Thursday, November 5, 2015

It’s been a while, so I thought it was time for a note from the “road.” It still isn’t much of a road, but at least it isn’t Kuala Lumpur. I’m in the George Town district of Penang about 5 hours by bus north of KL.

My journey here falls pretty firmly into the “things like this only seem to happen to me” category. I came here to apply for a tourist visa for Indonesia. The Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur (for reasons that no one can explain) won’t issue tourist visas. But the Indonesian embassy in Penang (in the same country) DOES issue tourist visas. It’s not a big deal because the bus journey here was pretty painless and Penang itself is a pleasant change from Kuala Lumpur. It feels much cooler with brighter, bluer skies. And George Town is tourism central with hundreds of touristy things to check out if you’re in the mood. I’m not in the mood for that (I didn’t even bring my camera), but it’s very nice to just walk around the streets and check things out. Little India is particularly nice, though with the overwhelming traffic that is everywhere in Asia.

The “things like this only happen to me” stuff occurred when I tried to get a bus out of Kuala Lumpur. For many, many years, buses to Penang and the rest of what they call the northern corridor left from the Pudu Sentral bus station, which is conveniently located just two or three blocks from my Kuala Lumpur hostel. Other guests at the hostel were happy to give me lots of advice about the buses from Pudu Sentral. There are so many buses to Penang that you can just show up and hop on the next one leaving. And you don’t even have to go into the building and up to the floor with the ticketing counters. It’s so easy that you just have to go to the level with all the buses, pick one out, buy a ticket right there and climb on board.

As is my wont, I went to Pudu Sentral the day before I planned to leave. This was on November 2nd. I wanted to check the place out and make sure I knew where to go. And, if possible, I wanted to buy my ticket in advance. I’m organized that way. I like to make my trips as stress-free as possible. So I walk over to Pudu Sentral, and right from the start, things don’t feel right. For one thing, there are no buses. Absolutely no buses. The ground floor area with the hundred or so parking slots for big buses is completely empty. Nothing was moving down there. That seemed strange for a bus station. I went inside and made my way up through a bewildering maze of shops and stairwells to the ticketing floor. There, I found a mostly dead space. Nearly every ticketing counter was closed and dark. The two or three that were open made no mention of Penang. The only signs of life was a group of drunk men sitting on low stools and spilling their drinks onto the carpet.

I searched around this area for a long time, but I could find no ticket counters for Penang and no buses at all. I finally went outside and I approached a knowledgeable-looking man in a security uniform to ask him what was going on. My guess was that I was at the wrong place. This couldn’t be Pudu Sentral, the main bus terminal for all buses going north. The security man asked where I wanted to go and then he handed me a shiny brochure from a pile on the stairs next to him. What did the brochure say? Well, it said that as of November 1st, all the northern corridor bus services had moved from Pudu Sentral to TBS – a major bus terminal to the south. I go to Pudu Sentral on November 2nd to catch a bus. And on November 1st – the day before – all the buses had vanished and moved elsewhere. It’s a good thing I had checked out the bus station beforehand.

Luckily, this new bus terminal was hooked up via the local rail system and the subway system, which they call Light Rail Transit or LRT. I made my way to an LRT station and plotted a route to TBS. It wasn’t close, but it wasn’t far. It turned out to be quite a modern establishment. It was so modern, in fact, that it felt almost quaint to be there in person to stand in line and buy a ticket. The savvy modern traveler would have booked a ticket online or swiped their cell phone at some magical kiosk and had everything taken care of by the gnomes in the Internet cloud. The walls around the bus station were plastered with promises of digital ease using EasyBook.com and other such services. Only chumps make physical trips to purchase bus tickets.

I had picked out my bus line in advance through Internet reviews, but that did me no good. The bus station was so technologically advanced that there were no separate counters for the various bus lines. There was a vast line of counters that served all of the bus lines at once. You simply told the woman behind the bullet-proof Plexiglas where you wanted to go and she punched up a selection of buses and times on a computer screen on your side. You select your bus trip, and she prints out your ticket and takes your money.

