Trip Report I
G'day everybody. I've put some stuff in bold to show what each paragraph is about (the Cairo stuff runs on for 2 long ones) in case you're skimming.
3/7/02 The flight got off to a good start. Mum & me were praying so long before we parked at the airport (40 mins.) that they ran out of economy class seats and bumped me up to business class. It's one of the things I like about mum being around, we tend to get together and pray a few times a week and before or after anything important. Consequently I watched 'Monsters Inc.,' 'I am Sam,' 'Ali' & some of 'Charlotte Gray' on the flight over. 'Monsters Inc.' was a lot deeper than I expected and makes a great environmental analogy, but remember this is from someone who saw a strong Christian analogy in 'Aliens III.'
I arrived to a dinner of 4 delicious hot curry dishes & chapattis, and lunch the next day was another 5 with rice, followed by another 4 plus an omelette with a carbohydrate I don’t know the name of. I miss the food here when I'm gone, but gee we eat a lot of chilli. No one bothers asking me if I want cutlery any more. If you've seen me make more mess than Ben did over 6 months ago (Ben is 2) when eating with a knife and fork (let alone now he's getting tidier), you can imagine what I'm like with just my right hand. Actually I think I did a lot better than I would have if I'd been using a knife and fork. Last night I finished before my auntie & uncle without making much of a mess at all (which is a bit of a worry, I thought that at least using my hand I couldn't eat too fast as I normally do). Maybe I should give up on cutlery when I get back to Australia (saves on washing up too).
Getting around. One thing about this visit is I'm familiar enough with the local area to walk to the mall (less than 40 mins.), direct a taxi here or find my way here from the city, apart from having a map of KL with me. Man, a good map of the city is probably the most useful thing to have in any given place, even though I didn't use it for this. Before I relied on uncles, aunts & cousins to show me around. Where I always have stayed in KL is a relatively new area and if you give a taxi the address they just look at you quizzically. Having more energy this time helps as well.
Well the thoughts of becoming a Malaysian citizen have gone down the gurgler. It used to be that Australia didn't allow dual citizenship & Malaysia did, then a bit over ten years ago they both switched. Mum will breath a sigh of relief. She was concerned that if Centrelink didn't use Malaysian citizenship as an excuse to kick me off the pension and the immigration department didn't decide I had to leave the country, that I’d probably be regarded as a suspected terrorist.
Now let me tell you about the trip to Cairo saga. A bit less than 2 years ago my cousin Yudishtra, who I get on particularly well with and has caught up with me in Sydney while studying through a uni. in Melbourne & came over for my dad's funeral in 1997, was transferred from the Ritz-Carlton in Double Bay to the one in Alexandria (well, after he decided against Qatar for the lack of night life, not that he has much time outside of work anyway). His parents Jega & Anucia are where I am staying now and where I have stayed the previous times I've been to KL. So when I got a round the world ticket I of course included Cairo, the travel agent (who also happens to be a friend of mine - Becky) reminded me I could visit the pyramids & the sphinx etc. In order to do the stop in Cairo I couldn't stop in Toronto (where I hoped to visit the airport Vineyard church & Nicole). They are the two destinations a long way out of my way that together exceed my ticket air mile limitation. Then I was hearing about the Neufelds who have been good friends with everyone whose homegroup I've been in since being at RBC/GCC and thinking if I want to do some sight seeing and catch up with everyone I'll need more time, and it turned out Pierre-Alain & Natalie wouldn't be arriving home from Australia (where they were arriving shortly after I left - irony no. 1) by the time I was due to arrive in Geneva, so I changed my ticket. Now I would arrive in Cairo on the 29th July and leave on the 9th August, 11 days (although I arrive in Cairo at 6pm and leave at 4am).
