It was less about running from and more about running towards. I was ready to launch my real life, and had a partner to help me. Why wait around? For what?

The unintended outcome of all that is that I have never been alone and fully responsible for myself. OK, almost never. While we were divorcing Dorothy worked at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival for a year while I set up shop in San Francisco. One of the reasons we remarried is because neither of us particularly enjoyed our Wanderjahr, although for very different reasons.

Part of that separation involved figuring out whether the problems we were having were worth overcoming or whether there was greener grass elsewhere. In Dorothy’s case, that manifested as dating one of the actors, who eventually proposed marriage. Faced with a specific A/B choice, rather than a generic ballot, Dorothy decided that fixing what was up with us was the best path.

My journey led to the same destination but took an entirely different path. I, too, was committed to exploring the alternatives and applied myself with gusto. I made a date with a different girl every one of the 52 weeks Dorothy and I were separated. You’ll notice a said “made a date,” not “went on a date.” That’s because I was stood up on every single one of those dates. Every. Single. One.

After a year of that, running back to Dorothy, tail tucked between legs and forelock tugged, was a pretty easy call. I’d have done pretty much anything to avoid the future that year portended. Including admitting that I was a dick and that all of our problems were my fault. An admission made at least slightly easier as a result of it being true.

I’ve thought about that year a lot, and the most plausible explanation I’ve come up with is that the first few cancellations were a coincidence, and then I got the yips. I think I gave off an air of flop sweat and desperation that women sensed. Easier to say yes to my face with no intention of following through than to deal with me directly. I suppose if any credit accrues to me at all in this debacle, and it doesn’t, it’s that I kept at it. Long past the point where it made sense to do so, a recurring theme for those following closely.

Over our several hundred years together, Dorothy and I have established pretty clear spheres of influence. I balance the checkbook, she feeds us. I take care of logistics, she makes sure our lives are beautiful. I ignore things, she obsesses about them. Overall, a pretty decent division of labor.

But the thing about being apart for five months is not only that we’ve lost each other’s companionship, but we’ve also lost each other’s labors. I’d have to feed myself. If Dorothy wanted to visit St. Louis, she’d have to figure out how to get there on her own. On the one hand, all part of the Neuroplasticity Tour. Good for us. Personal growth, y’all. On the other hand, oh, that just doesn’t sound fun.

And it wasn’t!

There’s been an element of the solo travel that’s been liberating. We’ve been an us so long that I sometimes think we’re a single organism with the same desires and needs, but that’s pretty clearly stupid. When we have people join us we’re always aware of the triangulation necessary to make sure everyone’s having fun. But we obviously triangulate with one another, even if we do it so gracefully that we’re not fully aware that we’re even doing it.

So the ability to stand up, put on pants, and walk out the door is pretty cool. It’s a lovely freedom, and very difficult not to enjoy. Is it worth giving up Dorothy’s companionship to get there? Not even close. It’s like the difference between finding a quarter on the street and a $100 bill. No comparison. Although it does calibrate Dorothy specifically as $99.75 of value added. Good to have that calculation in the bag.

And there’s the feeling of accomplishment that comes with being fully autonomous and taking care of myself like a grown-up. Finally, I’m a real boy! But it’s fucking exhausting. I feel like I have to be vigilant and mindful about everything, with no one there to back me up. Am I in the swimming pool when it starts raining and thundering? My call as to whether I should get out. Open wound? My job to figure out how to treat it. Has that meat gone bad? That decision is mine alone. It’s so much work staying alive. It really doesn’t seem like a one-person job.

So the real takeaway from all of this is that the solo travel makes sense and we can both manage fine, but not for five months. That’s way too long. But if we did it for a month or two, at most, I think it’s more than just survivable. I think it’s actually incredibly positive. I’d go so far as to say, smart.

When we’re in Chicago we are able to manage time together and apart. We each have interests there that don’t involve the other. It’s balanced. But when we travel, that balance evaporates. By going places where we don’t speak the language, we are the only people we can talk to, creating this tightly bound, hermetically sealed echo chamber. That’s not the only pressure associated with the travel, but I think it’s the big one.

A month or two apart is a tonic for that, making sure that we have enough solo space so that the completely shared space doesn’t feel so claustrophobic. I think by taking that regular short break we’ll be able to sustain the travel part of the year for a longer, healthier period.

The most salutary side effect of divorcing and remarrying was the context shift around foibles. “That thing you do is really annoying and I’m going to have to tolerate it for the rest of my life” is entirely different from “That thing you do is really annoying and it’s a very small price to pay for all of the amazing things about you.” We came back together not because we’d figured out how to eliminate the things we found annoying about one another, but because we’d decided they didn’t matter. We’d intentionally chosen to accept them as the price to get our tickets punched. And you don’t get to be salty about your own decisions.

This experience has been a lot like that, a welcome reminder after all these years that we’re still making choices. For example, most of you know how very, very observant Dorothy is. Nothing gets past her. But in our 24/7 travel bubble, I have been the subject of that scrutiny in a way I’ve found oppressive. Jesus, just… look away for a minute.

But now that I’ve been fully responsible for myself for five months, I’ve recontextualized that scrutiny as labor-saving. If she’s not staring at me and asking whether that new thing is a skin tag, I have to. I now can’t wait to be under her watchful eye again.

Also, I’ve gained about twelve pounds feeding myself. I’m eating out in restaurants way more than I do when we’re together, traveling or home. And if I’m being honest, I’m also eating for comfort. There’s a Dorothy-sized hole in my life which I’ve been convinced can be filled with cake. Now we know how many doughnut holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Enough so that when I was trying on a shirt recently the shopgirl told me that the shirt fit fine, I just needed to lose weight. Ouch.

We were discussing this recently, and Dorothy summed it up in her usual pithy fashion: “I loved you when you left, but I miss you now.” Back atcha.

• Image generated by Google Gemini

Primary access is via funicular, the current version of which came online in 2010. It is not the steepest or longest funicular or fastest funicular in the world, but it doesn’t miss by much. At 2 km there are only a few longer. At 28° slope there are only a few steeper. And at 10 meters/second there are only a handful faster. It’s quite an experience.

It go fast.

Once up top, the vistas are impressive. There’s definitely nothing higher anywhere visible. And the relief from the heat at that altitude is delicious. The Brits were obviously weenies, but the lowland heat is real, and escaping it, even for just a few hours, was marvelous.

There are restaurants and attractions and historic buildings at the summit, but the real action is in The Habitat, billed as an eco-tourism discovery center. More to the point, it’s the entry point to the UNESCO rainforest biosphere. It has a separate entrance fee (a hefty 60rm, about $15 USD), and for a few dollars more you can go on a docented nature tour. I joined a group with just an Australian couple, so it was practically a solo tour. Our guide was super knowledgeable.

The nature walk included the Langur Way Canopy Walk, a 750 foot long suspension bridge 130 feet above the forest floor. It was vertiginous. I wasn’t sad when I reached the other side.

The rest of the nature walk was more beautiful than terrifying. Unless you’re afraid of spiders. Assuming this is even a spider, and not a Guillermo del Toro nightmare. I was pleased to learn later that while the Golden Silk Orb-Weaver spider is venomous, it’s not fatal to humans. Only annoying. Hooray!

The spider wasn’t our only wildlife encounter. There was this adorable creature, about thumbnail-sized.

The nature path offered many roadside attractions.

But the stars of the show were flora, not fauna. A tropical rainforest is a beautiful thing.

After the docented tour, there was one more trick up The Habitat”s sleeve: The Curtis Crest Tree Top Walk. That scary looking thing is forty feet above the forest floor.

Penang Botanic Garden

On my last full day in George Town I went to the Botanic Garden, nestled at the foot of Penang Hill. I’d packed, unpacked, and repacked multiple times, and I was bored. I’m glad I went, although midday wasn’t ideal. I’d have gone in the morning but no way was I missing Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. An epic run to the finals for a very young Spurs team. A delight to watch.

The gardens weren’t cool like the top of Penang Hill, but there’s definitely something cooling about all of that oxygen being respirated by all those trees. It was a lovely, serene setting, and a perfect way to say farewell to Penang.

I’m sure you’ll agree that this has been a refreshingly lightweight post, an amuse-bouche compared to my usual Ploughman’s lunch of verbiage. This will be my last post from George Town, my last post from Malaysia, and my last post from my Solo World Tour. It seems somehow appropriate that I not leave you with a metaphorical heavy meal weighing you down. That should leave us all ready to go when the road calls again, in just four more months (October 2026).

Temples

Let’s stay in our comfort zone and start with the Hindu temples.

Despite ethnic Malays being the minority in George Town, there are still more than enough to support substantial mosques. This is Kapitan Keling Mosque, the oldest mosque in Penang, dating to the early 1800s.

The Chinese temples are everywhere, almost unexceptional in their ubiquity, wallpaper to George Town’s streetscape.

Hean Boo Thean Kuan Yin Temple

I kept seeing this from the Clan Jetties. I thought it was a particularly lurid restaurant at the end of the last clan jetty, but it’s actually a Chinese temple dedicated to Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy. It’s built out on stilts like the Clan Jetty houses, which is why it’s called The Floating Temple.

Kek Lok Si Temple

Kek Lok Si is about half an hour by Grab west of George Town, not quite five miles, and well worth the visit. It’s a Chinese Buddhist temple built between 1890 and 1930, and, like Hean Boo Thean, is dedicated to Kuan Yin. How dedicated? 120 feet of bronze dedicated.

But Kuan Yin was at the very top of the hill, and it was quite the journey to get there. Honestly, it was pretty confusing. There was a pair of short funiculars with a shuttle bus and a massive gift shop between them.

Then there were shuttles that would take you to the same places as the funiculars? Different places? I don’t really know. I’m pretty sure, though, that I missed the actual Kek Lok Si Temple. I was back down at the bottom by then and didn’t have it in me to make another ascent.

The pagoda on the left is the the topper to the Kuan Yin statue. The white wedding cake on the right is the temple I missed, or one of them, the Ten Thousand Buddhas Pagoda. I’ll wait while you guess what’s in it…

Or maybe I did see the Ten Thousand Buddhas Pagoda. This room had a lot of Buddhas.

But no. It was just a room with a lot of Buddhas. But not 10,000 of them. And merch. A lot of the temples were merchcentric, but this one was clearly the mothership.

The view of George Town from the top was pretty impressive.

The grounds were littered with frankly inexplicable stone carvings. Like the long arm of IP infringement suits would never make it all the way up their holy hill. Which is probably true. Even the statues that weren’t recognizable IP felt like ripped off IP I just wasn’t familiar with. Entirely begging the question, what the fuck were they even doing on temple grounds?

On the way back down I was pointed towards the funicular… which was empty. I guessed that I was meant to operate it like an elevator, so I punched a button that did, in fact, start the funicular down the hill. They should probably have checked my license.

Back down at the bottom, I followed the signs to the official Kek Lok Si Temple Tortoise Pond. Which was awesome, but also so full of tortoises it was kind of creepy. Like if that many of any other species was in the same place at the same time, infestation would be the appropriate terminology.

If this was anything but tortoises you’d run screaming. Spiders. Kangaroos. Snakes on a motherfucking plane.

There was a guy selling bundles of leaves for two ringgit. One scarcely thinks of tortoises and frenzy together, but I didn’t merely witness a tortoise feeding frenzy, I caused it.

Thaneermalai Shree Balathandayuthapani Devasthanam

This mouthful of temple was near the Botanic Garden at the foot of Penang Hill.

Peranakan Museums

A number of old Peranakan houses/mansions/compounds have been preserved and operate as museums. They offer a fascinating glimpse into a gilded age of excess, the equal, at least, of any Western money pits. Maybe not quite on the same scale as Hearst Castle, but with similar aesthetic ideals. Enough gold leaf to choke a Trump.

Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi

Not strictly speaking a mansion, Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi is the clanhouse of the Khoo clan, a hopped up version of the Clan Jetties that dot George Town’s eastern shore. The compound was essentially a miniature clan village, with its own self-government and all of the functions necessary to manage clan affairs, from education to finance to welfare to religion.

This was my favorite of the Peranakan museums, in no small part because it’s completely hidden away down an alley. I walked past it multiple times and never noticed it until I went looking for it. Also, because it’s completely over the top.

Cheong Fatt Tze

Cheong Fatt Tze was a Chinese emigré to SEA who leveraged himself up from poverty to become obscenely rich. I’m sure that The Rockefeller of China was meant as a compliment. The wealth derived from his mercantile interests (banking, shipping, agricultural products…) also provided political power. He served as the Chinese Consul, working with the British Raj to promote Chinese interests.

His George Town mansion has been preserved, ostensibly as a museum. Also known as the Blue Mansion (guess why – I’ll wait…), it’s kind of a bait and switch. It’s not much of a museum, because it’s actually a hotel, most of whose grounds are off-limits unless you’re a guest. You can wander the public areas for 25 ringgit, but that’s pretty much the lobby and the restaurant, with a few display cases holding old stuff. There’s a guided tour that provides a little more access, but that’s at scheduled times and requires a reservation. That don’t work for this ramblin’ man.

So I saw the public bits, and it’s a pretty building. That’s all I got.

Pinang Peranakan Mansion

If Cheong Fatt Tze was a hotel masquerading as a museum, the Pinang Peranakan Mansion was a gift shop masquerading as a museum. So much architectural cosplay. I swear, every third gallery was merch. I love museum gift shops, almost as much as cake, but it was a little much.

The collection was fascinating, but seemed kind of haphazardly curated. “Here’s a room with Peranakan beaded shoes! All the shoes we could find, right here. Every pair. Yep.” There seemed to be only a fitful effort to use the collected artifacts to tell a story, which is what museums do at their best. Absent that, it’s just an agglomeration of cool objects with the occasional explanatory plaque.

If you think about it, the Hagia Sophia is just a museum of itself. There’s nothing wrong with a museum being about the structure instead of the collection. In this case, the Pinang Peranakan Mansion was primarily about the structure, but they’d filled it with interesting stuff to look at while we’re there, so thank you. It’s why all the gift shops fit in. Just more stuff to look at.

Dating back to the 1890s, the Pinang Peranakan Mansion was built by a wealthy Peranakan tycoon as his home and office. It’s designed in the Straits Eclectic style, an amalgamation of Chinese, Malay, and British architectural elements. That seems fitting for the Peranakans, who were themselves woven from multiple cultural and ethnic threads.

The house itself is epic in scale. Massive rooms flow into more massive rooms, sitting areas look like they could hold a government delegation, and even the opium room has multiple beds. Livin’ la vida loca.

As modestly curated as the collections were, they were still the highlight. They were diverse to comic extremes, from embroidery to glass to beading to jewels to goofy hats, all the way to a vitrine full of Hummels. Can’t make this shit up.

It’s important to note, though, that the collection on display doesn’t have anything to do with the house itself. In Melaka, for example, the Peranakan houses that had been turned into museums were family museums, where the objects on display had been curated from the original owner’s own belongings.

The Pinang Peranakan Mansion is a different story. The building had fallen into disrepair and was acquired by a developer in the 1990s who turned it into a museum and used it to display his own collection of Peranakan antiques. That’s probably why the collection seems poorly curated. It’s neither the documented belongings of a specific family nor an intentionally curated exhibit. While he may not be a distinguished curator, our developer is an eminent collector. The exhibits run the full gamut from Wow to WTF.

The shoes and beading room was spectacular. The beaded Nyonya slippers are still a thing, available in multiple shops here and in Melaka.

Penang History Gallery

I was dubious heading into this. It had been on my list to visit, but it was specifically recommended by the couple I walked with on the Penang Hill nature walk. The woman said that she really liked it and that she wasn’t “a museum person.” A museum that describes itself as “interactive” and appeals to people who don’t like museums? I almost skipped it.

But I’m glad I didn’t. I’m not even sure “interactive” is the best description, as it suggests a level of touchscreen tech that was completely absent. Rather, the displays were all life-sized recreations of environments, such as shop streets, dens of iniquity, and bombed out WWII buildings, with faux newspaper clippings offering the context. I think “immersive” would have been a better description than “interactive.” My services are available for a reasonable fee.

The most interesting part of the history, to me, was the WWII bits. George Town was a British entrepôt which somehow came under Great Powers scrutiny during the war. When you’re a hammer, everything looks strategic. The Japanese had been bombing George Town to soften it up for what appeared to be an invasion. In response, the British… left.

On December 16th, 1941, in the dark of night, the British gathered up all of the Europeans, put them on a ferry, and evacuated them to Singapore by train. When the remaining Asian inhabitants woke up, many of them members of the civil services, they found they had been abandoned by their more “civilized” masters. The ensuing Japanese rule was as gentle as was common at other Japanese-occupied territories at the time.

The shock and horror of all of this was not that the British were feckless cowards with no regard for the savages under their aegis. It was learning that when the Americans fled Vietnam they were just following an oft-copied playbook. Nothing original to add, even in abject, tail-tucked-between-legs defeat. Typical.

This was probably the most alarming thing on display. I don’t think I have ever read a more anodyne description of the bombing of Japan, even in government-sanctioned America First high school textbooks. I guess when atomic clouds blot out the sun they also leach out the nuance. “A proud victory.” Chilling. There’s a special place in hell for whoever wrote that.

Fort Cornwallis

The most noticeable British colonial leftover in George Town is Fort Cornwallis. The original wooden stockade was built in 1786 by George Town’s founder, Captain Francis Light. It was replaced in 1810 by the brick and stone structure still standing today as a response to the threat of the Napoleonic Wars. Which never actually materialized in Penang, so it’s been used for administrative purposes for most of its life.

Which is almost all I can tell you about the Fort, since it’s closed for renovations. Which I discovered when I got there and it was closed.

As has been documented, Temple Fatigue is real. George Town wraps up ten months in SEA out of the last fifteen. That’s a lot of Hindu and Buddhist temples, so I’m grateful for the Chinese influence here. It’s wrapped a lovely bow on our SEA adventures.

Lakes can count, under the right circumstances. But islands are the gold standard, surrounded, as they tend to be, by oceans. We try, at least once per country visited, to spend at least a week (or a month – looking at you, Bali) body-of-water adjacent. Bobbing in a pool is lovely, but it doesn’t hold a candle to bobbing in the ocean. We are committed, unapologetic bobbers.

Which is what makes my current location, George Town, such a disappointment. George Town is on an island, Penang, which doesn’t, between sewage and fatal jellyfish, have a single swimmable beach. Unacceptable! It’s the reason I find myself on Pulau (island) Perhentian Besar (big). Big Perhentian Island, not to be confused with Pulau Perhentian Kecil, Small Perhentian Island.

But here’s the thing about the island and beach trips. They are incredibly fun to do, but not, I think, of particular interest to read about. They feature pictures of beaches, pictures of sunsets, and pictures of fish. The only practical purpose they serve is to make you feel bad that you’re not bobbing in the bathtub-warm waters of a tropical island, like me. And while your envy keeps me warm at night (that, and the tropical weather), I don’t honestly think there’s much in it for you.

So I’ll follow the classical form here, and give you pictures of beaches, sunsets, tropical islands, and fish. It’s the template, and who am I to rail against the constraints of my cage? But most of this post is about AI.

I know, right? Way more excitement than you were expecting. Why? Because as a blogger I am an honorary pundit (the hazing ritual is harsh), and haven’t yet provided my hot take on AI. The Guild contacted me, and they’re not happy. But why here, in a post about tropical bobbing? Because, in a first on our travels, AI brought me to my current location. I am in Pulau Perhentian Besar at all thanks to Google Gemini.

But first, dessert.

After my toe injury, I wasn’t certain a beach junket was actually wise. With my Jiminy Cricket in Chicago, I’d have to navigate avoiding sepsis on my own. I went back to the clinic that had originally treated the wound, but I showed up just as they closed for a long lunch break. I had a scab on my toe still, but it wasn’t swollen or tender to the touch any longer, and I’d scheduled my trip for two full weeks post-incident. It would be fine. I’d be fine. Everything would be fine. So, unburdened by either common sense or knowledge, I took off.

Getting to Pulau Perhentian Besar was a multi-step process. First, fly from George Town to Kota Bharu, on the eastern side of Malaysia. From Khota Baru, a taxi trip of over an hour to the Kuala Besut Jetty. From there a speedboat, which made multiple stops before depositing me at a jetty that led directly to my hotel, The Barat Perhentian Beach Resort.

The Barat is a classically shabby/chic resort. I’m a budget traveler, so I didn’t spring for an ocean view room, which seemed unnecessary. I am 60 seconds from my door to the beach. What I didn’t realize is that those rooms also come with en suite bathrooms. I have my own dedicated bathroom, but it’s a separate room down a hallway.

And exactly what treats does the Barat offer? Bobbing, snorkeling, and hiking. Eating, at the overpriced restaurant. There’s a little strip of resorts all next to one another, so if I tire of the Barat’s overpriced meals, I have other places to get the same overpriced rice-noodles-pizza-sandwiches. To be fair, it’s an island. Everything here arrives by boat, so it shouldn’t be cheap. But it adds up. I’m spending about $35 daily on meals, since there are no non-restaurant options. I’m only here for five days, but I still cringe whenever I settle my bill.

I forgot gaze. I’m on a tropical island, so gazing is also a major activity.

Fun With Wildlife

At one point I swam (OK, walked in shallow water) too close to the rock this pair of black-naped terns called home.

They seemed offended by my presence, and were happy to make certain I understood their feelings. I loved that they didn’t scream until they were right at my head.

In addition to the two bad terns, Barat’s beach offered one very aggressive fish. Territorial like the terns, this pushy little bastard headbutted my calves whenever I ventured onto his lawn. At first I thought it was driftwood, but I never saw any driftwood, and the impact was way more forceful and intentional than something just floating into me. It only occurred in this one spot, and it was a surprisingly creepy sensation. I screamed like a little girl every time. Although it tended to strike from behind, the coward, I did see it once launch a frontal attack to the shin. The hissing gave it away.

Light My Fire

I wasn’t expecting any sort of entertainment, but they offered an evening fire dance performance on the beach. I think it’s required by custom, if not law. It had a very DIY, this-whole-thing-could-blow-at-any-moment vibe. Like maybe I shouldn’t feel deeply attached to my eyebrows. They didn’t seem deeply attached to their pants.

I especially admired the casual smoking while fuel was decanted from one vessel to another. I mean, they were eventually going to light them, but still. I felt… exposed. The whole thing bespoke an exceptionally low TLI (Tort Lawyer Index, calculated as TLs/hectare).

I wasn’t expecting crowd work, but there’s your low TLI at work again.

Truthfully, this was way more entertaining than it had any right to be. And I’m sure their safety protocols were impeccable. What could possibly go wrong?

Snorkeling!

I signed up for a morning trip, 10:00 – 1:00, that stopped at four locations. We’ve been snorkeling a fair amount, so I don’t want to be jaded about it, but it was… OK. I mean, I was snorkeling a Malaysian island in the South China Sea, so it’s hard to complain. It’s like sex. As a general rule, bad sex is still better than no sex, and so it is with snorkeling. This wasn’t even bad snorkeling. It just wasn’t particularly distinguished snorkeling.

It starts, as all good stories do, with beautiful views from the boat.

The first stop was Rawa Island, which produced no good underwater photos, but did provide a classic white sand beach and water so turquoise it made my teeth ache.

Next stop, Tokong Burung, the Temple of Birds.

This offered up some underwater goodness.

