June 3rd
Once again it has been
ages since I've made a post. Which is rather ironic considering I've
spent the last week staying with a friend, who has (mostly) reliable
wi-fi and I haven't been doing a lot of sight seeing. Oh well.
Killing time at the airport is a good time to write. :) I'm on my
way to Malaysia, to see the metropolitan city of Kuala Lumpur and the
countryside of the Cameron Highlands, where the average daily
temperatures hovers in the 20's, I can't wait!
This past week I've been staying with a friend in
Mumbai, a teacher at a new international school and I've been helping
her catalogue the books for the library. We literally catalogued
hundred's of books. As the school is Grade 1-5, most of the books
have been childrens picture books and juvenile chapter books. I've
had a grand time coming across books I read as a kid but had
forgotten about till now. Amber Brown, Frog and Toad, Shelia Rae the
Brave, Jane Yolen, Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler,
Some Monkeys and
Their Monkey
Business, The Golly Sisters Go West,
Angelina Ballerina, Patricia Pollaccao, Marc Brown, and more. And
I found new authors and books – Jack
Prelutsky,
The Day I Traded My Dad for Two Goldfish,
the Elephant and Piggie books, 100 Cupboards. It was a blast.
Besides cataloguing
childrens books, we also had to enter non-fiction books. This
required the Dewey Decimal system. I learned a lot about the DDS and
seemingly random it can be. I also learned that I have no desire to
be a librarian, it's too sedentary.
The one touristy venture
I'd done is a tour of Dhararvi. Many people refer to is as Dhararvi
Slum, but it is certainly NOT a slum. That word revokes images of
hastily built ramshackle structures that would hardly provide
adequate protection from the slightest variance in weather. It
assumes the people living in the area are just lounging about,
waiting to be relocated or given an indication of what they're
supposed to do. 'Slums' sounds like people sleeping and defecating
in the streets and cooking food (if any) over an open flame and
children running around with no clothes on. Dhararvi was none of
these things. True, there are between 600,000 and over 1 million
people residing in ~1.7 km2 HOWEVER,
the streets of the residential area were clean and free of the trash
that decorates many of the avenues in Mumbai. Instead, there were
women rolling out and drying papadums in the sun, potted gardens and
barrels of stored potable water. There's an entire industry section
that produces everything from plastic pellets from recycled plastic
collected from around the city to hand dyed swaths of fabric to clay
pots to leather belts and wallets and bags. There's a soap making
business and a pastry making business. The place abounds with
industry. According to Wikipedia, the district of Dharavi
has an estimated 5000 businesses and 15,000 single-room factories.
That's an astounding number, considering the space available.
Needless to say, I was thoroughly impressed with Dharavi and it's
inhabitants.
You're not aloud to take photos while on the tour through Dharavi, however, the company I used has a great website with a short slide show of the places they show you in the tour. http://www.realitytoursandtravel.com/tours/slum-tours/dharavi-short-tour/
June 5th
A few thoughts on KL:
It's posh, and lavish, and metropolitan
and developed and snazzy! I think I experienced culture shock for
the first time yesterday when I walked into the mall in the Petronas
Towers. (I've been in India and Cambodia for the past 4 months, it's
been awhile since I've been in proper civilization). I emerged
through the lower levels of the mall and looked up, up, up. The
place is HUGE!! And every posh, expensive label that I could think
of was there or in the shopping district of KL, which seemed more
upscale than New York. It was CRAZY! Everyone wears designer
clothes, has fancy phones and big cars, and owns 50 pairs of
sunglasses (at least). You can't go more than 5km here without
coming across another mall/shopping centre, they're everywhere, worse
than Starbucks. At least Starbucks only takes up the area of one
shop. The malls are HUGE and there's SO MANY!! I don't know what I
was expecting from KL, but it wasn't this. I was standing below the
Petronas Towers the other night, they were all lit up and glitzy and
I had a moment of, 'I can't believe I'm here, actually seeing this!'
If only there was a large body of water near-by, then the city would
be almost perfect.
Note: me and my CS host are watching
the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, it's rather surreal, she
doesn't look very jubilant.
June 7th
I have found rolling green hills and
cool weather (21C), it's amazing!! I'm currently in Tanah Rata, in
the Cameron Highlands. There are acres and acres of rolling green
hills, tea plantations, and strawberry farms. It's a fabulous
respite from the chaos of Mumbai and the metropolis of Kuala Lumpar.
Today, disregarding the warnings about walking around in the
highlands on your own, I set off on my own, on a small trek though
the jungle/forest. It was green and cool and damp and reminded me of
home, except all of the trees here are deciduous, not conifers. :P
It was a wonderful walk through some beautiful scenery. Just what I
needed after spending so much time in large cities in the past month.
My next stop is a village in the state of Negeri
Sembilan, south of KL. The girl I'm planning on staying with
(through CouchSurfing) was in the Highlands yesterday, on holiday
with her family. We we able to get in touch and they picked my up
from my hostel and we went to the market, which was full of anything
strawberry related, anything! It was great to hang out with a large
family. :) Siti and her brother were very curious about N. America,
the US and Canada (no we don't have open air markets like this in
Canada, it rains too much. Canada is north of the US, not south.
The language in Canada and the US is English, though there is
regional variance in slang. Yes, most white families are small, my
family is an exception.) I am looking forward to staying with them
for a few days and learning about the Malay culture. I was told that
I'm going to learn how to dance, cook, and speak Malay. :P
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