That sounds great, but there were problems. The main one was that I found it impossible to hear what the woman said through the holes that were drilled through the Plexiglas. I saw her mouth move, but that was it. No sound reached my ears. Perhaps my hearing is failing. Considering the way my whole body is falling apart, it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that my hearing is going, too, but even with perfect hearing I think it would have been difficult to hear this woman. I had to rest my head on the counter and shove my ear deep into the open space at the bottom in order to hear this woman. It got even more complicated because the woman could not book my bus trip to Penang and my return trip in one transaction. She had to do it in two separate transactions and I had to pay for each ticket separately. And she had to have my passport and contact phone number in order to sell me a ticket. Life has certainly gotten complicated. I can only imagine what a hippy backpacker from the 60s or 70s would think of this. It was pure chance and luck that I had my passport with me. I’d brought it because I knew I had to make a photocopy of it for my visa application.

I spent the rest of the day packing up my gear in Kuala Lumpur and putting it in storage. I also made a phone call to Penang and reserved a room at a budget guest house called 75 Travellers Lodge. Just making that phone call was an adventure in itself. I still haven’t mastered the dark arts of the smart phone, and nothing I did, no numbers I dialed convinced my phone to actually make a call. You’d think making a phone call would be the easiest thing to do with a telephone. It is, after all, its primary purpose. Yet, it is the one thing I can’t do. I can do all kinds of things related to the Internet and photography, but I find making phone calls and sending text messages bewildering. I finally figured out what magical sequence of numbers needed to precede the phone number to make the call. Then came the comedy of errors as I tried to make myself understood to the rather gruff man who answered the phone. I’ve since met this man, and he is very nice, but on the phone he came across as quite rude and abrupt. But that’s just the way phone calls go. I had a very specific request about which room I wanted to reserve, but we never managed to reach that point. I felt lucky to have reached him at all and to have successfully booked any type of room. I told him that I would be arriving in the late afternoon around 4 p.m. That was just a guess since I really had no idea how smoothly my journey would go. That guess turned out to be quite accurate. Even so, I was still on the ferry from the mainland to the island around 4 p.m. and my phone rang. It was the hotel wondering where I was. If I didn’t have this phone, chances are my room would have been given away. It’s a strange mix of advantages and disadvantages. The modern digital world provides all kinds of convenient ways to book bus tickets and reserve hotel rooms, but it also means expectations have risen. The bus station expects you to book online and the hotel expects you to have a contact number that is active 24 hours a day. If you don’t, things get complicated. Everyone everywhere needs my contact number all the time. If you don’t have one to provide, systems start falling apart.

I’m still in the honeymoon phase with my smartphone, and I’m quite enamored of the mapping capability. It’s weird that I wasn’t even aware of this possibility until now. I knew about GPS systems in cars and how convenient that can be. My father had a GPS and I marvelled at it. Despite being somewhat technical and being surrounded by people in Taiwan with smartphones, I never knew that smartphones could do the same thing. I really had no idea. I didn’t even know that when I bought this phone. I had a vague idea, but I had no idea how it really worked. It really wasn’t until this trip that I started to understand. I was on the bus between Kuala Lumpur and Penang, and just out of curiosity, I turned on my smartphone and loaded Maps.me. To my delight, the phone showed me exactly where I was and where I was traveling. I put in my destination – the Butterworth bus station in Penang – and the phone plotted a route for me and showed exactly where I was on this route and how long it would take to get there. I’m so out of touch with technology that I was delighted. I knew logically that my phone could do this, but I didn’t really understand what it meant. In particular, I didn’t really understand that this would happen whether I had an Internet connection or not. My phone has a GPS chip built into it and it is in constant contact with satellites overhead and with the map loaded into the phone’s memory, I can plot my route and see my current location at any time, with or without the Internet or a SIM card.