As I hadn't heard from aunty Anu via email I was going to ring them anyway. They don't check the home email very often & she was on leave for most of June, hence didn't see her work email either. Then she replied and asked me to ring. So Saturday night I find out Yudi is now working in the Ritz-Carlton in Bali, but that he's there at Anu & Jega's at that moment, but flying out Monday morning! After all this planning I missed him by a few hours! I still have a good feeling about my trip to Egypt, like God has something planned for me there. Sunday arvo. & Jaqi, Ev, Ben, Kylie, Anna, Bernd, Alain & Carole give me the lonely planet guide to Egypt and a condensed one for Amsterdam. Monday morning & mum is picking up a CD carrying case from Jane in Cleveland St. (they last thing I didn't have for my trip, then someone left one at her place), stops to talk to a neighbour at the end of our street, and discovers she has just written a guidebook about Egypt! They get into a big conversation about the Kurds as she has just written a book about them ("Fire, snow & honey - voices from Kurdistan" edited by Gina Lennox, published by Halstead Press Publishing at her own expense). Anyone bombing Iraq will be the opportunity for them to finish off the Kurds is her fear. She is desperate to get the book published in the UK in the hope that it will turn public opinion against an invasion of Iraq. She gave mum a couple of tips about Egypt (actually most of which I read in the lonely planet guide), & suggested I make an effort to contact the woman who is desperately trying to show that Islam, at least from the Koran, does not support the humiliation & degradation of women the way they are being by fundamentalist Muslims (mum was asking about interesting universities to visit & people to talk to). If any of you know who she is, please email me. I've seen stuff about her but can't remember her name either. I guess I'll be talking to a few publishers in London when I get there.
How’s this for a change of pace - for the couple of weeks before I go away I was really exhausted and sometimes unable to move, complete with aches, pains & cramps. This seems reasonable considering I was doing stuff all day each day without a days rest anywhere near as often as I usually need. After a big day and a 9 hour flight during which I filled watching movies, I stayed up talking (and unpacking etc.) until 11.30pm which is 1.30am in Australia. The next day I woke up at 8.45am, later went for a walk to the OUG Plaza, walked back and had lunch, did a bit of computer stuff, then walked back past the OUG Plaza (almost 2 hours walking by this time, but only 6 km so I’m going slower than my usual 4 km/h) to Old Klang Rd and got a taxi to the Mega Mall, wandered around then spent a couple of hours on the internet before getting a cab home in time for afternoon tea (at 6.30pm). Spent the next couple of hours reading about where I’m going to go and places to stay in the next few months, had dinner at 9.30pm then started catching up with the relies? on the phone. Eventually I started working on this email again until 12.15am and I didn’t feel tired. I’d spent probably a couple of hours lying in bed praying or with my mind wandering, but that’s it - 9 hours sleep in over 40 hours and I was still going without the inclination to stop. I thought I would sleep in this morning and yesterday but had no desire to. In the wee hours of the morning & I was so excited I couldn’t sleep and wrote some more, then woke up in time to say 'salamat pagi' to uncle Jega & aunty Anu (actually I just say it to Atun, the housemaid, English is all of my families first language).
At the moment my auntie Dhamayathi is organising dinner for tonight, Thurs. or Fri. with all my cousins who are here in KL (Prabhasa, Kulendra, Dushan & Priya) at her & uncle Vaithynathan's place, I'm organising doing something in town with Dushan & Priya on Saturday and I'll see more relies' than you can poke a stick at on Sunday night at Surendaran & Annie’s wedding (Suren’ is Paramasivan & Janaky's son, and Param' is my dad’s cousin). On Monday I'll head down to Johor Bahru (across from Singapore) with my uncle Sri and auntie Eeswary until the reception in Kluang (a couple of hours drive north of JB) on Sat. the 13th, then stay with uncle Param' & auntie Janaky until the 19th when I'll head back up here to KL (about 6 hours drive from JB) and stay with my auntie Primalini, uncle Kuhan & Prabhasa until the 22nd when I leave. I'll go to Peik See's parents church where we did a grace conference a year ago and say hello to a few people on Sunday morning and on the 21st. Peik See has moved to Sarawak so I'll miss her (in both senses :) ).
