Prof. dt and Prof. Fraser round us up in the airport, and herd us through the first of many customs line. We meet up with Nad�a, our ISP tour guide from its Prague office, and Cecelia Mek, our local Hong Kong guide. Our bus has its entrance on its left: I hadn�t thought about what side of the road people drive on, and the Hong Kong movies I�ve seen never focus on cars that much. Hong Kong�s just had its tenth year of Chinese rule, after 150 years or so as a British colony. Virtually everything�s in English, particularly on the high-end retail and tourism level. The two official languages here are English and Mandarin, the official language for all of China. The people here all speak Cantonese, and those involved in business need to learn Mandarin and English. Cantonese could become a dead language within a generation.

There�s no fourth floor in the Harbor Plaza hotel. The number 4 is bad luck in China, since the word for �4� in Chinese languages sounds like the word for �death�. There�s also no 14th floor or 24th floor, and in catering to western customs the 13th floor is left off as well. This 33-story hotel is actually only 29 stories.

Not too much weird hotel stuff to report on. Instead of a coffeemaker, there�s a hot water pot and packets of instant coffee. The bathroom has two toothbrushes along with the complimentary little soaps. (Cathay Pacific gave each of us a toothbrush too, in a packet with a toothpaste tube the size of a vitamin, some advertisements, and a pair of socks.) There are two phones books, both just business, one in English and one in Chinese, both with about a hundred pages of glossy escort service advertisements. (My roommate Mark and I hypothesize that the Chinese girls in the ads are there for Western businessmen, and the white girls in the ads are there for the mainland Chinese businessmen. Everyone likes something exotic in Hong Kong.) The toilet uses filtered seawater, which saves on fresh water but leads to corrosion problems with those pipes.

The municipal buses outside seem to all be double-decker. The public transportation system is first-rate and very cheap, costing about $1 US for subway rides. Taxis are red, and usually a Toyota Comfort, a model we don�t have in America. Cars have the right of way over pedestrians, which might just be because the taxis are already the color of blood: pedestrians are just free paint jobs.

It�s incredibly hard to get contact outside. After checking cell phone messages once in a Paris airport and getting charged $15, I decide to buy a phone card. But I can�t find one: the Wellcome supermarket across the street doesn�t have one (which makes sense since it�s a supermarket, although American supermarkets sell everything from greeting cards to patio furniture). I normally balk at the high rates hotels charge for Internet access ($140 HK per day, about $20) but to get a connection it�s worth it. And then it�s not. The connection is slow as hell, and virtually no request makes it outside the country. Mark pokes around the computer and sees that requests are being stopped at the router level. Whether this is a function of all my email addresses having servers on the other side of the world or government censorship, I don�t know. There�s Wifi galore, but most of it is secured. The rare unsecured account does not let me go online. I try in the hallway that faces most of the big buildings, and at the other end of the hallway, and down in the lobby, and still no luck.

Eight of us went to the ATM to get some cash. The local bank had four kiosks for online banking, but only one was an ATM. One was for deposits, one was for check deposits, and one was for passbook accounts. It took the better part of half an hour for everyone to get the average of $500 HK per person. (I only got $300 HK: I�m planning to do most of my shopping in Johore Bahru). The money here is the Hong Kong dollar, with a 7.8 exchange rate. Prices seem ridiculous, but everything needs to be divided by 7.8 to convert to US prices. Dividing by 7.8 is tough, so most of us just divide by 7 or 8, which is also not that easy. I was not told there�d be mental arithmetic on this trip.

During my long unsuccessful hunt for contact with the Western world, I saw a woman running around the corner with a handkerchief clutched to her face. SARS? Bird flu? Whatever tomorrow�s pandemic is? Nope: just the septic truck around the corner. A lot of the sewage is pumped away by truck instead of by pipe. It�s just dumped back into the ocean, raw. I am very glad I got that hepatitis shot before coming here.

1/4/08 I technically got no sleep last night. Try as I may to lie in bed (which had no sheet, just a thick duvet), I could not convince my body that it was night and not the middle of the afternoon. For me at least, lying down and closing my eyes for a while accomplishes the mental recharge even without losing consciousness, so by the time I give up and just turn on the lights and TV at 4:30 in the morning (Mark over in his bed can�t sleep either) I�ll hopefully have enough rest to last us through the day.

Breakfast is in Greens, the hotel restaurant, a very nice spread that has most western breakfast items (omelet station, toast, cereal, juice, sausage and bacon) as well as Chinese dishes which apparently get eaten for breakfast (sticky buns, shrimp fried rice, congee) and Korean kimchee, which I flat out hate. I�ll look to sample all these various foods in the three mornings we�ll be eating here, save the kimchee.

Our conference room is downstairs, with pads of paper and pre-arranged glasses of water and a screen for Powerpoint presentations and remarkably similar to anything you might find in an American hotel conference room. There are pencils at every seat instead of pens: otherwise, I could be in Chicago.

Brock Wilson is our first speaker, from the US Commerce Board. He gives us an overview of Hong Kong�s business environment, and generously puts up with lots of our questions. China exports most everything to America. What does the US export to China? One thing, principally: waste paper. It�s cheaper to ship our old newspapers and office memos across the Pacific then to chop down a bunch of trees for new pulp.

I didn�t get the chance to ask Brock Wilson how often he gets references to Tyler Brock, the villainous trader in Tai-Pan, the James Clavell novel about the founding of Hong Kong. Is that an unofficial bible around here, or is that and Noble House the only two books about Hong Kong history I�ve stumbled across? After a break or coffee, tea and little pizzas, Dr. Mark Michelson addresses us. He�s with Invest Hong Kong, a local government group that provides free help to those looking. Like with Wilson, he ends with a call for us to work in Hong Kong. I have my usual thoughts about moving here and becoming an expatriate. I have similar thoughts about opening a restaurant right after watching a cooking show. But Michelson mentioned how quickly people become millionaires here, and the low taxes, which those cooking shows never do. A lot of people in our group turn out to be seriously contemplating the expat life.

