MalaysiaMarch 19 to March 23, 2008March 19 to March 21Welcome to Malaysia!!Before I even begin to tell you about Malaysia, I just have to share with you some things on my mind from leaving India to arriving here in Penang, Malaysia.We all see diversity, these countries through our own lens of life.We all have different prescriptions, so what we see, how we react, feel and take away with our experience is different from one another.As I have visited each of these countries, I have found new differences, new comparisons, new thoughts, new ideas, new lessons, new feelings that are similar to what we see in America or different in America.No matter what my conclusions are when I experience these countries, no one is right, no one is better than one another and no one is the expertise on what I should actually be feeling.If my lens of this experience gives me the chance to find and explore the differences but to build a nice dichotomy of finding the similarities, then what the others and I are learning are valuable experiences for each other and our own selves.From what I am seeing more and more, no one is right, no one has the correct definition of diversity, no one knows what it means, but the big thing I am learning is, respect each other's meaning of diversity and cultural awareness.Is it the visible, is it in the invisible, is it the differences, is it the similarities, is it what you are learning?Go with it…. Learn about the cultures, learn about the diversity, that is what diversity is, that is what all of these cultures and countries that we have visited and interacted with is teaching me!!There is so much more to the world, to the people, to the countries than seeing the outside of someone.Explore their traditions, explore their food, explore their families, find out who they are, teach them something about you, have them teach you about them and see how much it is an experience to open your mind, to open your thoughts and feelings to other cultures.No matter what I or you may see on the surface of others, that should not count to judge someone.At the end of the day the only thing that matters is that we all live happy lives and everyone's definition of happiness should be respected, appreciated and celebrated.It hit me the other night reading an email from one of the Indian students I met in India last week.He referred to me in the email as a foreigner!!I am not offended, but it really hit me… I am a foreigner in these countries.I am the minority, I am the one being stared at, I am the one lost, I am on the trying to find my way around with no one from the country and others either looking at me or thinking the same thoughts or having the same beliefs.It is actually a pretty cool feeling to be the foreigner for once in a while and to get the feeling of what is actually feels like.In America, I am not always the minority group, in certain roles or experiences, but thinking more about it, I now can relate to many more of the students, my friends and others on the minority feeling and how these feelings all do come together and make different roles come out.More and more every day, the experience keeps on getting stronger, the students are exploring more about themselves and involving me in those conversations at lunch, dinner or at programs. Think about it.. the world is our classroom!!The learning never stops out here.Our surroundings change constantly and life keeps on moving.Being in contact with friends and family at home is great, even though that is sporadic, but life gives you an interesting way of viewing things from and not having one foot back in the USA and foot here!!As we arrived in Malaysia, the one thing I noticed was how HOT it was out here.We pulled into port right on time at 8:00 a.m. and we were ready to explore and learn more about another country and their culture.But, yet again, getting off the ship is a big learning experience for everyone.Immigration was a tad bit late this morning, which put us a behind schedule to disembark the ship.It gets better… for Malaysia, the pier we are at is under construction, so there is no pier… so how do we get from the ship to land… well we TENDER!!This is a fun process, not one that anyone of us enjoy.Our ship dropped anchor about two miles or so (not really sure how far) out in the ocean.Then we drop down a few of our life boats into the ocean and then jump from the ship to the life boat, which then takes us to the pier to unload.Can you image trying to get 800++ people off a ship using two lifeboats that only hold 100 people at a time… yeah, it was crazy, organized chaos for us to work this.Myself and few other RD's were helping with crowd control and getting things organized for the departure.The first students off the ship are always the students who are traveling with Semester at Sea, as they normally have very strict flight and bus schedules to adhere to.It is difficult to turn away students from trying to board the lifeboat to leave since they were not traveling with the program and just on their own, but we need order.About 3 hours later, we were successful and got everyone that needed to be off the ship first, off and it was now time for me to get ready to travel.By lunch time, Amanda, Noah, Rachel and myself (all RD's) headed out to explore the local city, grab some lunch and head to the airport, as we were traveling by our own for the next three days.Lunch was fun… I was not hungry, but we ate at a local food court on the street.Let me tell you, it was CHEAP!!The currency in Malaysia is the Rinngit and $1 is equal to 3 Ringgit.One lunch meal cost 2 Ringgit… that is crazy… which is like $1.50 to us!!You can't beat that.. and the food was GREAT.In Malaysia, the culture is pretty much Indian and Chinese with a lot of Hindi, Islam and Muslim religions being followed.It is a very culturally diverse country, that is for sure.At times