The Trip Home

By Charlie

World travelers take note: Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taipei, Taiwan has free wireless internet. Or at least Terminal 2 has free wi-fi. Hookup to the SSID “HTY_FREE”.

So here we are for the next three hours, waiting for the China Airlines plane that will finally take us to America, The Greatest Country in the World.

We departed Penang, Malaysia this morning. It was fine. The plane was packed and we were the only white people in Economy Class. There was an American woman in First Class, but we didn’t talk with her.

We haven’t really thought about Taiwan at all this year, so it’s nice to get a little taste of it on our way out of Asia. Taiwanese people seem somehow different from Chinese people. The language is the same, but it sounds different. The youth are more funky, almost as funky as Korean youth.

Electrical plugs in this airport are of the American variety, which is neat. And the airport could be in America. I have no idea what the rest of Taiwan feels like, but this airport is fine with me.

But then there is that lingering and looming problem of China. One of these days, will China get a bug up its ass and try to sort out the Taiwan issue by force? I think not. But if I were Taiwanese, I’d spend most of my life wondering about that.

A few words about Penang:

It is not my most favorite place in Asia. I’m grateful for everything that we’ve done this year and I’m even grateful for the opportunity we had to visit Penang. But it is kind of gross.

We stayed here, at the Golden Sands by Shangri-La:

All of these pictures are pirated off the Golden Sands’ website and of course they make the place look far better than it felt in real life. Isn’t that always the way? Incidentally, we also found this to be true of Lonely Planet guidebooks.

Anyway, it was fine. And I feel bad for complaining.

Our room looked more or less like this, minus the fresh flowers and minus the stuffed animals on the bed:

We had breakfast here, at the Garden Café:

We had five breakfasts here and we didn’t discover the roti bar until our penultimate breakfast. That was our mistake, because roti for breakfast is a winner.

We had one “western set lunch” in the hotel’s Italian restaurant, called Pepino!

We also enjoyed a few dips in the pool:

On our first night in Penang, a taxi driver told us that we would be seeing many visitors from the Arab world. As it turned out, we saw hundreds of Saudis on holiday. We guess that our hotel mates at the Golden Sands are probably middle class folk, since most were not traveling with their servants.

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen so many women covered head-to-toe in black cloth. All you could see were eyes peeking through very thin slits. I saw one woman who didn’t even reveal her eyes. I guess she could see through a screen. Cultural judgments aside, this was bizarre.

The Luce Scholar who spent her year in Malaysia gave a nice and concise presentation organized around a top ten list that she collected during her year. While I liked the presentation, it didn’t make me like Malaysia. The good news is that Malaysia is diverse – “With a capital D” – as the Luce Scholar explained. The bad news is that diversity does not really equate with harmony or equality. And sharia law seems to be on the rise.

The worst thing about all of this is that we spent ten very long months in Mongolia watching Malaysia tourism advertisements on BBC World. “Malaysia, Truly Asia” is the slogan that is sung over beautiful visuals. We actually saw one of these ads the other night at the Golden Sands. As each wonderful visual clicked by, I thought, “We haven’t seen that – or that – or that – or that.” We did see a jewelry factory, a turtle cesspool, a butterfly farm and a spice garden. The spice garden was by far the nicest – or least offensive.

But just like the two-week trip through Mongolia, this experience was not entirely about the place. It was about the people. For the third time this year, 17 Luce Scholars and Spouses got together with people from the Asia Foundation and the Luce Foundation to talk about the year. And that was very nice. Each Scholar (or Scholar & Spouse Team) gave a presentation. Some of these presentations were excellent. For the nitty gritty on the best presentations, please see Raduga.