Lunch is back in Greens. Lunch is part of our tour package, but sodas are $42 HK extra. That�s over $6 US for a can of Coke. Damn. Never mind that stuff about living here. My stomach felt a little woozy coming out of lunch. What did it? The fish curry? The raw oyster? The raw mussel? The sushi? (The oysters and mussels were by signs announcing that they were from sanitary sources and not the harbor swimming with Hong Kong effluvium.)

Cecelia rejoins us on the bus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Chinese companies have a choice between being listed here or on the Shanghai Stock Exchange: this one�s more for companies looking for international presences. Bonnie Chan is our guide for the Exchange, in a new building just completed in 2006. The companies here trade by a stock numbers, not letters. When the HKEx itself went public, it grabbed #388, a number with two 8s and a 3 in it (three�s apparently lucky in all cultures). Traders wear red vests with their company numbers on it just so people know who�s who. This exchange is about 5% the size of the NYSE, which says more about the NYSE than the nonetheless-huge HKEx. Outside the trading area are the public exhibits and computer screens full of stock info (and Internet access, I�m happy to say; emailing home feels like scratching an itch).

Dinner is at Mr. Steak, which is fairly good western food despite the name. We�re sitting in the half of the restaurant with outdoor seats, and big heat lamps are turned on to keep us warm. I sit by Ahasn and Nirmit, the two undergrad bio majors who are on this mostly-MBA trip. Both of them have done their share of traveling, but I�d be blown away to be doing this trip when I was 19.

Most of us skip the bus trip back to the hotel, and catch the subway. Some are going to the bars by Central station, and some are going to the Temple Street market over in Kowloon (the Brooklyn to Hong Kong�s Manhattan). I go with the Temple Street crowd. A perpetual outdoor market is full of much of the stuff sold in American Chinatowns: cheap T-shirts, knockoff fashion, toys that are one or two letters different from trademarks (�Trgnsfirmers�) and lots of silk. Nauman and I split a batch of 12 postcards: each of us only needed six. One store selling various patches has, amongst flags and virtually all NFL team logos, a swastika. It was at the center of a big Iron Cross patch, with �1939� at the bottom. Since Japan took over most of Asia during WWII, I�d think people would still have a dim memory of the white supremacists who colluded with them. Or maybe anti-Semitism overwhelms that.

A seafood restaurant at the corner of Temple St. had us gaping, since its advertisement was live seafood wriggling on a corner table. This was more than just crabs: shrimp, prawns, snails, and some tubeworm-looking things were all pulsating on plates. Jumbo prawns, when turned upside down and flexing their many legs in rhythm, look like a completely alien species.

The bar scene by Central is overflowing with western culture. Drinks are about $50 HK. Our first stop is Agave, a Mexican bar that some of the group visited our first night. The nachos are apparently killer, but I can�t go to Hong Kong and then order nachos. One nightclub down from Agave is charging $100 HK just to get in, and half our group pays it without blinking. The rest of us go to a bar where entry to the stage area is one drink. American and British music is all we hear. A local band starts playing at 12:30, the Cranberries� Zombie and then Oasis� Wonderwall. Five of us pile in a cab for a quick ride home, and the total cost per person is the same as if we took the subway.

1/5/08 I finally get some real sleep, after not really attempting to on the flight, and then spending the next night just lying in bed uselessly for six hours. At breakfast I try congee: flavorless rice gruel. I don�t think there are many foods that the Chinese have earmarked for breakfast: I think it�s the same foods as lunch and dinner, only cold.

This is a tourist day, so our bus takes up to the top of Victoria Peak, the highest point in Hong Kong. And it�s high. From lookout posts we can see the tops of all the skyscrapers. I could zipline down to the top of a skyscraper from here. Is there anywhere else in the world with mountains and skyscrapers like this? San Francisco has both, but it�s smartly not looking to build very high in an earthquake zone.

Someone pukes during the bus ride down the mountain. It�s jerky, rough, and looking out the window at 100-foot drops doesn�t help. The bus comes very very close to scraping against the sheer stone walls a couple times, and once a thick branch hits my window hard enough I expect it to smash through. We pass by a cricket field where kids are playing, and the usually calm Nirmit dives to get his camera in time for a picture. A minute later, I�m doing that same camera dive when we pass by the gate to Jackie Chan�s house.

We stop by Stewart�s market, like the Temple Street market but a little more above board (we�re still advised not to buy any jewelry here). I find some Chinese place settings with six sets of chopsticks. Most stores sold them for $79 HK each, and a woman in the street was selling them two for $80 HK. I got three of them for $110 HK, and probably could have gotten her down to $100 HK if I had any experience in haggling.

Today�s the day we notice that the paper money here is not all via the Hong Kong government, but via private banks. They use different designs, so three $20 HK bills can be three different colors. HSBC has a lot of the money, and the Bank of China. Coins are still the government�s problem.

We hit the Aberdeen Harbor, where a few people grab a twenty-minute tour of the harbor on a rickety wooden boat. The rest of us enjoy the sunshine, look at the little fish visible in the jade-green water, and recover from the bus ride. Our last stop on our tour is the Aberdeen Jewelry Co. We get a short tour of the dingy authentic workshop where pearls, diamonds and other stones are set into gold and silver settings. Then we enter the enormous showroom. I�m in the market to get my girlfriend something nice, and pearls are both appropriate and local. I don�t know if this was the best deal in Hong Kong for pearls, but it�s certainly the first place that gave me the confidence that I would be buying the genuine article. I�m nervous the rest of the day about misplacing my purchase, even though compared to most of the kilogram-sized broaches in the showroom I�ve just bought a Ring Pop.

Iris, our trip�s Hong Kong local, takes us for a late lunch to a dim sum place. This is the first time any of us have used chopsticks this trip, or even seen them as an option for dining. Nauman and I get sweet and sour fish, while Iris, Vinnie and Mark all get various types of pork. Pork�s very big here: I�m used to American Chinese food, where the exact same dishes are made with four or five substitutable meats. Here, most dishes are just pork or seafood. For side dishes you could get rice or noodles: rice was a small dish, but the noodles came in an entr�e-size portion in a pint of good broth. It�s hard to finish it all, but I do.

