Malang, Indonesia

While editing some of my interviews today at the office, I noticed that the photos I was adding were from "more than 7 weeks ago," which makes me wonder where the time has gone and feel a bit of guilt. (I wrote that before my recent two week trip to the US, so let's just round up to more than two months) After my conference in Kuching and stopover in Kuala Lumpur, I traveled to Malang, East Java to conduct a series of interviews with people involved with a vermicomposting network, which will be part of a larger series of case studies on "waste" recovery. It was a busy few days filled with culinary adventures.

First things first: there is krispy kreme in the Jakarta airport.

A taste of home, but with innovative varieties, like peanut butter and jelly!

My time in Malang was scheduled to the brim by my two student assistants from a local university, Dwi and Hana. They did a great job with the pre-interviews and tracking down people without addresses.

They wear Letterman-style jackets from their "Agritech Research and Study Club" and are currently in Japan on a research exchange.

I asked them to act like badass biker chicks next to their motos.

One of the many worm-growing groups who were gracious enough to talk to us about their experiences.

Such healthy worms. Perfect for turning into:

Food for baby shrimp,

Vitality Capsules,

Sports drinks (CHEERS!) and much more!

I was offered worms 4 times. I consumed them twice (sports drink and honey elixir), passed once (worm covered ginger), and brought one back to Switzerland (the capsules) for my friends to try. Two months of sitting on my desk and I have not had any takers, yet. 

Aside from the worms, I ate well. In addition to a stop at KFC in Anto's honor (an Indonesian friend from my master's program who introduced me to Indonesians' love for fried chicken and rice), I enjoyed bakso and other stews (kept and served hot).

A little hard to tell, but I love the presentation.

Also, I ate BRAINS at a Maskan Padang. So smooth!

Roti is basically an Indonesian (?) doughnut (baked, not fried). So good. On at least one occasion I just ate these for dinner after a long day in the field.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Most of the time I was flying to Kuala Lumpur from Kuching and walking around the city I had the song "Kuala Lumpur" by the North Carolina based band Bombadil stuck in my head. If you want to catch an earworm or have a more authentic representation of my experience on peninsular Malaysia, CLICK HERE, but be warned, the first five seconds of the video are not part of the song and a little vulgar (the link is cued up to start six seconds in).

I was not planning on spending time in KL, but in order to get from Kuching, Malaysia (where I had a conference) to Malang, Indonesia (where I was doing a field study for work), I needed to change planes in Kuala Lumpur and in Jakarta. Most of the connections I found had me spending very short nights in one of the airports - flight landing at 11 PM and then taking off the next morning at 8 or something similar. The office would of course pay for a hotel, but this didn't sound like much fun, so I decided to pick one of the capitals to spend more time in by creating a longer layover. Jakarta is notorious for its traffic, so I chose to spend an afternoon and night in KL - flying from Kuching in the morning (AirAsia, meal:Pak Nasser's Nasi Lemak - yummy, but I was thrown a bit by the fried anchovies), exploring a bit, and on the following morning flying to Jakarta and on to Malang (Air Garuda).

I love bathroom instruction signs. People take for garnted that toilet usage is obvious.

For less than the price of the airport hotel, I was able to by transit tickets to and around the city and book a night at the Tune Hotel - Downtown KL. Tune Hotels are run by the same guy who runs AirAsia, a low-cost airline. I was curious about how the hotel would be - can you imagine if RyanAir branched out into the hospitality industry? For twelve euros I got a small single hotel room with a bathroom, but had to purchase air conditioning and WiFi separately in twelve hour bundles (also towels, TV, breakfast, and soap/shampoo, which I didn't need).The hotel itself was quite chic, with a chain coffee shop, 7/11, and some meeting rooms on the first floor. 

The room had very little furniture - just the bed, a bedside table,
this fold-down  shelf under the TV and some hangers - no wardrobe.

After dropping my bag, I went to the train station to catch the commuter rail to the Batu Caves, which is a series of limestone caves north of KL, some of which have Hindu temples inside. Its most recognizable features are the 140 foot tall statue of Murugan, the Hindu god of war, and the over 270 steps that lead up to the entrance to the caves. I think we can all agree that my selfie game has improved since Singapore.

So many steps. There were Chinese tourist ladies climbing in high-heeled sandals!

At the top!