Joe's Travel Tips. Get a GSM digital mobile phone (i.e. not an Orange One) (you can get a Motorola with a 300 entry address book, voice dialling etc. for about $200 AUD at the moment) and get global roaming. I had to put down a $500 AUD deposit, which at 16% interest on Bankcard works out at $6.67/month. Join Youth Hostels Australia & get their books about the hostels for the area you will be in (either Europe or the rest of the world, in my case both) but check you have all the pages (I'm missing pages 129-150, including all the pages about London, & there's not much I can do about it now). Stay at Youth Hostels when not staying with friends or relies', book over the internet and ring them from the airport as soon as you land. Ask them how to get there by bus or whatever & approximately what it should cost. The books have a lot of info about how to get to the hostels anyway. One taxi fare saved and you’ve probably paid the cost of getting global roaming for the whole trip; not to mention the feeling when you arrange to meet your cousin Suman in the hotel you're staying at, you go out the front and down the lane to catch him as he arrives, wonder why he's taking so long and ring him on his mobile to find out he went in by a back lane you didn't think off and you were about to miss him. This means you will know exactly where you want to go before you arrive and will get there by the cheapest means possible, which apart from saving you taxi fare also makes it less likely you will be ripped off. I got driven from the airport by some guy in a private car for the lovely sum of $100 Ringgit, $50 Ringgit more than the airport limousine, which is almost $25 AUD difference. Be wary of transport that requires bargaining when you’ve just stepped off a plane into an unfamiliar city (or in my case, one I’ve been in several times previously).
Youth Hostels seem to cost about half again as much as the cheapest possible accommodation or less, and the good ones come with some fancy dooverlackies (hence you need to book ahead). For example "Le d'Artagnan" in Paris costs $19 Euros per night including breakfast & linen and has wheelchair access, groups catered for, all meals available, self catering facilities, café bar, common room, TV room, library, internet access, 3 conference rooms, laundry facilities, luggage storage, a basic shop, lockers available, tourist info., currency exchange and a disco. It’s also 5 km from the city centre. Can anyone guess where I’m intending to stay while in Paris?
Get a good map of the city (preferably one with transport routes, which are sometimes free) and walk around the hostel until you are familiar with the area and can direct a taxi from a well known landmark if you need to. When in Asia (or anywhere else where squirty things are provided in the loos) learn how to use them, if you get the runs your backside will be very grateful. Pack earplugs, a small torch, nail clippers, a sewing kit & a travel clothesline. Learn how to speak a few words in the language of the place you are going. A greeting and ‘where is the toilet?’ are enough to get started. Use whatever language you have, making people laugh is a good thing. Roll all your clothes up (avoids creases).
Apologies for the fact that I get so verbose when I'm hyped up. I always used to say I could say in only one page what most people took a whole sentence to say. Let me know if it's too much and you don't want to hear all my travel exploits.
Love & blessings,
Joe Mithiran
3/7/02 The flight got off to a good start. Mum & me were praying so long before we parked at the airport (40 mins.) that they ran out of economy class seats and bumped me up to business class. It's one of the things I like about mum being around, we tend to get together and pray a few times a week and before or after anything important. Consequently I watched 'Monsters Inc.,' 'I am Sam,' 'Ali' & some of 'Charlotte Gray' on the flight over. 'Monsters Inc.' was a lot deeper than I expected and makes a great environmental analogy, but remember this is from someone who saw a strong Christian analogy in 'Aliens III.'
I arrived to a dinner of 4 delicious hot curry dishes & chapattis, and lunch the next day was another 5 with rice, followed by another 4 plus an omelette with a carbohydrate I don’t know the name of. I miss the food here when I'm gone, but gee we eat a lot of chilli. No one bothers asking me if I want cutlery any more. If you've seen me make more mess than Ben did over 6 months ago (Ben is 2) when eating with a knife and fork (let alone now he's getting tidier), you can imagine what I'm like with just my right hand. Actually I think I did a lot better than I would have if I'd been using a knife and fork. Last night I finished before my auntie & uncle without making much of a mess at all (which is a bit of a worry, I thought that at least using my hand I couldn't eat too fast as I normally do). Maybe I should give up on cutlery when I get back to Australia (saves on washing up too).
Getting around. One thing about this visit is I'm familiar enough with the local area to walk to the mall (less than 40 mins.), direct a taxi here or find my way here from the city, apart from having a map of KL with me. Man, a good map of the city is probably the most useful thing to have in any given place, even though I didn't use it for this. Before I relied on uncles, aunts & cousins to show me around. Where I always have stayed in KL is a relatively new area and if you give a taxi the address they just look at you quizzically. Having more energy this time helps as well.
Well the thoughts of becoming a Malaysian citizen have gone down the gurgler. It used to be that Australia didn't allow dual citizenship & Malaysia did, then a bit over ten years ago they both switched. Mum will breath a sigh of relief. She was concerned that if Centrelink didn't use Malaysian citizenship as an excuse to kick me off the pension and the immigration department didn't decide I had to leave the country, that I’d probably be regarded as a suspected terrorist.