Of course, I could manage without it. In fact, I have a very good map of Malaysia and I tracked down a good map of Penang and George Town. I could easily plot my route on my own. I’ve survived for years without Maps.me and smartphones. But there is no question that this smartphone business has its advantages. A good map is wonderful, but its utility depends on you knowing where you are. If you don’t know where you are, the best map in the world is pretty useless. A smartphone gives you the map and your exact location on that map plus trip times and logistics for walking, driving and even public transportation. You could argue that it takes some of the mystery out of travel, but as it removes the mystery it also removes large amounts of hassle.

The utility of the smartphone and Maps.me has been a constant theme of this little trip. My bus, for example, was supposed to bring me to Butterworth bus station. And from there, a short walk and a short ferry ride would take me to George Town. But my bus suddenly stopped and there was a bunch of shouting and yelling and a lot of people – including the only two other foreigners on the bus – got off and boarded another bus. I had no idea what was going on, but I could tell from my Maps.me map that we weren’t at Butterworth yet. In fact, we were just short of a long bridge that goes to the island. I suspected that perhaps this bus – despite what I was told when I bought the ticket – wasn’t going to Buttterworth at all but was going to cross the bridge and land me in the middle of nowhere. I approached the bus driver once and asked about Butteworth. He seemed to understand me, and he indicated that I should stay on this bus. I sat down, but then I got nervous again and I approached him again. This time, I used the magic word “ferry.” Then everything changed. If I wanted to go to Butterworth and take the ferry, I needed to change buses. Then came a mad rush to get me off this bus and on the other bus – the same one that the other foreigners had boarded. Once that bus started to move, I could see that it was moving toward Buttterworth and I had made the right choice to ask again. Without the phone, I’d have been on that other bus going to the wrong place.

But even though I was on the right bus, things were complicated. I was waiting for the bus to pull into a bus station. But again we just stopped in the middle of the road and everyone piled off. I stayed on the bus because I understood we were going to the Butterworth bus station, and we weren’t there yet. The bus driver came on and he saw me and yelled at me to get off. I asked him about Butterworth and he just yelled at me some more and waved his hands around and indicated that I had to get off. Once on the street, things were still unclear. It looked like a normal street with lots of traffic and nothing more. I asked the bus driver again about Butterworth and he just waved his arms and yelled some more. I had no idea what he was saying. (This was on Transnacional bus lines, by the way. I wouldn’t recommend using them. There are much better options out there.)

Then my smartphone came to the rescue. I opened it up and I saw that the Butterworth station itself was just a short distance up the road on the right. The bus, for unknown reasons, had stopped a hundred meters short of the bus station and kicked all the passengers off. On my own, I might have been completely lost. The best map in the world would have been of no use because I didn’t know exactly where I was. But my smartphone knows where it is. A quick glance at the screen showed me exactly where I was and with one or two clicks, I plotted a route to the ferry terminal. It was so easy. Just follow the arrow and there you are.

Interestingly, I wasn’t able to plot a route all the way to my hotel. My smartphone offered me two choices. I could plot a walking route or a driving route. If I chose a driving route, I was told to backtrack and drive across that big bridge I mentioned. A walking route was never plotted because it ran into the ferry and then didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t walk across the ocean to the island. Maps.me wasn’t aware of the ferry. To use Maps.me, I had to wait until the ferry carried me across the water and deposited me back on land. Then I could plot a route to my hotel on Muntri street. It was quite funny because Maps.me would show me my location while I was on the ferry. It showed me drowning out in the ocean. It knew where I was, but it had no idea I was on a boat. For that, I’d likely have to use a more sophisticated mapping system likes Here Maps. This system contains public transportation options like buses and ferries.