I swore upon leaving the States that a trip to Macau (the Atlantic City to Hong Kong�s Manhattan) was stupid. Now I�m on the trip, and very happy to be doing it. The small-then-huge-then-small trip to Macau ended up with just four people going: me, Mark, Ahsan and Nirmit. We took a taxi to Sheng Zau (SP?) and then bought tickets. At $169 HK each way, the round trip costs about fifty bucks US. Pretty cheap for a new stamp on the passport. Whether this counts as a new country is up to debate: we�re just leaving one part of China for another part. But it has its own money (at virtually the same value as Hong Kong money, and Hong Kong money is widely accepted here), its own laws and its own languages (not many other places in Asia with signs in Portuguese). Mark and I both went to sleep during the boat ride: I don�t think I needed a nap so much in my life.

Macau�s a 400-year-old Portuguese settlement, a Special Administrative Region just like Hong Kong. It�s also the only place in all of China for legal gambling. The past few years has turned it into Las Vegas on steroids: dozens of casinos, billions of candlepower of neon. Mark and I visit two of the biggest, newest casinos: MGM Grand and Wynn Macau. The MGM Grand just opened two weeks ago: big posters of a regal-looking Chow Yun-Fat advertise the casino. Rooms there run $400 US a night. Damn. The MGM has floor carpeting in the design of elaborate 8s. The Wynn has a restaurant called Red 8, where Mark and I get roast goose and roast pork belly. The Venetian also opened recently, but that was on another of Macau�s islands and we�ve done enough traveling for the day. Most table games are baccarat, Caribbean stud poker, and a wimpy version of blackjack with a soft hit-on-17 rule: the dealer only does it if he needs to. None of us gambles.

Wynn has the elaborate Tree of Prosperity event running every half hour, which compares with any of the big free events Vegas casinos like the Bellagio and Treasure Island put on. A huge golden dome is at the bottom of a room, and the twelve symbols of the Chinese zodiac are in huge brass carvings above. The carvings rotate out like an aperture, revealing a Jumbotron that pulsates textured lights to music (I think John Williams� Olympic Fanfare). The Jumbotron opens, and one of the biggest chandeliers in the world lowers, almost meeting an enormous oak tree that rises from the floor dome. Lights turn the tree gold and green and silver. It lowers to music both Mark and I immediately recognized as the Dragon theme. It gets used a lot in trailers: big, swelling, powerful music which isn�t identifiable to most as being from a movie. And if anyone does recognize it, it�s Bruce Lee, so one more thing to cheer about.

These casinos draw China�s rich, who live mostly along the eastern seaboard. Go inland and the average yearly salary is just $1300 US. This explains why most of the slot machines are for 10 cents or 20 cents: that�s all the locals can afford.

1/6/08 I try Vegemite on toast for my final Hong Kong breakfast, and end up ruining a whole piece of bread. It tastes like a dentist�s office: antiseptic and sour. I�m with four other people at the table, each of who is curious enough about Vegemite to take small bites from the same piece of bread, but most of who have no problem with spitting their bites out in their napkins.

We drive back to the airport, seeing the thousands upon thousands of containers stacked along Lantau Island that we couldn�t see during the night. Lantau Island�s the Staten Island to Hong Kong�s Manhattan, assuming Staten Island in this case is lots of shipping containers, a newly built airport, and Disney World. OK, the Manhattan analogy falls apart with Lantau.

The prospect of a mere 3-hour-45-minute flight after the 16 hour ordeal turns us into career criminals shrugging off a mere week in county jail. �I can do this standin� on my head!� After checking in, I wander through a bookstore, and get a huge ego boost. Private Label Strategy is in the store, on a subject I wrote about for five years when I was with Private Label magazine. I check to see if my former boss � who�s still editor of the magazine � was cited, and I find out that I�m cited. Stuff I wrote six years ago is now quoted by the Harvard Business School featured publication. I check four different bookstores along the way to my gate, making sure the book�s in each one.

The flight attendants spray us when we get over Malaysia airspace, with some sort of insect repellant. The Malaysia customs form has one line of red type warning that the penalty for drug trafficking is death. I see my first headscarf about twelve seconds after getting off the plane. I think this will be a more foreign country than Hong Kong.

The Kuala Lumpur International Airport looks like a stretched out Short Hills Mall: high end shops, wide polished aisles, and lots of space between stores. So did the Hong Kong airport, come to think of it. Very few locals can afford to fly, so the retail caters to the few rich people that can afford to be here. For the brief bit of time between leaving the airport and stepping on the air conditioned bus, we�re in a hot mess of humidity. 90 degrees F, 12 months of the year. It�s always hot and humid this close to the equator. At the hotel, we�ll find just a sheet on the bed, in a building with many amenities but no heat. I don�t think a single building in this country has a furnace.

The Federal Hotel uses a thick plastic door card, with a series of holes like a punch card to open the door. There�s only one card per room. The electricity in the room works off the same card: you can�t turn on a light or the TV without jamming this card in a slot by the door. The bedside table between the two beds has switches that control all the lights, and which looks like a NASA control panel circa the Gemini program. This might make sense if the biggest hotel problem is unattended lights. But for two people, having to share one key is a pain. If Mark and I split up, the first person back will need to hold the key. Mark arranges for the front desk to hold the key for whoever gets back first.

We all meet up for dinner, get money one by one at a Malaysian ATM (the ringgit exchange rate is 1:3.4, so just divide prices by three to get US prices: much easier than dividing by 7.8), then split into three or four groups to follow various tastes. I join a group going to The Ship, a steakhouse close to the hotel, because I haven�t spent much time with any of this group so far. The food�s good, and cheap. It proclaims �The best steak in town� and I have no reason to doubt them. No pork on this menu: just beef, lamb, chicken, turkey bacon, and (beef or chicken) sausage. The Ship also has a stage in their nautical-themed restaurant, with �The Best Rock Band in Malaysia� playing Sunday nights. I also have no reason to doubt this: the band�s competent, but aware that the club�s only half full, and so the Jerry-Cantrell-sounding lead singer disappears for a few minutes for a smoke break while the band adds five minutes to the rock cover they�re doing.

