A Muslim Christmas

Well, we've made it back from Langkawi, Malaysia and had a wonderful time on our vacation. Lots of sun, food and fun.

We flew out early and had a short layover in Kuala Lampur where we decided to have lunch at Burger King because the only other option was some scary noodle place. Our bill was 23 RM (Malaysian Ringgit) but we of course didn't have any local currency on us. They said we could pay with US Dollars but, well, none of those either. (note to self: bring back US Dollars next time we're back in the States). Thankfully, they took HK dollars. We gave them HKD100 and got back something like 25 RM. Between the two of us, we couldn't figure out how much we actually paid for our lunch so if someone could do the math and let us know, we'd appreciate it!

It was my first time in a Muslim country (don't feel badly if you didn't know Malaysia is Muslim because I didn't realize it until I got there - I really need to work on these kind of things), and it was interesting to observe their customs. The majority of women had their heads covered and were dressed in long pants and long sleeves, even though it was 90+ degrees everyday. Seeing as how I'm "environmentally challenged" and am either too hot or too cold, I can't imagine having to wear all of those layers when it's so hot outside. However, not every woman covered their head all the time, but we couldn't work out what the standard was and felt rude being too inquisitive with people. This trip was also the first time that I have seen women dressed in the full, black burkas. The local Malaysians weren't dressed this way, but there were several women at our resort dressed this way. I can't imagine how hot these women get.

Really, though, the biggest difference is not in how the women dress but in how they act and how they are treated. Chris and I had quite a few long talks about this. I have to say that I wouldn't classify Langkawi women (these women don't include those dressed in the burkas that I just mentioned) as "oppressed", or at least not in how we traditionally define the word.

Langkawi women work, go about their business freely, cruise around in cars and motobikes on their own. It's not as if they can't do many of the things that "unoppressed" women do. Yet, at the same time, women are clearly viewed as a man's possession, for lack of a better word, whether that man be a husband, father or brother. From what I saw and experienced, women aren't treated badly, on a whole. It's all very subtle. For example, if Chris and I were together, only Chris was addressed. From the taxi drivers, to the waiters to the women at the front desk, no one ever said "hello" or "how are you" to me directly. From the Muslim standpoint, it is considered a great insult to the man (& woman for that matter) to directly address any woman in a man's company. I would be irate if something like that ever happened to us in the U.S. but I have to say that I never felt like I was being treated rudely while we were there. That being said, it is nice to be back in Hong Kong where women are very independent and treated as equals.

Our first night we ate in one of the restaurants in our hotel that had a cultural dancing show. It was somewhat cheesy, as most hotel shows can be, but it was cool to see their traditional wedding dances that have been around for hundreds of years. It makes you sort of embarrassed to think that some of the traditional American wedding dances are the "chicken dance" and the "dollar dance." I mean, flapping your hands like beaks and shaking your butt doesn't quite give you the same feeling as these well choreographed dances but I guess that's what happens when your country is only 200 years old and a mix of all different cultures. Oh well.

We headed to an outdoor night market Saturday evening. Compared to what we have here in Hong Kong, the market was filled with crap but the food was amazing. We had dinner at this place and ate an amazing meal of Nasi Goreng Ayam (fried rice with chicken) and Mango salad, all for the whopping price of $2.50 and that was because we had a bottle of water.

Langkawi reminded us a lot of Maui, which makes sense given that their both small islands, in warm weather climates, but Langkawi is actually made up of 99 small islands, with only 2 of them being inhabited by people. You can see some of the smaller islands in the background of the picture. One of my friends recommended a great restaurant right on the beach called The Lighthouse for dinner and to watch the sunset. This is us at dinner there. We ate all Malaysian food and it was amazing. We've become obsessed with Thai food while we've been in Hong Kong but we're thinking that Malaysian may be our new favorite. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday evening.
On Christmas Eve, we wanted to rent a car to go and see some of the sights on the island. We thought it would be fun to cruise around for the day, even if we did have to drive on the other side of the road. This is where having our driver's licenses would have been very helpful. The funny thing is, we had planned on doing this long before we ever got on the plane, but it never crossed either one of our minds to bring our license with us. We brought our passports and our Hong Kong ID cards but nothing to actually prove we know how to drive. This is one of those things that we'll never leave home without again but we just never thought of it. Oh well!

The good news is, we were able to rent a taxi for 4 hours for about $35 and we got to see a lot of the island. Only in Asia can you spend 4 hours in a taxi for the same amount of money it used to cost us to get from the Milwaukee airport to our apartments downtown.

We had our Christmas Eve dinner at a seafood restaurant in town. The food was amazing, including the massive King Tiger Prawns that we ordered. They were bigger than most lobsters we've eaten but we probably should have paid more attention to the fact that they were about $4 per 100 g. Please don't ask me to do the conversion but all I can tell you is that we had 4 prawn for $60. Oops! Really, though, they were very tasty.

