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Tag: Kuala Lumpur

  • Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -> Tokyo, Japan: 4/22 & 4/23

    Both of these days were sort of travel days so I have less content, and I decided to combine them into one post.

    4/21: Last day in Malaysia

    My flight out of Malaysia was at 12:10 AM, so I needed to leave for the airport around 8PM (an hour of travel to the airport + 3 hours to get through it). I also needed a solid nap before since I hadn’t gotten enough sleep the last few days, and it would be a 7-hour flight. So my plan for the day:

    • Get breakfast
    • Spend my remaining Malaysian cash at a local street market and take more photos
    • Nap
    • Go to the airport

    After breakfast (which I forgot to take a photo of, but it was the same thing I got for dinner my first night in Malaysia), I started heading to the markets. However, when I pulled my camera out to take a photo, I realized it was dead. I’d forgotten to charge my spare batteries, so I instead walked to a nearby shop for some batteries. When I put them in, the camera . . . wouldn’t extend the lens!

    The Olympus is dead, long live the Olympus!

    I paid $5 for this camera at Goodwill in July last year, and despite it being grimy, after some cleanup it worked great. It’s since become one of my favorite cameras, being covered in manual controls, with a flip-out screen, and enough resolution to take pretty decent photos for web use (5MP). Later in the summer, I was using it on the beach and it got splashed in a sandy wave as I was trying to take a closeup photo of waves (my fault). It stopped working for a bit after that, but then started working again! The lens made a grinding noise each time I would open it, but it kept working! So I brought it on this trip, having used it for hundreds of photos since then.

    Sadly, it finally seems to have given up the ghost 😦

    Oh well, for $5 and probably over a thousand photos, I can’t complain! A replacement of the same model will cost around $30 if I find a nice example on eBay.

    Of course, I have my phone for photos – but I really prefer a camera with a proper lens, even if it’s from 2003. So now my plan was:

    • Get breakfast
    • Spend my remaining Malaysian cash at a local street market and take more photos Go find a used camera for less than $50
    • Nap
    • Go to the airport

    So, I spent the next hour and a half walking sweatily from camera store to camera store, hoping to find something of around the same era for about $50…

    This store clearly used to be a photo store, but isn’t anymore. There were a surprising number of camera/film stores, though!

    And didn’t find anything! The camera stores either only sold new cameras, only had film cameras, or had a small selection of too-new, too-expensive cameras.

    Luckily, the next place I was headed was Tokyo – the perfect place to find a deal on an older digital camera, so I held out for a day and just used my phone.

    Of course, I found more interesting vehicles – a nice example of one of the more popular moped models, a neat van, and a small (for the US) delivery truck painted to look like The Incredible Hulk.

    As I walked, I also took more photos of the streets – in this area, bustling with shops and market activity.

    Then, I went back for my nap. Malaysia was really cool, and I knew Japan would be too, but being sleep deprived (and less excited about how expensive Japan would be), I was having a hard time looking forward to the next leg of my trip – I would really have rather gone home.

    Traveling has been really fun, and I’m glad I’m here, but it’s been hard, too. I really like having a place I’m completely comfortable in to retreat to when I need a break, and obviously when you’re traveling (and mostly in shared dorm rooms), that’s not very possible. Add that to changing cities and countries every few days, a new language that you don’t know, new cultures you have to think about, and having to figure out where to eat for every single meal every single day, and it gets pretty exhausting.

    (As I’m writing this, I feel better – I still wish I could go home sooner, but that would be prohibitively expensive, and I recognize a lot of my feeling like this comes from having been behind on sleep. I’ll be at this hostel for 6 days, I just slept for 16 hours, and there are grocery stores nearby at which to get food for breakfast and any other meal I don’t want to go to a restaurant for – I’ll probably take the next few days a little easier, then feel more ready to explore Japan.)

    Anyway! Post nap, I packed and headed back to the airport.

    The tower near my hostel had lights along the sides that I hadn’t realized were there during the day! The street market was busier than ever, and I think I didn’t really see as much as Malaysia had to offer – I will have to come back sometime for a more dedicated trip.

    On my way out, I grabbed a couple of “thousand layer patties” (little warm pastries which have chicken or beef stuffed in them) from a street shop for dinner. At the airport, I ate these alongside a Dunkin Donuts iced latte before boarding.

    This plane was much more like a normal American flight, without screens, free food, or fancy seats. It did have more legroom than normal, though! I slept for most of the flight.

    4/22: Camera hunting in Toyko!

    The next morning around 8:30AM local time, I landed at Narita International Airport, about 65km from Toyko. Here, I charged my phone, got some cash (cards are less commonly accepted in Japan, apparently), and ate some breakfast at the airport before buying a train ticket into Toyko.

    Check-in time at the hostel wasn’t till 5PM, so I headed first to Shinjuku Station, around which there are a lot of camera stores with both new and used gear.

    The first few stores I stopped at I felt too poor to walk into – lots of expensive cameras (the cheapest were around $500 USD), pretty but far outside my budget (and not what I wanted, anyway). However, the third one I walked into had an “as-is” shelf, and on that shelf, an Olympus C4100! After testing it, I paid 3500 Yen ($24.50 USD) for the camera and two memory cards (it takes a different kind than my current one does).