Tokong Burung also provided one of the day’s highlights, this beautiful stingray.

Stop #3 was Serenggeh Island which provided the day’s absolute peak, another close encounter with wildlife.

I’d found a broken plastic bottle sitting on the sea floor, so I dove down and retrieved it, like a good boy. What I failed to grasp is that I’d seemed to have taken a key piece, if not the only piece, of Moon Wrasse enrichment infrastructure. As I swam with the bottle in one hand, I was approached by a horde (that’s the collective noun, look it up) of Moon Wrasse, nosing around me much closer than fish are generally prone, to see what I was up to with their toy.

I was very tempted to let go and let it sink back to the bottom, but I just had to play White Savior to those poor, benighted fish, who couldn’t possibly have known what was in their own best interest. Thank goodness I was there to save them from themselves. They will speak of this day, and their encounter with the Great White, to their grandfry.

Although the Moon Wrasse were the standouts, and are kind of my favorite fish anyway, there were other fishes of note.

Parrotfish. Allies, amiright?

The final stop was Nemo Reef. No one calls them clownfish anymore, they’re all Nemo fish. Although truthfully, they may prefer that. Clownfish seems a little disrespectful.

One of my boatmates claimed to have seen a clownfish here, but his photo fell short of dispositive. Myself, not even a hint. I’m not sure our guides even know what one looks like. I think I only swam for about 15 minutes here. Last of four stops and feeling those years. But more pretty turquoise water.

The day left me with an imponderable to ponder: Why are there so many different brands of fish? Why isn’t there just one fish, or maybe a handful at most?

I get why there’s lots of land animals. Different habitats, different diets, different ecological needs. All that creates diversity. But fish all live in the same ocean. OK, maybe a little warmer here, a little cooler there. I know that’s reductionist. Some fish thrive at different depths and different temperatures, and their morphology expresses that. Freshwater fish are often in bounded environments, leading to differentiation in the aquatic equivalent of Madagascar.

But there’s a ridiculous profusion of fish on the shores of this one island, all different shapes, sizes, and colors. All sharing the identical biome and all eating pretty much the same stuff. Why not just one fish here? What drives species differentiation in a common ecological environment?

I know it sounds like I’ve taken a blow to the head, but I’m kind of serious. I don’t normally assign homework, but please fill the comments below with cogent explanations. I could ask Google, but you’re more fun.

Tuna Bay

A theoretical short walk north from the Barat is Tuna Bay, which purports to have coral and fish accessible from its beach without needing a boat. We’d had a walk-in reef experience in Bali, so I was very excited to walk to Tuna Bay and see what was on offer.

I headed north up the beach and found this:

There was another sign that identified this as a “Jungle Trek.” That felt more accurate than the sign that promised it was 15 minutes to Tuna Bay. Because those were the last signs on the hike (path is definitely the wrong word), and the only way you could do it in 15 minutes is if you already knew the route well. Even then, once you were out of the jungle and back on the beach, Tuna Bay was another 10-15 minutes further north.

Was I on the path? Off the path? I deduced at one point that I was off the path because I was pushing my way through nettles that left me bloody, and that just didn’t scream path to me. I finally burst through the jungle to the beach, and was rewarded.

This lovely, secluded cove was still short of Tuna Bay, but I didn’t know that when the jungle finally released me, and the pull of warm ocean water made me forget all about what salt in my wounds would feel like.

I did trek the final mile to Tuna Bay, and there was some coral and some fish. Nothing like Jemeluk Bay in Bali, and well short of the previous day’s underwater extravaganza. I didn’t even bother taking pictures.

The trek back was, if anything, worse than getting there. I followed the signs at the head of the trail and wound up at a dead-end. I circled back to the closest resort and found someone to help. He explained that a tree had fallen across the trail so there was now another, unmarked, entrance to the path. He brought me to the entrance and waved his arm in a compound curve to mimic the direction the path would take.

It’s a good thing he did, because the official path took me to the same dead-end I’d been able to reach from the blocked path. If I hadn’t known to look in the direction of his arm motion I would never have seen the little sub-path forking off to the right, which put me back properly on the trail. I noticed that path mere seconds before I intended to just sit down in the jungle and cry. Good timing!

I stuck with the beach at Barat after that. Right at my feet, and very little bleeding required. The wildlife was a little pushy, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Revolution #9

What’s the Escape Velocity brand? “Overpromise and underdeliver.” Because I don’t truly have a hot take on AI. To the extent that I have a take at all, I think that there’s an AI investment bubble but not an AI technology bubble. That’s a warm take, at best. Lukewarm, even. Tepid.

One of the things I’ve read that the various AI bots excel at is travel planning. Which just happens to be the most onerous part of our journey. Discounting, of course, learning to butcher a different language at every stop.

The actual practical logistics aren’t that complicated. Once you know where you’re going from where you are, it’s not rocket science to determine the optimal method to get there. A quick stop at Rome2Rio usually answers that question, with a follow-up visit to Skyscanner if air travel is involved. What’s truly complicated is determining where to go in the first place, and secondarily where to stay once we’re there. That’s where I figured AI might provide a boost.

The inability to swim on Penang was the driver. I knew that Langkawi Island was a nearby resort island, and that the best snorkeling in the area was at Pulau Payar Marine Park, in between Penang and Langkawi. I couldn’t find any tours to the Marine Park leaving from Penang, so I figured I’d have to spend a few days on Langkawi in order to get my beach and snorkeling fix. How sad.

I told Google Gemini (a.k.a. Google AI Mode) that I was on Penang, that I wanted to spend a few days on Langkawi so that I could take a day trip to the Marine Park, and that when I wasn’t doing that I wanted to be able to walk from my lodgings directly into the water. How should I get there and where should I stay?

Gemini suggested two specific beach communities that met my criteria and from which I could get to the boat to Pulau Payar, and offered up links to several tour operators. I pointed out that the dock was a good 30 minute drive from the beach communities that had been suggested, and asked if there were any beaches that met my criteria closer to the dock.

That served up a detailed description of the coast around the boat dock, and a firm recommendation that the 30 minute Grab ride was a perfectly reasonable price to pay for the beach stay I craved. I checked one of the tour sites, which said that the Marine Park was closed right now. I went back to Gemini and specifically asked whether Palau Payar was open, and it confessed that it was closed for annual maintenance until the end of the month. First mistake.

It asked if I wanted recommendations on specific hotels at the beaches it had suggested, and I told it that I was still thinking about whether it was worth going to Langkawi if there was no snorkeling available. That produced a detailed list of the pros and cons of going, including a breakdown of all the other activities available besides snorkeling. It followed by asking if I wanted recommendations to other excellent snorkeling sites, like the Perhentian Islands. That was the kind of proactive suggestion I hadn’t been expecting.

I even asked it, since my dates were fungible, if there was any savings to be had by sliding the dates around. I got back a detailed analysis of the seasonal pricing policies for flights, boats, and lodging, and a net out that it didn’t make any difference at all.

It then offered me the ideal way to get to Perhentian, and detailed, to-the-minute logistics. It was a multi-stop process: Grab to airport, flight to Kota Bharu, Grab to Kuala Besut Jetty, speedboat to Pulau Perhentian Besar. It provided logistics in both directions, flight numbers, and precise timing for each of the steps. It even told me how long I’d have for lunch at the jetty before my boat left.

And it was correct to the minute. I stepped off the speedboat onto the jetty at my resort at precisely when it said I would.

I asked it, since my return boat left the dock at 4:00 and checkout at the Barat was at 10:00, how I should spend the time. It provided hour-by-hour suggestions, along with the info that after checkout I could store my luggage in the locked baggage room the Barat had behind the reception desk and use their public shower, so there was no reason I couldn’t swim as part of my post-checkout activities. That intel was incredibly specific and 100% correct.

The only mistakes it made were not flagging the Marine Park as closed until I specifically asked, and some of the pricing. Flights and rooms were slightly more than Gemini had suggested. Which is hardly a surprise, given the current volatility in energy prices. But everything else, down to the level of detail of the specific government access fees and which ones took cash vs. credit card, was completely accurate. While I came to Gemini more for directional guidance than detailed logistics, the quality of the logistics information was impressive.

Not only did it point me to a solution I might not have found on my own, or only found after many hours of keyboard pounding, it saved me countless hours of research. I got through in a couple of hours what would have taken me several days unaided, and it did so with a concierge-level of both service and knowledge.

I lightly fact-checked Gemini’s work, but mostly I just put myself in its metaphorical hands to see what would happen. I’d be on the beach no matter what, so the downside risk to the experiment seemed modest. I have to say that I’m more than pleasantly surprised. AI will be an integral part of our travel planning going forward.

Obviously, I hope, I don’t use AI in any way in the writing of the blog itself*. But the successful Gemini experiment made me curious. So I asked it to write a post about indigenous culture in Argentina in the style of Mark Nevelow’s Escape Velocity blog. Which, to my shock, it was able to do.

Not at all well, thank goodness. My day job is safe. But its attempt to recreate my voice, and the textual analysis of my writing that it performed to do so, was fascinating. I’m going to try the same prompt with the other bots and see what happens. That will be a whole post of its own.

George Town reminds me a lot of Melaka. It has a very similar history, with immigrants arriving from all over Asia and SEA. The most prominent populations were Indian Tamils and Chinese from across southern China. They settled down and married Malays, creating a unique Peranakan culture. Melaka is a much older city, with Chinese and Indian immigration starting in the 15th century. George Town was founded in 1786 by the British, with immigrants starting to arrive soon after.

George Town was the first British settlement in SEA, and was established as a free port. The absence of any duties or taxes on trade quickly built it into an influential stop on the trade routes connecting India and China. The Peranakan Chinese took full advantage of the business opportunities and accumulated substantial fortunes in their new home. Several of their opulent mansions still stand, and are museums today.

As in Melaka, the streetscape reflects the Peranakan influence, with Chinese-style shophouses the most prominent vernacular architecture. There is still a vibrant Little India in George Town, although its architecture, mixed between shophouses and British colonial buildings, doesn’t reflect any Indian influence. Temples, of course, excepted.

The biggest difference seems to be scale. George Town feels like Melaka’s big brother. I think it’s that the Portuguese mismanaged Melaka in a way that kept it from growing into the significant trade port it should have been, based on its location, while George Town, fueled by its status as a free port, took off and grew into a major economic engine. The Peranakan mansions are larger, the districts more extensive, the wealth more obvious.

Vietnam shares a border with China on the north, so you’d imagine that’s the place in SEA, at least that we’ve visited, with the strongest Chinese footprint. But that influence primarily manifested in shops. A lot more of the products in northern Vietnamese stores were Chinese imports than in the south.

The Chinese influence in George Town seems much more pervasive. The most visible example is bilingual Chinese/English signage, like the one below. It feels like there’s definitely more signage in Chinese than Malay (for that matter, there may also be more English signage than Malay). That’s because Chinese make up over 51% of George Town’s population, to about 31% Malay and 8% Indian. No wonder George Town feels like the most Chinese place we’ve been.

The Apartment

This is a perfect example of accommodations that are only suitable because I’m alone. It has a kitchenette and a fully equipped bathroom, but it still manages to feel distinctly like a hostel. Perhaps it’s the bunk beds. Perhaps it’s the complete absence of furniture. There are a couple of kitchen cabinets, but there’s no drawers or storage of any kind. I have had to use every clip, magnet, hook, and trick we’ve picked up along the way to unpack and move in.

More likely it’s that the apartment is a generous 6½ feet wide.

There is one feature I genuinely dislike. The front door locks with a button on the inside and a key on the outside, meaning that it’s possible to lock yourself out. Because we’re constantly in different apartments, it’s hard to create a consistent protocol for where things like keys live. We’ve tried to create habits, like hanging the key on the door wherever we are, but sometimes that’s not possible. It’s not possible here, so it requires holding the key in my hand when I leave to make sure I have it.

