Fooood

Malaysia has been wonderful. And it's not because of the cities, which are nice, but nothing to write home about; nor is it because of the scenery, although it is pretty. It's because of the food. Malaysia is extremely multi-cultural, with Chinese, Indian, Thai, and Indonesian immigrants all calling it home. This has resulted in some of the best food we've had this entire trip, if not EVER! What?! No, it's true!

It has been one exquisite meal after another. In Melaka, we had mouth-watering Malaysian laksa soup that just blew us away. Then Penang brought us beautiful, complex Indian curries and the absolute best chicken biryani of our lives. Who knew that chicken is best with mint and yogurt? THE FUCKING INDIANS, that's who. It's like the Indians have decided, "You know what? We're just going to take everything delicious, and cook that. And we're going to NOT cook anything that's NOT delicious. Fuck yeah, this is going to be awesome." And they were right, it IS awesome! I have so much respect for Indian food.

This is the Indian restaurant that BLEW OUR MINDS:



I love the culture surrounding the food even more than I love the food. (The word 'food' is starting to look a bit funny. Foood.) In one restaurant you will commonly see Indians eating with their hands, Chinese people with chopsticks, Thais using a fork and a spoon (using the fork to nudge the food onto the spoon, which then goes in your mouth), and the lowly tourists eating with their forks. And because everyone eats in their own way, the atmosphere is very laid back and entirely unpretentious. No one cares if your face or hands get dirty; no one cares which utensil you use. Just eat however you're comfortable eating, no self-consciousness necessary.

I have found this incredibly liberating. Normally, trying new foods while traveling is fun, but a bit nerve-wracking. You're never quite sure what to do. "Am I supposed to be using my fork or my hands?" or "Is that a soup or a finger bowl?" Add to that my seemingly unstoppable ability to spill food all over myself at nearly every meal, and eating inevitably becomes a bit embarrassing. But here, it's all good. Just enjoy the delicious food, that's the important part.

One night in Kuala Lumpur we decided to go to a "steak stall," a tiny little hawker stall rumored to have amazing steak. We found it under a highway, in the middle of a parking lot, surrounded by plastic tables and chairs. I was dubious at first - how can anyone make good steak in a STEAK STALL? But then it turned out to be the best steak since Argentina, and I realized you don't need to have a fancy restaurant to have good steak. I love this lack of pretense - I'd much rather sit at a plastic table than have some stuffy waiter draping a napkin over my lap.

Steak stall:



Yes, we take pictures of our food. What of it?



Over time, we've gotten better and better at picking restaurants here. The secret is to go to the small, dingy hole-in-the-wall places that are teeming with locals. If the kitchen is just a counter in the middle of the restaurant with a little old lady furiously flinging food around, you've hit the jackpot! At first we were intimidated, because these kinds of places normally don't have menus, and often the protocol is unclear. But we got braver as we went along, and now we realize that the rule of thumb is, the less you can figure out what's going on, the more delicious (and cheap) the food will be.

Little old lady furiously flinging food:



In this vein, yesterday we walked into a restaurant and ordered their one dish, "lorbak," not really knowing what it was. They brought us a plate of various meats with chili sauce. We recognized pork and calamari, but the rest were a mystery. As we chowed down, half of me was thinking, "I hope we're not eating pig brains right now!" but the other half was screaming "WHO CARES? It's delicious!" And that, I think, it the essence of eating in Malaysia.

And tomorrow we'll be in Thailand! Yay!

Here are some more photos of Melaka, Kuala Lumpur, and Penang.

Sex, drugs, and Carmelite nuns

One day after we got into Lima, Ross came down with a fever. We tried to ignore it, not wanting to make a big deal out of nothing, but pesky thoughts of dying of malaria kept popping up, since we'd just been a delicious dinner to ravenous mosquitoes in the jungle and, most likely, to deadly bacteria in the Amazon river. (Ross was secretly hoping it would be the plague, of which there has been a recent outbreak in Peru. It's the perfect disease - easily treated with penicillin, but bragging rights for the rest of your life.) Dying of malaria would be very inconvenient because we had plans to go to Bolivia after this, so we decided to go to a hospital to make sure that our plans would not be hampered by imminent death. I'm glad that we turned out to be in Lima when we were in need of a hospital instead of a more remote part of Peru. One guide told us that, in very rural areas, some indigenous people who don't have enough money for healthcare treat themselves using guinea pigs instead. In case you haven't heard of this method before, here's what they do:

