Tag Archives: culture

Gong Xi Fa Cai

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Gong xi fa cai, or happy new year in Chinese! Sorry we have been lazy lately to update our blog. As most of you know already, we came back home about 2 weeks ago. Getting home was bit of a culture shock, but more of that later. First, we have still some things to tell you. Sasi starts with Chinese!

In the middle of the exotic Malaysian Borneo jungle, we got acquainted with another Malaysian minority which lives in the area: its the Chinese community of Kota kinabalu, at that time they were celebrating the famous Chinese New Year.

Chinese do follow another calendar than the West, the Lunar calendar, where the date of the Chinese New Year matched the dates of our stay in Malaysia. The two weeks celebrations were in the end of January, the actual New Years Day in 26th of Jan this year.

Kota Kinabalu was a very friendly place where more Chinese inhabitant had businesses than Malays, in fact you can see the difference that East Malaysia (i.e. Borneo) was almost dominated by the Chinese while West Malaysia was more majority of Malay.

The celebrations started with the popular Dragon and Lion dances competition in Padang Merdeka Plaza in central KK. This event takes place every year in Sabah province in Borneo with a competition by more than 50 dancing groups from all over the Sabah region. The dancers will form a team of a single color and will be dressed as a lion or dragon. Believe me it´s a hard job!

The teams competed and danced really well, the loud music and drumming, the kids enjoying and the high VIP guests were all impressed, there was lots of fireworks and it seems that the main part that everybody expected was the arrival of Santa (They have a Chinese version of a man in red coming and spreading golden coins or small red envelopes filled with coins that people usually give to children or unmarried adults during the new year festivals. He is supposedly the personification of the God of Fortune or something in Chinese believes.)

Kota Kinabalu gave us the chance to dip into the Chinese culture, even without making it to China. Chinese culture is mostly based about material life, money and what you own is a very big part of life of a person, the more you have and the more you own puts you in a higher level at the afterlife.

Now, this was mostly it from KK, except the jungle trekking and the jungle walking we had and the rain forest climbing. Kota Kinabalu is close to some lovely islands. Only 20 minutes away on a ferry, and we were on some picturesque beaches with azure waters and snorkeling was available but the visibility was not the best due to the rainy season.

Back from Borneo to Kuala Lumpur, the Petronas city, we decided not to stay there for the Happy New Year of Ox celebrations and we took a 2 hours bus ride to Melaka, to old Portugese colony that is nowadays also heavily inhabited by Chinese. The city has kept it charm of the European-Asian mixture.

Melaka was like Venice of the east, with it´s canals running around the city and lovely bridges and cafes serving a mix of Asian/European food. The church in the center was built by the Portugese and it was to me more like a meeting point through the history for all the expats that lived in Malaysia.

Not so far from all this “European” center, you would find the popular Jonker street, a small China Town were you could fill your bags from toys to plastic items to traditional Chinese decoration and it´s the place to try Chinese food specialties like the chicken rice balls, they were just delicious and the place itself the Famosa restaurant located in the middle of the street, which seemed the place to try such a dish had an extraordinary beautiful interior decoration.

The Chinese experience in Malaysia is nothing to regret, I loved it and it gave me a great inside look on tradition, way of thinking and way of doing things in Asia.

As a conclusion, the Chinese new year is a must do on your next year calendar. a real advice from us, go to Borneo and to the Malaysian one because it’s the place to be and it’s just a heaven on earth.

Sasi (with a small hangover)

Yellow fever & a city which took my heart

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Arriving to Bangkok was a real shock to me; I felt that Asia is a total undiscovered world. At the beginning when we started planning to travel I had my inner fights about going to “poor countries”, as I thought Asia would be.

Bangkok was no way a regular city, and there I discovered that Asia is not a poor muddy roads with people on bicycles, but it was skyscrapers and sky trains. But now you think I am mentioning Bangkok as the city that took my heart but no…

We took a bus from Phuket to the destination of south. 16 hours, and by every step of the trip my heart was falling more and more in love with the country and finally the city that took my heart – Kuala Lumpur. Maybe the Christmas spirit that the city offered added a spice up to the feeling. Kuala Lumpur meant always to me Petronas Towers. You might say okay, they are huge towers so what’s the big deal, but they are simply beautiful, and the city bursts alight around them: it is modern and it is the vision of the Asia you know through the movies.