There’s also a locked door to the apartment’s vestibule, which has a four-digit key code. The very first time I left the apartment I held the key in my hand, like a good boy, exited through the vestibule door, and realized just as it clicked shut that I’d left my phone in the apartment. The phone that held the four-digit code (that I’d only used once and hadn’t yet memorized) that would unlock the vestibule door, allowing me to use the key in my hand to open the apartment door and retrieve my phone.

Fuck.

Nothing like a good panic to start the day. I was in luck, because the business on the first floor had the number for the residential operator and they were able to call him and get the code. Which, even though I’ve memorized it now and I hold my phone in my hand with the key when I leave, is written on a scrap of paper in my pocket. Analog backup.

The apartment is fine. But home is starting to exert some noticeable gravitational pull at this point.

The Neighborhood

The apartment doesn’t really matter all that much, because I’m staying right in the UNESCO World Heritage Zone in George Town, and it’s delightful. There’s another tourist-friendly area here north of George Town, Batu Ferringhi, which is known for its beaches. Except between the sewage churned up by storms and the various brands of jellyfish, including the Box Jellyfish, charmingly known for its fatal sting, there isn’t a swimmable beach anywhere on the island of Penang. Batu Ferringhi is great, I guess, if you both love the ocean and have no desire to actually get in it. Seems like a Venn intersection that should be pretty empty.

The neighborhood also offers the typical SEA welter of massage shops and nail salons. I love that when I sat down for a pedicure, the response was, “Well, this looks like a two-person job.” Four hands pedicures. I’m going to miss SEA.

Dining

My apartment is on Beach Street (Lebuh Pantai), renowned as the best eating street in a city famed for its cuisine. Ground Zero for dining out. In addition to the restaurants, this is a very dessert-forward culture. You’d think that would be true everywhere, but it’s not. Some places just don’t do dessert. Philistines. Beach Street, and all of the UNESCO part of George Town, is stuffed full with patisseries, boulangeries, gelaterias, and artisanal ice cream shops.

But this is my absolute favorite, also on my block. This gets my vote for the most passive-aggressive business name ever.

You’ll note that they spelled all of the other French words correctly: Boulangerie, Bienvenue, Chez. Kwason is entirely intentional. “We shall take your recipes and shit on your language. Take that, Frenchies!” It’s especially chilling paired with the massive kwason effigy over the sign. Surely meant as a warning.

Beach Street also features a bevy of durian shops, multiples per block. Durian is popular all throughout SEA, but it seems like the national flower in Malaysia. I almost can’t smell it anymore.

The one thing the dining scene doesn’t really offer here is cocktail culture. It’s not that there are no cocktail bars. There are a few. But because of the government’s confiscatory alcohol taxes, they are outrageously expensive. I’ve been clean for most of this tour, which is not a massive hardship, but I thought a drink after dinner would be nice one evening.

I stopped at a bar called Nomad. Cocktails were priced at 50 ringgit, almost $13 USD. I opted for a shot of bourbon, figuring that would be cheaper. Plus, their cocktails all seemed tropically sweet. My carefully measured one ounce pour was 42rm. And that was my one drink in Malaysia.

Jalan Kek Chuan

Still within easy walking distance is Jalan Kek Chuan, voted by some random magazine as one of the most beautiful streets in the world. So that’s worth checking out.

I mean, yeah, I guess. If I’d walked down it unbeknownst I’d have thought, “Cute.” I would not have thought, “Holy shit, that is one of the world’s most beautiful streets.” Not to be a dick about it, but it’s a one-block stretch of well preserved, nicely painted shophouses. The paint is doing all the heavy lifting.

Shopping

I’m in an excellent location for shopping, in all of its various manifestations. There are convenience stores scattered all about and a hypermarché about a fifteen minute walk. Provisioning is super easy.

Armenian Street

The primary tourist street, Armenian Street, is all of two blocks away, not that it offers much of interest. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the description, and no different than any other tourist street in SEA. Great if you’re looking for souvenirs (I’m not), useless if you’re looking for art (I am).

Pasar Chowrasta

There are two large covered markets within easy walking distance of my apartment. One, Pasar Chowrasta, dates back to 1890, and is the primary produce and wet market for locals. Even if I’m not shopping there, I love these markets to death. They’re colorful and vibrant and full of, well, it’s almost impossible to tell what they’re full of. Shit you’ve never seen before.

Penang Bazaar

The other market, Penang Bazaar, is more clothes and products. Tourists show up, but, like Pasar Chowrasta, this is primarily for locals.

Macallum Street Night Market

Night markets, at least those I’ve seen in SEA, are outstanding places to learn and sample the full range of local cuisine, but otherwise not good for shopping. The Macallum Street Night Market followed that pattern. It was two arms around a street corner vertex, with one arm food and the other arm merchandise. The merchandise was cheap and forgettable. Not a place to find hidden treasures. But the food side delivered big time.

Crafts & Clothes

The crafts action in Malaysia is clearly all in Borneo. Kuala Lumpur has the benefit of being a capital city, so at least it had shops that curated from across the country. The crafts scene in George Town is quite a bit more modest.

I think that’s a result of George Town’s history. The city was created from whole cloth as a mercantile center, so there was never a lineage of indigenous culture and crafts here to carry on. I’m not claiming the island was uninhabited, but George Town wasn’t built over an existing settlement with an extant culture. That, and its prominence as a tourist center, means that most of what passes for craft here is tourist tchotchkes.

I’d say the bulk of the energy that might be directed at traditional crafts in other places is focussed on traditional cooking here. The restaurants that specialize in Peranakan cuisine are filling the same need as crafts traditionalists, preserving an old culture while injecting it with enough modern elements to keep it from ossifying. The food scene here is as rich and diverse as the crafts scene in Borneo.

So there’s this: an owl shop and a cat shop right next door to one another. That’s just bound to end badly.

As far as clothes, they fall into two distinct camps: either showily colorful and batik-adjacent (meaning printed batik-like patterns rather than actual batik), or aggressively neutral, showcasing all the hues of the rainbow, from ecru to taupe.

But the fashionable set, locals or tourists, demands something more refined, more tasteful, something completely leached of terroir, something that could have been made anywhere and says nothing at all about either who made it or who’s wearing it. It’s as if Eileen Fisher had been forced at gunpoint to stop using so damned much color.

It’s an act of perverse will for an entire city in SEA to have settled on a shared aesthetic of meh, like everyone got together and agreed that their colorful cultural heritage was somehow shamefully tribal and should be abjured. I’m all for updating and modernizing traditional crafts, but turning your back on them completely is just wrong. It would be one thing if it was the odd designer or two, but it’s the upper end of fashion throughout George Town.

Swear to god, these are all different shops. And this is hardly all of them. There are more. Many, many more.

Batek-Lah

There was, thankfully, one shining exception to this, a batik shop a mere five minutes walk from my apartment. They carried both yard goods and clothes, with everything handmade locally, nothing manufactured. At this point we’ve seen a lot of batik, but this work stood out both for the quality of the design and the exceptional sense of color. These did not look like any other batiks we’ve seen.

I took pictures and sent them to Dorothy, who agreed they were excellent. Once I determined that there was nowhere else with quality goods, I went back early enough in my day that Dorothy was still awake and we video shopped together, which I just love. I toured her through all of the yardage, and she was able to pick out (I have no idea how, amidst all the bounty) three pieces. I got two meters each, enough for her to make a blouse or skirt.

It is possible that I had a couple of shirts made. It is very hard not to overindulge in SEA textiles. They are delicious. I have gotten fat with pastry and ice cream while my suitcase has gotten fat with shirts and textiles. One of us is more likely to recover than the other.

The Prodigal T-Shirt

This kind of counts, in the sense that it appeared in George Town. But its origin story is Cambodian.

I bought this in Siem Reap, and promptly left it at an Airbnb in Vietnam. I was sad. Very sad. I scoured the interwebs for contact info for the shop, and reached out via email and through their Facebook page. That was in August of 2025.

Eight months later, I got a reply from the owner. She still had some of these, but the Cambodian postal service wasn’t servicing the US because… Jesus, don’t make me say it.

I asked if she could ship to Malaysia, and so she did. It eventually wound up here, although there were some bumps and bruises on the way. At one point the Cambodian tracking showed that the package had been held up in Malaysia due to a force majeure event. I think what they meant to say is that it had been handed over to the Malaysian postal service and they could no longer track it. But sure. Force majeure. Nothing about that description made me nervous.

You will be pleased to know that I am no longer sad. I am now happy.

Craft Batik Factory

This is not in my neighborhood at all. In fact, it’s 24km away on the north shore of Penang, about a fifty minute drive. It’s the largest batik maker on Penang. I sort of wasn’t planning on going, but a few days before leaving to return home I contacted a Grab driver whose number I had and made arrangements. I was packing and repacking to see how well I could distribute weight and protect delicate artifacts and I was a little bored. Plus, I was pretty sure I had a few kilos wiggle room, so why not fill it with batik?

Little India

Melaka’s Little India was a several blocks-long stretch, but George Town’s feels like a district, comprising about four very packed square blocks. It’s within the UNESCO zone and less than a ten-minute walk from my apartment. Like Jackson Heights in Queens, it offers anything with a taste of home: food, clothes, jewelry, textiles, Bollywood video stores… Although I don’t think India has been home for these folks for quite some time.

Clan Jetties

The Clan Jetties were built on reclaimed coastline starting in the 1880s. They were originally the entry point for new Chinese immigrants, but gradually became associated with specific clans.

Over time, the jetties were built up with stilt houses used for both residences and clan business. There were originally nine jetties, but two were destroyed for development just prior to UNESCO designating the Jetties as a World Heritage Site in 2008, protecting the area and driving tourism.

Most of the jetties feel primarily residential, to the point that it feels less like walking down a public street and more like hopping a fence into someone’s backyard. Chew Jetty, though, has fully embraced the tourism model, converting quite a few residences into tourist-oriented shops and restaurants.

Them other Jetties.

Street Art

George Town is known for its street art, from official installations to co-opted buildings.

Seen On The Street

Signage

And by their signage shall they be known. One of my very favorite things to do in a new location is find all of the goofy signs and graphic design. It’s consistently high-quality entertainment.

I mean, it’s a matter of faith, right? Your mosque might kick you out for being a bad Muslim if your behavior came to light, but how can you be prosecuted when your faith is basically a personal expression of belief?

Well, it’s not that simple in Malaysia. It turns out that in addition to the civil courts, there’s a parallel Sharia court system that polices religious activity.

Malaysia is a deeply multiethnic society with legally enshrined religious freedom. Sort of. But if you are ethnic Malay you are presumed to be Muslim. In fact, per the Malaysian constitution, to be considered Malay you must be Muslim. If you are born into a Malay family, your religious identity at birth is assigned as Muslim. It’s right there on your national ID card, making it hard to claim otherwise in the event of a raid.

Which matters, because the State Islamic Religious Departments have their own police, and are known to conduct raids either on their own or in coordination with the civil police departments. Punishments for breaking Sharia law include fines, jail, and caning.

The authorities can also fine or shut down establishments that enable Muslims to break Sharia restrictions, co-opting them in the enforcement of the bans. No one wants heat because they carelessly massaged a Muslim or sold him a beer.

Of course, it is technically possible to renounce the faith, but it’s not a voluntary act. It requires the assent of… wait for it… the Sharia court. Which is not known for enabling apostasy. Born a Muslim, die a Muslim. At least in Malaysia. If you don’t like it, emigrating is the only way out.

As a mat salleh I can do as I like. No one’s asking to see paperwork proving my religious affiliation. Until I saw the signs, I was completely unaware that there was anything bubbling below the surface.

Is That All You Learned At Massage Spas?

Sadly, no. My promiscuous consumption of cheap massage practically guaranteed some kind of weirdness. It’s actually a surprise it’s taken this long.