I love ferries. They are often the greatest deals in the world in terms of travel romance versus cost. This ferry cost MR 1.20, and it had the added benefit of using a ticket turnstile system that only accepted old Malaysian coins. I can’t even imagine how such a system has continued for so long. Malaysia keeps changing its currrency, and at the moment the old coins and the new coins are both in circulation. And this ferry’s turnstiles accept only the larger old coins. So to get on the ferry, you have to line up at a ticket counter in order to change your new bills and coins into old coins. And then you go to the turnstile and hand your coins over to a man whose job it is to sit there and feed them into the turnstile. And, in true old Asia style, there are signs everywhere telling you to keep your ticket with you. You could be challenged at any time to produce your ticket proving that you paid the fare. This is amusing because at no time are you ever issued a ticket. This whole ferry is stuck in some kind of time loop in the past. The world changes – it even changes its money – but this ferry wants nothing of the new world. It won’t even change its signs as its own systems change.

It was a relatively short walk from the ferry terminal to Muntri street in Chinatown, where my hotel is located. Most of the accommodation in George Town is located in this area and the visitors head here. I followed the bouncing arrow on my smartphone to get here and it was marvelously easy. The friendly clerk at the hotel greeted me and he checked me in and took my money in a very organized fashion. I had tried to book a room on the second floor. I’d been told that these rooms had a shared bathroom, but they were larger and cheaper and more atmospheric. The rooms on the main floor were small and cell-like but with their own bathroom. That’s the kind of room I ended up with – room 101. It was very small and had only the barest suggestion of a window opening onto a narrow alley and a brick wall. But the important bits were there – a bed and a functioning bathroom with hot water. I wasn’t happy with the sheets. They were made of a kind of plastic or nylon and my body started to sweat the second my skin touched them. Luckily, I’d brought my own cotton sleeping sheet and I climbed into that in order to get some sleep.

My reason for coming to Penang was to get an Indonesian visa, and I was focused mainly on that. I planned to make the trip to the embassy the next morning, hand in my application, and then pick up my visa the next day. I had all the relevant information from various travel blogs and websites, including which bus to take. I generally despise buses of any kind, but a smartphone makes the process almost painless. I wouldn’t say it was stress-free, but it was quite simple to plot a route to the Indonesian embassy on my phone and then monitor my progress on the screen. In the old days, I’d have to track the bus’s movement at every intersection and carefully mark my position as we moved along. If I ever got turned around, I’d be lost. And it was always hard to hold onto a giant paper map while being tossed from side to side inside a racing bus. Now I could just keep my smartphone in my pocket and from time to time just pop it open and see where I was. When I got anywhere near the Indonesian embassy, I just hopped off the bus and walked from there. It couldn’t be simpler. I’m sure this isn’t news to anyone else, but it was a revelation to me how powerful a tool a smartphone can be for navigation.

As is my wont, I’d arrived at the embassy a bit early. It opened at 9:00, and I arrived at 8:30. There were already about thirty people there – all of them Malaysian or Indonesian or from some other Asian country. I saw no other other white dudes or dudettes. There was a big rush to get through the tiny door when it opened. I just hung back and waited till the chaos settled down. To get inside, we had to go through a security check. Our passport details were entered into a computer and our pictures were taken with a webcam. This was a lengthy process and the line moved very slowly. A guard with a metal detector gave me the once-over, but it was casually done. He just kind of waved the thing at me and he ignored the pannier bag on my back completely. That was a bit weird. I’m used to being searched very thoroughly at embassies, and they generally are very confused about my pannier bag with all its metal hooks and multiple compartments and zippers. This embassy was refreshingly casual, and I was pretty much waved inside. There was a dresss code, and I had made sure to wear long pants, a buttoned shirt, and socks and shoes.

There was no system inside either. There was no number to take or anything like that. A woman behind the bullet-proof plexiglass just waved me over and handed me a form to fill out. The form was surprisingly rational and well-done. It was clear and understandable and left lots of room for you to write down your information. I hate the forms that ask for your entire life history and then leave you a narrow space about half an inch long to write it all down. This form was very roomy and simple. I did not have some of the things the form required, such as a flight into and out of Indonesia. I planned to go by ferry. I might have booked a fake flight for this purpose, but I’d read online that if you could prove you had enough money, you didn’t need a flight. That turned out to be the case, but they wouldn’t accept my traveller’s checks as proof of financial solvency. They would accept only a bank statement or a credit card. Luckily, I could produce a credit card. I wasn’t totally thrilled with that because they took my card away and I presume made a photocopy of it. If they copied both sides, they’d have the number, expiry date, name, and the code on the back. Someone could easily use that info to go on a purchasing spree online.

