June 10
I was fascinated by the utopian parallel universe that is Singapore. I wanted to learn more. So I went to two museums today: the Pernakian and the Asian Civilizations. Both were top notch museums. Probably the best museums I’ve ever been to (although I haven’t been to many musuems in my life). I spent several hours in museums today.
June 11
I returned to Malaysia. I stayed in the city of Melaka. Melaka was a significant trading post in history for India, China, and Europe. It was nice visit. I walked around mostly and had some Indian food. I ventured down to the McDonalds and it was poppin’ at 10pm! I couldn’t believe how popular it was here. There was even a family celebrating a child’s first birthday there. McDonalds owns Melaka.
June 12
I saw the Petronas Towers today. They’re huge. And that’s an understatement. They distort your visual reality.
I’m excited for my 30-day trip in Indonesia with my girlfriend. She’s flying out from Los Angeles. And she is in the air now as I write this. It’ll be her first time outside of the US. I have a solid outline of an itinerary. I’m excited.
Indonesia was a tough country for making an itinerary. It’s huge and getting around is slow. And there isn’t a backpacker trail like in other regions of the world. I had an Indonesia Lonely Planet guidebook. It was okay, but it didn’t rank any places or landmarks. So I went on their website where they do rank places. I looked at the top ten things to do in the whole country, and then filtered down by major region, and then by island.
We already committed to start and end our trip in Bali–the center of the country–so that made it difficult to “do” Indonesia without any backtracking.
Nonetheless, I devised an efficient route that would hit three major islands with minimal backtracking. And we could feel like we “did” Indonesia.
The route was:
- Seminyak, Bali
- Ubud, Bali
- Gili Islands, Lombok
- Back to Bali (to the main bus terminal)
- Borobudour, Java
- Jogjakarta, Java
- Back to Bali (to hit whatever else we missed)
And there was also an option to another island far away from tourists, where we would see a volanic wonder and raw, indigenious life. However, it would be expensive and/or time consuming to get there and around. So, it’s only plan B, for now.