1/7/08 Another big breakfast buffet. I drink kiwi juice for the first time, as well as sample pineapple jam and kaya (which looks like peanut butter but tastes like honey).

Between breakfast and the start of the seminars, Mark and I go back to the room. Mark turns on the TV, and of all things he finds the Rutgers game live on ESPN. They�re up on Ball State 7-0, then 14-0. It�s 17-3 by the time we leave midway through the second quarter, and they end up winning the game 52-30. We come back downstairs and announce the news. �It�s a basketball game,� Vinnie says.

We�ve got two speakers in the hotel today, and then we have a field trip. Vincent Leusner of the American Chamber of Commerce gives us lots of points about this country. This is America�s 10th largest trading partner, and it�s a country with only 27 million people. Malaysia�s a moderate Islamic state, and still considered developing, although you wouldn�t know it from looking around KL. Per capita income is $4000 US, so most of KL�s advertisements are geared for the wealthy. Technology is huge here: a 747 full of Dell laptops leaves Malaysia every day. Literacy is 96%. Malaysia makes its own cars, the Proton. The country has lots of tin, rubber, and even oil.

Sakaya Johns Rani from PriceWaterhouseCoopers tells us that new companies that set up shop here can get 10 years of tax abatements. The Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), that the Petronas Towers are the unofficial point of, has brought in much of the technological development. Biotech is welcome here, although she doesn�t know of any biotech company that has currently opened its doors. Rani mentions a point that Leusner also brought up: despite being a member of OPEC, Malaysia is forecasted to become an oil importer by 2011. Indonesia�s already hit this mark.

Lunch back at the in-hotel restaurant. There�s a snow cone machine (maybe it�s called shave ice here) with toppings ranging from syrups and chocolate to shredded panang and red beans. Why are red beans a dessert item?

As the bus got to out afternoon stop, I asked our KL tour guide about visiting Batu Caves. I was hoping for some info on the best way to get there, any costs, what to look for if I could get there. He immediately suggests that the whole bus could go if we got through this Royal Selangor stop quick. Neat!

Royal Selangor is a major pewter manufacturer. It has built a major kid-friendly tourist center around its luxury pewter. It sounds like the world�s worst field trip � a field trip based on a metallic alloy - but it�s designed to be a very touchable child�s museum. There�s different finishes of pewter to touch, information about how it�s made (about 97% tin, with a little antimony and copper) and big crocodiles and Petronas towers made of pewter. At one point there�s a bunch of costumes to throw on to look like either a royal landowner or one of the coolies mining the tin. I couldn�t tell the difference between the outfits, since everything looked regal except those wide straw hats. Pretty sure the laborers weren�t wearing red silk.

The general manager couldn�t make it (he came down with dengue fever), so someone else addresses us. I know if we get through this quick I�d get my chance to go caving, but soon I�m just thinking of the pewter industry and asking three long questions.

We step out of the air conditioning and into the factory, where everything is still made by hand. Is this a sweat shop, or just a shop where everyone�s sweating? Molten pewter is poured into molds with a ladle, and the mold immediately broken open for the now-solid pewter to be removed. Other stations polish it, finish it, and join it with other pieces (for the tankards, which we saw being made, handles are separate pieces).

Back inside the air conditioning, there are work stations for us to make our own pewter bowls. First you take linotype letters and inscribe your name on a flat pewter disc. Then you take a wooden hammer and pound the disc into a wooden block with a bowl-shaped depression in it. Flip the wooden block to find a deeper wooden depression, and made your bowl even deeper. The pictures show five-year-old girls doing this. It�s fun, but feels more like art school than business school. We�re led into the showroom area after that, and then for a leisurely cup of tea, and any hopes of Batu Caves disappear with that cup of tea.

While I was planning Batu Caves other people were planning the KL Tower, which has a revolving restaurant up top open for dinner. It was expensive (about $50 US) but it was my first time in a rooftop restaurant, and I get plenty of shots of the Petronas Towers in the night sky, looking like two rockets about to lift off.

1/8/08 We�ve been told to forget about going inside the Petronas towers. It�s free and open to the public, but tickets for later that day are given out at 9:30, and you need to get there very early to get any. Mark and Iris are smart enough to game the system. They hire a taxi driver to wait in line. Each person in line gets five tickets. The cabbie gets 100RM when he came back with the tickets, and five lucky people on this trip get to go to the skyway. (You can�t go to the top, only to the 42nd floor skyway between the two towers. The KL tower gives you a much better view, all things considered.)

Our morning bus trip is to IBM. Director of marketing Ali Munawar tells us that a new hire here gets about $14 thousand US, for a job that would cost $50 or $60 thousand in America. The Lenovo sale didn�t affect this business at all, since IBM�s Malaysia business is 100% services. Doingbusiness.org ranks Malaysia worldwide as #3 for getting credit and #4 for protecting investors, although #105 for dealing with licenses. IBM gives us a yearbook-sized keepsake, with big glossy pictures of business clip art with a few words per page about IBM�s efforts in Malaysia. I thank them for it, flip through it, and put it back.

Our tour guide was going to be leading us on a picture-taking trip through the city in the afternoon, which was my prime time for the cave. I asked him about the trip, feeling bad that I was thus announcing that I wasn�t going on his tour. He was very friendly in describing my best way: just take a taxi, which should be 30 ringgit each way. Brendan then asks the tour guide something I failed to: what time is the cave open until? Until 8:00 or so, which gives plenty of time for Batu Caves after the bus tour. That becomes my new plan. But me talking about the trip has inspired five people to skip out on the bus tour nonetheless, and go to Batu Caves at 1:30. I have lunch with Brendan and Mai, at the food court inside a local mall. The mall vendors are largely the same food stalls as found on the street, only in the implied safety of a building with air conditioning. I get a bowl of noodles and chicken for 5 RM, and a kiwi drink for 2 RM. The food�s not that good, flavorless chicken noodle soup. But it�s authentic!

The bus trip takes us through a Malaysian war memorial, several mosques, and a popular spot for the ideal view of the Petronas towers. The first stop was at the Malaysian king�s palace. Kings are elected here, from amongst the sultans of the various states. Elected kings, huh. Like with England, the guards at the front gate are instructed to not move no matter how many annoying tourists get next to them for photos.