The whole process was quite quaint, in fact. Even when I handed in the whole package – passport, photo, copy of passport and credit card – I was given nothing in return. No receipt and no number. I was told to just sit down and wait. So I sat on a chair and kept my eyes glued to the plexiglass screen. After a while, a woman came to the window and scanned the room and waved her hand when she saw me. No computerized systems for Indonesia. A hand wave and eye contact was enough. Then I had to pay my RM190 fee for a 60-day visa and then sit down and wait again. A few minutes later, the same woman waved at me and when I went to the window, she gave me a printed receipt. I was to return the next day at 10 a.m. to pick it up.

I could have taken the bus back to Muntri street, but I decided to walk. It was 4 or 5 kilometers, and it should have been easy. It would have been easy except the streets here – just like in Kuala Lumpur – are not pedestrian friendly. Making your way is like mountain climbing with hundreds of cars trying to kill you along the way. It is no fun at all. Even Little India is like that. I like the atmosphere in Litttle India and I’ve spent most of my time there. But it isn’t easy. The streets are narrow and the traffic is so intense that you can barely move.

I returned to the embassy this morning and picked up my passport with no drama. There is some confusion about whether this visa can be extended. Technically, it can’t be extended. But it is a type of visa that can be changed into a social visa, which CAN be extended. So it’s really a semantics issue. The normal 60-day tourist visa (not a social visit visa) can be extended but it is a two-step process. You change it into a social visit visa and then extend it. Or something like that. To do that, you need a local sponsor. It’s all very complicated and mysterious. I met a young Russian woman at the embassy. She had been in Indonesia already and had come to Penang to apply for a social visit visa. I’m not sure what she had previously, but it seems that all things become clear in the end.

My bus back to Kuala Lumpur is at 9:30 tomorrow morning. I’m just going to hang out in George Town this afternoon and evening. Grab a lunch and dinner down in Little India and then settle in with a book from the hotel’s little library.

Later:

I’ve just come back from having lunch in little India. Penang is famous for its food, but I generally head to places with meals that I know will fill me up. When I go for local specialties, I end up with flavor but little else. I’m still hungry after the meal. So I prefer the buffet spreads at Indian restaurants. I haven’t found one that I really like in Penang, but I found one that will suffice. Today, I ordered off the menu and got their set lunch with mutton. They serve it on a banana leaf and you get lots of little veggie dishes plus the rice and mutton and tea and the other stuff. It’s a good meal, though not as filling as the meal I usually have at my favorite Indian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. There, you select your own dishes and I pile up my plate high with veggie dishes and tofu and rice and it’s really filling and good and cheap.

Little India here in George Town is a mixed bag. It has great atmosphere with lots of streetside food sellers and shops blaring out loud music. There are lots of colors and lots of activity. However, it is nearly death to pedestrians all day and all night long. The streets are narrow and cars park on both sides and then proceed to double and triple park until there is barely enough room for one car to pass. Pedestrians have to dash from safe place to safe place while avoiding being crushed by the cars squeezing past them. In a way, I envy the people who do this double parking. They have zero concern for anyone else in the entire world. They drive to the front of the store or restaurant or cafe they want to visit and then stop their car right there and get out. It doesn’t matter that they’ve blocked off an entire lane of traffic, blocked in a bunch of other cars, and made it impossible for pedestrians to pass. They simply don’t care. They just leave their car there and walk away. I’d feel like an asshole if I did that. But these people just do whatever they please.