What the entrance looks like (partially)

I actually climbed twice. When I travel, I try to get snow domes from the capital cities that I visit. NOTE: Not snow globes! These are sort of half circles (not spheres) and usually plastic. This is a question of aesthetics, fun (they often have movable parts!), transportability, tradition, no music, and spending a lot of time on "the search." Well, there was a stand at the top that had a pretty cool one with the golden statue in it, but it was one of the pen holder ones, which have never made sense to me - why have an object that is begging to be shook, as the vessel for other objects. Thinking that there would be others at the stores at the bottom for less money, I passed on it.  I was wrong. The downhill stores had globes that lit up, were made of glass,were more expensive, and did not have the Batu Caves, in favor of having the Petronas towers, which I knew I probably would not visit. So, I climbed back up! Good thing too, because I went to go see what the deal was with a side cave that had guided tours and got this great view:

View from entrance to the Dark Cave. Not the clearest of days, but you can make out the Petronas Twin Towers (to the left of the long, leafless twig) and the KL Tower (between that twig and the lone, dangling leaf).

This is a neighboring green shrine to Hanuman, a Hindu deity (in the form of a monkey?) who is revered for his strength.
Check out those quads! 

I sprung for the iced (read: from the refrigerator) coconut as a reward for climbing all those stairs (extra 20 cents). 

I sat in the ladies' carriage on the train.
 Women. Women with children. No couples. No men.

I spent the rest of the afternoon ambling through the city. Trying to navigate by sight to the KL Tower, I found some cool street art:

 KL Tower was pretty cool and I am glad that I paid extra to go to the open upper deck, it was much less crowded than the observation deck and not glassed in, so the photos could be much better. I just wish I had a tripod with me. As I am writing this, I only have access to the images from my phone, but I took some nice panoramas with my "real camera"

KL Tower from the hill that it is on after my visit, BLING! one of the ceilings in the elevator waiting area, view of the Petronas towers from the Open Deck.

I found my hotel from the KL Tower by following the monorail line.
It is the short building with the red lights, just after the curve in the brown line. 

My durian popsicle and the skyline. Oddly smelling, but surprisingly good. 

My flight was kind of early - I had to take a taxi to the train station in order to catch the airport express, because the monorail was not running yet, but I made my flight with plenty of time to spare. I was a little worried about changing planes in Jakarta, so quickly, but it worked out fine, with time to enjoy some american style doughnuts while I waited:

Doughnuts = Da bomb! Coffee = Nescafe :( 

Kota Kinabalu + Kuching, Malaysia

After snorkeling in Haiti, I "resolved" to try to squeeze scuba into an upcoming trip and I was able to make it happen in Malaysia. I read somewhere online that Kota Kinabalu ("KK") wasn't the most amazing diving in Malysia, but had a good reputation for beginner diving. KK is on the same island as a research symposium that I attended in August, so I checked with a few diving schools there for availability, then enrolled in and completed the PADI eLearning  Open Water Diver course before I flew to Malaysia, so I could get the theoretical stuff out of the way and spend my time there in the water and not in a classroom. The eLearning took a bit longer than expected and contributed to some time-stress in preparing for three weeks away from home. The eLearning was very thorough and made me think about physics/engineering stuff I had not thought about since undergrad. There is so much going on with fluids and pressures. When one dives, in addition to the tank of air that people associate with scubaers, one also wears a vest that is connected to the air tank and a belt with weights. You add air to the vest when you want to float (when you get to the surface, you inflate it all the way and you can float) and release it when you want to sink, but it gets more complicated - as you go deeper, the pressure of the water on the vest compresses the air further, so it provides less buoyancy, so you also have to add air as you go deeper.  So maintaining  a constant position under water was somewhat difficult to get the hang of - to make things even more complicated, the amount of air in your lungs also affects your position, so breathing can also be used to manage where you are.

Weight belt. I usually started with 3kg, but
sometimes the instructor had to add more.
(as I lost weight from compressed air)

Flippers, air-vest (real name: buoyancy control
device -BCD), tank, and regulator.

The instruction from Sucba Junkie KK was great! The lessons were fun and safety was always clear. I only forgot to breathe once... One of the exercises involves swimming without a mask and with contacts in that meant my eyes were closed. It was such a strange sensation, I freaked out for a few seconds, but quickly remembered that not breathing was very dangerous, inhaled and continued the guided blind swim. After two days, I completed all the exercises and despite low visibility, saw lots of cool animals on the dives: a lionfish, some clownfish (Nemo), some itty-biddy crabs... I don't have my log book with me right now, so I cannot give you a full list. On the last dive of the course, we saw an enchanting sea turtle. She was hanging out around the corner of some coral and then after a minute or so, gracefully swam by our group. I think my favorite are the nudibranchs, which I can only describe as fierce (in the fashion sense) sea slugs:

Google Image Search for nudibrach. Such variety! 

