by Eric

Although we didn't stay at the resort with the tour bus, we met a couple of interesting people at our budget hotel in Merang.

One was a young Aussie with dreadlocks just two months into what he hopes will be a five-year travel odyssey. His enthusiasm was amazing. You could see it in his eyes. He had never traveled at all before and he was at that stage of being blown away by everything. He was meeting all the locals and trying to learn Malay. His local friends took him for motorcyle rides all around. He had made friends with the cafe owners and was learning to sucba dive and was just pleased as hell with life. Although we had been feeling slightly burnt out (we'd been on the road for almost one year) I certainly didn't feel jaded and cynical. But I still benefited from his contagious enthusiasm. (Joan: I remember when he sat down to a bowl of mee goreng, he looked perfectly delighted, like he was sitting down to a beautiful birthday cake).

The other felow came from Switzerland and was getting and advanced diving certificate. He had near the same enthusiasm as the Aussie probably because he'd been hanging around him for a few days.

They were smart to do that here. You can live on US$20 a day and get certified for another US$120. Plus the diving is great. Most people like us who got certified in North America paid two or three times as much and got certified in ice-cold water with no visibility.

After a great moonlit walk on the beach where we saw a few jellyfish washed up on shore, we stopped at the dive shop to arrange an outing for the next day. Two Aussies ran the place. One had his head shaved and wore no shirt. He looked like an Olympic swimmer. They told us their dinghy had capsized that afternoon and all their masks and fins had sunk. They hadn't had a chance to retreive them, so they would have to borrow equipment for us from the resort down the road. Unfortunately, Joan woke up with a runny nose the next morning so we had to cancel the dive.

Instead we rode 133km to Kota Bharu. It was another long, hot, flat ride. Actually we wouldn't have ridden the whole way but by lunch time , we were only 45km from KB, according to our guidebook. So we decided to push on.

About 7km later a sign read, "KB 58km." That hurt. I didn't want another 58km. We stopped about 20km later at Pasir Puteh, a grungy little town, and had one of the worse meals we've had in Malaysia. Blender chicken--a shattered bone fragment in every bite.

After that we started seeing rice padis for he first time since Sumatra, Indonesia. But they weren't at nice because we were looking at them through haze. Also the Malaysians worked the fields with full-sized tractors and other machinery.

It was busy and hot but otherwise KB wasn't too hard to ride into. We got a room on the second floor of Menora Guest House for RM20 per night. Menora is in a classic SE Asian building: concrete and about four stories tall. On top is a nice garden and a view of the river. Like most of the places we stayed, Menora seemed empty. We didn't see any other guest until morning.

After we carried everything (including the bikes) up the stairs and got a shower, we looked for a good place for dinner. Almost immediately we passed a computer store that advertised inet access. I was hungry but Joan can never walk past an inet place if its' been more than 24 hours since our last email check. So we stopped for about an hour.

Eating in KB is great once you figure out where NOT to eat. We learned quickly, for instance, to avoid any place that serves western food. All the western food we had looked bad, tasted bad and cost too much. The one exception was Pizza Hut, which tasted like Pizza Hut and cost about double a good meal at a local place. (Joan: I hate Pizza Hut, but Eric loves it). We also consumed a great many magnificent root beer floats at A&W, which is popular in Malaysia, though it doesn't seem to be fluorishing in the U.S.

The best things about KB: the Night Market, Meena Curry House, Chinese coffee shops, Carlos Internet Cafe, and A&W.

The Night Market shows up at about 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. in a parking lot in the middle of town. Huge push carts larger than pickup trucks carry tarps, poles, ropes, generators and all the stuff you need to start your own country fair. Scores of small push carts caravan in from all over. Each cart is a self-contained kitchen specially designed to cook one thing, and a white fluorescent light to illuminate it. Some carts unfold into music stores that play something akin to music at way too much volume. All the music is sold in cassette form. Some carts carry drinks, ice, and a blender for making juice.

In an hour a shopping mall under tarps has appeared.

At the night market you can look at all the food before you buy. This takes the mystery out of the menu. We tired a few things the first night and decided that Murtabask is the best. It's a crepe with either chicken, beef, or a banana and egg filling. You can get three for about US$1 and that makes a meal.

Generators hum all over, but the music from the music carts drowns them out.

The murtabak man (Joan: there were several, but we formed a cult around our favorite guy, and went to him for three nights in a row. On the third night he told us he is from Thailand, and sure enough, we saw the same food there, only they call it pancakes) didn't use a spatula. He must have very thick fingertips. First he reached into a stainless steel pitcher, grabbed a golfball-sized gob of dough, and then spread it into a circle like you'd do with a pizza, except his dough was paper thin and only a foot in diameter. He then laid the dough on the hot, round grill (a little deeper in the center than at the edges). Then with rapid but careful motions, he folded the sides, and then the top and bottom fo the dough towards the center. He let the murtabak sit for a minute, then pushed it aside and started another one. After awhile he'd flip the first one.

