Malaysia Quarantine - Day 9

Another day in paradise! Day 9, it really starts to feel like a countdown now, another 4 full days and then time to wrap up. I can't deny it sometimes begins to drag but you still won't hear me/us complain much. Just have to switch off and get it done. The hotel definitely does its best to take care of us, food has still been pretty good and whenever we contact the reception, they're super friendly and helpful. It helps!

This afternoon we ordered ourselves a treat, arriving in this surprise bag; it's Friday after all!

Ice cream!!! Yay! We ordered one of the available snack packages, mostly for the ice creams, but hey nothing wrong with a nice soft drink after days of mineral water, coffee and tea

We also had a more-than-enough replenishment of our mineral water, which was nearly finished. Upon contacting the reception, it was clear we had only had the portion for 1p in the room - which was the case for all the consumables basically. Now we'll have plenty until the end of the quarantine!

We had (nice) fried rice for breakfast, rice with chicken (also nice, with a creamy mushroom sauce) for lunch, and I joked to Ellen that I would love pasta or so for once instead of rice. So what happens for dinner: pasta! Woohoo! And oh yes, apple number 7.

One of the things that's keeping me occupied a lot during this quarantine, and I'm really enjoying it, is creating my book about the 1993-94 backpacking trip in Asia. I think I spend 2-3 hours per day working on it. So, what is it? In May 1993, I left for a backpacking trip to Asia with a one way ticket, with Thailand as first destination. I knew I would mostly travel South-East Asia but not where and for how long exactly. 6 months, a year, longer? Ellen did not leave together with me, she was finishing the last weeks of her degree, before joining me in July. We travelled to Thailand, Malaysia (yes, in 1993!), Singapore, Vietnam, Lao, Nepal and India before returning to Belgium in February 1994.

More than 1000 pictures, some obvious where and when they were taken, others I have to guess

That, and 115 pages of text, all to be combined in 1 book. I have deliberately kept everything word for word as I wrote it back then, so it would be the exact digital replica.

Throughout the entire trip I kept a diary (written of course!), which I have securely kept all these years. A few years ago I entered the entire text digitally. I also made a substantial collection of photo's during the trip (slides in fact). These slides were beginning to fade and some of them had a lot of fungus already, so I urgently had to digitise them - which I did last year. Recently, while in Belgium, I finally went through the entire collection to edit them and get them as good as possible, although some were beyond rescuing. Now finally, this quarantine, I made the time to pour all of that together in a book.

I just used Microsoft's Photo Editing software, good enough for what I needed - but a lot of work for 1000+ photo's!

I'm using Blurb to create the book; I've used it in the past to make photo books and was really happy with the quality. This book will be something different, hope it works out well too. It's a bit tedious, as I need to create all the text and picture boxes page by page - but then again, it means you have 100% flexibility to create your book exactly as you want.

Here are a few short passages from the diary:

11 June 1993. Another travel day, this time by bus from Krai to Kota Baruh, then another bus to Pasir Puteh, taxi to Kuala Besut together with a German, Manfred. We're now 4 of us. From Kuala Besut we take the boat to Perhentian Island (note: it took about 4 hours back then) and go to Abdul's Place (seems this still exists, 27 years later). Somehow this is even better than Ko Tao, there is more to do. I share a room with Manfred, Angus and Stefan share another one. There is 1 small problem: we all don't have much cash left, and where we can change (note: Travellers Cheques!) they don't have enough cash either (note: no ATMs back then). Not funny. Stefan has been able to change a little cash, Manfred can also change some if really needed. We met a Frenchman, Thierry, who works in KL. He knew a lot of interesting things about Malaysia, as he lives here. Like: there are some hidden tensions socially, although you wouldn't say so.

3 August 1993. We arrived in SaPa and are staying in a nice little guest house, a fantastic old French villa, 3$ for a room. The shower is ice cold, but that's OK. You don't sweat as much here, it's comfortably cool. SaPa is a pleasant little town: some church ruins, a few beautiful old villa's, stone and clay Vietnamese houses, lots of hill tribes, nice market. We had some tea and cake - they bake delicious cake in our hotel - en went for a siesta. In the afternoon, we went for a walk and before we knew, we were on small hilly trails on our slippers. Incredibly beautiful, rice terraces, green, huts, villages, cows and buffaloes, and hill tribes in traditional costumes everywhere.

20 October 1993. 4.30am, wake up, get ready, take the bus to Jiri. 3 of us on a narrow bench, backpack on the roof, but we thought the ride was not too bad - probably because we expected it worse than the SaPa bus. 188km in 12 hours, but the road was entirely sealed. It was just too hilly to make progress. We arrived in Jiri around 7pm, our luggage still on the roof (apparently that's not always the case, which we were not aware of; we paid 200Rs extra for our luggage, maybe that was the "insurance"). Had a good dinner, the menu nearly the same as in Kathmandu, surprised! We expected only rice and potatoes or so... Pizza, lasagne, name it.

And, as a bonus for today, some of the pictures:

Penang Hill

My first time (really) riding a motorbike - in Penang

Jungle Train Kuala Lipis - Kuala Krai

Abdul's Place, Perhentian

Singapore skyline 1993!

Melaka

Merdeka Square

Jungle Trekking in Chiang Mai

The picture is not sharp (anymore), this is us on a motorbike trip through northern Vietnam - one of the most fantastic and memorable things we've ever done!

The old French Villa in SaPa. We went back to SaPa in 2014, and it had become a big town rather than a small village. The villa was still there, but it was very run down.