After the course, I paid for an extra day of "fun diving" to get some more practice - I initially left this gap day in the the schedule in case weather prevented me from doing the course in two days or so I had the opportunity to try out some of the other action sports in the area (white water rafting, trekking...).

On the dive boat off the coast of an national park island rain forest. 

I had planned to work in the evenings after diving (my presentation was not finished), but I pretty much fell asleep straight away. The first night I was asleep before I even took a shower. Luckily I woke up just in time to grab some food from a nearby convenience store before it closed. 

I did not see much of KK, although I don't know how much there is to see. I think it is like a port,, but touristically/culturally it is more of a gateway to Mt Kinabalu (on the Sabah state flag below) and rain forest activities. I was able to go through the fish market and sample a range of sweets from the night market.

Sabah Flag

Direction and distance to nearest public toilet on the main drag in KK.

Local dish: Bakso or meatballs. Super tasty and I love how nicely everything was arranged in the bowl

Coconut coated, green ball with some sort of fruit filling. Not the best.

Pancake with peanuts - nice!

Cupcake made with Sprite.

The next morning I worked from the hostel, since the airport bus stopped across the street and the wifi was pretty good. At the airport I searching in vain for stamps to mail some postcards that I had written (If you want one from an upcoming trip, email/message/carrier pigeon me your address!!!), but had to settle for some ice cream style dessert instead.

Yam flavored coconut milk "soft desert." Different from then Yam Ice cream G-ma and I made once, but quite yummy.

I flew AirAsia, a Malaysian low-cost airline, sort of similar to easyJet, to Kuching. The basic ticket would have been less than $25, but since I needed to check a bag I opted for their PremiumFlex ticket, which was still under fifty, but included a meal, seat reservation (with more leg room), separate check-in counter, and the freedom to change the ticket until two hours before the flight, if needed.

My meal choice was Vegetarian Chicken with Fried Ginger Rice, which I selected mostly because I wanted to see what vegetarian chicken was. turns out it is like a sheet of soy rolled into the shape of a chicken breast. It was actually really good.

Upon arrival in Kuching, I checked into my fancy hotel. My room looked like it had been decorated by Aunt Beth and there was a yoga mat and weights in the closet. I checked out the gym and pool situation, to gauge if they were worth using. The gym had some nice equipment, but I never made it back - no surprise. I wouldn't meet any conference folks until the next say so I went to the riverfront to get some food. I had bakso again, as the Sarawak Laksa (what Anthony Bourdain eats when he is in town) was finished for the day, accompanied by this Air Bandung lychee:

Rose syrup and fruit with (condensed?) milk

I saw several stands that make these fancy juice+fruit cocktails, which I assume exist in place of bars, since as a predominately Muslim country, there are few bars. I saw even saw them putting canned, possibly creamed, corn into one of the drinks!

Now we get to the real reason I came to Malaysia: a Service Research Research Symposium,, where I presented on sanitation services in low-income countries. I received some good feedback about different theoretical lenses I could use to examine my extensive data set and was able to see what other researchers are up to.

The conference concluded with a cultural dinner with dances and songs from all of the tribes in Sarawak. All of the Malaysians at my table were very helpful with explaining the Chinese style food - there were eight courses (because 8 is lucky), one of which was fish head soup!

Finally able to track down some Laksa Sarawak, albeit at the breakfast buffet of my five star hotel.

"preloved clothing from the USA" in the mall that was attached to my hotel

Taste of Sweden

It has been snowing steadily all day and the ice cream truck still runs! I heard the song playing and thought it was some sort of residence complex-wide alarm!

Swedes are prodigious ice cream consumers and I had heard of this phenomenon, but this was the first time I have ever seen a truck here (even in the summer).

 I chased it down. It wasn't a typical ice cream truck, they sell mostly bulk bars/cups (+frozen pizza), but I was able to buy an ice cream sandwich!

Morocco Trip

Aren't we an enthusiastic looking crew?

During the short break between my semesters in Madrid and Nantes, I went to Morocco with two classmates and a girl who is doing a different Erasmus Mundus master’s program. I didn’t really know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised.  I had heard about cool beach towns and the desert, but we drove a loop from Marrakesh to Merzouga and back and I was astounded by the geography – snowy mountains, vast plateaus, black canyons and plush oases. Yup that’s right, the first snow I experienced this winter was in Africa - not in Europe or when I was home for Christmas!

