It is amazing all of the weird stuff people have found to be beautiful throughout history. Upon leaving Kuala Lumpor, we arrived late in Melaka, Malaysia. On our first full day there, we visited a museum with the cities history, a kite collection and a whole floor dedicated to piercings, tatoos, scarifications, neck and ear lobe stretching, teeth blackening, filing, removing and jewel implanting, bodypart thinning and thickening...forms of "beautification" for both men and women. After this interesting excursion we were going to see a Ripley's Believe it or Not, but decided we had seen enough ghoul for one day.
The room we stayed in was very "indian"-huge doors and windows, blue walls with patterns around the windows, and our very own walk out porch. It was the nicest and last room available. I guess another party had reserved it but they never showed and we arrived late enough in the evening to take it. It just shows us in another obvious way how the Lord's hand has been on this entire trip. He has not only "supernaturally" provided for our needs, but He has taken special care of us aswell it seems.
Melaka was far nicer and smaller then KL. We had fun walking through the airconditioned malls and site seeing. The weather here is a little out of season aswell, say the locals. Much heavier rains and more frequently, as we experienced this, our last night in Melaka. Heavier rains than i am even used to, but oh so soothing.
Singapore is rich, full of skycrapersm almost as expensive as America and incredibly clean. I have even found myself looking for trash, it seems to be few and far between. This is probably because there is a very hefty fine for littering..........spitting, jaywalking, undesignated smoking & drinking, chewing gum, putting your feet up, among many others. The jaywalking wouldn't be so bad except that there are shopping malls, food vendors, museums and boutiques everywhere. And, the only places to cross the street are as few and far between as the trash. And you can only cross when the little man is green. We both feel like little test mice in a maze. Its like the dictatorship has put so many rules on common day activities that take a person's ability to make his own simple decisions away. Some say they wouldn't be surprized if the citizens had an uprising some day, and others even expect this. The law perfects nothing. It is nice to see things so clean, but stressful to follow such a fine line.
Thank God we live by grace!
Today we walked through some very beautiful malls and saw some mindblowing Chinese art. Unfortunaley we could not photograph it. But for example, an intricately carved, jade sphere, with 5 more completely revolving smaller identical spheres inside. All hand carved from one chunk of jade. Another gentleman was tapping picture perfect images off a piece of marble. What he removed became the highlights of the picture. He had one of an apple with dew droplets on it- it looked flawless and worth about $800. Even still, generation after generation has perfected the are of paper cutting. An entire very difficult picture is cut from special rice paper without folding it, with these primitave looking scissors. Next to that pagoda, was a man painting Chinese art on glass globes FROM THE INSIDE with a tiny brush through a small circular opening in the globe. Most of the stuff we saw I have never even thought of before and exceeds my wildest ideas of art.
After that, we walked to another mall that had a library and read afew magazines. As we were heading to China Town, we stopped to feed the giant Koa fish. It was there we realize the rain slicker i made for the videocamera was not with us. So we retraced all of our steps and still cant find it. We are hoping it turns up somewhere in our hostel because that was the last place we saw it.
Aside from all this, we leave on a plane tomorrow for Bali, Indonesia. We are both expecting a big, yet relaxing change from what we have experienced culturally so far. It should be a good turning point for our journey and probably much needed seeing as how we are both a little jaded.
Thank you for your prayers, they are much needed and appreciated!
Love, d&e