Episode #1

The Lucky Blind Massage Spa was billed as a rehab opportunity for the modestly sighted, offering low-cost massages. What could possibly go wrong? There was actually a similar place in Chiang Mai, but their mission was rehabilitating ex-cons. While I had some morbid curiosity academic interest as to what constitutes a Prison Massage, I never felt comfortable actually finding out. I am weak.

Lucky Blind turned out to be a few doors down from its Google Maps location, so I walked by it twice and didn’t see the sign. Thankfully, it was on an irony-free street. When I finally stumbled on it, I opened the door to… an interesting scene: a dingy room with an auntie and uncle passed out in chairs. I was greeted by a roughly 10-year-old boy. I’d have been unsurprised if he’d been holding a log, but he wasn’t. Ascertaining that I’d come for a massage, he roused the uncle.

Uncle wasn’t ocularly challenged. He was flat-out blind, arms out to make sure he didn’t run into anything. He found the door to the back and the lad instructed me to follow him. I was installed in a small room with a massage table and Uncle left. For so long that I thought perhaps he couldn’t find his way back. Not normally a concern. When he finally returned he started patting the table, and it took me a moment to realize he was looking for me. I was sitting up instead of lying down, so he didn’t find legs where he expected them.

There’s zero reason a blind person can’t give a stellar massage, which was the reason I’d come, but I wasn’t getting stellar massage vibes, so I opted for the half-hour. I mean, he couldn’t have stopped me if I’d just got up and left, but that seemed rude.

Vibe check validated. The massage was the short side of competent, and I’m super glad I didn’t take a full hour. The whole scene had a distinctly Lynchian feel. The massage was 30rm, but I didn’t have exact change and wasn’t interested in watching that poor man try to figure it out. So 40rm, special for me.

But Nothing Else Weird Happened, Right?

At the time, I didn’t know it would be my last massage for a minute, which makes the experience even worse. The very next day I’m walking down the street when my right foot slips on the wet sidewalk. My left leg shoots forward to brace my fall, but my sandal flies off and my unprotected big toe makes first contact.

I stumble, regain my balance, and put my sandal back on. It hurts enough that I really don’t want to look at it. When I finally do I am moderately nauseated to see a hunk of flesh dangling off the side of my toe. I carry an iodine wipe and a bandaid with me for emergencies, and this seems like a qualifying event, so I stop at a bench to apply them. There is no way I’m going to actually clean the wound with the wipe without passing out, so I just drape it over my toe and cinch it with the bandaid. When I gingerly slide my foot back into my sandal, I notice that a pool of blood has puddled on the sidewalk in the course of the brief bandaid interlude. Not good.

I obviously needed to get to a clinic, but Google Maps wasn’t much help. Nothing seemed nearby. I’m also not, to be fair, thinking all that clearly. I’d been heading for a batik shop, which was still a few blocks away, so I limped there and asked the owner if there was a clinic nearby. He pointed me to a clinic on a side street just a half a block away, which I would 100% never have found on my own.

A little bit of intake and a doctor saw me right away. He cleaned the wound, cut off the loose bit of toe, bandaged me up, and sent me home with antibiotics and a bottle of iodine. The total damage, at least financially, was $40, meds included.

But the whole episode rendered me pretty housebound. It’s too painful to wear real shoes yet, so I’m not going on hikes or adventures, I’m not swimming or snorkeling, I’m certainly not letting anyone manipulate me. I’m pretty much taking short walks in my admittedly adorable neighborhood. I’m guessing I’ll be out of commission for about a week.

Tell The Truth. There Was Another Episode.

Yes, fine, there was another episode. It’s not like you’re all that clever, since the first one was called Episode #1. Also, this is my blog. Stop interrupting.

I was super paranoid in Bangkok about going into the wrong kind of massage parlor, since that’s a whole industry there. Not that I was concerned that waltzing unbeknownst into a den of iniquity would scar me for life, just that I actually wanted real massage, and Happy Ending massage parlors don’t, as a rule, provide quality massage. They have other specialties, and good for them. God loves all his children.

But it’s tricky. I’ve been in situations that I was certain were leading to a Happy Ending offer, only for it to end as it began, completely professionally. I’ve found that it’s all too easy to interpret as foreshadowing what’s simply the same blithe indifference to my junk it’s taken me decades to cultivate. “If you don’t want that thing mashed, you should keep it away from where I’m working.” Completely fair.

Through diligent research and careful planning I was able to visit only legitimate massage spas in Thailand. I wasn’t so worried about Malaysia, it being Muslim and all. I’d have been even less worried If I’d known that the Sharia police were known to raid massage spas looking for Muslims on Spring Break. Foolish, foolish me.

Full disclosure, Episode #2 occurs in Kuala Lumpur, not George Town, but the story fits here, so all y’all Continuity Cops need to stand down.

The rest of my full disclosure is that I’m a credulous boob, although I’m pretty sure that’s so obvious that disclosure isn’t strictly speaking necessary. The average rock would have realized long before I did what I was walking into, but at this point in KL I had consumed multiple massages without even a whiff of hanky-panky on offer. I was so convinced that Muslim Malaysia only offered legitimate massage that my defenses were completely shut down. And, I’m a credulous boob.

To be fair, I had noticed that the party street featured a few freelance girls, but they weren’t even making a pretense of offering “massage.” That just seemed like a completely different category. So…

Walking down the main street, Bukit Bintang, I was approached by a woman holding a massage menu, just like all of the other massage spas, except solo instead of in a group. The rates looked fine, and every other massage I’d had was the same deal: stop randomly, check the rates, get a good massage. All the places were pretty much the same, so there was no reason to be either brand loyal or particularly suspicious.

I asked where the spa was, and she took me to a stairway a few doors away that led to an unmarked door with a bare bones massage spa inside. Not the most luxe setup, but no one was offering luxury accommodations. On the other hand, the absence of signage didn’t exactly promote a sense of legitimacy, but my red flag sensor was off. My new best friend had me strip off completely, which wasn’t the first time that’s happened, so also not a red flag.

There were a couple of places in Siem Reap that operated that way. They just moved the towel around artfully. I’m actually fine with that, as the false modesty of keeping the panties on has always struck me as odd. They’re always tugging them here and there to get the job done, and it just seems like in most cases it would be easier for everyone to lose them. I’m often tempted to ask, “Are those for you or me? Because I don’t need them.” But I have just (barely) enough on the ball to realize that even asking the question would be implying something I didn’t mean. So I don’t.

Next she takes a roll of paper towels, tears off one sheet for my head and two sheets for the middle and has me lie down on the table. This is an entirely new protocol to me, and I don’t love it. It bespeaks a concerningly casual commitment to hygiene. Then the massage starts, and I finally realize I’m in the wrong place.

She has clearly learned massage from watching a YouTube video, but not very closely. She pats randomly at my back and legs for a solid sixty seconds, compliments my ass (which is never unwelcome, but still…), and tells me to turn over. I turn over, but before she can paddle about topside I tell her that I’m in the wrong place and need to go, and apologize for my mistake. She assures me that if I stay all of my dreams will be fulfilled, for a very modest price. But I’ve seen Aladdin, and I know that you rarely get exactly what you wish for when you rub the lamp. Pass.

I dress and skitter out, feeling, justifiably, very, very stupid.

Melaka was established in about 1400 due to its strategic location at the narrowest part of the Strait of Malacca. In its early years, Melaka was actually a protectorate of China, which shielded it from assault by the other regional powers, allowing it to flourish as a key trade stop, connecting China, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.

You’ve probably already guessed that this arrangement didn’t last. Melaka had built itself up into a target, and the Portuguese, who had no word for consent, heard Yes. They took Melaka in 1511, intending to dominate Asian trading by leveraging Melaka’s critical role. Sadly, that required some competence in execution the Portuguese couldn’t quite muster. Their administrative ineptitude diminished Melaka’s role, allowing trade to be splintered amongst smaller, warring ports.

The Dutch figured they could succeed where the Portuguese failed, and launched a series of attacks on Melaka starting in 1606 and culminating with a Portuguese defeat in 1641. The Dutch held onto it until ceding it to the British in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. That lasted until the Japanese took Melaka in 1942. Melaka was part of various Anglo-Malay confederations until 1963, when it joined the now independent and newly named Malaysia.

One of the hallmarks of crossroad cities, from Marrakech to the Silk Road, is that their exposure to traders from other lands leaves a noticeable multicultural footprint behind. Welcoming is the brand that built these cities, the echoes of which still reverberate today.

While the British brought Indians and Chinese to work the plantations during its Malaysian episode, Melaka had a foreign presence practically since its founding. Chinese immigrants in the 15th century married local Malays, creating a unique culture called Peranakan, or Baba-Nyonya, with its own cuisine and unique crafts. The Portuguese also married Malays, creating the Kristang, with its own creole language and cuisine. Tamil traders came in the 15th century and intermarried, creating the Chitty. They adopted Malay language and customs, but insisted on keeping the Hindu faith. There’s a substantial Chinese presence from multiple Chinese ethnic groups, such as the Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hainanese, that didn’t intermarry. And, of course, the colonizers left their usual architectural stylings behind, even if most didn’t stick around for the afterparty.

That’s the backstory that motivated me to visit Melaka. That kind of history tends to leave a delicious residue.

I probably shortchanged Melaka, only giving it a couple of days. With so little time I was only really able to see the historic city center. That gave me access to most of the commonly accepted Places of Interest, but I’m not sure I was able to see anything but the surface. As a result, it was a little disappointing. “Baby, it’s not you, it’s me.”

Chinatown

My hotel was incredibly central, a short walk to all of the key locations. I stayed on Heeren Street, which, with its neighbor one block over, Jonker Street, is the heart of the historic Chinese sector. The area is known for its 17th century shophouses, and Jonker Street hosts a weekend night market. Hey, I was there on a weekend! Don’t knock it. Dumb luck is better than no luck at all.

Then there was the Jonker Street Night Market. I don’t know. This is month nine for me in SEA over the last year. Maybe I’m over night markets? They’re always crowded, and while I don’t object to people en masse, the shoulder-to-shoulder thing isn’t much fun. The highlight for me is always the food. The night markets always stand out for presenting the range of local cuisine all in one place.

The goods on sale always seem to disappoint, though. They’re a mix of cheap tourist goods and cheap local goods. I don’t know that I’ve seen a single interesting thing, that wasn’t edible, in a night market.

One thing the night market had going for it, as well as Melaka overall, was the relative dearth of mat salleh. Most of the tourists seemed to be from other SEA countries, and I’ll never complain about being one of the few gringos.

The Baba & Nyonya Museum

The Baba & Nyonya Museum is the actual home of a Peranakan family from 1861. Four generations of that family lived there until it was turned into a museum in 1985, which makes this as authentic a museum as is possible. Baba and Nyonya, by the way, are male and female honorifics, and are used together as a synonym for Peranakan.

While there were poor Peranakans, the owners of this house were distinctly upper crust, both socially and financially. The house represents almost a Gilded Age for the Peranakans in Melaka, with rich furnishings, tapestries, and hand-carved wooden furniture. It also raises the thorny epistemological question: Is it chinoiserie if it’s actually Chinese?

One of my children, to be unnamed, is contemplating major lifestyle changes. I was asked, in the event of becoming a grandparent, whether I had a preferred form of address picked out. I had never considered such a thing, and the most obvious answer, Mark, which is, you know, my name, was summarily rejected.

Truthfully, every other known option felt ill fitting at best and stomach-churning at worst. Gramps? Papa? Pop Pop? Pappy? How about The Dead Guy, since any of those other names would be over my dead body? But I think I could make Baba work. That doesn’t curdle. Although if I’m Baba I feel like Dorothy is more Yaga than Nyonya.