Back at the hotel, the taxi drivers seem to have 80 ringgit set up as a flat fee for Batu Caves. There�s five of us going, and we (by which I men people other than me) negotiate them down to 60 for the round trip, plus them waiting for us while we�re in cave. There�s five us of on the trip: me, dt, Prof. Fraser, Brendan and Mai. I�m taking my teachers caving!

Just before we leave, the other trip comes back. They�re very happy. The place is riddled with monkeys, which seems to be the big selling point. Nirmit went on his own solo trip there, and is also very happy. He says there�s a 140-foot golden statue. Must be a huge cave to fit that guy inside.

The taxi drive doesn�t take too long, and soon I can see the big earthen chunk rising from outside the city. The caves have got to be up in there. As we pass an Isuzu billboard, the giant golden statue comes into view, every bit the size of the billboard even from back on the highway.

The entrance to Batu Caves is 272 steps, enough to be taller even than the 140-foot statue at its base. Inside the caves were Hindu temples. The three rows of steps were made at different times, so some steps are steeper than others. From a brief glance around, we�re the only non-Hindus here. There�s no entry fee, just a parking lot and several shops and temples along the sides.

Our tour guide had recommended watching a video in a theater off to the side here. A temple to my left had a foot-washing station and a box office. I take off my shoes, wash my feet, and walked to the box office. The man behind the counter makes sure I had taken off my shoes, but says with gestures that the rest of the building is free. It�s full of very devotional Indians, but no theater, and not a single person with a camera aside from me. There is some serious worship going on here, and I�m not looking to stomp around someone�s worship. I walk around just enough to confirm there was no theater, and then come back to the others.

The theater is on the far side of the parking lot. Like our guide said, 10 RM for a 15-minute show. We�re the only ones, so as soon as we sat down in the very nice seats in the small theater, the DVD title screen was clicked to play. The movie gives a little bit of insight into the history of the temple (built in 1892) but not much on why, or who this was built to, or why people hang bells from their back and run rods through their cheeks to worship this deity. I�m checking Wikipedia when I get back home.

The skies are growing dark, so there�s extra motivation to climb the steps now. Once you get to the top, you�ll have a roof over your head. The steps are painted with the numbers on the bottoms, so you can see each step.

Around step 30 I run into a monkey. He�s sitting on the center post, long tail hanging most of the way to the ground. Malaysia has lots of macaques. This is my first time in a monkey-riddled country. The other trips said the monkeys were everywhere. As I get close, my monkey jumped away into the greenery to the right. He joins another monkey, casually climbing around a painted iron fence, and I see no monkeys after that. Monkeys like daylight the best.

Around step 60 the floodlights around us kick on. It feels like one of the steps triggers it. Later, big green lights will illuminate the jungle around the top of the steps.

Around step 170 there is a locked turnoff on the left for Dark Cave. This staircase is so big there are side trips. This was a wild cave in the same system, locked so no one goes in there to make mischief or get himself hurt. My KL city guide in the hotel says there were guided tours once a month. With a little planning, maybe next time I could do it.

Brendan and I are climbing at the same pace. This isn�t a race, so we clear the final step at the same time. As soon as we do, the rain stopped hitting us. The entrance frame exactly marks where the lip of the roof overhangs. We stick by the entrance and waited for the other three to make their way up the stairs. Everyone gets up without too much gasping for breath.

The cave is huge and tropical, with tufts of green overhanging from edges. Multi-ton stalactites hang from many locations. It still feels like an empty amusement park. There�s a cement floor, and metal banisters at midpoints to keep future crowds only going one direction, and enough flood lights so you don�t notice the many eroded holes in the ceiling. The stalactites too big to be removed for the cement have cement poured around them. The bottom ten feet of the cave is painted in a red and yellow stripe, almost like the bottom of a ship, with �no stick� written in multiple languages. No incense sticks? No postings? No high sticking?

There is a man in a cloud of incense here. Brendan brings an offering of flowers and milk from the bottom, and so is blessed with a mark of red paint on his forehead. I didn�t get a blessing myself, since I don�t know if it�s dependent on flowers and milk. I also have no idea what the blessing meant. I sure it�s a good thing, but I�m afraid there�d be a quiz on just what this temple was here for.

More steps lead down from this entrance area, into a flat expanse that might be the biggest cave room I�ve ever been in. Easily a hundred feet from floor to ceiling. All the cement and railings and flood lights can�t hide this from being one enormous room. More steps lead up from this room, up into a side chamber where the main temple is. The eroded ceiling of this chamber is noticeable because the rain has started to come down, and was only just below the hole. A stray cat slinks around, staying clear of the rain. I look for more monkeys, but they�ve all clocked out.

The temple in this side chamber has a bell to be rung when you enter. People take their shoes off before entering. My politeness overwhelms my curiosity, so I don�t go into it. I can see it�s mostly standing and bowing before a statue of ... someone.

Going at twilight has the bonus of seeing the bats leave. I don�t see where any of them nest, but looking at any of the holes in the ceiling and you see a continuous trickle of little winged things fluttering out into the sky. Eat up those mosquitoes, guys!

We descend back down the main stairs in a thickening rain. There are about 18 different entrances to this cave system, but I have several reasons to be OK with leaving now. First, we have taxis politely waiting. Second, the rest of the group is in no inclination to poke around in more holes. Third, I have no idea what further religious faux pas would be made by doing any of this. Fourth, it�s raining. Fifth, I have no lights, so anything that wasn�t pre-lit for us would be just a tease.

I get back to the hotel, finally figure out how to call my girlfriend (a convenience store has phones set up just for calling cards), and spend 25 minutes finally hearing her voice again. I take a stroll by all the food stalls, but after a rain the whole area reeks of wet garbage, so I wimp out and go to McDonalds. It�s my first McDonalds visit in another country, if you don�t count a visit to Niagara Falls in fourth grade. I order the one item unapologetically listed in Malaysian on the menu, which ends up being spicy fried chicken.