I woke up Christmas morning in time to watch the sunrise. Thankfully, because we were very close to the equator, sunrise is at about 7:15, not too early. This is the view we had from the porch of our amazing bungalow. It was quiet and peaceful and very cool to watch the tide come in with the sun. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the entire water area in the picture was pure sand during low tide.
We found a little Catholic Chapel in town where we attended Christmas Day mass. It was just a room in a strip mall but there was a great community feel there. We also got to talk to our entire family, for a few minutes anyway, which was very special for us since we were both missing our families and Christmas traditions a lot. Christmas night, we went on a sunset dinner cruise around part of the island. The scenery and weather were absolutely beautiful. Here's a picture from our boat ride.

We hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas. It's hard to believe our vacation is already over and we're back in the swing of things in Hong Kong. Relatively speaking, it's freezing here. There is a "cold warning" for New Year's Eve - no I'm not making this up. It's supposed to get down to 11 C tonight (or 52 F). I'm not sure that really deserves a "cold warning" given that Milwaukee has gotten a ridiculous amount of snow and ice in December, but when you don't have heaters in your home, it's a bit chilly. And I have decided I've become a wuss in the short time that we've been here because I have been freezing all day. I may have to buy a hat and gloves :)

'Twas the Night Before...

...Our trip to Langkawi!

We are off to Langkawi, Malaysia tomorrow for a much needed break. Chris has been working just about non-stop since our trip to Cebu so our week off will be filled with lots of relaxation. It is supposed to be gorgeous there so we are really getting excited.

We wish all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas. We will be thinking of you all.

Much love this holiday season,
Chris and Erin

Transcending borders

Happy Holidays to everyone! From what we've seen and heard, the weather in the Midwest is full-on Christmas-time. All that snow...yikes! Chris and I aren't feeling all that "Christmasy" this year without all of our holiday traditions: Christmas tree hunting, cookie baking, gift shopping and present wrapping. O.k. I'm probably the only one who enjoys all of these things but this weekend we sat outside for dinner in jeans and a light sweater (me) and jeans and a t-shirt (Chris) and that is just a little odd for this time of year. But, mostly, it's going to be very odd for us to not be with our families for the first time ever on Christmas. Granted, we'll be on a beach in Malaysia so we won't be suffering terribly, but we are going to be missing Attack Uno, Midnight mass and lots of presents under the tree.

We did have a fantastic weekend and hope you all did as well. Friday we were invited to the wedding of our new friends, Murray and Catharine, and what an event it was! Murray is from South Africa and Catharine is from Australia but they have come via London. Yes, very worldly but this kind of thing is not all that uncommon here.

The wedding was black tie...Oooooh! We didn't know exactly what to expect since this was our first black tie wedding and the first wedding we've been to for someone outside of the U.S. We have since learned that black tie is actually pretty common in London. I guess this really isn't a surprise when you really think about their culture, but apparently many companies in London even have black tie Christmas parties so just about every guy has their own tux. Who would have thought?

It's funny how there are so many things you really take for granted until you have to go through the motions in a new place. Yes, I know that I should be fully aware of this after the last 5 months but I guess some things still surprise me. For example, what do you buy as a wedding gift? They're our age and have done well in their careers so money seems very inappropriate but what's the right thing to buy then? I still don't know if they're registered anywhere but we assumed not since about 55 of their 70 guests flew in from other countries. We settled on a really nice photo album from Papyrus (which if you think is an expensive store in the States, you're in for a shock in Hong Kong - total rip off) that I'm going to put some pictures and memorabilia from their wedding in.

Next question: do you bring the gift with you? Seems like an easy question until you think about the fact that 1. we don't have a car to leave the present in during church and 2. from church, the entire wedding reception was being transported on the Peak Tram up to the reception on top of the Peak. Answer: we brought the card with a note saying that we would bring their gift by when they returned from their honeymoon. However, I later learned that the wedding planner was collecting gifts from people as their walked in to the church. Oh, and their was no card box or gift table at the wedding (see previous sentence) so I eventually handed the card over to their really fantastic wedding planner.

The evening was a bit of a fairy tale. For those who have been up the Peak Tram (or who will be when you come to visit), you can only imagine how cool it was to have the whole wedding reception, dressed in black tie attire, take over an entire tram and ride up to the Peak together, only to be whisked away like a tour group to the reception where the cocktails were outside with really yummy hors d'oeuvres, mojitos, lychee martinis, cosmos and my new favorite, champagne.

They had the entire Pearl on the Peak restaurant rented out for a 5-course dinner with each course having its own wine. The view of Hong Kong was incredible, as it always is from the Peak, but all of these amazing things were second to the people that were there. It was so cool for us to be a part of a traditional wedding from another culture. Their guests had traveled from 4 different continents to be a part of the wedding and we couldn't believe how friendly everyone was. We were a little hesitant before the wedding because we only knew a few people besides the bride and groom but by the end of the night we had several people planning our visit to Sydney and other parts of Australia.