I wrote much more than I had planned (it was a weeklong trip {or perhaps to atone for not updating more regularly}), so before I recount the trip I’ll cover some general highlights:

I bought shoes! Aren’t they cute? I learned some valuable economics lessons while doing so. When I bargained for the first two pairs, I didn’t know the actual market value just the price the guy quoted me and how much a friend had paid for a pair on a previous trip. Well, I paid only 6 Euros more for the two pair than she paid for one, so I thought I had gotten a deal. Turns out they should have only been between 5 and 9 Euros each, so I totally got bamboozled, but overpaid by less than others and spent much less than how I actually valued the shoes. I haggled hard over all of my subsequent purchases – my Intercultural Negotiations professor would have been proud.

Nourishment-wise there sure were some tasty treats:

Lamb with cumin and salt.

We didn't eat here. I just thought you'd enjoy knowing how KFC is spelled in Arabic.

After spending two nights in Marrakesh, we rented a Dacia Logan for 4 days and set off to explore the countryside. The drive to the desert took much longer than expected, so we didn’t make it back east in time to check out Essaouira and the coast, so I guess I’ll just have to go back.

On the way to the desert, during a pit stop in Ouarzazate, the Hollywood of northern Africa, we checked out a Kasbah, which has been used in several films, and its adjacent mellah (the Jewish quarter):

We slept that night in a little town called Tinerher. The owner told us the 4 person room was 250 dirhams and we went to park the car and eat dinner. When we returned he told us he was mistaken about the room price, which irked us all, until he said that it was actually 200 dh a night. The next morning we breakfasted quickly and set off for the desert.

We arrived in Merzouga and were swarmed by guys trying to get us to go to their hotel for the trek. We told them that we had a reservation and turned down a dirt/sand road, but were followed by a guy on a moped. Andrea rolled down the window to tell him to leave us alone, but the man started speaking in Italian. If you ever need Andrea to do something for you, just ask him in Italian and he will comply. Since he drove 95% of the trip, he got to decide things like that, so we followed the motor bike to La Tradition, were the trips offered were nothing like what the moto-man proposed, but we settled on a two hour dromedary trek through the dunes of Erg Chebbi (part of the Sahara) to a campsite, where we would watch the sunset and dune ski/board.

Translating the deal.

Camels are not the most comfortable animals, so two hours plus an hour back in the morning was plenty. They are ornery, defecate constantly and sound like Chewbacca, but they do have nice eyelashes.

The sunset was amazing. The sky really Roy G. Biv-ed it up! The stars were also pretty cool, but I’ve seen better… it was hard to stay away from the fire long enough to get a great view, because it was so cold. In the morning, we trekked back to the hotel, showered and headed back west on the low road. We wanted to stay in Ouarzazate, because it was a nice, clean city (it has really expensive looking lamp posts lining the main road)

We got back to Ouarza early the evening, so the guys and I decided to go to a hammam, the public bathhouses, where you get scrubbed down and massaged by a total stranger in front of lots of other women. My French is nonexistent, but that didn’t really matter since they only spoke Arabic. I paid my entrance fee and went into the changing room, stripped down to my boyshorts, ordered a scrub and subsequently had to buy my own scrubbing cloth and argan oil goop, then I was handed off to my attendant, who led me into the steamy room, plopped me down on a plastic mat and doused me with hot water a few times and walked away. I just sat there until the woman next to me gestured that I should continue to fling water on myself my attendant came back after a bit and began spreading the goop all over my body. After I was covered, she grabbed an arm and started polishing me with the scrubbing cloth, which has the texture of medium grit sandpaper.  Most of you know that I’m squeamish about walking on a pool deck barefoot, so I was understandably proud that I survived laying face down on the ground of a public shower. It was a little painful, abrupt and out of my comfort zone, but I felt super shiny and smooth afterwards. As I was leaving the women’s changing room, the attendant chased after me and wrapped my scarf (which was around my neck) around my head. I walked back to the hotel and got more attention than usual, I think because I was alone.

TANGENT: In Marrakesh plenty of women don’t cover their heads, but as we moved eastward it became less and less common. I always wore a scarf around my neck in case I needed to cover myself quickly, but now that I think about it, I wonder if that was seen a sort of flaunting my nonconformance to the rules. Like I had a scarf, I just wasn’t using it “properly.” We did go into a market in a small town where there were few women and some of them were in black burqas with neon detailing, so I kept my jacket hood up and tight. I don’t think I was fooling anyone, but it made me feel a little less conspicuous.

After the hammam and a freezing night in Ouarza, we headed back to Marrakesh for some more exploring and shopping. The next day we had a final orange juice in Djemaa el Fna and negotiated a taxi to the airport to head back to Madrid.

Overall it was an excellent trip! I'm in France now -  getting settled in to the new school and dorm. There's snow on the ground and it was minus 3 C today!