Crafts

There’s always shopping, amiright? Thankfully, all of the interesting shops were within a 5-10 minute walking radius. The shops along Jonker Street were definitely tourist focused, to the point where it was hard to figure out if Melaka had any craft traditions of its own, distinct from the rest of Malaysia. Whose primary craft traditions seemed to center on tote bags and refrigerator magnets.

One shop I found was a generations-old cobbler. His grandfather had made foot binding shoes for the Chinese gentry, but he was the last in the line, as foot binding was outlawed in Malaysia in about 1912, following China’s lead. But his grandson still has all of the old patterns, and makes the shoes now as artifacts.

The only other crafts I saw that had any Melaka terroir, and weren’t simply tourist gimcracks, were Peranakan beaded shoes and embroidered dresses for Nyonyas.

The highlight, as it turned out, was right across the street from my hotel: Mr. Joe’s Jewelry. It was contemporary design, nothing even vaguely traditional about it, with a specialty in stones and minerals. It is possible that I bought as much as I did because it was air conditioned. Mostly it’s that, while I can’t buy clothing for Dorothy in her absence, I have a passable track record with jewelry. The work was also objectively swell.

Dutch Square

Also called Red Square, but not in a Commie sense. In a paint sense. The Dutch built the primary structures in the Square, Christ Church and the Stadthuys (State House). In an unsurprisingly arrogant attempt to impose their will on nature, they painted them white. Stained red from muddy rainwater and peasants spitting betel nut juice on the walls (hmm…), the British finally conceded in the early 1900s and just painted them fucking red. And thus was an icon born.

The Square’s other main attraction was these trishaws. What you can’t see in the pictures is that each of them had a boombox strapped to its back, pumping out overamped Malaysian pop. That wasn’t ideal, much, I imagine, like being a BB in a can, but I could not get enough of the trishaws themselves. If you can’t tell from the pictures, these are basically bicycles with elaborately coiffed sidecars bolted on.

The trishaws are human-powered, which just seems wrong in the equatorial heat. I saw one poor bastard off the bike, pushing it up an incline, the sidecar fully loaded with a family of five. Whatever the amount, they did not tip him enough.

Little India

I had high hopes when I learned that there was a Little India neighborhood. But rather than a hotbed of vernacular architecture and Buddhist or Hindu temples, it was just an Indian neighborhood. Not unlike Jackson Heights in Queens. Not uninteresting, but it fell short of my imagined expectations.

Kampung Morten

Kampung Morten is a traditional Malay village in the middle of Melaka, designated a Heritage Village by the Malaysian government. For reasons unclear, it was named after a British tax collector. At least when I visited, it was just a bunch of houses of similar design, with Christ Church red roofs. There were no museums, displays, people, or information. Maybe technically a village, but practically a neighborhood. At least it wasn’t a long walk.

And that’s Melaka. Was there more to take away if I’d been there longer? Sure. Maybe. I dunno. But it was certainly an enjoyable interlude, and I can check Meleka off of my International Travel Bingo card. I’ve been to Melaka and you haven’t. No complaints.

My blink-and-it’s-over visit was a mere week, in the capital of Sarawak, Kuching. There’s a reason we don’t make a habit of the tourist cadence. It’s a drag. That week felt rushed, like I had to make every moment count. That frenetic pace is not generally how we roll, and it absolutely makes me want to come back, with Dorothy, and do it properly. Slowly. Thoughtfully.

But my commitment to squeeze out what I could made for a full week with much to report. I’ve already covered an overview of Sarawak and trips to view wildlife. Now comes the payoff: crafts. So many, many crafts.

Jalan Main Bazaar

Most people’s first exposure to Sarawak’s crafts will probably be the shops that line Jalan Main Bazaar. For about half a kilometer, souvenir shops stand cheek by jowl along this stretch, which sits right across from and parallels the Kuching River. Most of them are in the tote bag and refrigerator magnet class, although many carry manufactured versions of the traditional Sarawak basketry and printed versions of local batik patterns. There are also a handful of antique shops that seem to carry genuine goods, although at very high prices.

Jalan Main Bazaar had one other treat: actual treats. Specifically shops that specialized in Kek Lapis Sarawak, which translates just as you’d think, as Layer Cake. These are elaborately structured cakes made of layers of alternating flavor and color. Delicious and eye-bleeding. I enjoyed a chocolate/mint confection.

Steamship Building

The historic Steamship Building is on the Sarawak River side of Jalan Main Bazaar, opposite the souvenir shops. It’s a small building that holds maybe ten vendors, but they have been carefully selected for quality, and it shows. Everything on offer is hand crafted and exquisite. Most of it is priced accordingly.

Ranee Artisans

Now I’m digging into the butik and specialty shops where the real thing is to be found. Ranee Artisans has its own shop, but it also supplies many of the products in the Borneo Cultures Museum gift shop.

Songket & Keringkam Gallery

We had read about the keringkam, the dense metallic embroidery, and specifically about an embroiderer named Danny Zulkifli. I was able to track him down and reached out to ask what gallery represented his work. He was very gracious, and invited me to a workshop he was giving at the Songket & Keringkam Gallery. He offered me a tour of his studio after the workshop.

Once I figured out that the workshop was an all-day affair, I begged off, explaining that it would be wasted on me, as I could barely tie my shoes (I’m spending a lot of time in slides these days). Also, now that I’d done a little more work and understood how expensive the keringkam was, I didn’t want to waste his time in the studio, as I was pretty sure that unless he was selling scraps I wouldn’t be able to afford anything.

He maintained the offer and said he would love to meet me, but our schedules never matched, a victim of my short, overstuffed visit to Sarawak. But I did make it to the gallery, which was small but had excellent representation of both the keringkam and songket.

Some of their ridiculously baroque songket.

The keringkam selection was, no surprise, the best I saw. The work is so expensive, no one really carries a lot of it. Some of these closeups really communicate the scale of the work, both the overall effort and how very fine the work is. This is backbreakingly delicate work done at industrial scale. It’s very, very hard to wrap your head around.

Tanoti House

I’ve saved Tanoti House, the best of the craft shops, for last. They were out of the main shopping district, but only about a 25 minute walk from my condo. Which doesn’t sound like much except for the equatorial heat. Let’s just say that I was less than fresh when I arrived, and took a Grab back home.

The arrival part itself was pretty funny. As I was walking up the path to the building, a woman drove her car past me and parked. As I came up behind her she turned and asked if she could help me. “Is this Tanoti House?” “Yes.” We were standing in front of a large outbuilding full of looms. “Do you have a shop.” “Yes.” “Great. I’d love to see your work.” “Oh. OK, sure.” Like a customer walking up was so weird she couldn’t quite grasp why I was there.

But she warmed up quickly and led me around the corner to her shop. Which was staffed with a full-time sales associate (the delightful Jenny), so her confusion about a customer walking up seemed odd. Maybe they were one of those places that tours stopped at and walk-up customers weren’t a thing. They were a little off the beaten track. Dunno. However odd it started, it was a delightful experience once underway.

Not only did they have the excellent work produced in their own workshop, they also represented tribal groups from across Sarawak. I had struck a rich vein at Tanoti House. Everything was super high quality. However, this was another experience that required Dorothy’s direct involvement. I took some pictures and sent them to her, and we scheduled a return visit, when they were expecting me, so that I could bring her in on a video call and we could shop together. Important decisions needed to be made, so the Executive Committee was convened.

They had the best basketry I’d seen and beautiful songket.

But the standout pieces were the Pua Kumbu weavings.

One piece stood out from its brethren.

This is an Iban piece, and is, mostly, the Pua Kumbu Sungkit (songket) technique, which is actually two distinct techniques combined. Pua means blanket, and Kumbu is a warp ikat technique, where the vertical threads have been tie-dyed, rather than the more common weft ikat. In addition, songket is used, which is a discontinuous supplementary weft technique, meaning that additional weft threads are pulled through the warp and tied off to make discrete patterns that don’t continue horizontally across the width of the fabric.

What makes this particular piece an outrageous example of stunt weaving is that its three sections all deploy both different motifs and different techniques, all of which were executed on the same loom. One end holds the primary motif, the terabai, or shield. We were told that when displayed, the terabai is always at the top, never the bottom. This section is Pua Kumbu Sungkit.

The middle section is a motif called silup langit sereta. Langit means sky or heaven, and the overall motif represents the connection of the earthly and the divine. The technique used is sidan, which is a continuous supplementary weft technique, meaning that the pattern extends side-to-side.

The final panel is the kelekeit motif, a sacred pattern with strong protection powers. This is again executed in the Pua Kumbu Sungkit technique.

So this piece incorporates three distinct patterns, is built on a warp ikat base, and uses a discontinuous supplementary weft technique at each end and a continuous supplementary weft technique in the middle.

Sweet bleeding Jesus!

In case you’re still not convinced, here are closeups of the front and back sides. The amount of labor is almost unfathomable. Just thinking about it makes me want a nap. Although, to be fair, very little doesn’t make me want a nap.

This piece was also… expensive. They had so much beautiful stuff we were sort of looking at a shopping cart. Some of the baskets and purses, a floor covering, a little of this and a little of that. Instead, we put all our chips into the Pua Kumbu. This is a signature piece, always our goal, and will find its new home, I think, well suited. Sadly, it required that we leave all the other beauty behind.

Well… almost all. We still needed an example of the basket weaving, and their selection was outstanding. This piece is from the Penan tribe, and uses a fern motif called paku pakis. The rings that hold it together at the top are called ulat, the Malay word for caterpillar.

I left lighter in the wallet but richer in every other way. I love shopping with Dorothy.

What could possibly be left after that? A pair of museums, a cultural center, and a field trip to a songket weaver. But don’t worry, there are excellent gift shops still on the itinerary. That Pua Kumbu may have eaten up most of our budget, but there was still room for a few more treats.

Borneo Cultures Museum

Everyone in Kuching said the same thing: “Have you been to the Cultures Museum yet?” I like to think of myself as pretty resistant to peer pressure, but resisting seemed not so much futile as foolish. Why would I skip a Borneo cultural museum? Good lord. I only play an idiot on TV.

The first thing I liked about the museum was its name. Not the Borneo Cultural Museum, but the Borneo Cultures Museum. There are many cultures here, and we’re going to do our best to represent them all. Nice.

The next thing is the building itself, a five-story structure that riffs off traditional basket weaving and Pua Kumbu motifs. Not for nothing, it’s also the second-largest museum in all of SEA.

The oddest thing about the museum is that every time I entered or exited a gallery my hearing aids went all staticky. Dr. Google says it’s most likely some form of electromagnetic interference caused by the museum’s security systems, but they must be doing something no one else is doing. I’ve never had that happen before.

Also, and this is just me being weird, none of the escalators moved until you stepped on them. That’s not the first time I’ve run across that, but it still surprises me how disorienting it is. Are you broken? Is there a toll? Are you Up or Down? So many questions.

OK, enough. Focus. Museum.

Because there’s lots of museum to take in. This is just going to be the highest of highlights, but the bottom line is simple: You should go to Borneo, visit Sarawak on the Malaysian side, and go to the Borneo Cultures Museum in Kuching yourself. Until you can pull your shit together and execute on that perfectly reasonable plan, this will have to suffice. But it will be very sad for you if this is all of Borneo you ever see. Just sayin’.

Often in a museum I’ll think, “Oh, I’d love a reproduction of that.” But outside the Borneo Cultures Museum these pieces are being produced, not reproduced. They are the artifacts of cultures that are still current, active, and engaged. Their craftwork may be in a museum, but none of them are museum cultures. They’re out there right now, living the lives represented in the exhibits. Museums tend to be monuments to the past, not representatives of the present. That’s pretty unusual, and it’s more than a little exhilarating to know that I could see any of the cultures represented there in situ if I so chose.

So let’s dine out on the feast the Borneo Cultures Museum serves up. First up, basketry and reed weaving, a Borneo specialty.