1/9/08 The plane flight to Singapore might be half an hour start to finish. Add in the whole morning to get to the flight and an hour once you land, and all of a sudden we don�t beat the bus here by very long. (Three people skipped the flight to take a bus, hoping to see the Malaysian countryside. I already had the ticket in hand, and didn�t want it to go to waste.) Eric and I add some time to our leaving the Singapore airport by finding the free Internet kiosks there and using the fifteen minutes allotted to each person.

Singapore�s hotter than KL, and rainier. It comes and goes: we�ll have two bursts of rain today, and the rest of the time will just be humid. Alan, our tour guide, is a fourth generation Singaporean. Four official languages here: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, with English being how the legal system and most business operate. The money�s the Singapore dollar, at a 1:1.4 exchange rate. Every S $3 is worth US $2. The money just gets more and more valuable as we travel.

Nad�a had three bits of news to impart when we get to the York Hotel, which do not sound good when put together: lunch is on our own, we need to change into business casual and meet back in the lobby in just over an hour for the Rutgers meet-up, and after that we need to make our own way back to the hotel. The York has the same no-card-no-power policy, but it�s no problem at all since there are multiple cards. No iron in the room, though, and we have just over an hour to get checked in, change clothes for the Rutgers EMBA meet-up, and call for an iron to help a shirt wrinkling in the suitcase for a week now.

We get a boat tour of the city, on the two-mile-long Singapore River. Even with all its rains, Singapore needs to import water, since it doesn�t have anywhere to collect all the rains. The skyline�s full of dozens and dozens of huge, gorgeous buildings. We see the Singaporean Merlion fountain, the mythical creature that guards Singapore, which I have respectfully nicknamed the barfing fishcat. Most every car in Singapore is new and quite nice, since the permit to get a car here costs more than the car itself, and every car has a 150% import tax on top of that. I haven�t seen a single Proton. The city extends itself through building new land, something Singapore even needs to import dirt for.

The Rutgers meet-up is for the eight-year-old EMBA program, which gets no publicity at all up in New Jersey. Half the people who take classes are expats from America, Australia, and various parts of Asia. They�re all very friendly people, and it�s frustrating to not have any business cards to give them. I got most of the stuff done before my trip, but printing business cards didn�t make my list.

I walk back to the hotel, which takes about 40 minutes including wrong turns. I�m not walking fast but my back is completely coated with sweat by the time I find the York. Singapore�s been called �clean� by most every source. There�s still some peeling paint here and there, some plastic bags on the ground. But there�s no hovels. No one begging in the street. Wherever the poor people are, they�re out of sight. I think a lot of them commute in from Malaysia on scooters. Our guide says there�s not much in the way of unemployment insurance here, but lots of home ownership assistance, with about 90% owning homes, mostly government housing (which is anything but projects).

1/10/08 The buffet tickets are for two people, so Mark and I need to go down to eat at the same time. We�re the first ones down, some of the only people not shaking off hangovers. The bar scene in Singapore is apparently very good.

We had four speakers in a row today. Dave Barker of David Lawrence Associates brags about Singapore�s transparent government. There�s only a 15% income tax, and that gives you excellent medical coverage. Dom La Vigne of the American Chamber of Commerce recommends Singapore to be seen not as its own market, but as a hub to Asia in general. I noticed there was virtually no pizza in any of our locations, just a few Pizza Huts and a Canadian Pizza (when did Canada start claiming good pizza?). I ask La Vigne if there were many places for pizza. He tells of the one spot on the whole island to get some, and immediately people begin taking notes. I was thinking of it as a business question: good pizza�s easy to get in New Jersey and everyone likes it and it�s assumedly easy to export to Asia. But everyone else was just looking for directions for dinner one night. I can hold off until New Jersey to eat some pizza. And if I have the bug to open up a restaurant chain, New Jersey Pizza might start popping up at Singapore malls.

In all, Singapore sounds like the benevolent dictator idea at work: someone who controls many of your freedoms, but does so in your best interests. Some 20% of your salary is forced to go into a government savings account, which can be accessed essentially just for retirement and housing down payments. Spitting is illegal, selling gum illegal, peeing in elevators is illegal (which somehow is a common crime here). Public transportation is cheap and reliable, so cars can be made ridiculously unaffordable. Censorship is widespread, satellite dishes are illegal, and the conservative populace seems OK with this. Prostitution, bizarrely, is legal, but workers need a documented clean bill of health.

Cheryl Tan Lange speaks from Abbott Laboratories speaks more about the medical industry in Asia that Abbott Labs in particular. Being a Pharmaceutical Management concentration guy I�d be fine with just hearing about the menu of the Abbott cafeteria, but I�m fine talking about more general matters as well. Singapore�s a huge hub for medical tourism, usually from countries with weak health care systems. Americans come here for elective surgery: it�s cheaper to fly here and get some plastic surgery on a vacation than to just have it done in the States. Singapore�s a dispensing market: doctors are allowed to sell the medicines they prescribe, and they make much of their profits from selling these drugs. Generics are pretty small business here, as you�d imagine.

Howie Lau from Lenovo went over the company�s plan to compete against so many other PC manufacturers. Lenovo doesn�t have much brand recognition, but ThinkPad does, so the company can stress that. It needs to fight the perception that Chinese products are low quality, especially since Lenovo products are higher quality than many other PCs. The company has no one headquarters: the executives rotate around several different sites, including Singapore.

The one thing I want to do in Singapore that I can�t do anywhere else is the Night Safari. We take the subway (which is very similar to Hong Kong�s) to the stop where we could grab a bus. We pop outside, and immediately a woman in bright orange beelines over to me. Hearing about the aggressiveness of prostitution in certain parts of here, I say �No thanks� before she can even say �Night Safari?� Whoops.

From here we buy our tickets, which cost the same as at the Safari but which have a free bus the last few miles to the site. (The chances of counterfeit tickets are very slim in Singapore: it�d be a much riskier bet in Malaysia.) Singapore�s highways look very much like American ones, only with people driving on the left. Where does Singapore find room for this greenery between lanes? Where does it find room for a giant zoo, for that matter? The city�s very smartly planned out. Infrastructure�s being added now with a 6.5 million future population in mind, not the 4.5 million is currently has.

