The Sweet, Sunny South

Take me back to the place where I first saw the light
To the sweet, sunny South take me home
Where the wild birds sing me to sleep every night
Oh!, why was I tempted to roam.
-Joan Baez, "The Sweet, Sunny South"
Hey yall,
We were standing in a junkyard. The grass was overgrown and a few cars were up on cinderblocks. There were chickens running around underneath our bus as they raised it on a jack to tried to fix it. I walked to a little stream rolling through the back of the junkyard. I could just barely hear the words to the above song plucking away. It was then that I realized I was kind-of back in the sweet, sunny South. Kind of.
It’s been 10 days since I’ve left India, and life has been much easier. Southeast Asia feels a little bit closer to home. Its dirty, but it’s the kind of dirt that I like. The people are nice, and the lifestyle here is laid-back as lakeside lawn-furniture in the heat of summer. There is a really cool mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Thai cultures here, leaving a fusion of all of Asia on this thin strips of land. The weather is also a little bit nicer. I sweat, but I don’t get heat exhaustion, usually. So far, the monsoons have not dropped onto us yet.
Robby and I have been heading towards the equator for this leg of the trip. We started in Bangkok and, after India, we were amazed at the efficiency. The buses run. The people are nice, mostly. It’s not normal to have streets filled with slums. Of course, Bangkok has its ills, but we even enjoyed some of those.
From Asian modernity of Bangkok, we took an overnight bus/boat to an island called Ko Tao. It’s a part of an archipelago off southern Thailand’s east coast, in the Gulf of Siam. Of the three island’s in this archipelago, this island is a scuba hub, and the other two islands are party/beach islands. We did two dives, snorkeled, motorbiked, etc. for two days. We were tempted to stay longer, but these islands have a way of sucking you in if you stay too long. Some of the westerners who live there for years seemed to have lost all their will. Every day, their life is dive in the morning, sleep in the afternoon, party at night. Repeat. Despite the party mentality of some of the local expats, I really liked this island and may have to come back (but not for too long).
From there, we penetrated deeper into Asia’s sweet, sunny south. From Ko Tao, we took a night boat back to the mainland, and I was rocked to sleep by the waves tossing the boat around. The next day we arrived in Penang, Malaysia. Penang is an old colonial city that used to be a major trade node between China and India until it was overtaken by Singapore. It has a lot of crumbling colonial architecture and the population is a majority Chinese, so I got to practice some. Here, we also meet up with Robby’s girlfriend, Laurie.
We made a quick stop in the Cameroon Highland, hiking around this colonial hillstation in the middle of mountains and tea plantations. The Cameroon Highlands is one of the few places in Malaysia where it’s too cool to sleep naked, a welcome break from the equatorial heat of the rest of the places we had been in Southeast Asia.
Now we are hanging out in Kuala Lumpur, the biggest city you’ve never heard of. It’s the capital of Malaysia, and has the Petronas Towers, once the tallest buildings in the world, still the tallest pair of twin buildings. Tonight, we’ll be taking a night bus to another cool scuba island. At that point, we will split off: I will head back to Kuala Lumpur to fly to China on the 19th where I will start classes. Robby and Laurie will continue on to fly from Singapore to China and maybe travel with me for a weekend or two, when I’m out of class.
Best,
Lee