They take a live guinea pig and rub it all over their body. (If you've never had anyone mime 'rubbing a live guinea pig all over your body,' you truly haven't lived. It's exhilarating.) The campesinos (farmers or peasants) believe that by doing this, their disease will be transferred into the guinea pig, so they cut open the guinea pig to diagnose themselves. If they find something wrong with the guinea pig, they believe that indicates what was wrong in their own body. (Only black guinea pigs are used as medicine. The other unfortunate souls are enthusiastically eaten all over the country as a dinnertime treat. Guinea pigs suffer so many indignities at the hands of the Peruvians.) However, for some reason, guinea pigs are not seen as a suitable treatment for children, so for children they do the same thing, but with eggs. This makes even less sense to me - how are you supposed to make a diagnosis using an egg? They don't even have body parts! The way the guide explained it, "They don't have enough money for medicine, but they already have guinea pigs and eggs, right?", with which I had to agree.

So I was pretty happy to find that we didn't see even one guinea pig scampering around the hospital. I did see an egg, but only in the form of my sandwich. The hospital was quite professional; in fact, the experience was quite a bit more enjoyable than a typical Emergency Room experience in North America. A+++, would visit again!! $300 worth of blood tests later, we discovered it wasn't malaria or the plague, it was just a regular old flu that happened to strike at the moment we'd be most paranoid about it. Damn sneaky viruses. 3 days later I also came down with a fever. We briefly debated going to the hospital for tests again, because what if we let our guard down, assumed it was the same flu, and at that exact moment, malaria made an ass out of u and me? How absolutely ridiculous would we feel THEN? But we're too lazy to be that paranoid, and I'm still alive, so I think we made the right choice.

Another happy coincidence was that we got sick in a hostel that is as cheap as it is bizarre. Our hostel is what would happen if you crossed an old Colonial mansion, a museum, and a zoo (Ross tried to capture some of the weirdness in his first ever youtube video). There is pre-Inca pottery lining the front desk. Roman statues hide in the corners, and every corridor is peppered with religious Spanish paintings. Getting to our room is like walking through a labyrinth. You walk up one long regular staircase, then one spiral staircase. Then you pass a rooftop patio in which you encounter several budgies, 3 turtles, a cat, a dog, a parrot, and what we have only been able to guess is a macaw. One more spiral staircase later, and you finally arrive at our room, where we spent a week in bed, trying desperately not to wake up when the macaw and parrot began squawking every morning ("Hola!" the parrot would shout hopefully, over and over again). Sleeping through all of that might have been possible except on top of that, every morning at 9am, the restaurant on the patio blasts music for their breakfast customers. And by "music," I actually mean, one very worn album of French love songs from the 50s, each song indistinguishable from the last, played over and over again until my ears would start to bleed. I spent every morning in a rage, wondering if the entire city of Lima was just some cruel, psychopathic joke.

In the last few days, I have finally been able to ascertain that it is not, in fact, a cruel psychopathic joke. Instead, it is simply an absolutely chaotic whirlpool of 8 million people squeezed into a city with the infrastructure for about 13 people and a llama. Areas of devastating poverty surround quite lavish neighborhoods filled to the brim with historic landmarks. Traffic is an unbearable mess - getting from one side of the city to another can literally take several hours during rush hour, as we found out while trying to get back from the hospital. Cabbies will routinely simply refuse to go to Central Lima during this time. Because many huge intersections lack street lights, cars just dart out into oncoming traffic with no understanding of "right of way" and honk angrily when they find that other cars are - surprise, surprise! - in their way. Not to mention the daily parades, which aren't actually an election quirk as we thought, but actually just a favorite national pastime, akin to reading or playing Backgammon. If the government spent half the money on street lights as it spent on parades, I think Lima would probably not have earned the nickname "Lima, la horrible" from noted Peruvian essayist Sebastian Salazar Bondy. (He was actually referring to the weather, but I'm sure he'd say the same thing about the traffic, were he alive today.)

Nevertheless, once we were healthy enough to say our tearful goodbyes with the parrot, we actually found that we enjoyed exploring Lima quite a bit. One of my favorite parts happened our first night out. Still in somewhat of a flu-y haze, we chose to go to dinner at a restaurant that our guidebook said was run by French Carmelite nuns. Walking up to its exterior, we were greeted by a closed gate, with a sign saying "We're open! Ring the bell!" Hmmm. We rang the bell and waited. Finally someone answered, "Sí?" I wasn't quite sure what to say. "Uh... para cena?" I stammered ("...for dinner?"). I suppose this was the right answer, as we were quickly buzzed in. Puzzling.