There are textiles, to no one’s surprise. Mostly Pua Kumbu, with a few exceptions.

Some truly excellent beadwork examples.

More? Of course. How about some clothing and hats? Well, since you asked so nicely…

OK, one more. You’ve been good. Here’s some primo carvings and masks for you.

The museum opened in 2022, so it’s modern to the gills, full of interactive displays. This room held a series of decorated glass windows and a sliding wooden frame.

When you slid the frame over one of the windows, it came to life. Sorcery! Witchcraft!

This next display was an interactive book that took up an entire wall. You controlled it with hand gestures.

But this may have been my favorite interactive display: Smell-O-Vision. There was a whole bank of these, each with a different aromatic substance. Push the button and huff and you get to smell, in this case, camphor.

Is there anything better than a good museum gift shop? If there is, I’m certainly not telling you. I’ll snort it all myself.

Kampung Budaya Sarawak

The Sarawak Cultural Village calls itself a living museum, and that sounds about right. Visiting SCV is meant to be an immersive experience. The 17-acre grounds are dotted with reproductions of traditional houses associated with different tribes. The houses are all accessible, and there are docents to explain how people used those spaces and lived in them.

There are craftspeople scattered about the different houses, highlighting some sort of traditional activity or craft, such as games, baking, weaving, beadwork, and blowpipery. Many of these activities can be joined by visitors in a low-key version of tourist places that let you Make Your Own Batik! There are also performances, some taking place in the houses, some staged in their indoor theater. It’s meant to be a soup-to-nuts cultural experience and it pretty much delivers on that goal.

We actually visited someplace similar in Hà Nội, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which is likewise made up of houses representing Vietnam’s different ethnic groups. I think the biggest difference is that most of the houses in the Museum of Ethnology were real houses that had been broken down and reconstructed on site, whereas the SCV is all reproductions.

This grand edifice is a Melayu home. It was built in 1989 from native ironwood, just as the original was in 1860.

This is a Melanau Tall House.

This is the Iban house, with crafts you’ll recognize from the Borneo Cultures Museum.

Another tall house, from the Orang Ulu.

And finally, a few lightly identified houses.

Here’s one of the Tourist Enrichment Stations, where an expert tries to teach a poor schlub how to throw a top. Opportunities to humiliate myself always seem to crop up without my intervention, so I passed. Schadenfreude only works if it’s someone else’s misfortune.

The performances were surprisingly good. The performers were charismatic, the costumes were great, and even the musicians were excellent. It was an unexpectedly professional production, especially since all the performers were pulling shifts in the houses before the afternoon Big Show.

I love this clip, where the pole dancer clearly has to work his nerve up for the trick.

And then this, indigenous crowd work. I’m sure the screaming is traditionally relevant and not just a Tourette’s-like outburst. Plus, more of those delicious thighs. What’s not to love?

But do they have a gift shop? What a silly, silly question. I picked up a few things there for the floor.

SCV was the other place, with the Borneo Cultures Museum, where everyone was all, “Have you been? Have you been? What about now? Have you been?” And I get it. It would have been a grievous error to have visited Kuching, for however short a stay, and missed either of those institutions. Thankfully, most of my lapses in judgement involve doing things I shouldn’t rather than missing things I should.

Tun Jugah Museum

I was texting with the tour operator who got me to Bako National Park and mentioned that I was interested in Pua Kumbu. She pointed me to the Tun Jugah Museum, right in town. Tun Jugah was a Malaysian politician who played a central role in the establishment of Malaysia as an independent nation. His foundation, set up to promote Iban crafts and culture, houses a museum and gallery with amazing specimens.

They must not get a lot of visitors, as it’s pretty hard to reach. There’s a sign in the lobby indicating that the museum is on the fourth floor. I naturally take the escalator up to the second floor, where I’m met with an escalator to the third floor that’s decommissioned and gated, with no obvious way to go any higher. Back down to the first floor, where I find the elevators that… don’t go to Four.

Then I see a sign for the museum at the head of a passageway, but the passageway dead ends. I back out and round another corner where I find another elevator bank and signs to the museum… behind an entrance that requires a key card. No signs, no help, but I’m now adjacent to the front desk in the lobby of what looks like an office suite. I ask the nice lady if she has any idea how I get to the museum on Four. She does! I get there when she hands me a visitor’s badge that opens the gate to the elevator bank. Of course. How foolish of me not to have figured that out.

When I exit on the fourth floor, I am honestly unsurprised that the museum staff is surprised to see me. Not me particularly, obviously, but anyone. I can’t imagine many people make it through the gauntlet required to gain access. It lacked only a troll and a riddle.

But the collection. Holy cow, they had the goods. Sadly, they wouldn’t let me take pictures in the fabric gallery, but I was able to take pictures of the looms and some of the workers, as well as a separate gallery with beaded goods. The ladies who worked there were super knowledgeable and helpful, and seemed truly pleased to answer my questions. And downright spooked when I was able to use the phrase discontinuous supplementary weft properly in a sentence. One of my favorite tricks.

Outside of the fabric gallery I can’t show you, the most interesting thing was the workroom, full of looms with work in various stages of completion. No one was weaving while I was there, as all of the women were tying off thread for ikat dying. But what was up in the looms as WIP was beautiful, even half-finished.

They had some completed pieces up for display, but nothing for sale. If any museum ever screamed for a gift shop, it was surely the Tun Jugah. The sound still echoes.

They also had a section of looms set up tagged with the technique being demonstrated, which was very helpful. I think these were specifically educational display, and not WIP.

The range of techniques on display was impressive. I would have gladly stolen any one of the pieces at random, had they not been still on a loom. And had I been slightly less thoroughly docented. You can just imagine what the display pieces in the Forbidden Gallery looked like, given how stunning the WIP was.

I was baffled by this first piece, but I think it’s because I’m not very smart. I’m used to seeing fabric woven in a length, and I couldn’t figure out why this was being woven from the bottom… up to completed weaving on the top? How is that supposed to end?

I’m sure y’all saw it right away, but I had to ask. The entire piece is being woven in a loop, and when the weaver catches up to the beginning she’ll cut it so it’s a single long piece. It seemed obvious once it was explained, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.

The live action while I was there was all in the ikat preparation. Three women were engaged in tying off thread to dye into ikat patterns. They’d move to the looms later. I’m sure they were waiting for me to leave.

Finally, there was the bead room, which featured beautiful pieces made from glass trade beads and carved shell. Most of the beadwork I’d seen in the markets was clearly tourist goods. It was a treat to see the real thing.

Seri Gedong Songket

It’s such a fine line between adventure and misadventure. I suppose the distinction is really just how much stupid you bring to the table. Game on.

I had read about this high-end songket maker, about 90 minutes south of Kuching, and made it the central focus of one of my day trips. When we got there, I found a small workroom with maybe four looms, three of which were in operation during my visit. I asked about their shop, where I could see and purchase finished goods, and they explained that it was in Kuching. After describing the location, I said, “Wait, are you the songket stall in the Steamship Building?” “Yes! That’s our shop.” The songket photo in the Steamship Building section above is theirs.

I had come all that way for no reason except to see the weaving. And don’t get me wrong, I love seeing the process. But I’d seen songket weaving in person in Bali and I’d seen Seri Gedong Songket’s finished work already in Kuching. I don’t think I’d have made that trek knowing those things. [counting the ballots…] Misadventure!

However. Lemonade shall be made from these lemons. The work was unquestionably denser than the Balinese songket, so it was pretty cool seeing it made.

Nothing like mixing up a little misadventure with the actual adventures. Keeps me young.

Dorothy and I had planned for our next leg, leaving Chicago before winter, to be 100% India. Current thinking, based on all of the above, is Kerala, Borneo, and Sri Lanka. More planning and thinking to do, but I’ll happily sign off on that itinerary. Especially the full-on Borneo tour. There’s so much more than a week’s worth of wow left in Borneo.

KL offered a couple of craft malls, an outstanding batik maker, and an excellent museum. But, as expected, the real action was elsewhere, where craft traditions are a lived part of daily life. In other words, Borneo.

Central Market

Central Market, despite its name’s connotations, is exclusively a crafts bazaar, with a second floor emphasis on batiks. This is considered the go-to market for crafts in KL. I love nothing more than a good crafts mall, a place that digs deeper than refrigerator magnets and keychains, and Central Market delivered.

As promised, the second floor delivered batiks, wovens, embroidered goods, and readymade clothes.

Kompleks Kraf

A larger physical complex than Central Market, but with dramatically fewer vendors. The emphasis here was on the experience, so there were multiple huts where you could make your own batik or make your own batik. The full range.

I get those, but I also kind of don’t understand why you’d want to go home with an artifact that represents all of the skills you could learn in a couple of hours rather than the work of a master who’d devoted a lifetime to his or her craft. Nothing comes out of those “experiences” but handprint ashtrays. To each their own.

But the setting was beautiful, and there were cats. A win all around.

There were also a couple of large shops with truly outstanding examples. None of which, of course, were local. Every time I saw something juicy, it was from Borneo. All signs point to the Sarawak excursion as my prime Malaysian looting opportunity.

There was an excellent fabric selection, with batiks, wovens, and embroidery, all with prices to match.

But the highlight was the Borneo reed and rattan weaving. Wow! I can’t wait, and I’m already regretting that it’s only for a week.

Jadi Batek

Jadi Batek was so good, I went back and scheduled a morning visit so Dorothy would be awake. I put her on a video call and toured the store for her, zooming in where she saw something of interest. She was able to pick out her own fabric that way, and it was a lovely way to share the experience.

When I went the first time it was clear that there were way too many quality choices for me to just pick something out for her. Taking her shopping with me was the only reasonable option. And I am nothing if not reasonable. Shut up.

They had a nice selection of shirts, but nothing I loved. However, they offered to make one for me from any of the fabrics I liked at the same price as off the rack. They promised three-day turnaround, but actually had my shirt done that afternoon. Having been involved with Bespoke, Dorothy’s custom made clothing shop, I cannot imagine how that’s done. Pretty much the same in Hội An, so there’s clearly a method. Black, black magic.

National Textile Museum

Malaysia has been crafting textiles for centuries, and the breadth of that craft is, as you’d expect, on excellent display at the National Textile Museum. In addition to the specimens there are multiple displays demonstrating, step-by-step, how each of the different textiles is made. I surprised myself with how many of those techniques I already knew.

I’ve been chasing weaving all over the world with Dorothy, and damned if some of it hasn’t rubbed off. I’m no expert, obviously, and know exponentially less than Dorothy, but I am able to look at a weaving and say, “Ah, that’s a discontinuous supplementary weft.” Or, “How did they get a backstrap loom to do that?” I never tire of the surprise that elicits. Like a puppy that has just complimented your outfit in perfect English. And then pissed on your shoes.

I visited the Museum on one of my last days in KL, so it came after my Borneo junket. I’d seen examples of many of these techniques while there.

They had some spectacular examples of songket. Songket is one of those discontinuous supplementary weft techniques I’m so proud of recognizing. Additional gold weft threads are manually worked into the warp threads to create the patterns, which are discontinuous across the horizontal length of the fabric.

We’d seen songket woven in Bali, and came home with a piece, but Balinese songket, because of the complexity of the weaving, tends to be done as a border treatment. Hold my beer, say the Malaysians, who weave entire sarong lengths in songket. It’s a crazy amount of work. And the reason we don’t own any Malaysian songket. It is appropriately priced to the effort required, which puts it out of budget for us.

They also had some excellent beaded pieces. These are made from European glass beads, which started trading in SEA in the 1800s, although glass beads were being brought from India as far back as 500 AD. None of the pieces at the Museum have dates, though, so no way to know exactly what’s going on.

There was a separate gallery with an exhibition on technical experimentation. That’s 100% a sweet spot for us, the intersection of tradition and modernism, but we normally find that as the output of specific studios or artisans. Seeing that curated and aggregated was a nice surprise.

