the view from the end of noodletown road

well, penpals -- this is it. after sixteen long months in asia, i'm shuffling through my last hot rainy weekend in paradise and packing my bags to come home. wednesday morning, to SFO, with a direct connection to a Barneys avocado cheddar cheeseburger.

so here's my last update and final reflections. since last we penpalled, i went to a national park and saw proboscis monkeys and the fabled beared pig -- a monstrous thing with facial hair like wookie (endearing) but fangs like a vampire bat (terrifying) -- a pair of flying lemurs, and a bright green pit viper curled up in a tree for a nap like it weren't no thing to be the second most poisonous snake in town. then i flew to the north of Sarawak for a night where all i did was listen to a toad of a hungarian talk about himself and how adventurous he was because he was traveling alone (HELLO), and then onto Brunei with the lion king soundtrack playing the whole bus ride. i stayed in the youth hostel with some schoolgirls and wandered the hot empty streets of bandar seri begawan for a couple of days, talking pictures of the giant golden mosque from every angle and at every time of day, and marveling at priceless crap that people have gifted the sultan over the years, and watching storms roll in from across the river and then out the other side. people in brunei were very nice to me, and i even got a boat ride from a man who had painted his vessel red white and blue with a big USA emblazoned on the side and took me through the water village talking about new york, a place he had never been but was very fond of. he told me he would come visit me there sometime, and i said that that was fine.

after brunei i took a bus back into malaysia, and, eight border crossings later, found myself in a hotel out by a bus station in kota kinabalu in desperate need of doing laundry. i mentioned this to the manager, who directed me to the one shop he was sure was still open but which was actually closed (at 7 pm), and when i came back in defeat he felt so invested in my plight that he drove me a half an hour away to another, hipper town where laundry joints stay open all night--despite my protests that i was actually totally happy being crusted in travel crud head to toe and he should go home at once to his mama's house where he still lived at age 38 (i'm not judging). but he wasn't having any of it. he waited with me for an hour, drinking sasparilla contentedly while i washed and dried and folded, and then, instead of dumping me back at the hotel and being rid of me as i would have expected, he took me on a night tour of kota kinabalu to see all the sights and markets and have a quick break to try some durian and tell me about the history of the area. incredible -- one of the nicest people i met on my whole trip, that dear old mohammed ariv.

the next morning, clean clothes in hand, i took another bus that was delayed five hours by an overturned lorry, turning a six hour trip into an eleven hour nightmare, but finally made my way to Sepilok, the jumping off point for trips up the Kinabatangan River. I went upriver with a great group of people (including more Barcelonians, who have quickly become among my favorite travelers to meet) and saw everything from an 18 foot crocodile sinking into the muddy depths to a mama gibbon teaching her baby how to swing in what's left of the surrounding jungle. I was also bitten roughly 4000 times by mosquitos which may or may not have been bursting with malaria (turned out not but you never know), so i was more than ready to leave the jungle and return to civilization. i went to melacca, which i loved, and then back to KL, where, after months of planning and anticipation of bank transfers back and forth, i finally met up with matt (georgetown matt) and embarked on the final hurrah.

which went something like this: we took a sleepless train ride north and stayed four days on Little Perhentian island, which displaced Gili Trawangan as my favorite tropical paradise, partly because a guy there had a pet otter that i got to play with but also because it is just stunning, and then, as if we hadn't had enough of turquoise water and white sand perfection, we flew back to borneo and spent five days diving in Mabul and Sipadan and could not have asked for anything better. Sharks and turtles and cuttlefish and things i've never even heard of like a Flying Gurnard and a sea moth, plus perfect clear blue water and another group of really fun people, this time mostly dutch but also norwegian and a couple more barcelonians just for good measure. We dove, we played cards, we lounged, we went to a chinese karaoke bar and tried to convince them to let us sing ABBA but were subtly yet unmistakeably rejected, we ate well and sunbathed and had just about the best time i have had on this whole extended trip. Asia, if ever i doubted you, i take it all back. you've been a wonderful host and i have grown quite fond of you indeed.

but now it's time to come home and i'm pretty happy about that too. goodbye noodles, hello sourdough baguette. it really has been too long.