What they need here is an organization like the one in Russia: Stop a DoucheBag. I’ve recently become addicted to their YouTube videos. This volunteer organization goes around Moscow and tries to shame Muscovites that double park or drive down sidewalks or do other insane things. If the driver does not comply, they put a huge red sticker on their windshield that says something like “I park wherever I like and I don’t care about anyone else.” The great thing is that these stickers don’t come off easily. They attach with some vicious glue. As these drivers quickly find out, they don’t tear off with a simple tug. You have to get to work with solvents and scrapers and elbow grease to remove them. So having one of these huge stickers on your windshield is no small matter. Little India in Penang needs a Stop a DoucheBag movement. At the very least, they need the traffic police to come in and ticket everyone that double and triple parks. That would clean up the situation in a hurry. It amazes me that a parking situation is allowed to get that bad and no one does anything about it.

I had a funny moment regarding my cell phone. I had just finished going on and on about how wonderful my smartphone is as a mapping device. Then I went down to Little India, and I was standing at a street corner staring at the map on my phone when a big dump of yellow, lumpy bird diarrhea landed right on my phone. Splat. It was disgusting. I looked up and saw a pigeon sitting on a telephone wire right above my head. The amusing thing is that this almost never happens to me. A bird taking a dump on people is a standard part of comedy, but I can’t even remember the last time it actually happened. And now just after extolling the wonders of my smartphone, a bird lets me know what he thinks.

That’s all for now

Back in Kuala Lumpur the next day:

Just a quick note to start your day and mine. I’m back in Kuala Lumpur. The ferry/bus ride back from Penang went like a dream. I arrived at the dock about three minutes before the ferry was scheduled to leave. That’s a rare occurrence. I usually arrive just in time to wave at ferries from the dock as they leave and I have to wait for the next one. The bus station was loud and chaotic, but I found a counter for my bus line and they confirmed that my pre-booked ticket was valid and my bus was still scheduled to leave at 9:30. They even knew which platform it would be arriving at. When the bus arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was an upgrade from the one that had brought me to Penang, and it was pretty much empty. Many of the buses I see plying the highways of Malaysia are empty. I often wonder how they manage to stay in business.

The drive was about six hours long, and we hit only a little bit of traffic upon entering Kuala Lumpur. I entertained myself by plotting our course and following along with the GPS on my phone. I also passed the time with a new podcast. It’s called the History of the Internet Podcast. It’s a low-budget sort of thing with no production value, but the story is very detailed and very interesting. It begins with the launch of Netscape Navigator. Just hearing that name brought me back, and it was interesting to hear the story of its origins.

Kuala Lumpur seemed massive after my short stay in Georgetown. I’d forgotten how large the city is, and I’d gotten used to the urban sprawl and scale. Amazing how quickly I adapted to Georgetown. I’d also forgotten how hot and muggy it is in KL. I thought the heat and humidity in Kuala Lumpur was standard for Malaysia, but Penang was much cooler and drier. I could sit in my room or in cafes for hours without becoming drenched in sweat. In Kuala Lumpur, I’m sweating all the time no matter where I’m sitting. I quite liked my short stay in Georgetown. It is 100% touristy but in a good way. It would be easy to stay there long term and have an enjoyable time. I quickly learned that a lot of foreigners do exactly that. I’d check out these intereresting budget hostels, and all the big, atmospheric rooms on the second floor would be occupied by Westerners who had been living there for months. The only downside to Georgetown is that the flow of tourists had driven prices up. In the short time that I was there, I wasn’t able to find true budget restaurants. I’m sure they are there, but I wasn’t able to track any down. And things like coffee were relatively expensive. So just sitting in a cafe and drinking coffee was nice but you had to pay for the experience.

I’d reserved a room back here at the Bird Nest, and it was waiting for me. I quickly got my gear out of storage. In the time I was gone, some other people had left backpacks in storage and they were blocking my way. I had to move them, but I could barely pick them up. I’m very curious what is inside them. They were so heavy they were far beyond even the heaviest of backpacker loads. I don’t think anyone could even walk with them on their backs. And these were the bags they’d left behind. They must have had even more stuff in other bags. I’m very curious about what is inside them. It must be some kind of specialist equipment – like bags of cement or bricks of lead. Nothing else could weigh that much.

