To Dwell in Possibility

Pictures are worth a thousand words?

One of the royal bathing pools. This pool was for the women and children. The royal family would be washed in this, essentially an enormous bathtub.

Local women painting batik. Some batik designs are drawn on the fabric with hot wax to prevent bleeding but this one  was drawn with normal fabric pencil. It can take hours to complete a design like the one on her shirt, and then the shirt might sell for only $10. It's a tedious art that I feel can be under appreciated. Batik is not easy!

Snuck my camera into the batik shop... Portraits like this can sell for $100. They might take days to complete.  All of these are hand drawn, not traced or copied from somewhere else.

Overlooking one of the many temples we visited. A UNESCO world heritage site located in Solo City, each of the upside down bell stone structures used to hold a small Buddha statue. The temple was crafted almost entirely by laborers.

Civet poop coffee! Said to be the most expensive coffee in the world, Kopi Luwak is made from covet cat (kind of like a monkey cat mix) droppings. The cats eat the beans and then the acids in their stomach treat the beans to make an extremely dark and smooth coffee. Very strong, but don't add sugar or milk to appreciate the full flavor, aroma, and texture. (I sound like such a coffee aficionado!)

One of the royal family's pet birds. He was very old and seemed very sad. Forlorn looking body. But at least he wasn't caged. Then again, he wasn't singing.

My favorite part of the trip was meeting some of the other YES Abroad students that have actually been staying in Jogja since October! Julianne and Darlene accompanied us to yet another temple. It was strange talking about their years with them. I enjoyed it though, it makes me so excited to share my experiences with my very international group of friends!

The story goes: a suitor built all these temples for his lover before sunrise so she would marry him, but she refused and ever since then her spirit was locked in one of the temples. Indonesians are very superstitious people, so we weren't even allowed in some chambers of the temples due to spirits.

Favorite picture ever. L to R: me, Sara from Italy, Ilaria from Italy, Irene from Italy, Teresa

While staying in JB, Teresa and I went into Singapore one day so she could show me around. I was amazed as soon as we crossed the border. Everything felt really clean and super Western. It was a bit like being back in America again...
Doing what we do best, Teresa and I tackled the malls on Orchard Rd. Shopping is a shared favorite pasttime of ours.Only problem was I kept having to remind myself the prices were in Singapore dollars, not ringgit. The exchange rate there is really similar to the USD, so I kept having to remind myself that the costs add up really, really quickly. I didn't actually change any money for SingDollars either, so thank you my dear debit card and my dear daddy for funding me!
We ate lunch at a place called Skinny Pizza, which sounded promising but was kind of a letdown. The pizza was served on a cracker thin crust (hence the skinny) and covered with green. More salad than pizza. The sweet potato fries were way too sweet as well, but at least they had authentic A&W and real cheese.
After lunch, we headed over to the touristy area, Marina Bay. Neither of us felt like paying to go to the top and we couldn't figure a way sneak up there, so we hung around the hotel for a while and had some New Zealand cold slab ice cream (basically Coldstone! Miss that goodness.)
Finally, we decided to finish the day by going to Chinatown. After a bargaining battle, I bought my cheongsam for a 20% reduced price.
After doing the touristy thing, we had steamboat at a friend's house. Steamboat is a pot of boiling soup that you can cook meat, vegetables, and other small things in. It's really delicious and filling.
Singapore had this weird surrealistic feel to it. Everything was clean and sparkly, but you can tell that it's that way due to the strict fines. Apartments are stacked upon each other and crammed into already overcrowded city blocks. It's a country that's dreams are too big for it's area! Already many people are living in JB and working in Singapore. I liked visiting it as a tourist. The escalators move faster than the ones in Malaysia. Public toilets are cleaner. There's toilet paper. People tip. But I wouldn't want to live there. Everyone seems stressed and there's no room to breathe. Of course there are people who love that lifestyle, but not me. I loved the experience, but long term couldn't tahan. Strange how one day in Singapore made me homesick for Malaysia!
I'd take quality roti canai over a clean bathroom any day....

Disappointing salad pizza

Marina Bay

Doing the touristy thing

Really pretty building

Steamboat with crabstick, fishball, and some veggies

February was basically a month of travelling Malaysia and the little corner of the world that is Southeast Asia, so bear with me as I recap this month's adventures!

