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Sony and I find the women behind these abayas to be both mysterious and frustrating. Mysterious because I keep wondering how they sneeze and how they drink coffee with that thing on…and how do their sunglasses not fall off their noses? At the buffet this morning a woman wearing an […]

You can judge a country by the way they eat…and Malaysia certainly tops my list of culinary wonderlands. It’s just that there are so many choices…and everything, almost, is really good. Ok, last night I did sample a ‘national dessert’ of shaved ice with three different syrups that I left […]

In a drenching rain we’ve arrived in Kuala Lumpur, a city of 4.5 million with a pulsing, oil-fueled heart. What’s new since I was last here in 2006? More shopping. The names that rich Asians love, like Hugo Boss, Cartier, and Juicy Couture, all lined up here in the famous […]

This stunning building is almost finished on the banks of the muddy Sarawak River in downtown Kuching. It’s the new parliament building, as grand as a palace and something unlike anything you’d see in the US. We prefer our edifi to be blocky, and big, this one is grand, tall […]

The streets are crowded with cars, small trucks and motorbikes. The sidewalks are porticos, stuffed with vendors, sellers of all manner of goods. The interiors of the shops are dark, inhabited by Chinese men and young girls, silently waiting there for customers. You walk beneath the ceilings of the stores […]

The South China sea is extraordinarily warm. It’s gentle and feels like a bath, and I floated out and put my ears beneath the waves and exalted in that splendor of nothing, of not hearing anything for just a few brief moments. Sony also loved being on the beach and […]

The nicest thing about this big Rainforest World Music Festival are the people we’ve met. We got to the Sarawac Cultural Village early, and we sat on bamboo matts and drank mojitos. While lounging on big pillows we met a couple from Singapore with two young boys. He is an […]

These guys called Akasha from Malaysia rocked the rainforest with their blues number played on a sitar plus twangy Indian drums, guitar and bongos. They also played Jimi Hendrix’ Voodoo Child, with that unforgettable riff from the beginning repeated over and over. It was a fantastic performance and the most […]

The Rainforest Music festival is held in the shadow of a great mountain called Santobong, which means coffee in Iban. There were thousands of people there, and they were all wet and muddy, since from before the first note rain poured down. This is the rainforest after all. Sony and […]