We were further confused as we were led to our table. "Bon soir!" they greeted us in French. Except my brain, which has been struggling to think exclusively in Spanish for the last 2 months, interpreted this as complete gibberish. She may as well have squawked at me like the parrot. The whole night, none of us could decide which language to speak in, so every conversation was conducted in a mix of French, Spanish, and English. The problem was that some of the nuns spoke Spanish but not much French, while others would address us mostly in French and a bit of English. I only speak some Spanish and no French at all, while Ross has no Spanish but a tiny bit of high school French. And everyone, trying to be polite, tried to speak the other person's preferred language, but nobody could decide what that was.

"Ready? Ça va?" approached a nun.
"Oui, merci," Ross responded, while at the same time I answered, "Sí, gracias!"

This continued the entire night, every interaction ending in laughter as the nuns tried to engage us in conversation and made fun of our stumbling around at every opportunity. I never knew nuns were so cheeky. (By the end of the dinner we started throwing some German and Russian into the mix, just for fun.) The food was outstanding - in fact, it was the only truly amazing meal we've had in Lima, despite our guidebook raving about this city as the "gastronomical capital of Peru." (I don't buy it for a second - even a gastronomical capital can't salvage the horror that is Peruvian food.) After dinner, the nuns gathered in the dining room to sing Ave Maria, all facing a picture of the Virgin Mary (which I'm sure the virgin appreciated). They handed out little cards with the lyrics printed in French and Spanish and invited everyone to sing along, but I didn't, because they sang in French, and it was a different version of Ave Maria than I was familiar with. (Neither of these things stopped Ross though. Perhaps his religious fervor was just too overpowering.) It was quite a touching moment and a perfect way to end a very bizarre, but absolutely lovely, dinner. The only better way would've been if I could've taken one of the nuns home with me to be my grandma. So cute!

To now turn in a completely different direction: Several weeks ago we promised that we would go to a museum filled with pottery made by the Moches, one of the most insane cultures that has ever lived. Artifacts that have been found from their culture suggest that the Moches were obsessed with sex and death (Freud's predecessors). For example, they would make 2 warriors from their culture fight it out to see who would be sacrificed. The loser would then be 'cleansed' for sacrifice by being forced to take San Pedro for a week straight. (Normally I would be all for that sort of fun, but to be on a hallucinogen for a week before being killed would probably be a bit of a downer.) Then he would be ritually anal raped and decapitated, after which (according to one theory) the priest would drink his blood. And that was only the beginning of the fun - their pottery frequently shows women being raped by pumas, women having sex with corpses, men with venereal diseases, and lots and lots of anal rape all around. So of course we were excited to go see this museum. And indeed, their pottery was more grotesque and fascinating than anything I've ever imagined. Observe:

Aaaand I think that is a good note on which to end. For more pictures of Lima, including many, many more pictures of pottery with cocks on it, click here.

The emergence of the gringos

We're only into day 4 of our year-long trip, and already I've had enough thoughts to fill up a novel. Not sure where to start, so I will start with what is most prevalent in my mind.

A few days before we left, a friend asked me what creature comfort I would miss most during our travels. I wasn't quite sure how to answer, and mumbled something about safety. It turns out that the answer became abundantly clear to me on our very first day: hot water. The water system in Ecuador is... well, I don't want to say "abysmal," since the rest of the world will probably be even worse, but it definitely leaves a lot to be desired. However, the benefit of this is that my showers are down to about 10 minutes. We're saving the environment through sheer discomfort.

Another interesting aspect of the water system that's taken a few days to get used to: the pipes are so weak in Ecuador, that you're not allowed to throw toilet paper into the toilet, or the toilet will overflow. Instead you have to throw it into the trash can. At first this seemed really gross -- especially since I forgot a few times -- but after only a few days it seems almost normal. (Almost.)

