Bucket List (The Beginning)

Jenne Raub June 2, 2015

Today marks the official halfway point of my trip, just two months to go. I don't know whether I'm sad that it will eventually be over, or excited to head home to SF and see friends, family and eat burritos (and be cold! Oh, sweet cold).

Of course while I've been jostling around dusty roads in tuk tuks and not sleeping on night trains rumbling through Vietnam and watching endless palm tree plantations drift by bus windows, I've been dreaming of new adventures out there in the world. Here is the start of a list (I'll be adding to this list!) in no particular order.

Cold

Jenne Raub June 2, 2015

Yes, for the first time since arriving in Bangkok on April 1, I have had the good fortune to find myself cold. I took a bus to the Cameron Highlands in central Malaysia (peninsular Malaysia, obviously) and upon getting off the bus nearly swooned from the delicious temperature. It was probably in the low-80s, no humidity, just lovely.

If I haven't made it really clear, Malaysia is by far my favorite stop so far on the trip. I enjoyed Cambodia and Vietnam (and I'm definitely really happy I visited) but I absolutely love Malaysia. The country is just so easy and laidback and mellow. The people are really friendly and nice and the vibe is just relaxed and chill. And having a couple days in cool weather paradise, it made my love for Malaysia grow even more. I stayed at a guesthouse in Tanah Ranah where I ended up meeting a lot of fellow travllers, did a fun day tour on my first full day that took me along winding roads through the tea plantations, up to the top of Mt Brinchang to climb a lookout tower, on a walk through the 'mossy forest' that grows at the top of the mountain, and then to the tea plantation to learn more about how they're grown and to have a cuppa. I had the tour guide drop me off in the town of Brinchang and ventured to a strawberry farm (where I learned they import their plants from California "because they're the best"... my state pride just swelled even larger than before!), then tried to find this Buddhist temple (I got close but couldn't figure out where the entrance was), and walked a path home that took me by a waterfall.

*A pedestrianized street in Kuala Lumpur, where old colonial buildings are dwarfed by modern skyscrapers.*

Monkey See, Monkey Batu

Jenne Raub May 29, 2015

Well, I finally figured out how to get photos up on here, which I'm sure comes as a huge relief for those of you who like pictures and hate words. Oh, who like words but prefer them intermingled with images to look at. I've been running into all kinds of issues with blogging solely via Squarespace's app, which has been one of the reasons for the delay in having more imagery on here (the other reason: laziness). Anyhoo!

I took the bus from Malacca to Kuala Lumpur on Monday on the oldest, creakiest bus I've ever been on (and I've been on some old, creaky buses in Romania and Hungary, so that's saying something). Thankfully, the bus held together for the four-hour journey. We pulled into the southern bus station, which is quite a distance from the city center of Kuala Lumpur and looks like it was lifted from the sketches for a sci-fi film's space station. It was a mammoth, brand-new structure of glass and metal, rising up out of the ground with steep on-ramps going every which way; all that was missing was spaceships zooming in and out. Just as we got near the bus station, rain started that was the most torrential downpour I've ever witnessed. I thought the entire bus station might be swept away in a flash flood. Instead, I tried to figure out how I would get into Kuala Lumpur without wiping out wearing my flip flops on slippery tiles. I wandered around for a while and finally figured out that I needed a commuter train so I headed off via an overpass at a snail's pace. Going down the four flights of stairs to the station entrance, I was going step by step like an elderly woman, gripping on the handrail, for fear of my flip flops giving way. Two teenage girls clad in jeans, long-sleeved shirts and their headdresses came behind me on the stairs and watched me in horror as one of my shoes gave way and I ended up in the splits at the top of the stairs, trying to not lose my balance and topple all the way down (side note: if you think walking down slippery stairs wearing your giant backpack is an exercise in balance, try squatting to pee!).

How I Did Singapore

Jenne Raub May 26, 2015

Ah, Singapore. Everyone told me how boring and expensive you were, and I found you to be neither. (Well, OK, you are a bit expensive. I'm just clearly brainwashed from living in The Most Expensive City Ever, aka San Francisco.)

I arrived on a flight to The Most Beautiful Airport in the World, aka Changi International on a flight on The World's Best Airline (Singapore Air) from Hanoi. Can I just take a minute here to talk about one thing that upsets me (yes, only one right now) and that is how basically every airport in the WORLD is nicer than JFK. Here we have people arriving from all over the planet, many of them for the very first time to visit the United States, land of the free and the brave, one of the richest and most powerful nations in the world, and our introduction to the U.S. is: "It sucks here." Yes, there are some terminals at JFK that are nicer than others, but when I flew to NYC last January, I arrived at Terminal 7, wandered through rundown dirty hallways trying to find a bathroom before waiting on the absurdly cold, absurdly unsheltered LIRR platform to head into the city. Everything looks like it hasn't been cleaned since the '70s, although the big bathroom was closed for cleaning. I finally found another tiny bathroom past baggage claim that had two toilets blocked off for cleaning, surly airport worker ladies shouting at everyone and each other, all manner of toilet paper and other trash all over the floor, and of course a queue of women waiting to use the one available toilet. One German woman came out of the lone toilet with a look of fear in her eyes and I wanted to say, "Yes, I feel you. I have been to the airports at Hamburg and Munich and Frankfurt. I get it. It will be OK. The rest of the country isn't like this. Just the subway. And the streets of New York City before trash day. But I promise, it gets better. Kind of."

Bucket List (The Beginning)

Cold

Monkey See, Monkey Batu

How I Did Singapore

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