The safari�s lit with dim white lights, just low enough to not disturb anyone. Almost all of the animals on display here are well lit and standing right where you can see them. Rhinos, tigers, lions, elephants, water buffalo. The bigger animals have moats and disguised fences preventing them from jumping onto the tour bus, but the various antelope species could walk right up to us if they want. Some of them are right across the path from their prey, like the red fox right across from the tapirs. There must be invisible fences used with these animals: how else could you ensure that the big antelope on display wouldn�t get bored and jump the six meters they supposedly could?

To keep the animals in their habitats, some jungle airlocks are used. Our group finds the first one of these, with a chain mesh door so thick I assumed it was a utility access. Our group begins to go through, holding the door open for the rest of the group. Fifteen feet ahead, we come to a second door, like the first but locked. A sign on it says it only opens when the first door is locked. It�s like a decompression room, but only to make sure there�s not a completely open series of doors between the main tourist trails and � whatever creature we�re about to visit. We try to close the door, but our group has now been shoved into the room by a big Japanese tour group, who are so big they won�t all fit in this room with us. Three of four of them stand in the doorway, and every effort to pull one of them through just results in another happy guy taking his place in the doorway. This is how the Japanese pack onto subway cars, and we�re not able to communicate to them. The zoo signs are in multiple languages, but the Japanese tourists can�t get close enough to read the sign since our sardine-like group is stopping them from reading it in the dim light. Eventually the tail of our group manages to communicative/shove enough people back through the door to close it, letting us get out of this room.

After all that, we enter a pathway with no animal life. I missed the sign of what�s in here. Bird? Monkey? Flying squirrel? Whatever it was, we didn�t see any of them. We went through another airlock, this time ahead of the Japanese group, and picked up the trail as it walked through the dangerous animals under glass.

The Japan Tourist Board JTB (SP) sponsors several of the animals. The lion is sponsored by Coca-Cola. Some of the animals are glassed-in, with fans blowing cool air by the glass. These were usually the animals that could eat you. I think the fans made the area by the glass cool and therefore a preferable area to sleep. We see a leopard the size of a golden retriever with his back against the glass. He doesn�t seem disturbed by the whispers and tapping on the glass and eventual shouts, so the glass must be fairly soundproof.

The room I was looking forward to was the bat room. Giant fruit-eating flying foxes are just inches from you. You go through a steel grated door, then a drapery of plastic chain, then another steel grated door. It�s a jungle airlock: if a bat tries to escape, it�s not immediately out in the world. Several of my group began announcing that they�d skip this room, as if they could sense the bats fluttering around in their hair.

Oranges and bananas are placed just underneath the dim lights, so the bats need to get in the spotlight to chow down. The first couple spotlighted bits of fruit are unoccupied, but one with a crowd around it has a Malaysian flying fox hanging off it. The flying foxes are big, about a pound or two each, and they can get even bigger. They have black bodies with reddish brown fur over their backs and necks. Their snouts are long, to get deep into a piece of fruit. They have huge dark eyes, the better to see you with. Their feet look very sharp. �That one�s a boy,� a girl said, looking at one. Sure enough, there were two big bat testicles visible while he was stretching his wings.

The bats move around like monkeys in the tree, using feet and hands to swing from branch to branch. They preferred to be upside down, but also seemed OK with being right side up so long as it gave them fruit access.

I took picture after picture. Photos on this tour were restricted to flashless taking. Most everyone has digital cameras now, and the automatic twilight setting requires a lot of aperture time. It turns into 19th century photography: you need to stand absolutely still for five seconds, and so does your subject, or else you end up with a messy blur. And even if you do, you�ll just end up with a dark smear.

Not being able to take pictures allowed some degree of freedom. With a big memory card and a charged battery, you begin taking pictures of everything remotely interesting. Things you�d never look twice at in America are now photo ops: street signs, random trees, a billboard.

The bats are about the biggest in the world. They don�t flap around all night subsisting off insects. By not burning so much energy during their existence, they can get big. Society in general works this way as well: when we were hunters and gatherers, our whole lives were just survival. Once we figured out agriculture and knew how to make a stable food source, then we had the ability to get big.

I could pick one of these bats up if I wanted. If my arm spasmed, I would pick one up. There are signs everywhere saying the bats will not harm you unless you provoke them � such as by plucking them out of the tree. I don�t think a zoo like this would work in America. It�d be under an hour before some brain surgeon decides to pick up a bat because he wants to throw it like a football, and next thing you know he�s suing the zoo for endangering his life.

Leaving the bat sanctuary was another jungle airlock: steel grated door, another curtain of weightless plastic chain, steel door. Adios, bats. The gift shop has the usual mix of zoo stuff: animal pens, little knickknacks, T-shirts, stuff you�d get bored of owning five minutes into the bus ride back to the hotel. About 20% of the stuff involves polar bears, which I think would die if they were brought to the equator. The pens and pendants and mass-produced stuff are at about the same prices as American gift shops, possibly a bit cheaper. But the handmade stuff is ridiculously cheap. Hand-made leather animal statues up to a foot tall � elephants, tigers, lions � are about $15 US. Bamboo xylophones are all of $10 US. None of this stuff is made in Singapore, obviously, but importing it from Malaysia or Indonesia costs much less than having some guy in America ship it overseas and add his hefty markup. I had no need or desire for any of this stuff, or even any way to bring it back without crushing it, but it�s interesting to see that these items that would sell for the better part of a hundred bucks back home cost as much as a Ben and Jerry�s ice cream cone (which was being sold right next door, and which ironically is probably imported from America). I make very sure none of this stuff involved bats: if there�s bat stuff, they�ll have a sale.

1/11/08 I never use my ticket to the Chinatown Heritage Museum from our first day here, so on my morning off I take the MRT over there. I run into Mai, Trish and Brendan, but then lose track of them in Chinatown. I pass by the tailors around here three times, and each time they remember me and call out for me to buy a suit. The tailors in Chinatown � and throughout Asia � are very aggressive. They stand outside their stores and laser in on whatever male tourists they see. The cart vendors in the malls in New Jersey do the same thing: very friendly, very in your face, making it impossible for you to be polite without stiff-arming them. Not my style at all.

