Asian Extravaganza, Days 6 and 7

Well, it's Sunday afternoon right now for me, and I'm in Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia. Friday night, after getting back to Dubai from Oman, I flew overnight back to Singapore, to meet up with the rest of my crew. The flight was a bit delayed, so I got in at 10am or so, just in time to catch literally the last 45 seconds of the 1st Prez Debates on a CNN screen in the airport. Yarrrrgh! Luckily, I've been able to catch up on all that a bit... Obama didn't totally kick ass, but he remained presidential and positive, while McCain was condescending and vague. So I'm going to call it for Obama. And it looks like CNN and others have done the same. Which is great news, cause McCain was supposed to be favored in that one.

Annnnyways. I took a cab from the hotel to Luis' place in Singapore (he's there for Motorola, just like Dan's in Penang for Motorola). I met up with Dan, Kelly, Kelly, and Luis, and we all headed out to explore Singapore. We didn't do anything too crazy... got some breakfast (some sort of toast with lots of butter, sugar, and kima or something like that), then walked around downtown. There's a huge F1 racing event going on on the actual streets of Singapore this wknd, so there are tons of people in town, and whole sections of the city are walled off for the race. We grabbed some drinks at the Raffles Hotel (apparently Sir Stamford Raffles is a big name in Singaporean history)... I had a Singapore Sling, which was apparently invented at that very hotel...!

We wandered around some more, including checking out Chinatown. We actually drank multiple "travelers" during the day... you can have open liquor out on the streets of Singapore (and Malaysia, as it turns out), so we availed ourselves. Quite a change from my experience in Dubai, where I wasn't allowed to even drink water outside during the day. =D We got beers at this restaurant owned by one Alvin Koh, who I met in SF yearrrrs ago. Totally random. He's a 4'9" bodybuilder/chef/poet/speaker/renaissance man, apparently. Interesting guy. I'd wondered what happened to him... I guess the answer is he moved to Singapore. =D

Eventually we packed up and metro/bus'd it over the border to Malaysia, to Johor Bahru. That was an experience... though not exciting enough to justify documenting. =D At JB, we checked into a Hyatt, cleaned ourselves up, then went to meet Luis' boss at this bar downtown. We ended up eating at a fast-food-esque place called Nando's, which apparently is a global chain that does Portuguese food. Mmmmm. We then met up with Luis' boss, his wife, and his 2 sisters. By that time I was freaking exhausted, because I'd slept 2 hrs on the plane from Dubai (my back was hurting for some reason, and I got sucked into watching Baby Mama (d'oh!)), and because I'd not had a full night's sleep in like a month. I powered through the small talk for a couple hours by variously squeezing random parts of my body to the point of causing myself pain.... it was the only way to keep from passing out and face-planting in the pitchers of beer sitting on the table between us and our Malaysian hosts. Good times.

Anyways, we got to sleep, then got up at ass-o-clock (5am) to catch a 7am flight to Kota Kinabalu, which is where SE Asia's tallest mountain is waiting for us to attempt to scale it on Tues/Weds. We got in, checked into another Hyatt, then wandered a local market and got some street food. The food was good, and I got an awesome belt in the market with a pirate buckle!!! So I'm basically now set for life. Annnd... that's it so far. The rest of the day will likely consist of swimming in the hotel pool followed by drinking tonight. Tomorrow we're going to snorkle at the islands of the coast of Borneo here (wooooo Borneo!!!), then climb the mountain Tues/Weds. God knows when/if I'll have PC access again in the near future. Or when I'll get a full night's sleep next. =P