Malaysia Diaries May 2019: Awana and Janda Baik

I'm finally writing about the real reason we came to Malaysia.  My uncle's wedding!  Of course all the pictures I managed to take were of the trees and my Kong Kong "hitting the whoa".  So all the fancy wedding pictures were taken from Facebook including the ones taken by WYK Catering.

The wedding location was in the gorgeous tourist destination of Genting Highlands.  More specifically in Puncak Dani Genting Highlands AirBnB in Awana.

This was the first wedding I ever attended.  Prior to coming, I kept pestering my mom about what to expect.  Is it the same as western weddings (one I'm more familiar with)?  Is the attire different?  But she wasn't too sure herself albeit her wedding 20 years ago.

In the end, the wedding was a mix of western Christian and Chinese traditions.

The next day, we headed next door to a resort where my great-aunt was staying and ate lunch.  Then my mom, sister, and I were back on the road to Janda Baik to visit her university friends: Yen Yen, Pauline, and Mayine.

We stayed one night in a chalet, ate steam boat for dinner, walked across a river, and pretended to climb a coconut tree.

I had a lot of fun meeting her friends and seeing the similarities between her friends and mine.  They're all so different and yet they have stayed friends for over 20 years.  It's incredible and I hope the same for my best friends Dana and Serenity.

Malaysia Diaries May 2019: Broga and Kuala Selangor For a Day

My mom made arrangements to meet up with her friends over the next two weeks and I got the pleasure of meeting them all.

This day in particular was packed with adventure served with a side of educational tidbits.  Ming Wah was my mom's colleague back in the days and now she works at an community eco farm in Broga.  It was incredible and refreshing to see an eco community farm in another country as I think community gardens are an amazing way to build community with others who value sustainable practices and who care about the environment.  Now more than ever is sustainable living a necessary mindset and value people need to have if we are to pull the Earth out of our decades of ill-treatment.

Broga is a small is a small town in Selangor, Malaysia with a predominantly Chinese population.  This community farm sits on land which is own by a local farmer who eventually did not need so much land and wanted to share it with individuals who were willing to take on their own projects and use the land well.

They've got rows of corn, ginger, papaya, and sweet potatoes to name a few.  I had the pleasure of helping out and deweeding the corn rows which were shared with ginger growing below them.  I've never seen ginger grown before and I was amazed at how fragrant the leaves were!

After what seemed like ages in the crazy hot and humid weather, we got a little tour of the place and then ate lunch.  Check out their Facebook page!

That was merely the start of the day's adventures.  A short drive away, and we arrived at an insanely gorgeous waterfall.  There was no one except our little posse.  Swimming in the water felt so good!  That is until I began spotting lots of water bugs to which I did not feel like swimming anymore haha.

The next portion of the day was spent with just Ming Wah, my mom, and my sister.

There was so much beauty and yet in all the views, there was a heartbreaking amount of trash EVERYWHERE.  I've seen videos and pictures online about terrible waste management, but this was the worst I've ever seen in person.  It only reaffirmed by choice of living more sustainably and ethically.

Driving down a small, narrow road, we saw plenty of monkeys sitting in the trash, picking at it for food, and waiting for passer-by's to throw more trash out the window in hopes of food.  Not only have we destroyed their habitats for the agriculture industry, we have forced them to eat out of our trash.  Not to mention all the plastic and toxic waste they have surely consumed.  The state of Earth and the animals and plants depending on it is in critical condition.

HUMANS NEED TO CHANGE.  WE NEED TO SHIFT OUR CONSUMERISTIC HABITS TO BE MORE SUSTAINABLE.  WE HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THE LINEAR INFRASTRUCTURE OF THESE BIG CORPORATIONS THAT CREATE THESE SINGLE USE PLASTICS AND HAVE BRAINWASHED US FOR DECADES THAT SINGLE USE PLASTICS IS A CONVENIENCE.  IT IS NOT.

#take3forthesea

Malaysia Diaries May 2019: Back to Kuala Lumpur

On May 8th, my family and I flew back to KL to visit family and attend my uncle's wedding.  It so happens that I go back every 5 years or so.  This case was no different.  Malaysia is where all my close relative live.  

(Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I grew up in Malaysia.  Would I value family more?  Aside from living oceans apart, the language barrier is always a challenge.  In Malaysia, people grow up being exposed to three main languages: Malay, Chinese dialects, and English.  Switching from one language to the next looks so easy coming from my relatives who live here, but they mainly talk Hokkien to each other.  I can only communicate fluently in English to them.  And every now and then someone tells me that it's not good to just know English.  I am of Chinese decent so I should know how to speak Chinese.  People think poorly of Chinese who only know English.  "Banana" is what they call me.  I used to hate learning Mandarin.  I went to a predominantly white school where all my friends and classmates spoke English to their parents.  I thought it was embarrassing to speak a different language to your parents.  Being Asian in general was not cool.  Kids made fun of Chinese people.  "My name is Ling Ling.  Ching chong ching chong".  The jokes were funny to me at times, but ultimately made me feel like my heritage was a joke.  I distanced myself from being Chinese.  My mother spoke exclusively in English to me so it was easier to turn a blind eye; to create that barrier.  A barrier that had negative repercussions that only until recently did I begin to feel.)

I wrote that while in Malaysia and contemplated whether or not to delete it entirely.  Ultimately, that's how I felt and continue to feel so it would not seem genuine to not put my thoughts out there.  I digress.

Albeit the sweltering hot temperatures, everyday we managed to do something different and exciting. I plan to dedicate a full blog post to the best foods to try in Malaysia, but for now here's a brief recap of my first two days back in KL:

My Kong Kong has lived in the same neighbourhood for well over forty years, so he's an expert and well loved man to plenty of people who live and work around his house.  Along the roads it's very easy to find shops under tents selling anything and everything.  He brought us to a store he frequents regularly to let us try fresh durian and coconut.  My mom buys the frozen ones back home and I never dare to touch them because it just looks so unappetizing.  Eating tropical fruits here is such an experience.  The durian was so creamy and soft and not at all foul.

 After a few hours roaming around the mall, my EE brought us to try chendol.  It beats ice kachang any day.  The green jelly is made from the pandan leaf.

 The pasar malam (night market) is a fun way to try different foods.  I ate asam laksa, jackfruit, and guava to name a few.  All of which I have eating before, but only in Malaysia!

Aso, my neighbour, has a gorgeous jackfruit tree in her front yard.  I almost didn't recognize the jackfruit under at the clothes protecting them.  I thought they were just doing laundry.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series! I've got a backlog of pictures I want to share and a lot more time to write now that I'm on summer vacation.