Summer 2000 Trip 
Duane Banks'
Travelogue
12 July 2000
I didn't quite make it to
Bangkok like I had planned. Good thing I am
flexible and resourceful. Actually I am glad cause I think it turned
out better this way. The flight to Bangkok was full, so I went to
Hong Kong, rode the star ferry and up to the peak.
Met a guy named Justin Li
on the ferry who will be going to BYU in the fall. He attended BYU-HC
for a couple of years. Anyway from there it was off to Singapore. Got
there at midnight and the busses stopped running so ended up sharing
a taxi with a Japanese backpacker named Asami. She was pretty cool,
and I ended up hanging out with her the whole next day touring
Santosa
Island. It was a theme
park. I thought we were going to go and take a picture of some lion
head she had heard about. It was fun. They had an oceanarium, a wax
museum, the big lionhead (Merlion),
a music fountain show and a cheesy Volcano show that somehow ended up
showing a film about evolution.
Hong Kong \\ Asami Segi \\
Singapore
There was also a beach.
Asami loves to swim, but forgot to bring her
swimsuit (she has three in her backpack). After a little while she
went in with her clothes on and luckily I was wearing shorts too and
could take off my shirt. That was fun. She had a lot of good stories.
She has actually lived in Tennessee for 9 years and will start
working on her Ph.D. in Sept. She had just been to China. She slept
on her hand for three hours on the plane and it not only went to
sleep she couldn't move it so had to go to several doctors there.
They did a cat scan and gave her herbs and told her it was from a
spinal anomaly or something. In Hong Kong she saw another doctor who
told her the loss of use of her right hand was going to be permanent
which scared her. That was a few weeks ago and now her hand is a bit
weak, but she can move it. She says in China they call Chinese
Americans
ABC's, "American Born Chinese".
She also said they call them "bananas" since they are yellow on the
outside, but white (Americanized) on the inside. The place we stayed
there was only dorm style beds left when we got there. All the air
con rooms were full so it was very hot with just a fan.
There was five of us sleeping in
this room. There was one guy that was bald that she said was sitting
up in his bed for hours in the meditation position. He frightened
her. Luckily I slept through that part.
The next day I took a six hour bus
to Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia. Some Indonesian
girl bought me lunch since I didn't have any Malaysian ringgits. She
wouldn't let me pay her back. She ate these pruny looking dried hot
dogs that looked disgusting. I stayed right in China town in
KL.
Merlion \\ Petronas
Towers
It is very bustling. Actually
Singapore and Malaysia's standard of living and highways etc. are
much nicer than I expected. Today I went to see the Petronas Towers, the tallest building in the world. I took a
subway close to it. It let out at
this huge mall with Cartier shops and Mrs. Fields cookies and it took
me forever to get out of it so I could look for the towers. I
couldn't find them for a few minutes wondering where the hell they
could go and then looked straight up and there they were. The mall
was connected to them. Unfortunately they only let you go up 40
stories to the bridge between
the towers (half way). I also went
to see the KL tower which looks about as tall which they do let you
to the top so had an impressive view.
I am working my way back to
Bangkok. I am waiting at a train station now and will be heading
north for 7 hours to Northern Malaysia. Then I plan to stay at the
Beaches of Southern Thailand in the Krabi area for a few days before
heading north. I am reading Harry Potter which
has been pretty
entertaining.
see ya
Duane