I kept on forgetting were I was from seeing so many different buildings, names on stores and the people on the street.Malaysia is pretty built up!!They have skyscraper buildings, a lot of technology, a lot of great public transportation.The traffic is under control, people are living in a great places and doing great things, they also have a lot of things that we are used to in the USA.. like McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, malls, malls, malls, malls, and so much more.. it was so comfortable to be here, besides the unbelievable HEAT!!So after lunch, we headed to the airport for our flight.We were flying to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital city.We got to the airport and now time to figure this out.Being at an international airport and not traveling internationally is pretty interesting, we confused the airport workers, as they all assumed we were traveling internationally back home, but we weren't!!We flew Air Asia and got our flight and two nights at the hotel for $100, you can't beat that.Air Asia is just like our Southwest Airline, cheap flights and sit where you want.The flight was fast, one hour, and had a great flight over there.We figured out our traveling and made it safely to our hotel.The hotel was such in an amazing place.It was located in Chinatown and in the middle of the Chinese Night Market.How cool is this.Thousands of people were selling many, many things on the street in their vendor shops and others just shopping around. As always, the vendors have the special price for us as we come by to shop and look.It is fun to bargain with the vendors and get them down to their lowest price, which they usually always do.The next morning, it was off time to explore the city and learn about Malaysia!!!Breakfast was first, as it was included in our hotel price.I found it very interesting that in Malaysia they eat spicy noodles, rolls, rice, beans and other items for breakfast.It was good to taste and try, but my body could not handle all of that as my first meal, so I went back to the Western station and had my eggs and cereal!!Our first order of business was to go to the Petronas Towers.These are the tallest twin towers in the world!!!Both standing with over 88 floors and connected by a sky bridge on floors 41 and 42, these two towers are just amazing to see.The towers give out 1,000 free tickets to go up to the sky bridge to get a bird's eye view of the city.Of course, we were there and got our tickets, but our reservation for our viewing time was not until 12:30, which was fine.So after we got our tickets, we headed back to the streets and went to the Menara Tower.The Menara Tower is just like the Seattle space needle!For $5 or 15 Ringgit, we headed up to the observation deck and had a great view of the city from up there.It was great to see the culture, the city and a new country from way above.After our visit to the Menara Tower, we headed back to the Petronas Towers as it was our turn to go to the sky bridge.It was another great view to see the city, just from another end of the city.All of the views were great.The fun part about both of these visits was the Malaysian workers asking were we were from.They right away assumed we from Australia or Europe, but when we told them we were from the USA, there eyes light up.They were saying that they don't get many visitors from the USA, and were happy to see us there and to tell others to come down to see the country.It is pretty cool to be so close to Australia right now!!After the sky bridge tour we got into a taxi and went to the City Market in Chinatown.It was lunch time and we headed back to yet another food court to have a cheap lunch.That is right we had rice and noodles and other great Asian food for about $3.This is so cool.I had Thai Fried rice for lunch and it was amazing.After some hours of shopping and running around, we did our own walking city tour and some of the local sites, temples and history of China Town.By the time we finished immersing ourselves in the culture, the city and becoming Malaysian for the day, it was time for some dinner.We decided to have a nice sit down dinner and went to a restaurant called Ginger, which was all Thai food.The menu looked amazing, so we decided to order 4 large meals and split them amongst everyone so we all could get a taste of the food.We had some coconut fried chicken, some curry beef and vegetable that I did not know what it was and lots of rice to go with it.The food was so good!!For about $15 each, we ate like kings and even had desserts that were out of the world!!Just thought I share this with you all, if you keep on reading it, you will get a nice laugh.Well, it happened today and went on for another day, the lovely travelers stomach issues started, which meant lots of visits to the bathrooms.But these were not your original bathrooms.You see in Asia, they mostly use the squatter type toilets… no seats… just squatting over the hole.Look at the pictures on my blog to see them from the India Section.But lucky enough, they had the ONE Western style toilet, which made me feel so great!!The other bad news, they do not use toilet paper out here.. so you better be aware to always travel with toilet paper out here in Asia, which I did and saved myself and the others in the group that began to get the stomach situation.Yeah, laugh.. but you know what it happens to everyone.. for only knowing the group of people I know here for two months, we talk about our poop and stomach situations regularly, it is part of our traveling issues mostly everyone is experiencing.Our next day in Kula Lumpur was off to the Batu Caves.The Batu Caves is a place were many Hindi temples are located.It is pretty nice to visit these temples and see how others practice their religions and beliefs.On our arrival we saw the largest, gold Hindi god straight ahead overseeing