Alive and Well in Malaysia

I wrote this email to my mom and thought some others might like to know what's going on half way around the world:

Well...it took a few days, but we're finally adjusted. The hotel has been fine...it's on the island and in a populated part of town, but it's still a few minute ride to the "happening" area and a 30 minute ride across the Penang bridge to the office. We don't really know what we're looking for when we go out, so it's not that big of a loss not being right in the action. The team at the office has been great about taking us out for lunches and stuff. We've eaten a lot of fish, pork, rice, noodles, soup...but in many different styles...some Malay, some Thai, some Chinese. When they serve the fish..say snapper...they serve the whole fish (head and all) and you just kind of pick it off the bones. People here like spicy food so we just have to be a little careful not to go too quickly on the food before we eat too much. We haven't really eaten at many restauarants...they have these "hawker" stands where they just cook the food in front of you (and out in front of the store front if there is one) and you go find a seat in a common area. That food is very cheap and can be anything from chicken to fried jellyfish to squid or fish soup...anything really.

First couple of nights we stayed in mostly b/c we were tired. We did go out one night to the main hawker stand area on the island...recently rebuilt after the tsunami...there were tons of them out at night...and our work people ordered a bunch of things for us to try...pretty interesting. Fruit pancakes, fish soup, purple dragon fruit, veggies in black bean sauce, bbq meats...fairly safe stuff...they didn't want to scare us too much.

This weekend we went up the coast to Battu Ferrenghi beach and stayed there. Managed to get an hour long Chinese reflexology massage on the beach for about $15. BF beach area is also famous for this night market which is basically about a mile long flea market where they sell a lot of trinkets, pirated CD's, fake bags and watches. Everything is haggle priced...so you basically get one price and then get what you want for half of that. One girl from work was also nice enough to pick us up yesterday afternoon and drive us around the island...saw a few temples and botancial gardens (with monkeys). I have pictures, but forgot my cable so i'll have to wait until i get home to download. We did eat out at a nice (that's a relative term compared to the hawker stands) seafood place where i picked my lobster out of a tank...the other tanks had snapper, king prawn (big shrimp), moray eels, yellow eels, and some other exotic fish/reptiles that i probably would never eat.

The other thing we did at the beach was get fitted for some custom clothing. Labor and materials are very cheap over here so I bought 3 pair of very nice dress pants and 5 shirts...all custom tailored for about $220....I'll pick everything up on Tuesday. If I ever wore suits, I could have bought the jackets for all of my pants...the whole suit, tailored is like $120. I have a feeling in 5 years or so I'll wish I would have bought more.

We're back at our original hotel for this week and then we'll travel to Kuala Lumpur for the next weekend. Got a $40 flight on AirAsia so we'll go see the city (they have the tallest building in the world there..bet you didn't know that). This week should be pretty busy at work so it will be a nice break for the weekend.

I think that's all for now...in fact...I wrote so much, I think I'll post it on the blog.