A Malaysian Homestay

For my last few days in Malaysia I stayed with a wonderful family in a village just outside of Port Dickson. I found Najla through Couch Surfers and she offered me a room at her parents house/guesthouse in a traditional Malay village. I quickly accepted. :) The best part was that Najla and her family were holidaying in the Cameron Highlands at the same time as me, so I was able to meet up with them there before they headed home. I followed two days later. It took a bus, a train and 2 more buses to get there, 8.5hrs total. :P When I told the final bus driver where I was going he asked, “Why you want to go there?” (ie- What's a single, white, female girl doing in the middle of rural Malaysia??) I told him I was going to visit a friend of mine. He asked her name and when I said 'Siti Najla,' understanding dawned on him, it's perfectly logical for a single, white, female girl to visit a friend in rural Malaysia, when the friend is Malay. Anyway, Najla was thankfully waiting at the bus stop for me. “Oh, that must be your friend there! I let you off now.” As soon as I'd set my bag down, I was besieged with refreshments and commands to 'eat, eat, you must be starving after so long a journey.' It didn't take much to get me to eat the delicious food set before me. As per Malay culture, the main dish was rice and everyone eats with their right hand, no utensils. It took some getting used to, but it's certainly much easier than learning to use chopsticks. :P Later that evening we went to the beach for some snacks and tea and watched the remainder of the sunset.

A note on Malaysians and their drinks: they like them sweet! Be it tea, coffee (or what passes for coffee) or juice, there's at least 5 parts sweetener and 1 part liquid. SO sweet! :P

On our return home I caught up in my journal, washed some clothes, took a shower, read for a bit and then decided to it bout time for bed. I settled in for the night. A little while later, as I was drifting off to sleep, I hear a knock on my door and Ayah (father in Malay) calls out, “Jewel, it's time to eat.” Oops. I guess it wasn't bed time. :P After diner, Ayah laid out a plan for the rest of my stay In the end, we only did about half of the stuff on his list; the Malay sense of time is similar to the Indian way. Then I had to show them pictures of my family, and where I live and my kids in Cambodia, and India and, and, and. And I didn't end up going to bed till 12:30, so much for an early night. :)

On Saturday we walked to the Army Museum (after a breakfast of fried rice). The one family car is broken, only one motor bike was available (the other two were with the other two boys, who were on their way home from KL), the bus system is sporadic and Ayah decided that walking would be good for us. It was a long walk. :P Also, museums aren't my favourite thing to do as a tourist, and army museums in particular are not my cup of tea. However, it was free to get in and I learned that before Malaysian independence in 1945 or 57, the country had been occupied from ~1504, first by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then British, then the Japanese during WWII and then the Brits again. That's a long time to be occupied.

On the way home we stopped for a treat. It was an amazing (and unsurprisingly sweet) concoction of strawberry ice cream, shaved ice and syrup, with chopped nuts, corn and kidney beans at the bottom.

That evening, the boys returned from KL, we had a BBQ (I tried BBQ cuttle fish for the first time), a couple from KL came to stay at the guesthouse (with their adorable 3 month old daughter), Ibu's friend came to visit, Ayah serenaded us most of the night with Malay karaoke and then insisted we sing a traditional Malay song with him , and Ayah and Ibu taught me a traditional Malay dance, which turned out to be very similar to the Electric slide. It was great to hang out with family and friends, laugh, joke, tease, eat, share and dance. :)

On Sunday we took a 'jungle walk' to a fresh water well near the ocean and an old lighthouse. The highlight was clambering out on a huge rock in the water and then watching two of the boys try to follow me. Obviously they didn't spend a majority of their childhood climbing rocks and trees. The water was amazing and there was a lovely lagoon for swimming. I really wanted to jump off the rock, On the walk to the lighthouse we were passed by a man out walking his dog and Najal reacted like he was walking his pet lion or something. She got as far off the trail as she could and continued to squeal and run away anytime the dog came within 10 feet of her. I learned that Muslims are not allowed to touch dogs, if they do, they must go through a proper cleansing process to remove all traces of dog from their body. I didn't think of it at the time, but on reflection, I wonder if this accounts for the lack of stray dogs everywhere in Malaysia. We met up with Ibu on the beach and had a picnic lunch of rice (of course) sweet and sour chicken, and deep fried bananas, yams, corn dogs and fish sandwiches. (yes, the bread was sandwiches were deep fried, it was interesting). The other highlight of the day was riding back to the house on the back of Muz's moto-bike! I'd ridden a moto twice in Cambodia, but both times I didn't know the driver and it just wasn't as cool. So this was my first time riding with a friend, wearing a helmet (they're SO heavy) and having the absolute time of my life. It was GREAT! :D

A random fact I learned while Najla and her family were trying to teach me Malay is that the Malay and Khmer languages have the same word for 'town:' kompong. I didn't think these two languages had anything in common, Malay uses the English alphabet while Khmer looks like Hindi, it's not a character based language like Mandarin, but they don't use the English alphabet.

That evening, I had to make my monument. Najla and her family have hosted two other Couchsurfers, a couple from Spain and a couple from Russia. Both couples wrote a small thank you note that the family has framed and put on their wall and they made a cement impression of their hands, to put out in the garden. I made an inuksuk. Muz mixed cement to pour around the base and I left impressions of my hand and wrote 'Canada.' :)

On my last day with the family, Ayah took me to visit a local kindergarten. I felt like a foreigner coming to look at the kids in the zoo, but it was Ahya's idea, so I went along with it. The kids were adorable and so respectful. When we arrived and as we left, they touched our hands to their forehead/nose/lips. It's a gesture done in Malaysia as a sign of respect to the elder you are greeting.

I spent the rest of the day travelling to Singapore. :P Six buses and 8.5 hours later I reached the small island country. It's just like KL, in the same way that Seattle and Vancouver are similar. Another city of tall sky scrapers, traffic lights, people rushing here and there, reliable bus and metro systems, and designer brands names everywhere. I spent less that 24hrs. in Singapore, and that was enough. The next day I caught my flight to Bali to meet up with Beth, Sierra and Rosie, three girls I'd met in Siem Reap, Cambodia, 4 months previously. :)