Malaysia, Days IV & V: Kota Bharu, Woodcarving Museum, and the Long Ride Back

Click here for the accompanying picture album.

Like the first one, this hotel also had a delicious buffet breakfast, from which I drank several cups of coffee and had some faithful peanut butter toast. We headed out and rode 10 minutes down the road to a different hotel, whereby we had a talk with a Christian to Muslim convert from Ghana named Mohammed Michael. He told us about the basic beliefs of Islam, but his message was a little bit too evangelical and honestly a bit ridiculous. I don't think he realized that he was supposed to be talking to us from more of an academic than a religious standpoint, but it was interesting and sparked some thoughtful conversations, nonetheless.

After the talk, we went to a mosque just across the street, which happened to be the largest mosque in the state we were in. It was, ironically, the only mosque we visited the whole time, and we didn't even get to stay very long. Almost as soon as we got there, a man came and told Francis that the governor (or minister or sultan or something, I don't remember his official title) of the state was willing to meet with us briefly.

I'm not sure how or why this came about, and, honestly, we were all suspecting Francis of more foul play at first. However, it turned out to be completely legit, and the minister (for lack of a better word) was very old and majestic, kind of like Dumbledore or Gandalf. He had a very wise, patient voice, and even though he spoke in Malay and we only got to hear Francis' miserable translations, it was clear that he spoke poetically and eloquently. I'm still not sure how or why we wound up in his presence, but it was a very cool experience, and I'm glad it wound up happening.

After this spontaneous meeting, we rode in the bus for quite a while looking for a woodcarving museum/workshop, which was also the home of the woodcarver's widow, who ran the whole affair. I don't think the bus driver knew how to get there, and there were quite a few times when we wasted a lot of time going down a road only to make a U-turn.

Nevertheless, the area we were in is practically Thailand, and so riding around in the countryside was actually pretty interesting. I'm not sure how to describe it, but the landscape really did look different from Malaysia, and somehow like what I would imagine Thailand to be like. Wide, slow, brown rivers, marshy soil, lots of wide-leafed, verdant trees. The architecture in Kota Bharu also looked very "Thai" to me, though I'm not exactly sure where this feeling came from.

The woodcarving centre was very interesting (I should get a nickel for every time I use that word in this blog. I'd be rich). I'm going to post an academic blog which I wrote for our class blog that summarizes the experience, so I won't talk too much about it here. Essentially, it is at the house of a late woodcarver, whose widow, after his death, compiled his works into a museum and started running workshops to teach people about his craft. She saw herself as a sort of protector of his craft, guarding it against globalization and modernization. It was funny how well the stuff she said fit in with what we've been talking about in our globalization class.

After the woodcarving centre, we drove back to Kota Bharu and Francis let us run loose for two hours to find dinner. It was nice to have freedom, but Kota Bharu is a filthy, slightly sketchy town, and there were not really any restaurants in close proximity to our hotel. We finally found a place to eat, and the waiter was really nice and spoke pretty good English, which was a huge plus. The food was kind of awful, though, and I was not satisfied at all after finishing it.

Fortunately, the shadow puppet show we were supposed to go to was not being performed (I really don't know how Francis didn't know about this beforehand), so Francis decided to take us to a "night market." I'd love to tell you what this is, but I have no idea. As we were driving up to the night market, we saw a McDonald's and a big group of us decided we would much rather go there than to any circumspect "night market."

It was actually a good decision, I think. There was a big group of us, and the workers seemed pretty excited to see Americans there. The most ironic part is that McDonald's was one of the nicest, classiest establishments around. They even had a big flat screen TV playing the World Cup! The hamburger and ice cream I ate completely made up for the awful dinner I had had before, and were the first time I really felt satisfied during the whole trip! Before we left, the workers asked us to come behind the counter and take a picture with them, and then gave us all free kids' toys. It was a heart-warming, rejuvenating experience after so much lifeless riding around in a bus.

We went back to the hotel after McDonald's, singing songs together on the bus. Here's a video of one of them. It was an awesome bonding experience, and a perfect nostalgia moment.

At the hotel, a bunch of us met up in one person's room and had a good ole time. We danced without music, played truth or dare, and had discussions about life and identity and dreams for the future. It was, once again, a great bonding experience, but we stayed up really late because we knew we had nothing to do the next day but ride in the bus for 18 hours.

We weren't sorry about staying up, but by midnight Sunday night, when we were going through Singapore customs, we realized how stupid staying up so late was. I felt beyond dead, and we didn't get back to the dorms until 2am. Ick.

On the way back, we played a game like telephone and pictionary combined. Each person writes a sentence or a quote or a lyric from a song and then passes the paper to the person next to them. The next person interprets the quote into a picture, folds over the initial sentence, and passes the picture to the next person. This third person writes a sentence to describe what's going on in the picture and then folds over the initial picture. The next person draws a picture interpreting this second sentence, and so on. By the end, you always wind up with something completely ridiculous. It was a hilarious game - few things in life can make me laugh as hard as that game did!

We stopped at a shack (more or less) around 1pm and had lunch. Just down the street was the beach, so we all ate quickly and ran to play in the water. It was a perfect ending to an ambiguous trip. The weather was sunny but not too hot, the water was gorgeous, clear, blue, and so warm, the sand was soft and shell-less, and there were rocks to sit on. We tried not to get too wet, but it was more or less futile. My shorts got pretty soaked, so I put on my friend's sarong after we got back on the bus! Everyone thought that was a hoot (and it really was, but the thing was so dry and comfortable!).

That's about it! As I passed out on my bed at 2:30am Monday morning, our excursion to Malaysia came to a close.