Scary Day

It all started on an exciting and positive note this morning, with Chinese Dragons and dancers seeing us off at the Raffles in Singapore. Finally we were driving! All the cars filed out of the underground parking lot in sequential order. We loaded the bags and off we went. My father drove, I navigated using our roadbook. You have to imagine. A roadbook is a very detailed set of instructions that guides you by providing distance measurements between points where you have to turn, plus it illustrates what these turns look like and what's around you where you have to turn. 

Little diagrams called "Tulip Diagrams" are supposed to do this (see my pic above---the fateful page in the roadbook). Well, my dad said "you are doing a great job navigating with this thing already" and 2 minutes later we got ourselves so lost that I just wanted to curl up and disappear. 

Read one little side note wrong--took the wrong turn--ended up at the wrong border post to Malaysia--totally different route from everyone else in our group. The whole thing was terribly stressful and scary, but we made it to our next destination in Malacca maybe 30 minutes after the last car of the main group. Anyway...all the Brits made fun of us, but I am just glad we are here and it all worked out. We are still working on our post-traumatic stress, but I think a few local Tiger beers will help a lot. 

Malacca. Totally different from Singapore. This is a small not-so-fancy Malaysian town where, for the first time, I feel like we are in the heart of Asia. I spent a while walking through the Jonkers Street market, a network of little streets filled with all sorts of shops and a few very beautiful temples. There was a Buddhist temple next to a Mosque next to a Hindu Temple, which illustrates the eclectic character of the people who live here in Malaysia. People don't look as smooth and pure here any more as they did in Singapore, but everyone is amazingly friendly. We asked some random older gentleman in a shady back alley for directions and got the nicest and most helpful response in good English. 

Tonight, our group is invited to a dinner at a local authentic Malay restaurant in the old part of this town. Tomorrow, we have to sign off and leave at 9 am...next stop Kuala Lumpur. I'm excited to see the Petronas Towers, until 2004 the tallest building in the world. If we ever make it there, with me in the car...

"On March 20, 1997, French Urban climber Alain "Spiderman" Robert, using only his bare hands and feet and with no safety devices, scaled the building's exterior glass and steel wall."

Thank you friends for reading this stuff...I like writing to all of you.