Now let me tell you about the trip to Cairo saga. A bit less than 2 years ago my cousin Yudishtra, who I get on particularly well with and has caught up with me in Sydney while studying through a uni. in Melbourne & came over for my dad's funeral in 1997, was transferred from the Ritz-Carlton in Double Bay to the one in Alexandria (well, after he decided against Qatar for the lack of night life, not that he has much time outside of work anyway). His parents Jega & Anucia are where I am staying now and where I have stayed the previous times I've been to KL. So when I got a round the world ticket I of course included Cairo, the travel agent (who also happens to be a friend of mine - Becky) reminded me I could visit the pyramids & the sphinx etc. In order to do the stop in Cairo I couldn't stop in Toronto (where I hoped to visit the airport Vineyard church & Nicole). They are the two destinations a long way out of my way that together exceed my ticket air mile limitation. Then I was hearing about the Neufelds who have been good friends with everyone whose homegroup I've been in since being at RBC/GCC and thinking if I want to do some sight seeing and catch up with everyone I'll need more time, and it turned out Pierre-Alain & Natalie wouldn't be arriving home from Australia (where they were arriving shortly after I left - irony no. 1) by the time I was due to arrive in Geneva, so I changed my ticket. Now I would arrive in Cairo on the 29th July and leave on the 9th August, 11 days (although I arrive in Cairo at 6pm and leave at 4am).
As I hadn't heard from aunty Anu via email I was going to ring them anyway. They don't check the home email very often & she was on leave for most of June, hence didn't see her work email either. Then she replied and asked me to ring. So Saturday night I find out Yudi is now working in the Ritz-Carlton in Bali, but that he's there at Anu & Jega's at that moment, but flying out Monday morning! After all this planning I missed him by a few hours! I still have a good feeling about my trip to Egypt, like God has something planned for me there. Sunday arvo. & Jaqi, Ev, Ben, Kylie, Anna, Bernd, Alain & Carole give me the lonely planet guide to Egypt and a condensed one for Amsterdam. Monday morning & mum is picking up a CD carrying case from Jane in Cleveland St. (they last thing I didn't have for my trip, then someone left one at her place), stops to talk to a neighbour at the end of our street, and discovers she has just written a guidebook about Egypt! They get into a big conversation about the Kurds as she has just written a book about them ("Fire, snow & honey - voices from Kurdistan" edited by Gina Lennox, published by Halstead Press Publishing at her own expense). Anyone bombing Iraq will be the opportunity for them to finish off the Kurds is her fear. She is desperate to get the book published in the UK in the hope that it will turn public opinion against an invasion of Iraq. She gave mum a couple of tips about Egypt (actually most of which I read in the lonely planet guide), & suggested I make an effort to contact the woman who is desperately trying to show that Islam, at least from the Koran, does not support the humiliation & degradation of women the way they are being by fundamentalist Muslims (mum was asking about interesting universities to visit & people to talk to). If any of you know who she is, please email me. I've seen stuff about her but can't remember her name either. I guess I'll be talking to a few publishers in London when I get there.
How’s this for a change of pace - for the couple of weeks before I go away I was really exhausted and sometimes unable to move, complete with aches, pains & cramps. This seems reasonable considering I was doing stuff all day each day without a days rest anywhere near as often as I usually need. After a big day and a 9 hour flight during which I filled watching movies, I stayed up talking (and unpacking etc.) until 11.30pm which is 1.30am in Australia. The next day I woke up at 8.45am, later went for a walk to the OUG Plaza, walked back and had lunch, did a bit of computer stuff, then walked back past the OUG Plaza (almost 2 hours walking by this time, but only 6 km so I’m going slower than my usual 4 km/h) to Old Klang Rd and got a taxi to the Mega Mall, wandered around then spent a couple of hours on the internet before getting a cab home in time for afternoon tea (at 6.30pm). Spent the next couple of hours reading about where I’m going to go and places to stay in the next few months, had dinner at 9.30pm then started catching up with the relies? on the phone. Eventually I started working on this email again until 12.15am and I didn’t feel tired. I’d spent probably a couple of hours lying in bed praying or with my mind wandering, but that’s it - 9 hours sleep in over 40 hours and I was still going without the inclination to stop. I thought I would sleep in this morning and yesterday but had no desire to. In the wee hours of the morning & I was so excited I couldn’t sleep and wrote some more, then woke up in time to say 'salamat pagi' to uncle Jega & aunty Anu (actually I just say it to Atun, the housemaid, English is all of my families first language).