And there’s KL. A few treasures, but mostly just confirmation that Borneo is where I’ll find the hotness.

Semenggoh Wildlife Centre

The first of my two day trips took in a songket weaver, a local market, and monkeys. Not just any monkeys, though. We’re talking orangutans, which can only be found in Borneo and neighboring Sumatra. That Primate Bingo card is starting to fill up.

Semenggoh hosts about 28 orangutans (from the Malay orang hutan, person of the forest), ranging in age from 55 to in utero. Four of them have been rescued, the rest born on premises. Which is not the same as “in captivity.” The reserve comprises a robust 1600 acres of free range territory, more than enough for the solitary creatures to feel at home (mothers and children are the only orangutans that travel together). They could leave if they wanted, but the supplemental food that the rangers provide anchors them to the area. It’s especially important in between fruit seasons, when food can be sparse.

I happened to visit during fruit season, meaning that the orangutans were less likely to venture to the feeding stations, which are set up for safe observation. There was a possibility that none of them would venture out at feeding time, as the jungle naturally produced a bounty of jackfruit, durian, rambutan, and mangosteen. As you’ve all come to learn, though, I’m sprinkled with fairy dust, so of course I saw orangutans.

Before our first showed up, the result of rangers tramping the forest and ululating in the traditional orangutan Dinner’s Served call, our ranger gave us the lowdown on Dos & Don’ts to keep from provoking one of the orangutans into a deadly rage. Happy to listen. Along with hide your water bottles and put your selfie stick away, it included this pertinent gem: “If I say move, move. If I say move fast, move fast. If I say run for your life, get out of my way.” He assured us that he was JK and would stand as the last line of defense in the event of monkey fuckery. Good to know, but a little concerned that a last line of defense had been mapped out in advance.

I asked our ranger what else lived in the jungle, and he rattled off quite the list: gibbons, western tarsiers, macaques, slow loris, flying squirrels, wild boars, bearcats, pythons, cobras, and pit vipers. On the one hand, glad they closed the jungle trails. On the other hand, Wikipedia says that bearcats smell like buttered popcorn. In possibly the first instance of this sentence ever being written, I’m sorry I didn’t get to smell a bearcat.

Also, when he got to macaques, I said “Oh my god, macaques are the worst.” Even nature ranger agreed that they are the rats of the primate tree. It’s most certainly not just me. Everyone hates macaques.

Also, this was the sonic background.

Everyone hates cicadas, too. That’s what travel teaches you: all over the world, we are more alike than different. Kumbaya.

Our first visitor was Ruby, 13 years old and pregnant. Perhaps that’s why she was interested in bonus snacks. Sadly, photos and videos of the orangutans are sparse, but there’s a little. Here’s Ruby managing bananas in both hand and foot. The agility and dexterity is remarkable.

Here she is in action. I love her passing the bananas between mouth and hands/feet as necessary. It makes me imagine an evolutionary path where we have four hands and no feet. You could Hold my beer yourself.

There was a second sighting away from the feeding area. One of the alpha males, the 20 year old Anaku, was in the trees just off the path a few dozens of meters from the feeding area, so we all took off in that direction. Anaku was, we were told, only the fourth largest alpha in the group, which, once I laid eyes on him, was utterly terrifying. Nothing should be that large and nothing that large should have thumbs. And a hippocampus. And have three other even larger beasts nearby. That thing was fucking enormous.

And also closer than Ruby. Much, much closer. He was maybe ten feet away in open territory. Had he taken a notion to go all carnivore on us no one could have stopped him. He’d have been on us before we could even be shooed away. Thankfully, he was eating bananas and we were silent. Enough.

However close he was, he was also behind the first line of trees on the path, so the sight line wasn’t ideal. There were a number of us clustered trying to get good photos, but Anaku himself was the best reason not to try to angle for a better shot. I really felt like holding still was the best idea. The photos suffer. I only got one vaguely acceptable shot.

But I got better video. I love him catching the bananas while hanging from the tree.

Also, a note on their names. There was a population list up with all of the orangutan’s names, ages, and provenances. In addition to Ruby and Anaku there was an Analisa, a Baka, a Selina, a Sigat, even a Roxanne. Down at the bottom of the list was a 7 year old male named Ooooha. That is so weak. That is so, “Billy, what shall we call the monkey?” Honestly, that felt disrespectful.

Bako National Park

Bako is a must-see from Kuching. It’s Sarawak’s oldest national park, and despite being one of the smallest, crams a ridiculous amount of diversity into its modest 10 square miles. it features multiple biomes, from rainforest to riparian, trails of varying length and complexity, and more wildlife than you can shake a stick at. Or that can shake a stick at you. One of the highlights is the proboscis monkey, which, like the orangutans, is native to Borneo. You see them in zoos everywhere, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a thing.” But it’s not. It’s a Borneo-only treat. With luck, I’ll complete a row on that Primate Bingo card.

Bako is a full day tour, all by itself, and it was quite the adventure. The park isn’t that far from Kuching, maybe half an hour drive to the car park. But even getting there was an accomplishment.

We usually use a service called GetYourGuide for booking tours when there’s something we can’t muster on our own. The whole somebody’s-cousin thing seems fraught. It’s like using a ridehailing app instead of a taxi. The communication is in English, prices are set in advance, the itinerary is specified… It’s just easier.

But GetYourGuide didn’t seem to work in Sarawak. First, the prices were heinous, like $150 for a day tour. But then when I tried to book, the price doubled to $300. I finally figured out that they were all private tours, and you had to cover the full cost if there was just the one of you. Unlike other places, where the tour is scheduled, they’re selling up to ten seats, and they take off with whoever shows up. I’ve had tours like that effectively be private tours when I was the only one who booked.

At one point I passed a hotel with a tour sign outside, so I went in to see if there were more reasonable arrangements. I still had to book a private tour, but at much less than $300. So that was the first hurdle cleared. I booked it for my last full day in Kuching.

The second hurdle was that it started to rain on the drive to the park. Transit from the car park to the park entrance was by boat, and there was no guarantee that a boat would take us, and no guarantee, if we got to the park entrance, that they’d actually let us out on the trails.

We arrived at the dock and my guide, Salihin, was able to procure a boat. But it was still raining, so I had to decide whether to take the chance or not. If I bailed before the boat much of my fee would be refundable. But if we take the boat I’m committed, whether we’re actually permitted to hike the trails or not. Not a difficult decision, having worked so hard just to get as far as the dock. All aboard.

To say that the boat ride was wet is an understatement. The skiff had a canopy, but it was also slicing horizontally through a rainstorm, rendering the canopy useless. I arrived to the park pretty thoroughly soaked.

A short walk brought us to the ranger’s lodge, where we’d learn whether we’d be permitted on the trails or not. Certainly not while it was raining, as the footing, as I learned, is questionable under the driest of circumstances. We’d just have to hang out there until given the all clear. Or give up at some point and boat back.

Just on that short walk we came across this on the path: a Bornean Keeled Pit Viper. Just one of Bako’s many species of deadly snakes. Not deadly to humans, however, as it only produces enough venom to take down little critters, not something our size. We get what’s referred to as a “dry bite.” Which is better, I guess? But which still seems undesirable.

Salihin shares all of this intel after I come in close for a photo. Makes me wonder if, as a small human, I’m critter-sized.

We wound up waiting about an hour before being permitted to head out. I got an order of lovely fresh pancakes with local honey from their café, so I was able to fill the time just fine. Here’s a better example of what we were up against.

Thankfully, there was entertainment available while we waited. Besides the pancakes. A family of bearded pigs was wandering the grounds, snuffling for treats.

But you came for the action shots, and I would never disappoint you. Here’s the family.

And here’s one of the adults, up close. Jesus their noses are weird. Swear to god, when I first saw one I thought he was carrying some pink plastic thing in his mouth. Life’s rich fucking pageant.

Free to roam the wilds, Salihin and I set out on one of the trails. There are some very long trails and some very challenging trails. Wisely, Salihin chooses Bako’s bunny slope for me. Which turned out to be more than enough, thank you.

It’s very hard to overstate the jungle’s lush beauty.

The spiky palms were scarcely the only hazard. There was the path itself. The paths are all what I now know are called desire paths. Meaning that they were created through use rather than planning. As people have clambered over these paths, the dirt has worn down exposing the tree roots. So the paths themselves are now an obstacle course of gnarled tree roots and irregular stone.

Completely understandable why hiking isn’t permitted in the rain. Not sure just how much safer the paths are right after rain has stopped. Those were still very wet trails. Like a geriatric mountain goat, I was somehow able to keep my feet throughout the 2.5km hike.

There were places along the trail that were considered problematic enough that railings, bridges, and stairs had been built. Having traversed the parts they considered passable without assistance, it truly made me wonder what was under those structures. It had to be pretty heinous.

Besides, the assists themselves were problematic. Stairs had been built with 2″ deep, unevenly spaced steps, structures were coming loose and dangling… The design prompt appears to have been “make it just like the rest of the paths,” as opposed to “make it better than the paths.” Fair.

While I was there for the monkeys, there was plenty of smaller wildlife to enjoy.

As we neared the end of the trail, Salihin gave me a choice: we could walk back, retracing our steps, or we could continue on to the beach, where he could arrange for our boat to pick us up and look for proboscis monkeys in the mangroves lining the shore. It would, however, cost an additional charge of 50 ringgit, about $12, as we’d only engaged our boatman to take us to and from the main dock. That wasn’t a difficult decision. Monkeys!

While we waited, I was able to take in the beach. I may have been soaked through, but I hadn’t actually dressed for swimming. That was ok. Between this and the jellyfish, I wasn’t really tempted. Not, I believe, that it was permitted. Salihin certainly wouldn’t have let me.

I asked Salihin whether the crocodiles were freshwater or saltwater, trying to calibrate the risk of running across one, and he cheerfully offered that Bako had both.

The beach had a kind of desolate splendor, beautiful but bleak. There were rock formations to clamber over and water to avoid while we waited for our ride.

As we slid down the coast, I was just able to get my camera up in time to catch a white crocodile entering the water from the beach.

What I had thought was another crocodile in a stand of mangroves was, I was assured, just a big ass monitor lizard. On close inspection, that’s definitely a lizard tail, not a croc tail, but it was so big it was an easy mistake to make.

But we’re all here for the same thing: proboscis monkeys. I have to preface the video by noting that this is more like a safari than a zoo. We’re visiting animals in their native habitats, so any sighting is a special thing. What I’m getting at is, no cute closeups.

Here’s a pair at ground level with one of them climbing up a tree. Their distinctive white tails make them easy to spot, even in the wild.

Here’s that same monkey hanging out.

And here he is dropping from the trees to the ground. An entire Day In The Life.

And that did it. Bako National Park wrapped up in a nice bow. Although there were a few more sights on the way back to the dock. There were these interesting structures. They’re rigs that hold fishing nets, which are dropped off in the morning and picked up in the afternoon with the day’s catch. They’re made from nibong, a palm used for building materials rather than food. They’re hardy enough to survive in the water for over a decade.

And just what do you think these massive rubbery mats are? I couldn’t tell, either. Salihin had to explain that it was a fisherman’s daily jellyfish catch being offloaded for processing. I noticed that the fisherman wasn’t wearing gloves, and asked if the jellyfish were the non-stinging kind. Salihin assured me that those were stinging jellyfish, but the fishermen spend so much time handling them that they just get used to it. We can add Borneo Jellyfish Hunter to the list of Jobs Mark Doesn’t Want. It’s a very long, very comprehensive list, but that’s a new entry.

To be fair, its sister document, Jobs Mark Wants, is empty.

Given how dire the day started, soaked and uncertain whether I’d even get to the park, this ended damned skippy. Getting to see both orangutans and proboscis monkeys during my stay in Borneo was 100% a highlight.