Click here for current times in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the East Coast of the U.S.
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Click here for weather in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
(note: this is one of my pre-scheduled posts set to appear at 5:00am EST each morning I am in a port city. I will post follow-up information about each trip once I am able to get back on the computer.)
- I'm not yet sure what I'll be doing today. I'm playing it by ear and seeing what other people will be doing today.
Update:
Today I slept until the afternoon. I was going to maybe try to go out this morning with Emily (the nurse) to walk around a bit, but she never knocked on my door and I didn't feel so bad when I finally emerged from my room to find a note from Emily saying that she ended up sleeping until the trip she was going on in the afternoon. She mentioned in her note that some people are getting hotel rooms by a beach area and that she might go out there tomorrow. I just left Emily a note in response saying that I would go with her. I know that tomorrow is also Joanna's 24th birthday and there is some talk of everyone going out somewhere tomorrow night for that.
For today, I decided to go along with Mark, Ben and Joanna (the Global Nomads Group) to their first broadcast tonight. The broadcast is at 8:30 pm, but we are leaving the ship at 6:00 pm because it takes them time to set up and to arrange everything with the students they have participating here. It will be interesting to see what they have pieced together today because as of last night they were still scrambling to find Malaysian students to participate (their original school of students fell through at the last minute).
On another note, I am now wondering if I got sick from something I ate or if it was purely a virus. Many people on the ship are sick - and many just recently got sick just before getting to Malaysia. Apparently if you eat something funky in a foreign country, your body will react relatively quickly to that so these people who are just getting sick aren't victims of questionable food/water from India. Since I still feel like I have the remnants of a cold in my head, I think that my sickness could have been the same thing people have recently been getting on the ship. I am kind of glad I didn't go on the Kuala Lumpur trip at this point because I actually do have a lot I need to catch up on (ie. grading midterms) and I overheard someone saying the other day that there really isn't a whole lot to do in Kuala Lumpur anyway.
Second Update:
I got the 7:00 pm tender boat to the shore with Ben, Joanna and Shayla (the administrative assistant) and we went to the university where the Global Nomads Group broadcast would be that night.
tables and chairs near food stands on the street in Penang, Malaysia
Global Nomads Group director Mark and Global Nomads Group documentarian Ben in Penang, Malaysia
Near where we ate a Buddhist ceremony was happening (by this time it was around 11:00 pm) and by the time we were ready to go back to the ship, the ceremony moved into the middle of the road.
people lined up with incense at some kind of Buddhist ceremony going on behind where we were sitting in Penang, Malaysia
A paper mansion, paper car, paper money and other flammable things like that were piled on the road and cars had to simply go around this spectacle. Once this was done, the people lit incense sticks and said some prayer before lighting the entire thing on fire and holding hands and circling the fire. This was apparently done as a ceremony to protect people's belongings and a guy that was nearby told us that the group holds hands around it to prevent others from symbolically getting to their belongings. Other Buddhist rituals involve burning items that are meant for one's ancestors who have died.
video of the ceremony in the street
(click here for a bigger version of the video)
video of the ceremony in the street
(click here for a bigger version of the video)
Malaysian Buddhists holding hands circling the paper offerings in the middle of the street in Penang, Malaysia
Global Nomads Group documentarian Ben and Global Nomads Group director Mark basking in the fire in the middle of the street in Penang, Malaysia
By the time this was over, Mark, Ben and I went back to where we needed to catch the tender boat and we knew that at that time, they were only running one boat per hour. Two girls were sitting there with a local guy and said that this guy was giving them some free alcohol so we just sat there with them for a while. More than an hour passed and no boat had come. At that point, some other Semester at Sea students showed up and asked where the boats would come. The girls we were sitting with told them that the boats were at another area and pointed to a location about 200 feet away. At that point, Mark, Ben and I looked at each other wondering why these girls never told US that because we were waiting with them assuming that was where the boat was coming. Ben went to go see when the last boat left at the other location and we apparently missed it by five minutes. This meant we had to wait yet ANOTHER hour. It turned out to be an even longer wait because the boat that we were then waiting for apparently had engine trouble. Essentially, we waited two and a half hours and by the time we got back on the ship, it was around 3:00 am. It didn't bother me that much because I had slept a lot earlier that day, but Ben and Mark had been up since 8:00 am and out all day working and they had to get up early the next day too.