Now for the speeches. Between Chris and I, we're pretty sure that we've been to probably about 50+ weddings in our adult lives and these speeches and toasts were some of the best we've ever heard. That's not meant to be disrespectful to anyone, especially because we were incredibly moved by all of the speeches at our own wedding, but I think the whole atmosphere really added to them on Friday night.

For starters, the evening had an MC. Yes, really, but I suppose that's necessary when dinner is 3 or 4 hours. Nope, not making that up either. Catharine's brother, Daniel, was the MC and he did such a great job. He is a political correspondent in Sydney and on the national news every night in Australia so I suppose he has a knack for public speaking.

Second, the guys in the wedding party were dressed in morning suits (sans the top hats). In other words, tailed tuxedo jackets, gray striped trousers (this is a British things after all) and a fancy vest & tie. This kind of thing would NEVER fly in the U.S. I'm laughing just sitting here thinking about Chris, or any other guys I know, dressed like that and pretty sure that they would get beaten up by someone if they were ever dressed in a morning suit but in this atmosphere, it really just worked.

Third, there were real, proper toasts to the bride and groom. What do I mean by proper? Well, see pages 365 and 366 of "Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette" by Peggy Post (I hope I've cited this correctly!). You're laughing at me right now, I know it, but my dad and step-mom gave this to me when I got engaged and it has come in quite handy. For those not wanting to make a trip to the library or just can't bear to buy one more thing on Amazon.com this season, I'll give you a synopsis.

• Telegrams and messages sent from guests unable to attend are read by the best man - check
• People stand to toast the bride and groom - check
• If just the bride is being toasted, the groom stands (it doesn't say anything about just the groom being toasted but I can't imagine that really happens and it didn't last Friday) - check
• Both the bride and groom stand when the parents are being toasted - check

All of these things happened, along with the entire reception finishing a toast with saying, while standing of course, "To Murray and Catharine!" or "To Catharine!" It was very cool and it quickly became obvious to us why the English hold on to these traditions. It really does create a truly special atmosphere. You may be thinking to yourself, wait a minute, I know she said that neither one of them is originally from England. Well, their in lies the British influence on all corners of the earth and, apparently, most weddings in Australia are black tie because Australian guys don't know enough to show up to a wedding in an actual suit so this is the way to get around that problem! Well, at least this is what some of the Aussies told us.

Dancing started a little later than we had expected but that didn't matter because Bon Jovi and Cindy Lauper are apparently played at weddings all over the world. Livin' On a Prayer wasn't quite as animated as it would be in the States but it was close enough. All in all, a really wonderful experience and we were so happy to be part of Murray and Catharine's special day.

We left the reception around 12:30 and headed to meet our Hong Kong posse (so fun that we actually have one of these!) out in Lan Kwai Fong. They were all getting together for a Christmas celebration and of course the party headed to Al's in LKF. It is an experience like none other. All the 80s music you could want, jello shots, dancing on tables and swinging from poles hanging from the ceiling. So funny and so much fun. The only problem with Hong Kong is that there is no bar time. We were there for awhile and then the rest of the wedding reception showed up and 4 hours later we finally made it to bed. Not really all that bad considering we didn't have any commitments on Saturday but our neighbors upstairs started doing remodeling work at 8:30 a.m. Ugh! Definitely a time when we were missing our single family home.

Saturday was mostly a wash but we met our friends Sophie and Richie for dinner. Sophie and I went home early but the boys stayed out. Chris has decided that he needs to stop thinking he is 21 anymore because it makes for really bad hangover at 34. He does rally very well but we keep laughing at how ridiculous we are sometimes. We definitely go out a lot more in Hong Kong than we had of late in Milwaukee.

Sunday we went for an amazing hike on the south side of the island with Sophie and Richie. I can be a bit sadistic when it comes to these kind of things and I was really wanting a hike that would be a good workout. Well, literally 4000 steps up and down later, all of our legs were shaking. I got my work out and worked up a good appetite in the process. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera but the pictures probably wouldn't have turned out very good anyway because the pollution was sort of bad.

Anyway, we had a very fun weekend and are now looking to our 9:15 a.m. flight on Friday so we can catch up on sleep.

It's my little sis's b-day today so Happy Birthday, Ashley! She got to see the Packers wallop the Rams in St. Louis this weekend. Woo hoo!

And, in the spirit of weddings, I want to give a big congrats to my very dear friend, Robyn, who got engaged this weekend to Erich. He popped the question Friday night at what looks like was a very cold, but beautiful, night at Lights in the Park in Chicago. Congratulations you two and I know we're all looking forward to a night of "Mystery Drink".