see you all soon!
love molly

it's raining in borneo

dear old penpals,

hello again, this time from borneo! i'm in kuching which means "cat" and it's raining -- cats. cats and more cats. but luckily it started in the late afternoon, just as i was finishing up at the orangutan sanctuary down the road where i saw my first ginger haired apes in the wild. well, kind of wild, it's sort of a reserve and sort of a park, not at all a zoo, but not quite wild either -- close enough. anyway i saw five very fine specimens, one with an itty baby clutching onto its chest as it --she -- smashed coconuts into tree trunks with impressive force and then tried to pour the juice out on the ranger below (pretty sure it was on purpose), and tomorrow i go to a really truly national park and look for hornbills and proboscis monkeys and maybe if i'm very lucky a civet cat! i spend two nights at the park headquarters and i'm really excited. to wake up to gibbon calls walk around with the flying squirrels and all their forest friends..how fun.

kuching is also lovely, though, surprisingly more developed and modern than most se asian cities (including phnom penh) but still incredibly colorful and charming with lots of colonial buildings, windy streets, sidewalk cafes...i'm really glad i came. after the national park i go on up the coast towards brunei, which i'll pass through and spend a night or two in, just to see what the sultan's up to, and then over to the other side of malaysian borneo to hopefully see more orangutans in more of a national park setting, along a river which you go up in a little boat and wear a safari hat. like the jungle ride at disneyland come to life! finally.

anyway so i know i haven't written much since i've been traveling because i've just been distracted and short of attention span for the internet after several months of spending so much quality time with my computer in phnom penh (phnom penh! seems like a lifetime ago), but a short rundown of the trip so far is as follows:

first, a week on gili trawangan, a little splotch of paradise near bali with the best white sand beach i've ever been to and so many turtles that the locals get annoyed at seeing them, where i met a friend from VIA and lounged a lot and watched the world cup with some swiss people. then, a four day "cruise" on a "boat" which nearly capsized whenever a gentle breeze rippled across the sea or a tiny wave lapped at our stern, but somehow survived to take us to lots of uninhabited island gems for waterfalls, hiking, and pink beaches (from the coral that washes up there) and then onto komodo to see the dragons, which are gigantic and look like they belong with the dinosaurs but don't do a whole lot more than lie flat on their stomachs with their legs sticking out and watch you watch them (occasional tongue flick), and then final port of call at Labuan Bajo, Flores, an island that kept making me think of the land before time: Impossibly green valleys, multi-colored ever changing opaque volcanic lakes, traditional cultures with temples made out of spiky rocks and offerings of vanilla and coffee beans, and castaway beaches with nothing to do but watch the tide come in and go out over a good book and a cold beer. i rented a car with a dutch family and drove all the way across, listening to Mr. Meijer talk about things that were "so idiot" while his wife and daughter made fun of his english and his yellow speedo. charming people, the dutch. next i flew to bali, met a spaniard and a chilean and drove around the island with them, just to make sure that Bali is really as pretty as people say it is (affirmed). And then I flew to east timor which is a really strange place that appears to have been invaded by an army of white UN trucks, but still has really good scuba diving and some sweeping scenery and complicated people who can be charming but mostly just seem wary -- even of little budget backpacker me, on the local bus with the chickens and the drooling infants, with no white UN vehicle in sight! i think they may have a bad impression of westerners at this point and i guess i don't blame them. but, there was a parrot at my hostel, and it was incredibly warm and friendly, so it all worked out just fine.

and then after a short stopover in singapore to refuel and reconnect, i came to Borneo and here I am. it's still raining but i'm getting hungry, and the food here so far is fantastic. i've had minced pork in two different forms, both excellent, and the best thing by far: stir fried fern leaf. crunchy yet delicate. what a treat. so i'll brave a warm shower and head out and i will talk to you all soon! one more month of this and then i'm back to the bay. i can already tell that i'm going to miss eating fern leaves.

love, molly

Nepal, but really mostly Delhi

This last bit, much like the first bit, doesn't really deal too much with me being in Nepal, but never mind. I still want to write about it, mostly on the off-chance any of you were considering flying through Delhi any time soon -- you'll want to go ahead and reroute now. Try Dubai, they're very nice there and sometimes there are free buffets.