the caves.Amazing!!Our first order of business was to walk up to 272 stairs to the top of the temple area to see the city and to see the other smaller temples and alters inside the CAVES.Yep,I did it, made it to the top of the cave, see the picture.Along our way up the stairs, random monkeys decide to walk with you and jump from tree to tree, taking your bags, food and just having a good time.When we finally made it to the top, we visited some of the temples and learned about their gods and history behind many of their beliefs.Very interesting to watch others practice their religion right in front of us.The great part is that they are happy to share and talk to us about what they are doing, and what their beliefs are in.As you enter the temples you are required to take off your shoes!So walking around barefoot is interesting taking pictures of the locals and their statues of their gods all around us. After visiting the Batu Caves, we got daring and decided to try the public transportation bus to head to the Indian section of Kuala Lumpur.The bus ride was 50 cents (or 2 Ringgit) for our 35 minute drive back into town.The public transportation system here is easy to use and the driver and ticket operator were very helpful to us to let us know when to get off.We walked around for a bit, did some more shopping, did some more eating.All around these cities are massive malls.I mean massive…. With 10++ floors, lots of stores, name brand stores.It is just amazes me on how many malls we ran into!!Pretty much after doing our own walking tour in the Indian section of time, it was time to get to the airport and head back to our ship.Dinner was amazing at the airport.. yeah, it was time for some American food… so we had McDonalds and it tasted so good!!I had my Big Mac, fries and apple pie and I was in heaven. You don't realize how much you miss these small things in life until you leave them.My stomach and I were just full and so happy to have some American food.What I loved about the menu selection was the fact that they had their own Asian style options to choose from as well, how convenient for everyone.We had a successful flight back to our ship and made it back for the night to crash and get some more rest.March 22, 2008Today,I took it easy and slept in for most of the day. Yeah, your body gets tired after a while of getting up really early, walking around all day in HOT weather.Tonight I lead a trip for the students for a Chinese seafood dinner and night time zoo and safari trip.I brought 35 students with me and we had a fun time out together. Our first stop was to eat.The Chinese restaurant did a great job on their meals.We had squid, crab, shrimp, some other fish, vegetables, rice, some chicken and Chinese tea.It was just so good, so ummy and so filling.The food out here has just been one amazing treat!!After dinner we headed to the zoo.This zoo is one of the only zoos that is open at night to see the nocturnal animals in their habitat.We walked around to see Elephants, leopards, panthers, bats, snakes, bears, and so many other animals.It was a great way to see the animals up close in their homes.We had a great time tonight!!March 23, 2008Happy Easter from Malaysia!!When will you ever tell someone that you spent your Easter in Malaysia… most likely never.Today was just like another day, time for more site seeing.Rachel, Leigh Ellen and I headed out to the mall in the local city to do some more shopping and site seeing.You learn so much about the culture and people by shopping with them and hanging out with them.Since the buses were so cheap and easy to maneuver, we hopped on the bus to the mall and got their fine.We saw a movie theater in the mall and we knew exactly what we wanted to do, yep that is right, see a MOVIE, something we have not done in two months.So, we just saw whatever movie was playing at our time of arrival.. so we saw 27 Dresses!!So get this about the movie theaters in Asia…. 1) it is CHEAP, it was only $3 to see the movie, how great…. 2) they do assigned seating and you choose your seat when you pay, how cool… 3)the snacks were even cheaper….4)the seats were so large and so comfortable, you could have slept in there.It was the best movie theatre experience I have ever had.After the movie, we just walked around the mall and had some Asian snacks.I had no idea what I was eating, but it looked like some corn dough thing and it was good… By this time, it was time for us to get back to the ship and to get ready for the arrival of our students.Overall, Malaysia was a lot of fun.I had no expectations here and I had a blast.Traveled on my own, saw a lot of sites, was exposed to yet another culture, ate some great food and learned a lot. Malaysia is so calm, so friendly, so open and so unique, but very comfortable and easy to travel.Walking in the town is safe, the busses were safe and the atmosphere was open.This was a nice place to see after India and to get ready for the rest of our Asian Countries that our still ahead of us.Well, I am off to help with the gangway duty and to get our students here on time so we can sail out of Malaysia.Our next stop is Vietnam!!It is only three days to Vietnam and I have a lot of trips planned there as well, which I am looking forward to.This is just way too much fun and so great to learn what I am learning!!! Stay tuned for updates at sea and Vietnam!!I am sure many new things will begin to happen.If you read my journals and experiences, THANKS and I hope they are not too boring.If you don't, oh well…. If you keep in touch, THANKS.. if you don't.. oh well.. life is life I guess.Hope to hear from some of you soon.For those of you working your butts off at schools getting ready for selection time and closing, have fun!!Not me this time.. just me trying to find a job, which is better than working the other interviews.Take care and talk to you soon.- Mario