However, all of that aside, it's been a marvelous trip so far. Quito was beautiful, and more rich and modern than I expected. It's divided up into 2 sections - Old Town, and New Town. Old Town is quite charming - post-colonial architecture, cobble-stone streets, and a view of The Virgen de Quito from everywhere. Plus, right next to our hostel was a gorgeous 115m tall gothic basilica that was so huge I couldn't even take a proper picture of it. Of course, we decided to climb to the very top of it on our first day in Quito. The sheer terror of climbing up rickety ladders at this height, combined with our altitude sickness, ensured that my legs were screaming at me when we came down. But wow, it was worth it. Such cool views, and such an adrenaline rush.

 

The main feeling so far: everywhere I go, I feel like a bumbling gringo (in a good way). For example, to go explore New Town yesterday, we decided to take the Trole bus. These buses are only 25 cents and go quite fast, so they're VERY VERY packed. So much so, that when you're exiting, you have to literally elbow your way through people. I guess Ross is more assertive about this sort of thing than I am, because he got to the door just fine, while I got stuck in the crowd. I was still about 4 feet from the door when the doors started to close. I panicked a bit and shouted "Ross! Wait!" and reached my hand out to him. He reached for my hand and started pulling me through the crowd of people, while the people on the bus were pushing me forward! With this teamwork (people here are so friendly) I was able to get out. I think my elbows are going to get a good workout on this trip.

Another example: When we finally got off the Trole, we decided to get some lunch. Lunch is the only meal that we have to get ourselves because we get breakfast and dinner at the hostel. We were trying to decide what to get, but didn't know what many of the words on the menu were. Unfortunately the dictionary we got isn't very good for food - most of the words we tried to look up weren't even in there. So we tried to order the cheapest thing on the menu, which was a portion of "merenza." Somehow we figured that this was probably vegetables, so it seemed safe. The waitress looked at us funny and made up a silly story about how you can only get merenza by itself between Monday and Friday. We figured she was just trying to get us to order something more expensive, so instead we ordered rice, with fish, and merenza. When the meals came, it turned out that merenza was a side of beans. So we had basically been trying to order a side of beans for lunch! Again we laughed about that for a long time (and at that point realized why the waitress was trying to get us to order something else - she was actually trying to help us!) That's right about the time that we came up with the name of this blog.

On Sunday they close down the streets to cars and you're free to walk (or bike) all along the streets. This was really nice, because there's so much traffic normally that it was great to be able to enjoy the cute architecture without all the smog in your face. We were also surprised by the fact that there were performances going on all around the city. We saw 4 different bands playing, dancers doing an indigenous-looking dance, and even skateboarders showing off! I really enjoyed this tradition. It made me wish that Vancouver did something like that once a week. It felt very alive!

On our last day in Quito we finally went up to see La Virgen de Quito up close. I was most surprised to see that, in addition to all the tourists and locals hanging out up there, there were lots and lots of dogs. Probably around 20 or more were running around. I asked the bathroom attendant why there were so many dogs. She said that when people don't want their dogs, they drop them here. They are then given food and water by the tourists and by the employees, they are neutered, and (if I understood her Spanish correctly) they check up on them every 3 months to make sure they're healthy. Overall it doesn't seem like such a bad life, even though they're stray.

I think my favorite part about Quito has been the hostel. It's such a fun place to be and it's so easy to meet people here (plus, the view is indescribable). Before we left, everyone kept telling us that you inevitably meet lots of cool people when you travel. I was a bit worried about this at the time, because I know both Ross and I can be a bit shy and anti-social at times. But somehow it just happens, and it's wonderful.

The first 2 nights I was going a bit insane living in dorms. It turns out that having personal space is important! Who knew? Now, 4 days later, I don't mind the dorms so much. The secret, in case anyone is wondering, is lots and lots of baggies. I got a baggie for my tops, a baggie for my pants and undies, a baggie for my morning/evening toiletries, a baggie for my shower toiletries, a baggie for my laundry... It sounds silly, but it's the only way to stay sane when you're unable to unpack and lay out your stuff. I swear by baggies now.

Our last night in Quito, we decided to book another night in the hostel (we weren't ready to leave yet), so we decided to splurge on a private room for the night. It felt so luxurious, even though it was just a bed in a room. But it's your own bed, and your own space, with no other people in the bunk underneath you, and you don't have to worry about waking people up - pure luxury! Oh for priorities shifting.

Now we're in a city called Baños. This city has hot springs, a huge waterfall, and you can also do sports like zip-lining, mountain biking or water rafting for very cheap. We are planning on meeting up with a couple we met a few days ago in the hostel and going rafting with them. Looking forward to soaking in some HOT water!