the deception!

i just looked up the second largest reclining buddha statue in the world, and guess what! thailand lied to me! the first and second largest reclining buddha statues are in myanmar!

malaysia to thailand

so...we arrived in KL and stayed with aunty pat for two nights, then went to her father-in-law's house at a place called fraser's hill. it's huge and magical and two maids live and work there full time, although the family uses it sort of as a vacation/weekend house. one maid is from indonesian and the other is from mainland china. neither speaks english. so foo talked to the chinese lady who then talked to the indonesian lady. one time the chinese lady was asking me if i wanted her to put my wet laundry in the machine to spin out the excess water. she and the indonesian lady were trying to ask me and i was totally lost, so i called foo down to interpret. and she figured it out. and then she told me the chinese lady said that she and i were like a duck and a chicken. both talking but not understanding a word the other said. ha.
so then we went to a little island off the west coast of malaysia called penang. we stayed in a nice hotel that datuk ng booked for us. he really likes to take care of guests. he also sent us off with a bag full of medicine and train tickets to bangkok. it seems like the more foo and i try to resist people doing nice things for us, the more stuff they try to do. and datuk ng and aunty pat are not two people you can say no to. so anyway, we were in penang for two nights and ate delicious food and saw the third-largest reclining buddha in the world.
after two days, we took a ferry across to butterworth, where the train station was.
so the train is a sleeper train for the 22-hour journey to bangkok. the train was really slow. and there was this crazy man sitting across the aisle from us who was traveling alone. and sometimes solo travelers can be a bit strange i think because they don't have anyone to talk to so they get lonely. foo and i had missed lunch and were snacking and he looks over and says to me 'you have to watch the calories.' oh man. also, people always say really rude stuff like that to me. never to foo. like in argentina, the mom at the farm once said 'you don't eat very much for being so big.' every culture has it's own version of what is rude, i suppose.
so anyway, he kept saying really strange stuff and also talking to himself and making stupid jokes to the service people who were too busy to humor him. and for dinner foo and i wanted to make instant noodles we brought with us. we needed hot water, and the crazy man was willing to help, so that was nice. but get this: we used an instand noodle cup and he put train tap water in it. gross. but he boiled it. with his do-it-yourself heating element. it was the tops of two spoons flattened out, nailed on either side of a little piece of wood, attached to a cord that perhaps was once attached to a lamp. so he dropped it in the cup and boiled the water. he gave it to us and there were like brown dirty-looking bits and he said 'oh that's just iron.' so...voila! instant noodles!
we got to bangkok and found a place to stay right by the train station. it's pretty nice for $16/night. bangkok is really really hot. like a sauna all day long, but sunnier. and thai people are soooooo nice. so nice. we saw a buddhist temple with this 9 ft tall golden buddha. the buddha statue was stucco-covered, and then was being moved and was dropped, and the stucco cracked, revealing the solid-gold statue underneath. pretty neat.
also, we went to see the biggest reclining buddha in the world. now i'm only missing the second-largest. i'm not sure where it is, but after seeing the first and third, i have to see the second too.
after that temple, foo and i took a water taxi back to the hotel. pretty fun.
last night we went to this night market in a seedier area of town. and these men were lining the sidewalks holding little papers that said 'dvd sex'. there were other men that said 'ping pong show, see ping pong show' and held out an extensive menu of what other services were available at the ping pong show.
today we went to this mall and walked around but by the time we were leaving it was raining so we didn't want to walk. and around here there is this type of taxi called a tuktuk. mostly they try to scam tourists, but if you can negotiate a fair price, it's fine. the tuktuk is like a cross between a small car and motorcycle. like a rickshaw, but motorized. so we found a guy who would take us. so we're going wayyyy fast throught the pouring rain with water dripping all over us and the tuktuk man driving like a crazy fool. but we made it back to the hostel and it was soooooo much fun. there are cheaper ways of getting around, but i think i'd take the tuktuk again for the fun ride.