongi clubs, but that's a different story :P

A Slice of Thailand - Bangkok and Chiang Rai

Though I hadn't originally planned to stop there, I had heard from one fellow traveler that flights were generally cheaper out of Bangkok than Kuala Lumpur, and had been told by another about a set of bizarre art installations in the far northern city of Chiang Rai.  So I booked a flight to Kolkata out of Bangkok and, after spending New Year's in Penang, I boarded the International Express overnight train to the capital city.

I spent just one evening and the following day in Bangkok, but it turned out to be a much more eventful stay than I'd anticipated.  At the hostel I met a German expat named Frank, a friend of the hostel's owner.  In addition to being agent of Interpol (so he claimed, and he *did* have a badge), he was a chess grandmaster (though he no longer competed) and former world Tetris champion (though I'm not sure this title existed before 2011).  Having lived in Bangkok for twenty-five years, he had an intimate knowledge of the city.  For 200 baht (about seven dollars) each, he took a few others and I on a tour of some strange and little-known sites, expounding upon them in his thickly-accented English and peppering his expositions with ribald jokes.  Afterwards I put his claim of chess mastery to the test.  We played twice, and while I'm not an especially skilled player, I've never before been crushed so completely and rapidly, so by the end I was ready to believe him.

The next evening saw me piling into a double-decker bus for an uncomfortable overnight ride to Chiang Rai, where I spent five days.  The White Temple and the Black House, documented in the second photo album below, were macabre and spectacular, each in a very different way, and worth seeing if you find yourself in Thailand.  I also joined a group of other backpackers to take a one-day Thai cooking class taught by a local, who took us around the market to buy ingredients before teaching us to prepare four dishes, all of which were delicious.  I'm not sure how much of it I remember but afterwards she gave us a link to her website, which has the recipes.

Finally returning to Bangkok by another, slightly more comfortable night bus, I arrived at the airport at six in the morning and passed the eight hours until my flight in watching Thais and tourists swarming through the vast check-in hall, a surprisingly calming pass-time.

And that's Thailand.  My photos from Bangkok are here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152193367715879.1073741844.514945878&type=1&l=32ef579ec6
EDIT: And here's the Facebook album for Chiang Rai:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152255734305879.1073741845.514945878&type=1&l=af185953fb

Next time: Kolkata, and maybe some more of India as well.

Malaysia

Malaysia gives a sense of being in the middle of rapid but uneven development.  In every major city, there are modern high-rises and shopping malls standing within a hundred meters of rows of colonial-era shop-homes fronted by open sewers.  The contrast is most striking in the capital of Kuala Lumpur.  Like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur is a highly stratified city, but while Singapore's lower-class and wealthy districts are separate and hidden from one another, in Kuala Lumpur the two are everywhere interwoven, and one can't seem to get away from either.

But while there are visible economic tensions, there is much to love about the country as well.  The old colonial districts of Melaka and Georgetown are beautiful despite their age, and mostly still serve as the homes and workplaces for the residents of the cities, nodes of a local economy largely unconcerned with tourism.  There is also a vibrant culture of street art particularly evident in these colonial areas, most famously in Penang but also evident in Melaka and KL.

Also like Singapore, the country is extremely ethnically diverse.  Wherever I went, there seemed to be almost as many Chinese and Indians living and working as there were Malays.  This has the happy side-effect of making Malaysia's cuisine marvelously diverse as well.  This is similar in many ways to that of Singapore, but with more traditional Malaysian dishes in evidence, and a much bigger culture of street food (I suppose selling food from a cart is probably illegal in Singapore). Georgetown in Penang is best for this, with dishes I've seen nowhere else as well as many of the best examples of national favorites, like Cendol, a shaved-ice dessert with coconut milk, red beans, and green rice noodles.

On the topic of food, the fruit in Malaysia is also very good.  Though not the most flavourful I've ever eaten (that honour still goes to Ghana), the variety is unmatched.  I actually discovered a new favorite fruit at the roadside markets here, the mangosteen, a largely-seedless, easily-eaten fruit that tastes like a combination of a mango and mandarin orange.

The countryside in Peninsular Malaysia is beautiful.  Much of it is flat farmland or palm plantations, but as you head north you begin to see massive, sheer-sided stone hills jutting hundreds of meters up out of perfectly flat surroundings.  The Cameron Highlands is a particularly beautiful area, high in the rainforest-covered mountains, and its altitude makes its climate a welcome respite from the sweltering equatorial heat of the rest of the country.  I found that taking inter-city busses rather than trains gave the best views.

For more detail, I will as always direct you to my photo albums:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152150647895879.1073741842.514945878&type=1&l=6a9a2c6c78
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152187924925879.1073741843.514945878&type=1&l=1875559549

I'm writing this from Chiang Rai in Thailand, a destination that I hadn't considered until about a week ago, and I'll be flying to India in less than a week.  Thoughts on Thailand will come next, so stay tuned.