We spent a few days in KL, touring the city: it’s malls, gardens, crazy Chinatown and great shopping districts. The people in there are so cool. The ethnic mix of Malaysia is an experience itself; you will find Indians, Chinese, and Western looking faces and Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Chinese temples next to each other.

One street would be full of blond tourists walking next to veiled Malaysian girls and Indian girls with their saris and Chinese girls in mini-skirts, it is so diverse and so open minded. Even though alcohol cost a lot more then other places, KL has it’s charm, and it took me like a storm.

You would take a small ride in the sky train or whatever underground system they have and you would be in the jungle, The Lake Gardens are the start of the jungle, yes tropical jungle city is KL.

Thank you KL you gave me what I always wanted, a diverse culture that can manage to live together in harmony not like unfortunately my homeland.

Sasi in love with KL

P.S: My wife says it’s an Arab behavior to love shopping malls and big tall buildings. Oh, maybe it is then. And yes, am in love with Asian girls, they smile and never worry, life goes on and the easy way it does! This is the yellow fever men suffer in here…

Sasi said he is not going to write about butterflies and flowers, its girls duty. Anyhow, he enjoyed as much as I did of the Orchid and Hibiscus garden, and we both absolutely loved the butterfly park: there was tens of thousands of beautiful, colourful butterflies in there, some of them size of a sparrow! They came to sit on our heads and hands, and it was a small paradise indeed. If you go to KL, do not miss that, especially if you have kids. Have a look of the photos on our Flickr.

What comes to the Asian girls, it is so funny to see them flirting with my husband. They are like Siamese cats, almost like rubbing themselves on his feet and purring. Not a single man, even my husband, can resist that. And I like them too, their giggling and chirping, so am not even jealous!
Maiku

A political mosquito net

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My beloved readers, am very sorry we haven’t been blogging lately. Last weeks of Europe were hectic, but coming here home to Lebanon was even more hectic. You know how it goes: must see all the family and all the friends in the same time. Furthermore, my parents are coming here the first time ever tonight, so we needed to do all kinds of preparations for them.

My parents have been a bit nervous to come here, as well as they have been exited. Last night, my mum send a panicked sms: there has been clashes in Northern Lebanon, is it still safe to come? We had been on our mountain village house for bbqing the whole day, and didn’t know the shit of the news. Quickly checked, and normal stuff: anti-government vs. pro-government shootings, few killed, dozens wounded. Nothing big deal in here. Yes mommy, you are still safe to come.

Anyhow, coming home has been cheerful. Nothing much has changed here in a year, except that Downtown Beirut is normal for the first time I am in here. No air raids and bombs, no more Hizbullah tents. But Hizbullah flags have been replaced with the new ones: German flags! For some reason, most of the spoiled brats with their fancy cars seem to support Germany in Euro football. And believe me: they truly SUPPORT! Downtown is full of big screens showing the games, and people have flags, horns and facial make-ups to cheer to their teams. I have never seen this kind of enthusiasm even in Europe. A friend of our said that it is normal for Lebanese always take some side to piss off the others. Always bickering and quarrel on something, if not politics then soccer. Guess so.

Also, once again I have come across of cultural differences I just cant understand. For example, I asked Sasi if it is possible to visit the Hariri mosque downtown. He said he didn’t know, and he refused to as the taxi driver because, he said, “i don’t know if he is a Muslim, and it is a weird question to ask. You just can’t ask if it is possible to visit Mosque”. I didn’t understand and I still don’t.

Even weirder was the clash of mosquito nets. I hate mosquito, and they just love me. I don’t know if its my white Northern skin which is delicious to them or if I smell so bad, but they are all over me always. And especially on the mountain home there is plenty of them. So I asked where I could buy a mosquito net over the bed. Sasi looked me weirdly and said, “we don’t use them”. And why, I demanded. “Because only Arabs use them, we Christians use Vap”. Yhym. But I don’t want to use sprays, I suffocate myself, and I want my net. So he asked his parents from where we could find them. My parents-in-law have probably used on the strange questions of their foreign daughter-in-law, so they didn’t laugh too much. After a family meeting, the possibilities were either getting one from Syria delivered by a family friend, or getting one from Dahiye, the Shiia neighbourhood of Beirut.

Finally, I managed to find the net from Bourj Hammoud, an Armenian neighbourhood of Beirut, and been happily sleeping under it without any bites, Christian habit or not.

Yours, Maiku

PS: Sasi wrote about his home coming to his personal blog jlian.info. Have a look!