Live the life you love. Love the life you live.
A gift from a Chinese artist I met during my first stay in Malaysia.
The worst time I’ve had in Thailand was during the week I’d lost this after Songkran. I’m flirting with superstition. Now I wear it every day.
Ballin out in the cuts uh Malaysia, Ringgit style.
Yeah, that’s like eleven dollars. Rekkitnize
This is what upscale budget hotels look like on Pinang.
Disheveled sheets not included*
It always bugs me that there are mirrors on the work desks in hotels. I’m trying to work and I keep catching eyes with myself. Weird.
Back from the land of Penang. Everything went very smoothly, much to my surprise.
After 5 months of hemming and hawing with the local government here in Thailand I was able to show up on the other side of the border and get a one-year multiple entry visa overnight- just like they said I would back in January.
Feels like I accomplished a major goal. But I’m surprisingly unexcited about it.
Ever heard that advice, that when you can’t make a decision you’re supposed to flip a coin, except you don’t decide by heads or tails, but by how you feel while the coin is in the air? I estimated my chances of making this visa thing work out at 50/50. Now I feel a little bit like the coin landed on the wrong side.
Maybe I’m just worn out from the trip.
The culture on Penang is a strong mix of Colonial, Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Muslim people and aesthetic. Oddly typified by my hotel nightstand’s containing a Bible and The Teaching of Buddha with both English and Chinese text.
I can see five mosques and at least one Hindu temple from my window. Must be dealer’s choice not to include the Koran and Gita. This is the Hotel Oriental, after all.
View from the 9th floor Hotel Oriental, sunny Georgetown.
I think I want to live next door to a mosque. I love the call to prayer.
There are 3 mosques within earshot of my place here in Penang. I can hear all of them overlapping their calls. I don’t know the words. But I like it. I could listen to that all day.
Somewhere over southern Thailand, I think.
This time tomorrow I’ll be chilin in Malaysia, again. In Georgetown, Pulau Penang, again.
I find it interesting that I now know my way around a city in Malaysia better than I do L.A.
What a difference a year makes.
Malaysia, Pulau Penang, Georgetown, Lebuh Muntri, Star Lodge, October, 2011