I first travelled to Johor Bahru, to stay with Teresa's host family for Chinese New Year. It was a 12 hour train ride filled with cockroaches, non-functioning air conditioning, and overpriced meehoon goreng, but eventually I reached JB Sentral where Teresa greeted me with some kuih, Starbucks and a hug. Good friend alert or what?! I was welcomed warmly with a comment (completely friendly of course) from Teresa's host mom about how much weight I've gained and an exceptional dinner of Chinese noodles. Somehow those two things seem connected... Anyways.
The eve and eve-eve of CNY were a flurry of activity. Last minute cheongsam shopping, eating lots of Chinese food, drinking coffee to no end. I suppose the festivities statrted with the reunion dinner. Teresa, me, Timo and Ihsan (two of Teresa's mom's interns) and the various other members of Teresa's  host family traveled to a restaurant for a dinner. The point of this dinner is to, well, reunite the family before the real celebration begins. Hands down the best part was the yee san. This is a dish that consists of rainbow crunchy things, raw salmon, vegetables and some sort of sauce. The whole mess of ingredients is put on a plate and then tossed in the air using chopsticks. Suposedly, the higher the tosses, the higher your prosperity is. Chinese New Year is a lot about ensuring prosperity for the following year. In a slightly bizarre plot twist, the foreigners were the only ones to use chopsticks for the entire meal.
Due to a communication error, we ended up with 15 foreign interns at the house for the eve celebrations. Lots of fireworks, wish lanterns, and at midnight, 2 oranges to each person, we headed to the temple. The temple was crowded and filled with the cloy scent of incense. We received our fortunes for the year and very sleepily returned home.
The next morning we attended services at Teresa's host mom's Japanese Buddhist center. There was chanting, which was a really amazing thing to witness. The whole room was full of energy as they all repeated the Chinese phrases. Really powerful. After chanting, there were lion dances and drum performances, the first of many we'd witness during the holiday. We also had a barbecue dinner that night for all the interns and some neighbors. We played some bonding games and enjoyed each other's company.
The second day we went to Batu Pahat, a small village also located in the state of Johor. After visiting some relatives, we received ang pau from the prosperity god at a local temple and explored the area. There was a pig farm, a sketchy looking jetty, and some really beautiful cave temples. The village had a community feeling, everyone knew everyone. For such a small area, it was packed full of things to do. After exploring the village we went for a delicious lunch of chicken feet! This probably sounds so gross to any Americans reading this, but chicken feet are one of my favorite Chinese foods. You just put the toes in your mouth and suck off the meat. It's super juicy, and 100% clean.
Third day of Chinese New Year: more open houses, more orange exchange, more ang pau. Pretty routine eh? Of course, at every open house we went to there was tons of food. Some of the typical Chinese New Year goodies are Love Letters, pineapple tarts, and this amazing thing that I can only describe as pork jerky. It's ridiculously expensive, and definitely a delicacy, but so satisfying (and probably full of cholesterol...)
After the third day, we went sightseeing around Johor a bit. Teresa, her host family and I went to the southernmost tip of mainland Asia, a water village, and some places in Johor Bahru. I know Ipoh is supposed to be one of the largest cities in Malaysia, but it doesn't have the skyscraper pedestrian feeling of KL and JB. Something I appreciate about Ipoh, definitely.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Teresas's host family and I'm so grateful they hosted me for CNY!

Wish Lanterns

Sparkler Art: CNY

Candles at the temple

The temple

At the Japanese Buddhist centre: international interns, Teresa, me, Teresas's host mom

The pig farm at Batu Pahat

Po$ing in front of the giant money

With our friend the prosperity god

Incense

A few weeks ago, was the Hindu festival, Thaipusam. I stayed with a really young Indian family in Gopeng, a town 20 or so minutes from Ipoh.
Thaipusam is honestly one of the craziest, breath-taking, and somewhat terrifying thing I've experienced. A bit about the background of the festival: during this festival, Hindus do many things to honor one of their gods. Some carry pots of milk, other stick spears though their mouth or carry/ pull heavy parade-like floats on their back. Which are attached to hooks that are pierced into the skin.
This sounds incredibly painful, but it is said that the people are in a trance while being pierced repeatedly, and they don't feel a thing. This trance also gives them a slightly manic look to their faces. Add that to the giant spears going through their mouths and you get a slightly terrifying picture.
You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaipusam
On the morning of Thaipusam, I went to the temple with my Indian host mom, auntie and grandmother. Ipoh is known for its striking cliff views and I was finally able to do something I always wanted to, enter a cave temple. The crowds were so dense that everyone moved as one mob, which filled the musty cave with a very centralized energy.
I love how colorful Indian culture is. Vibrant temples, vivid candles, a rainbow of saree colors. Tamil and Hindi conversations, chanting, a bit of India here in Malaysia.  It was an amazing experience to be part of that energy, something I'll never forget.
The second night of Thaipusam, I volunteered on the streets of Ipoh. My Indian host dad for the week works for an electronic communication company, and that company had a booth to serve food and drink to the temple goers.  We're talking giant vats of curry and rice, enough to feed 5,000 people.
Lise's and my job was to pour drinks. While this may have seemed like a simple task, puring juice while wearing a saree is not easy! Sequined sarees, heavy bangles, and fake hairpieces are so not intended for  people that have to walk back and forth between a table and a tub of juice. Ah well, these are the lessons that one learns here.
Albeit a bit shocking, Thaipusam is a festival I was lucky to experience. So much of what goes on in my life here I would have never been able to learn about back in The States. I am eternally grateful to Malaysia for opening my eyes to all these new things.

NASI

A man was pulling this with rope attached to hooks in his back