Friends Mostly

Icon posts and fandom ramblings are public but this journal is primarily friends only.

Please comment here with where I'd know you from to be added to my f-list. If you're just here for my icons, feel free to friend.

Kati
xx

Our stay in Georgetown, Penang did not begin well. After having trouble booking anywhere to stay because of the Chinese New Year fast approaching, Helen and I managed to reserve a twin room with en-suite and were looking forward to a little luxury after our recent ultra basic living conditions. We spent most of the six hour journey fantasising about the idea of getting to unpack and having a bathroom to ourselves. However, when we arrived 75 Traveller's Lodge about 10.30pm, we discovered they didn't have our booking and all their private rooms were full. It being too late and being too tired to go look for anywhere else, we took a bed in their dorm. At 9 ringgits each, it was at least cheap but seeing that every other bunk had a mosquito nets set up over it should have been sufficient warning about what was to come but neither of us could face rooting through our backpacks for our own nets.

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There is not a great deal to say about Ipoh, especially as I arrived there quite late. I was last there 19 years ago and I don't really have much of an impression of the town itself. I can now tell you that it's got a pretty good bus station where they sell some very enjoyable sweetcorn in a polystyrene cup that's absolutely dripping in butter and salt. It was nice to have a room to myself for one night though and in the morning, I sat and read in the Bougainvillea Park, which was pretty. I saw some caves on the bus journey in and if I hadn't arrived so late, I could have gone out to see them - maybe they would have been less commercial than the Batu Caves.

I was meant to meet Helen outside the HSBC, which according to Lonely Planet is on Jalen Dato Maharajah Lela, near the clock tower. It isn't. There is an OCBC on that road and HSBC is one over. Our secondary plan had been to have lunch at the recommended FMS Bar and Restaurant a couple of streets from our proposed meeting point. It had closed down. I then spent two hours roaming a four street block looking for Helen, who it turned out was doing the same. How we kept missing each other I have no idea. Every 15 minutes, I would hear the clock chime but not be able to locate it, until eventually I tracked it down to the top of a small hill. There was Helen, who had a terrible hangover and was about to give up and return to the bus station.

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I am massively behind, I know, as I am typing this in Laos after having been through both Malaysia and Thailand. But here goes with an attempt to catch up.

Sentral Kuala Lumpur (the train station) is lot more swish than Singapore's although is probably the only thing that is. It was a little bit disconcerting though to turn up and not be met with any form of border control or customs. I just walked on through to get on the MRT. Apart from my leaving card from Singapore, I spent my whole time in Malaysia without any proof that I had arrived. The MRT itself is a bit confusing too. Each line is operated by a different company, so each time I wanted to change, I would have to get off, go through the barriers, cross over to another station and then buy another ticket.

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After saying good bye to Leila (who complained that the Maori woman in our dorm had spent the night snoring and grinding her teeth, which I thankfully slept through), I went out to the National Museum of Singapore. It's split into two parts - a History Gallery and four Living Galleries.

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I joined the breakfast queue for toast on Monday morning, slightly sleepy and glad to see there were still tiny bananas left. While I waited, thinking that the toaster seemed to be taking a long while for the girl in front of me, the queue built up. Then an Irish girl behind piped up helpfully, "have you turned the toaster on?"

The girl in front immediately looked embarrassed and sure enough, she hadn't depressed the lever and did so hurriedly. Not long later, fresh toast popped up. Or at least one slice did, the other one stuck. Reaching for a knife, she started to push it into the toaster before I suggested she might want to turn it off at the plug first. Mandy, as she turned out to be called, is also from England (London) and after having travelled for six weeks has so far lost one camera, broken another, lost a bag, shorted her converter plugs with her hairdryer and I lost track of what else. I am not alone! And I haven't broken anything yet!

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I have never known so quiet a hospital as this one. I usually end up in the bed next to the screaming person (unless I'm the one screaming) but it was so quiet, I wasn't sure at times whether there was anyone else in the ward. I was also close enough to the nurse's station to hear the nurse call bell, which, instead of being a beeping or ringing alarm, played a jingly little tune.

In the morning, a doctor came to see me and I finally learnt where I was - Jikei University Hospital (not that that left me much wiser). He started talking about what we were to do when he interrupted himself to ask, "Where are you from?" When I said I was from England, he said, his own Japanese-English being very American, that must be why my accent was so different. He said that I was okay to be released and he'd go sort out the paperwork, then disappeared again, but not before saying in a marvelling way, "I really love your accent."

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The perils of staying in hostels was brought back to me twice that morning. First, as I went past the ten-bed dorm on the way to the shower. The smell coming out of it made me very grateful that we'd booked a private room. Second, after finishing my shower, I realised I'd forgotten my towel. I had to shake myself off and put my pyjamas back on, before hopping quickly back to the room in the hope that I wasn't leaving a trail of damp footprints behind me.

Last time I was in Tokyo was four and a half years ago. It was a brief stay at the end of a six-week holiday and I have three main memories of the occasion. That it rained, apparently non-stop, for the three days we were there; Tokyo Tower looked more like a glorified pylon than the Eiffel Tower; and the sad sight of rows upon rows of statuettes at a shrine that represented unborn children. Coming back, feeling a lot more alert than my previous visit made me realise that I like Tokyo - it reminds me a bit of home. I think I'm just more comfortable in cities.
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Our last morning in Kyoto was begun with a Yashi breakfast, complete with homemade bread. I wouldn't be surprised if he had been glad to be rid of me, if only for my constant questioning whether food contained nuts the previous two nights at dinner. It continued at breakfast as my yoghurt was sprinkled with a seed mix and we had a prolonged discussion over whether granola contained nuts before agreeing it probably didn't but not to risk it anyway.

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First a little house-keeping from my very vague last entry. The lights we went to see were at the Arashiyama Hanatouro - the lantern festival. It really was very pretty and the first indication I got of how seriously a lot of Japanese seem to take their photography. Saw a lot of people with tripods, spending a lot of time on their shots.

I saw a fair few more of these photography enthusiasts while out on Wednesday morning. Ryan and I took a long walk around eastern Kyoto, the Higashiyama area. It's an area with a lot of temples and shrines, all of them very serene and calm. It was also quieter in general than we expected and we started to learn that the day, at least if you're not working, doesn't really start until 11am. A lot of shops don't seem to open until then, although many of them had some fascinating displays in the window. A lot of them don't like photography - after taking one photo, I realised on reviewing it that there was a no photography sign in it - and I started to get a little paranoid of offending anyone by taking photos of their wares. In fact, I started to worry more about inadvertently causing offence in these situations, than in any of the temples and shrines.

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