    This one is slightly older (2002 vs 2003) and a little lower quality, with 4MP instead of 5, no flip-out screen, and a slightly less nice lens. Fundamentally though, it is a very similar camera.

    Glad to have found a replacement camera, I headed back out and took a few photos. It was a rainy grey day (much like Oregon!) and it made the streets wet and the bright signs pop against the grey buildings and skies.

    Olympus C4100

    I’m pretty happy with this camera! Straight out of the camera the images have a lot of color, though I can tell the dynamic range is worse (I had to do more minor adjustments to these images in order to bring the bright areas down and the dark areas up than I normally would do for the other camera).

    I’ve seen a few of these not-quite-motorcycle, not-quite-car things around.

    There were a few more camera shops to stop by, so of course I did. What, just because I found a camera doesn’t mean I won’t look at more!

    I forgot to take pictures of the last camera store I went to, but it would have been a perfect place if I hadn’t already found a good camera. It was a small shop, crammed floor to ceiling with antique to (somewhat) modern cameras, mostly film, but with a good mix of digital in there too. There were a lot of cameras sold non-working, most for only a couple thousand yen ($10-30 USD). Of course they had working cameras too, also for what seemed to be good prices (under 20,000 yen in a lot of cases, or USD $140). I may have bought two parts cameras of the same model, in the hopes of combining them into one working camera… They were only $30 together!

    I love how small these are! With digital cameras it’s not so surprising, but there’s only so small you can get with 35MM film. The cute factor was part of why these were so irresistible.

    These are half-frame cameras, meaning they shoot two photos per one film frame (by using only half of the frame each time). This effectively halves the resolution of the photo which does decrease the quality, but means you can get either 48 or 74 shots depending on what type of film you use! With the cost of film, this is definitely a benefit.

    They’re from around 1963 (62 years old!) and neither one works – the shutter doesn’t seem to properly close. I suspect (after watching a video on YouTube) that the shutter blades just need to be cleaned, but I’m not completely sure yet.

    (To Felix and Katerina: I don’t think I’ll get the chance to rent a moped 😦 I believe the laws are a lot more restrictive in Japan, and in Italy and Malaysia it didn’t seem safe to do so. Someday I will go back to Barcelona, and I’ll be sure to rent one there! Instead, your moped money will go towards some nice sushi!)

    All for now! Let’s hope my spare luggage space survives the next few days – no more camera shops!

  • Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: 4/20, 4/21

    First non-Europe post!

    4/20: This was mostly a travel day, lost to the 10 hour flight from Istanbul to Malaysia. I got to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport around 5PM local time, and then spent about an hour more figuring out how to get from the airport into Kuala Lumpur itself, which is about 60km from the city’s center. Google thought it would take 6 hours, but it didn’t seem to know about the express train between the airport and city center, which only took 30 minutes!

    I didn’t realize when I took this photo, but my hostel is right near the base of the tallest tower in the middle!

    As I drew closer to my hostel, I realized it’s right in Chinatown in Malaysia – and right next to Jalan Petaling, a well known street market. Lots of stuff to see nearby!

    My hostel is the grey building on the corner.

    I didn’t have a lot of energy, but for dinner I went downstairs to a restaurant owned (I think) by the hostel called Mingle Cafe and got Nasi Ulam Ayam Percik, a chicken dish:

    The sauce on the chicken was so delicious. I actually am eating the same dish again for breakfast as I write this!

    I also got some kombucha, and in total the whole meal cost just under $9 USD! The prices here are a big shock to me – food and lodging are both extremely cheap, with most dishes at restaraunts I’ve seen costing $4-6 USD, and my hostel costing (for a private room!) $22/night. If I had chosen to share a dorm with others, I could have paid only $6-9/night depending on the hostel.

    Mingle Cafe, where I’ve been getting a lot of my food.

    4/21: Today I actually got to explore a little bit! Supper had been so good at Mingle Cafe that I went back for breakfast. This time, knowing how cheap the prices are, I splurged a bit.

    Mango Lassi, Iced Mocha, and the “Mingle Big Breakfast” – big was right, I couldn’t finish it all!

    This was of course also delicious, and my splurging on two drinks cost me a whopping USD $15.77… I could get used to this!

    Next, I began walking to the Perdana Botanical Garden a few km away. As I walked, I realized why many people don’t come to Malaysia during Monsoon season – it was in the upper 80’s outside, and the humidity was high – I was dripping sweat just from walking! However, it was beautiful, and you can tell you’re in a tropical country!

    On my way, I walked through a section of Petaling Street, the nearby street market, but apparently only took a few pictures.

    I’m tempted to buy fruits like this, but that’s exactly what the travel nurse I had an appointment with told me NOT to do . . . I might anyway 😛
    Some of the market is in temporary stalls on the street, but some of it is more inside buildings with hallways adjacent to the road, like this.
    The streets here are green and bustling. This street was one of the less busy ones I crossed.
    There are plenty of mopeds here too, but unlike the ones in Spain and Europe, these ones seem lighter. A lot of them look like they might be based on or inspired by the 70’s Honda Trail mopeds. I kind of like the look of these ones better!
    I like the purple-white color scheme on this one. It’s also quite old! The area where the speedometer would be was just a mass of wrapped duck tape…
    Still not as common as in Barcelona, but still far more so than in the US! I suspect many of these small ones are only 50-100CC, likely with a top speed of 35-50 MPH.

