Welcome to Malaysia!!!

Friends and Family,

Greatest apologies that our updates are a week behind our travels in Malaysia. We will do our best to promptly catch you up.

The first few days in Malaysia were the best and worst of times, especially for yours truly. The award-winning Malaysian airport was a beautiful sight to me with its cleanliness, efficiency and "welcome Westerners!" feel. The sun was shining, mothers were playing with their toddlers, and the tourist agency was very clear about what the country had to offer. (They are celebrating 50 years of Independence this week, though the average Malaysian couldn't care less). While I appreciated Malaysia for the changes it brought in comparison with Indonesia, Victor received it a bit more skeptically, deeming "Florida" of SE Asia. (Victor intends to publish a post defending his derogatory assertions...more on that to come)

While Malaysia does lack some of the Indonesia's excitement (we ceased to experience the liklihood of sudden death on a daily basis in transportation....and we didn't didn't have to worry about being tracked by the government for working at a human rights organization) many more of the creature comforts we missed in Indonesia were now there. We could walk down the street without suddenly loosing our appetite to the city smells, and Kuala Lampur struck us as a friendly place with very diverse cultures, religions, and cuisine mixing amicably in public places.

Unfortunately, all this cleanliness and tidiness did not translate into better health for me. I was sick on the second day of arrival. But I'll get back to that. The first day was pretty good.

We arrived early in the morning (just in time to wish my dad a very late-in-the-day happy birthday)and celebrated our arrival with some McD's fish sandwiches (on the breakfast menu!). We boarded a highly decorated coach bus (complete with hanging Indian fabric and tassels)that was playing the "Gwen Stafani" Station 24/7, which we found notable. The drive to KL took us past palm forests under blue sky, which left the impression that Malaysia is a naturally beautiful place...we later found out that the government cedes 3/4 of all agriculture-friendly land in Malaysia to a giant corporation (Deetech?)that plants palm forests for palm oil extraction. Our hosts at SEACON, the Southeast Asia Council on Food and Fair Trade, later complained that most of the oil is used on fuel and manufactured goods rather than applied to food products that benefit those on the lower end of the economic scale. Food security in SE Asia is generally unstable, and focusing so much of the country's resources on products for exportation threatens the ability of the least well off to secure adequate nutrition for themselves and their families, and the ability of small-scale farmers to compete with the international pressures towards big-industry and monoculture.

This information was timed very interestingly with the Malaysian evening news, which today announced that Malaysia will not meet its expected output of palm oil this year (approx. 17 million tons). The government will seek to compensate by doubling export tariffs.