At the moment my auntie Dhamayathi is organising dinner for tonight, Thurs. or Fri. with all my cousins who are here in KL (Prabhasa, Kulendra, Dushan & Priya) at her & uncle Vaithynathan's place, I'm organising doing something in town with Dushan & Priya on Saturday and I'll see more relies' than you can poke a stick at on Sunday night at Surendaran & Annie’s wedding (Suren’ is Paramasivan & Janaky's son, and Param' is my dad’s cousin). On Monday I'll head down to Johor Bahru (across from Singapore) with my uncle Sri and auntie Eeswary until the reception in Kluang (a couple of hours drive north of JB) on Sat. the 13th, then stay with uncle Param' & auntie Janaky until the 19th when I'll head back up here to KL (about 6 hours drive from JB) and stay with my auntie Primalini, uncle Kuhan & Prabhasa until the 22nd when I leave. I'll go to Peik See's parents church where we did a grace conference a year ago and say hello to a few people on Sunday morning and on the 21st. Peik See has moved to Sarawak so I'll miss her (in both senses :) ).
Joe's Travel Tips. Get a GSM digital mobile phone (i.e. not an Orange One) (you can get a Motorola with a 300 entry address book, voice dialling etc. for about $200 AUD at the moment) and get global roaming. I had to put down a $500 AUD deposit, which at 16% interest on Bankcard works out at $6.67/month. Join Youth Hostels Australia & get their books about the hostels for the area you will be in (either Europe or the rest of the world, in my case both) but check you have all the pages (I'm missing pages 129-150, including all the pages about London, & there's not much I can do about it now). Stay at Youth Hostels when not staying with friends or relies', book over the internet and ring them from the airport as soon as you land. Ask them how to get there by bus or whatever & approximately what it should cost. The books have a lot of info about how to get to the hostels anyway. One taxi fare saved and you’ve probably paid the cost of getting global roaming for the whole trip; not to mention the feeling when you arrange to meet your cousin Suman in the hotel you're staying at, you go out the front and down the lane to catch him as he arrives, wonder why he's taking so long and ring him on his mobile to find out he went in by a back lane you didn't think off and you were about to miss him. This means you will know exactly where you want to go before you arrive and will get there by the cheapest means possible, which apart from saving you taxi fare also makes it less likely you will be ripped off. I got driven from the airport by some guy in a private car for the lovely sum of $100 Ringgit, $50 Ringgit more than the airport limousine, which is almost $25 AUD difference. Be wary of transport that requires bargaining when you’ve just stepped off a plane into an unfamiliar city (or in my case, one I’ve been in several times previously).
Youth Hostels seem to cost about half again as much as the cheapest possible accommodation or less, and the good ones come with some fancy dooverlackies (hence you need to book ahead). For example "Le d'Artagnan" in Paris costs $19 Euros per night including breakfast & linen and has wheelchair access, groups catered for, all meals available, self catering facilities, café bar, common room, TV room, library, internet access, 3 conference rooms, laundry facilities, luggage storage, a basic shop, lockers available, tourist info., currency exchange and a disco. It’s also 5 km from the city centre. Can anyone guess where I’m intending to stay while in Paris?
Get a good map of the city (preferably one with transport routes, which are sometimes free) and walk around the hostel until you are familiar with the area and can direct a taxi from a well known landmark if you need to. When in Asia (or anywhere else where squirty things are provided in the loos) learn how to use them, if you get the runs your backside will be very grateful. Pack earplugs, a small torch, nail clippers, a sewing kit & a travel clothesline. Learn how to speak a few words in the language of the place you are going. A greeting and ‘where is the toilet?’ are enough to get started. Use whatever language you have, making people laugh is a good thing. Roll all your clothes up (avoids creases).
Apologies for the fact that I get so verbose when I'm hyped up. I always used to say I could say in only one page what most people took a whole sentence to say. Let me know if it's too much and you don't want to hear all my travel exploits.
Love & blessings,
Joe Mithiran
posted by Joe at
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
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