I walk back to the hotel, which is a dumb mistake. I made it home the first night in 45 minutes, including time getting lost. This time it takes almost two hours. I need to be back at the hotel by 2:15 to shower and change out of my T-shirt. I overshoot where the hotel is, then follow several winding roads which ended up not putting me close to the hotel, then find every single wrong way to get to the hotel within five blocks. I�m afraid I�d be running after the bus in my suit at 2:30 when it departed, but I can�t even get to the lobby until 3:00. By all accounts, I miss the lousiest presentation of the bunch. The trip was to a freight forwarder office. People thought the bus was going to the Singapore port, but it was just an office building. I�m interested in logistics � almost signed for a Supply Chain concentration � so I might have been one of the few people to get a lot from it.

We still have some time left in Singapore, but the farewell dinner is tonight, at Bobby�s. It�s American food, same as the welcome dinner. Most people dress up to some degree: I keep on the business casual stuff I meant to wear to the logistics provider. The food isn�t bad, but why did both of our big meals have to be Western food? I really have to go out of my way to eat a meal with chopsticks.

It appears everyone�s favorite city of the three is Singapore. Personally, I think I got the most out of the Kuala Lumpur visit since it was the most foreign to me, but if I had to live in one of these cities it�d be Singapore before you could blink.

Most of the group is dropped off in Clarke Quay, where all the new bars and retail has been built. It reminds me of Florida, or Southern California. You can get creative with restaurant seating when you know your only weather problem will be rain.

1/12/08 If a single person went on Johore Bahru trip, I�d be surprised. It�s scheduled for today, and I was looking forward to it, under the assumption there was something to see there. The listings mentioned a mosque and a cemetery and a mall, all of which we have in Jersey City. I assumed these were of a particular historic or otherwise noteworthy nature, or else why spend a whole day just going out to visit them? As we got here, and asked locals about JB, they universally said there was no reason to visit it. It�d be a couple stamps on the passport, but other than that it�s not interesting. I suppose it�d be like a trip to New York with an optional day trip to Weehawken. Sure, you can find places of historic significance, but why do that over spending one more day in Singapore?

Mark, Paulina and I plan to spend the day in Sentosa. Mark stops by a mall for a suit, Paulina goes shopping for dresses, and I lean against a wall and get a shoulder full of gum. Gum! In Singapore! The one country on earth where this is illegal! Mark and Paulina also find some disappointments, as Mark�s tailor wants four times his advertised price for the clothes, and Paulina� shopping yields few deals that she couldn�t get in the States.

We�re looking to take a taxi to the Sentosa train, but cab driver claims to have never been to Sentosa and so accidentally drives us there directly. That way actually saves us money over the whopping S$2 train charge getting back. The Sentosa beach is perfect. Warm without being too sunny, not crowded at all, lots of authentic cheap food inside an air conditioned building but without anyone trying to sell you junk from the beach. There are even trees for us with Irish skin to hide from the sun under. We took a walk over the rope bridge to what�s marked as the Southernmost point in continental Asia (which Johore Bahru also claims), but we mostly stay under that tree. It�s 4:30 before any of us know it.

We go back to the hotel to clean up a bit, and then went out to Clarke Quay for a final dinner. I had S$52 left, which I thought I could spend on dinner no problem. We stopped by the Singapore Sling, and I buy a round of them for Mark and Paulina. That would bring me up to S$51, but with tax and a 10% service charge the fee was actually S $60, which I had to put on a card. We decided on a seafood place for dinner itself. I had heard from Mark and Iris about the chilli crab they ordered and enjoyed immensely. So although I�m not that hungry, and I�ve got no idea of the final price, I order the crab. Sri Lankan crabs are the size of football helmets, it turns out. It didn�t arrive until Mark and Paulina are about done with picking at their calamari. I spend a solid hour cracking my way through legs, claws, and unknown middle parts. The crab ends up costing S$73, so I gave Mark my S$52 and a US $20 to cover my share of the rest.

1/13/08 I answer the 6:00 AM wakeup call and then lay in bed for an hour. The call was more for Mark, who wasn�t packed yet, but I just lay there, forgetting to wake him up. He gets up at 7:00 on his own, and begins rushing to pack, me apologizing the whole time for his lost hour.

This was my birthday. I tend not to make a big deal about my birthday, but this is the first time it�s been 37 hours long, so I�ve been mentioning it to people. I sneak down to the hotel pool and swim one lap: the first time I�ve ever swum outside on my birthday.

I get an aisle seat on the planes back home, which I like because I rarely need to pee on planes. The plane from Singapore to Hong Kong has an older entertainment system in it: some of the same programs as before, but all with the same start time. I watch The Brave One, and then they all go empty for the last hour. When we land, I stick in my aisle seat until the plane empties out. We�ve got a four hour layover, and I�m not holding up anyone else in the aisle by doing this. I feel very smart for five or ten minutes as I sit and read my book. Then I stand up in an empty plane, go to retrieve my carryon bag, and it�s not there. An identical black bag is sitting there, but not mine. I grab the other bag and go racing through the empty plane, catching up to the tail end of the disembarking passengers. I�m not looking at faces, I�m looking at carryon bags, and I weave through the line of people as fast as I can. I pass through a huddle of my group, but don�t have time to explain because most of the dispersing passengers are headed down the same hallway, and the quicker I go the better chance I have of finding my bag before it�s on a transfer flight to Taiwan. I catch my bag just as it�s getting on the travellator, on the shoulder of the guy two seats away from me. He speaks no English, but as soon as I hold up his bag he begins thanking me. No thanks necessary; just give me my bag back.

Movies on the long haul flight: The Darjeeling Limited, On Her Majesty�s Secret Service (the LAZENBY Bond movie? Well, at least it�s a good one.), Rush Hour 3, Closer, Butterfly on a Wheel, Stardust, Noel. We land back in JFK at 9:00, and it takes a solid hour for our luggage to slowly appear on the conveyor belt. We rush back outside, tired and wired and very ready to see our loved ones, waiting just outside the customs table.