    Malaysia isn’t known for its architecture that I know of, but I did see a number of cool buildings along the way. There’s a large tower close to my hostel that’s an easy photo subject (you’ll see it a few times throughout this post) and I found a number of other buildings that looked good too.

    Another tower in Malaysia. I walked right by it on my way home later.
    I’m not sure this is a Muslim temple or not, but the influence is strong here – lots of Halal food, plenty of references around. In fact, I’ve seen multiple signs prohibiting “indecent behavior” in public spaces, usually indicated by a figure of two people kissing. Is kissing in public actually considered indecent?
    See?
    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050

    Once at the botanical gardens, I was ready for something cold and sweet, so I fell prey to the snack stands just waiting for hapless tourists like myself to stumble upon them. I got a durian popsicle (not recommended, durian is an . . . odd flavor) and a lychee drink (I do recommend this one!)

    The durian taste lingered longer in my mouth than I desired, and kept reminding me I’d eaten it every time I burped for the rest of the day. Oh well, new experiences, right?

    Mildly refreshed, I continued my explorations of the gardens, stopping at some type of war monument.

    Something about the silver lotus flowers on the deep blue of the water in the last picture above is really satisfying to me.

    After the war monument (whose plaque said it represented the triumph “over the forces of evil” – funny how the forces of good always win), I found my way to the actual botanical garden.

    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050
    OLYMPUS C5050

    Around this time, the sky (which had sneakily been growing darker and cloudier) began to rain. It was a relatively light rain at first, so I continued to enjoy my walk, shielding my camera from the rain with my hands while I wasn’t using it.

    Then, it started to POUR – so like several other people who’d been roaming the park, I scrambled to a large shelter nearby.

    Unfortunately, this shelter wasn’t perfect – the wind blew water in from the sides (so you had to stand more inwards) and many of the seams leaked. There were some dry spots, though!

    I read my book for a while (Brandon Sanderson’s 5th book in the Stormlight Archives series – great so far, of course!)

    Eventually, the rain was joined by lightening and thunder – a proper monsoon storm! It didn’t let up for close to an hour, and most of us just sat around, waiting. At one point, a golf cart with a few covered seats rolled up and took some of the others away (where to? hopefully somewhere dry!) and promised they’d be back for the rest of us – but 20 minutes passed without their return, so eventually, as the rain began to let up, I figured I’d venture out. I was already pretty damp, and the only electronics I had was my camera, so I took its batteries out (electronics getting wet usually won’t hurt them by themselves, if they don’t have any power source when they’re wet – as long as you dry them out completely before restoring power, they’re generally ok!)

    Just before I left, one of the women waiting let the kid inside come out, and ran through the proper waterfall and pond now present in the little area with the tree pictured above, while the rest of us laughed as she shouted with joy.

    Luckily, the rain finally begin to stop (and not get worse) as I continued to walk. The paving stones were slippery and I almost fell a few times, but I managed to get back in one piece!

    The same tower!
    A moped graveyard…
    OLYMPUS C5050
    The river flowing through this part of town, now much higher than it had been a few hours before.

    On my way home, I ran into an indoor market, with lots of street food, textiles, some antiques, a camera store, and lots of souvenir stores. There was also an art section selling a lot of really cute paintings for quite reasonable prices! I wish I had more space in my bag, but it’s probably a good thing I don’t!

    I only got a few photos inside, but a lot of it looked like this – hallways with shops on all sides.
    Seagull? This is not a brand I’ve heard of before! The equivalent USD cost is $317, a bit pricey especially for an off-brand SLR.

    After the market, I went back to the hostel, changed into clean clothes, and wrote the blog posts from yesterday. At the market I also picked up a few snacky items for dinner:

    Tasty!

    It’s funny – the food here is so cheap, that sometimes the prices in Malaysian Ringgits lines up with what I would expect to pay in USD – except that the Ringgit is worth only about 23 cents! The two meat pasteries, for example, were 4.50 each – a little pricey for USD, but converted to Ringgets, only $1.03 each! The drink was 9.90, pricey for even a specialty boba drink in the US, but not outside of the realm of possibility – but of course, actually only cost $2.26.

    I really could get used to this… Maybe I should have spent 2 weeks here instead of in Japan!

    The last thing I did was a recruiter interview (at 2:30AM local time!), this time for an actual electrical engineering role in Washington. I’m quite excited about this one – if working at Rivian doesn’t work out, I’m hoping this will. It’s a neat sounding job at a company that seems to have good culture, and should pay pretty competitively. It’s also a hybrid position – so working from home would be common, but not mandatory. The interview went well, so here’s to hoping I get a followup interview!

    All for today! You probably won’t hear from me again for a few days, since this evening I fly to Japan. After a day or two to settle in, I should be back on track with more updates.