Once you buy your food you sit down at tables around the edge of the parking lot. Each set of tables is attached to a drink stand. When you sit down someone comes to take your order. They even provide silverware. The fresh juices were really good, especially the watermelon. The guy who served us watermelon juice was really proud of it. He saiid, "Only watermelon. I add nothing."

In the morning we could find almost no sign of the Night Market. It was just a parking lot.

During the hot part of the day we hung out in coffee shops, mostly run by ethnic Chinese, and drank coffee on ice while reading newspapers. These shops are like a cross between a diner and a Starbucks. As in a diner, you can sit down and get a whole meal, but as in Starbucks, you can just sit around with a cup of coffee and a newspaper for hours. I've learned to appreciate them: always a clock on the wall, a couple of calendars, large pictures of country leaders,--usually by the clock--a fridge in the corner, a glass case with food in it by the door, tables and plastic charis sprinkled about, and several middle-aged Chinese men sitting around not talking much.

We occasionally had fried noodles at the coffee shops but once we found Meena Curry House that stopped. Meena's menu was very simple--you could have either chicken, muton, or veggie curry served on a banana leaf. Silverware is optional. As soon as you sit down two or three people come by carrying stainless steel bowls and they ladle your leaf full of rice, potatoes, beans, some other veggies and your choice of meat.

The food was excellent. Also each table had a stainless steel pitcher of ice water and little stainless steel drinking cupss. The meal costs about US$4 instead of US$3 at other places but the endless supply of ice water is worth at least a buck.

We ate at Meena's every day after we found it. That turned out to be quite a few times because we had to wait while the Thai consulate processed our visas. (You don't need to get a visa in advance unless you plan to stay for more than a month. We were planning to stay one month but didn't want to have to rush in case we fell behind schedule, which we always do). One odd thing: they would not let me inside the Thai consulate with shorts. They were my best shorts too, and clean for once. Fortunately, Joan got in and brought the forms to me to fill out. It peeved me a little that my first contact with Thailand was getting kicked out of the consulate. (Joan: we had read about the no-shorts rule, and Eric had worn his pants with zip-off legs for the occasion. But it was too hot to walk around in pants, so he took off the legs, intending to put them on at the consulate door. Then he forgot them in the hotel room).

We went to a cultural "show" one day. It was more of a demonstration than a show.

First a couple guys demonstrated martial arts. It reminded me of parts of the show we saw in Bukittinggi, Sumatra, Indonesia. Two guys walked slowly aorund a pavilion doing strange things with his hands and apparently concentrating, though the huge smile on one guy's face made it look like he was concentrating on not laughing. After a minute or two a second guy came out and did the same thing. Then they engaged in mock combat. It looked silly--like pro-wrestling except more fake.--but they were having fun.

Another group demonstrated Sepaktakraw, which we had seen played at Mersing. They didn't compete. Instead they stood in a circle kicking the ball back and forth exactly like hacky-sack. They let the tourists try too, but kicking the plastic ball in sandals hurts.

We also got to try the percussion instrumetns (I forget the name unfortuantely). The sound was produced by strking a two- or three-foot long, polished, half-round piece of wood with a big mallet. The wood at on a couple of rubber cushions and was held inplace with bungee cords. The wood was so heavy you could hit it as hard as you wanted. The sound was a very strange but low hum. When the wood was struck the immediate percussive sound was very small but the ringing echo got louder and louder with time. The whole effect sounded like a concert hall right after the playing stops, but loud.

When the semi-uniformed band played there was no melody, just rhythm, and not much of that either.They just sort of banged away together and got louder until one guy signaled the end and they all hit their wood especially hard one last time. Like their martial artist friends, they looked to be having a blast.

The main reason we came tothe cultural show was to see top spinning. We hoped to see the fierce top battles we had read about. We didn't. But the demonstrations were good and we got a chance to try ourselves. We saw two kinds of tops--small wooden ones and large metal ones. The small ones are launched with string about three feet long. The guys demonstrating could really get those things spinning, but not one of us spectators could get more than a couple of seconds of spinning action, if that.

The big tops were about the size of a small frisbee but wieghed at least 12 pounds. A demonstrator wrapped 10 feet or rope around one, then set a landing board about 10 feet away from him. Then he went into a wind-up like a major league pitcher, and flung the top on the board.

It hit with a loud bang. Then he yanked the rope to give it more spin. It spun in exactly the same position for several minutes. It amazed me that it worked.

I'm rereading this and it sounds like I'm pretty hard on the KB cultural show. Actually we had a good time. If there was one thing I learned about their culture, it's that more than anything else, Malaysians like to have fun. They even smile when they fight.

(Joan: one weird thing happened before we left. Some English travelers showed up at our guesthouse, and one of them, a woman was very sick. She was screaming and delirious and was running a high fever. A doctor came to help and thought she had typhoid fever. He gave her some medicine which made her feel better. It was really freaky to hear. I'm glad she got out of it OK).

Next: Thailand.

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