I’m now under a very real time crunch. My Malaysian visa expires on November 15th. That gives me 9 days, including today, to get out. I wouldn’t want to leave it to the very last day, so realistically, I have six or seven days. That would be no problem if I were flying, of course. But I need time to ride to the coast and catch a ferry. Which ferry I can take is still up in the air. I was under the impression there was only one ferry, and it left from Melaka. But there might be a second ferry (perhaps even a third one) leaving from the port city near Kuala Lumpur. This satellite city is called Port Klang. It would be a giant pain to ride a bike from here to there through the urban sprawl and highways, but it could be done in half a day. Melaka is two or three days away. And the scenery between here and there is pretty bland. It’s also not entirely clear that these ferries will take a bicycle onboard. That is always an issue. There is also a ferry from Singapore to a tiny island called off the coast that belongs to Indonesia. It’s possible, apparently, to get large ships from that island to various parts of Indonesia. I hadn’t heard of that until recently, but it doesn’t look very useful to me unless I wanted to go to Jakarta. There is a ferry to Medan, but geographically it makes no sense to ride all the way to Singapore and then backtrack all the way back by boat to Medan. Might as well have just crossed to a little town called Dumai from Kuala Lumpur and then ridden up the coast to Medan. It’s an interesting nugget of information to keep in my back pocket, though. It would be a useful way to leave from Indonesia and backtrack through Singapore/Malaysia if necessary. From anywhere in Indonesia, you can take a ferry back to Jakarta and then another ferry to Batam, which is just a short hop from Singapore. That’s probably a bit excessive, though, considering that there are such cheap flights. It is a pain to box up the bike, but you have to balance that against days and days and days of ferry travel.

On that note, I just read an entry on a cyclist’s travel blog taking a ferry from Singapore to Indonesia. It sounded pretty much exactly as I’d imagined: horrible. Crowded, disgusting bathrooms, swarming with cockroaches, loud TVs blaring all night, people smoking non-stop, lots of theft – all the stuff that people go traveling in Asia to experience. These cyclists were traveling as a couple, so they managed to board the ferry as a team – one person carrying gear while the other person guarded everything else. Their journal entry was all about scams and thefts and stuff like that.

Another smartphone note: I didn’t really take many pictures on this short trip. I just took a few as a test. And I have my phone set to automatically upload photos online to my Google account. It’s incredible how advanced that has become. I mentioned before that Google Photos has a built-in Assistant. This Assistant will automatically track your photos and do all kinds of interesting things with them. If you take a bunch of photos that are next to each other, the assistant will automatically build a panoroma for you. Then it sends you a link to this panorama with an option to save it or discard it. On this Penang trip, I learned that the Assistant will also use the GPS and time/date information embedded in each photo to build a photo album – a type of photographic journal – of your trip. It puts the photos in order, of course, and it also describes them. For example, my photos of the ferry actually came with the name of the ferry in the caption. Google and my phone knew the name of the ferry even when I didn’t. It makes perfect sense that it can do this, but it still comes as a surprise. I know that many people will react with gut feelings about privacy and security and fear, fear, fear. But I don’t care if Google knows where I went and what I took pictures of. I just think it’s kind of cool.

Well, it’s time to start my day. Today is a day for sorting through my gear – as always. I have to reorganize and get organized. With the addition of a laptop computer and a smartphone and other things, I have no idea how to pack anymore. Time to get organized. I have a bunch of extra stuff, and I’m trying to decide if I should leave it in storage in Kuala Lumpur, dump it, or send it back to Canada or even to Taiwan. That depends on whether I think I will be returning through Kuala Lumpur at any point. And I really don’t know. Have to think it through. I really don’t want to ship boxes to Canada, but I might have to.

Tags: Malaysia