Oh my, the humidity. And various other things.

I am really worried my computer is going to short out – the humidity and condensation is unbelievable.

I still haven’t mastered traveling.  You might think that after almost 2 months, I’d have been able to avoid some of the classic blunders, but it was not to be.  My dad and brother have joined me for Malaysia (which is great!), but we flew in on different planes and did the classic move where I got to their terminal to find them right as they went to mine to find me.  So we ended up searching Kuala Lumpur’s crazy airport until 2 in the morning until we finally met up downtown at our hotel.
Oh well, it happens.  We’re together, and I am having a great time traveling with family – in a way, Malaysia isn’t nearly as foreign as South America – for one, I can speak English with my brother and dad, and besides a lot of people here, especially in the big cities speak English, so it’s not as hard culturally as S. America was.
I got a Singapore stamp in my passport because, like New Zealand, I spent a whopping two hours in the country – I’m running out of pages in my passport!  But I like the stamps, so I don’t mind in the slightest.
Do you remember how polluted Santiago was?  Well, Kuala Lumpur is a lot worse.  We went up the Menora KL, the telecommunication tower (top 5 tallest towers in the world) to get a panoramic view of the city, and you honestly could barely see a kilometer around the tower.  When we first got out of the elevator, it was a big wall of white – granted, there’s some humidity and cloud cover, but there’s also an amazingly large amount of smog.   Not that this really surprises me, but it still makes me wish I wasn’t an asthmatic.  But we’ve escaped to the hill country now, where the air is much cleaner and cooler (KL also makes you sweat like crazy- the heat, the humidity and all of the car exhaust make walking a chore).  We are in the Cameron Highlands, where all of the old colonialists would come to escape the heat.  It’s great – tea plantations and strawberry fields are the highlights, and the plantations are unbelievably cool.  Plus, the tea is actually pretty good, even to a guy who doesn’t really like tea.  I’m enjoying being in a country that doesn’t empty my wallet, like Australia did.
As far as Parks go, I still haven’t had a chance to see many – there is a very old Park right in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, at the base of the tower we ascended, but it’s relatively small, and its only real attraction is an animal Park with snakes and lizards from around the globe, and also a raccoon from the states, which doesn’t seem interesting at all to me, but I guess is exotic for Malaysians.  As far as conservation goes, the Park is likely hopeless – I don’t know how anything can stand living in that smog for long.  We did also go to the aquarium, which was very cool – I was very happy to see a lot of interactive displays explaining what Marine Parks (National Parks still) were, why they’re important, etc.  They were definitely geared towards children, which is good for environmental education.  You know my worries that env. Ed doesn’t always work, but the thought is good.
Ate at a great Malaysian restaurant last night called Top Hat – it was in an old boarding school, or so we thought, because they had actually moved and weren’t at the address we thought.  Instead, our taxi took us to this (now) abandoned school which was populated by middle aged men playing volleyball.  I didn’t really understand either, and we didn’t really want to hang around and ask…  We eventually found the right address, and had great food, including George’s (my brother) dessert of Black Glutinous Rice (a local delicacy, apparently).  Good times – Malaysia is great!
I’m also excited because I am going to meet up with the Patrons, the family of one of my really good friends from back home.  They moved to China a few years ago, and I haven’t seen them in a while – fortuitously, they are vacationing at the same place we are going on Borneo, so it should be lots of fun.  But George and I are playing cards now (which I have missed.  Solitaire gets boring), so I must run!