Here's the problem: You leave Kathmandu still glowing from your magical two weeks of mountains and hidden courtyards, and, though they grope you no fewer than four times while passing through security (one groping is actually conducted on the stairs leading up to the aircraft as your fellow passengers wait in an amorphous bottleneck crush on the steaming tarmac for their turn to undergo the same indignity -- does this strike anyone as a good idea?), you're still relatively happy about the place and glad that you slogged across three countries to get there. But then you land in India. And India, being it's usual charming self, makes you want to never leave your home ever again in your life.

You get off the plane and are funneled into a big open hall, which contains no signage whatsoever and gives you no hints as to which way you're supposed to proceed, and so you become confused. Then you notice that there's one guy standing in the middle of the hall, mumbling things that you can't understand unless you get closer, so everyone clogs around him only to find out that his instructions are simply "International passengers wait here" (aren't we all international passengers, having come from another country? Oh but let's not be difficult now). So everyone waits in a clump, bumping into each other, until the people who aren't connecting to other flights realize that they can actually go on through immigration, and the transit passengers, at least most of them, realize that by "wait here" he meant "proceed through this messy line and give all pertinent information to a representative who won't tell you what it's for". You have to be proactive, you see.

So we get through that, and then once they have compiled all the vital information of every single transit passenger onto hand-written sheets of paper, they take these sheets, stand in the middle of the room, and read them aloud as if we're being picked for the middle school volleyball team. You're supposed to listen for your name and the move from wherever you're standing to some other part of the room to show movement, which they note dutifully, and then they mush you all back into a group and march you up the stairs and into a waiting area. Your guardians disappear and you realize: you've been trapped. Trapped in transit. From the waiting area you can see the rest of the airport, the shops, the restaurants, the happy people drinking cappuccinos and waiting for their flights in the comfort of an easy chair at the Coffee Bean (or equivalent). But transit passengers are not allowed over there. They have to wait in the Transit Waiting Area, also known as Airport Purgatory, for the entire duration of their layover. Which, if you're the French people whose flight home got canceled because of that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, means up to and maybe exceeding four days. I watched these French people for awhile as I ate my cold french fries in the one Transit-approved restaurant -- at one point one of them had a breakdown and sobbed for a good twenty minutes on the stairs just outside A little later, once she had been brought back into the fold, someone took out a guitar and they held a sing-along of popular French diddies, everyone joining in. When one of their party got a flight and had to go, they all hugged and took pictures, exchanging email addresses and promising to get together soon. It was really quite touching. But then the restaurant called the police on them and had them unceremoniously removed, apparently for overstaying the secret unwritten hour limit imposed to keep people from getting too attached to that dimly-lit hellhole. Talk about adding insult to volcanic ash cloud.

Anyway, back downstairs in Transit purgatory, I sat in a hard blue chair from 4:30 to 11 pm, reading, cursing under my breath, and waiting to be granted my golden ticket to freedom, also known as a standard boarding pass. At 11 my airline representative appeared from his secret lair to announce that my boarding pass would be delivered "soon soon" but that in the meantime I was invited to a free dinner, courtesy of Jet Airlines. What? But ok. So I scarfed down as much dal curry as I could, which produced some really uncomfortable cramps, all the while suspicious of the bad news that such a bizarre gift must surely portend. I still don't get it. There was no bad news, except of course that I was there in the first place. I went back downstairs, witnessed an impromptu birthday party for a Chilean girl who had the singular misfortune of turning 26 in that dump -- no Mumbai slumber zone, I can assure you -- and waited. About 12:30, another representative materialized out of thin air to round up all of us Jet Airways passengers (I mean, we hope he got all of them, but one can never be sure), issue us boarding passes (by putting 25 boarding passes on a table and asking us to identify ours, all at once), and send us on a mad dash through the airport to make the last call for our flight -- which, miraculously, departed on time at 1:05 am. Go figure.

The most disturbing part of this whole charade is that this is normal procedure. I asked. I was assured. "Yes madam, standard standard. Yes Madam, every flight, every day, oh yes, very normal. Always this way it works." Um, no it doesn't, but tell yourself whatever you want. I hate you and I'm never coming back anyway.

And that's the end of the story! The takeaway, thirty four pages later: Go to Nepal, but by god do not fly through Delhi. Fly through Phnom Penh instead and then you can come visit me!

Congratulations to those of you who made it this far. More adventures to come.