Well! It's been a while! I am now job-hunting in Australia. Sounds far less glamourous than my previous opening statements doesn't it? Well, I don't care. I'm loving it here.
I will recount my Malaysian and Singaporean highlights before moving onto my first week in Australia:
To be honest, both Malaysia and Singapore were a bit 'been there, done that' - and as transition phases they meant that I didn't really feel the full force of being back in Western society as I thought I would (although I did get very excited when I saw iced coffee, cheap sushi and John Freida Frizz Ease all within 5 minutes of one another).
In a conversation with a Malaysian the other day, we came onto the dress code.
Louise (sees Western girl): 'It's a shame that some tourists don't respect the local culture.'Malaysian (looks grave): 'Yes, it's very bad really, all these men, Malaysian men, they see the Western women, and then, and then they get all...'horny'. And then they take it out on local women....by raping them.'
Louise: '...right.'No, I wasn't quite sure how we got from a strappy t-shirt to blaming the poor girl for rape, either. The thing that worried me most was that I was talking to a female Malaysian. It reminds me very much of Russell Peters 'hairiness' sketch...logic loopholes abound.
Rewind to last day in Thailand and we find ourselves looking at the corpse of a monk. No, I'm afraid I didn't finally snap and go on that psychopathic monk-killing episode you've been thinking I might go on for some time. This fellow's been dead for about 50 years. A mummified monk.
He's sitting in a glass case, lotus position, wearing the usual orange robe. Looking very solemn. To counteract the seriousness of the whole affair he has a ludicrously huge pair of sunglasses on. After aome investigation, it's not hard to see why; if you wander around to the side to take a sneaky side-peek, behind the glasses you can see some very freakish gaping holes where eyes should be. I'm not sure what would be worse; mummified eyes or gaping holes? His eyelids and lips have dehydrated away to almost nothing; his skin is grayish-white and flaking a bit. Overall the effect is suitably and hilariously macabre.
There are no less than five Thais praying to this dead guy in a glass case.
Speaking of rape and corpses, did I tell you about the rapist corpses I saw in Bangkok?
We went to a pathology museum at one of the local hospitals. I can tell you I will never walk through wet grass with no shoes on ever again! Parasites abound...some lovely close-up pictures and examples of their effects. The elephantitis models were suitably gross; look up elephantitis on google pictures and you'll see exactly which body region I'm talking about. It reminded me of one of the beggars we saw in India, with the same condition. Kinda wish I'd given him some money now.
There was also a display depicting childbirth; a rural home setting, with woman semi-crouching, leaning backwards and holding onto a piece of cloth hanging from the ceiling. The midwife was gaping directly at the exit point, crouched as though ready for a high speed rugby ball right in the face. To complete the crew, there was another woman in the background with a bloodied towel who looked entirely nonchalant.
I felt twice as awkward looking at the scene when I found two monks muttering to one another behind me, curious frowns on their faces.
The highlight of the exhibition was the dissection area; lots of dead foetuses in wombs (and I mean LOTS of them), some showing healthy progression, some showing malformations (and one with an awful lot of hair). Some people had left little tokens on the glass cases, toys and incense and the like. There was a white guy with blonde hair looking very shocked, his skull halved into two cases so we could study the brain inside (my first corpus callosum!). And then, of course, the fully mummifed, fully naked corpses of two rapists standing in their glass boxes. Well, I say standing; their bodies seemed to have been frozen in a standing stance but without being strapped to the case, they had each slumped onto the pane, leaving smeary marks on the inside. There were fingerprints on the door handle.
-shudder-
Anyway, back to Malaysia; we went to a very cool science museum there. There was a F1 car racing simulator and a hurricane simulator and a helicopter ride simulator. Lots of other simulators... There was also a section with lots of interactive tests for your body, measuring your power to weight ratio and how fast you could throw a ball and stuff like that. I got mesmerised by a cool exhibit that showed a series of slow motion sequences: a gun firing, a rocket launch, a few car crash simulations, an explosion and a plane crash simulation. I am never not wearing my seatbelt again, especially if the car has airbags. Prime neck snapping material, those fluffy white pillows of doom. The best thing about the exhibit was that you could control the speed at which everything moved, from super super freeze frame slow to crazy light speed fast. Totally awesome.
Singapore was expensive and pretty dull. I was expecting Tokyo and I got Malaysia with a better transport system.
I shall update you on Australia forthwith (although I must admit, it might seem quite dull after a title like this...).
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