Kuala Lumpur- love it and hate it

For us, the jury is still out on this very busy but interesting, cosmopolitan city. We arrived close to dark and by the time our taxi found our guesthouse and we were settled for the night it was dark. After dark is when KL really comes alive. Like New York City, this place never sleeps. You can eat, drink, shop or get a foot massage until the very wee hours of the morning.

Downtown Kuala Lumpur

A 10 minute walk from where we were staying

Personally, arriving in a new place is the very essence of why I like to travel. Peering from the air conditioned window of the taxi I can't wait to get out and explore as I pass by the very active streets filled with every kind of people imaginable. The women in full Birka intrigued me the most. Seeing thousands of women dressed from head to toe in black exposing nothing but their eyes is fascinating to me. They seem like black ghosts  floating along the streets as they walk with their families who are all dressed in very hip, trendy clothes. It's such a curious thing to see in everyday life and I can't help but wonder what kind of women I would find under all the heavy blackness. How similar are we?

Finding our guesthouse was like trying to find a needle in a haystack in this hot, humid, steam- bath like city of over 6 million people. Cars, buses, taxis, mopeds and people are all jostling for position  but eventually we were let out to the welcoming arms of The Orange Pekoe Guesthouse. I didn't take a photo because I didn't want to worry my loved ones about how we were living but thankfully the inside was a thousand times better than the outside.
Our priority is always to make sure the boys are happy and comfortable wherever we are. If we lose their enthusiasm we are hooped. This place was great! It had a lovely little lounging area, a communal kitchen with chocolate cereal and wifi. Perfect!
Jalan Alor street was our first stop as we really needed to eat. The streets were packed with people, cars, and really, really disabled people begging for money. We had a hard time eating the very mediocre food we ordered ( we miss Thai food already!)  and in the days to come the boys refused to ever go back here even with the bribe of coconut ice cream.

You can get ANYTHING to eat here, except chicken fingers. Chicken feet, yes.

Jalan Alor is bustling!

fondue on the street!

Eventually we ended up spending time at 3 different guesthouses during our 6 nights in KL. Our favorite was the Sahabat as it was from here that we discovered our favorite Indian restaurant- TG's Nasi Kandar. This place was open 24 hours and served up some killer roti stuffed with banana and served with delicious daal. Chicken Mertebak- a roti filled with chicken, potatoes, onions and spice served with a fragrant sauce was what we had for breakfast every morning and it was here that we discovered Teh Tarik with ginger. This was the best Chai I have ever had and it cost us about .30c a glass. Remy and I spent hours here every morning eating, drinking, people watching and reading the English newspaper while the boys slept in. At night the staff would create a special plate of  sliced cucumber and carrot just for Bowen. Do you know how hard it is to get raw veggies in an Indian restaurant? We ate here at least once a day but usually twice. I screwed up the photo transfer to my computer so I lost the photos we took here but take my word for it, it was great.

Look closely at the image of the queen puffing on a stogie

When we weren't  eating we were seeing movies ( $5 each!) visiting the massive sparkling shopping malls until we were frozen from the air conditioning, visiting the Islamic Arts Museum , the Planetarium and the Menara (KL) tower and the indoor amusement park. Reflexology is BIG here so all four of us had the full one hour treatment for $16 each. That was so fun Remy and I did it twice!

The Pavillion shopping centre

a great place to drop the boys for a few hours

 Batu Caves was our one big excursion located about 15 km away. The massive gold Hindu statue and the 272 steps leading up to the caves were spectacular but the real hit for us was Jerry, the tiny pet monkey of one of the restaurant owners. We spent a LOT of time playing with Jerry which has created the desire in both boys to now have a pet monkey. I must admit, Jerry was very cuddly and very, very cute!.

The golden Hindu statue at Batu Caves. Note the 272 steps just beside.

Jerry, the monkey won all our hearts!

Malaysia is a mostly Muslim country so the lack of alcohol is very apparent. You really have to go out of your way to find it and when you do it is very expensive. Ok, beer is about $2.50/ bottle in the stores or about twice that in a restaurant but relatively speaking, this is expensive! Spirits are even pricier. It's refreshing though to go to a restaurant or a beach and not see anyone drinking, including us.

As interesting as this place is we found the constant haze from the deforestation in Indonesia to be too much for our pink lungs. Next stop is the Unesco World Heritage city of Melaka.

~Liz 

Thai Heaven! Koh Yao Noi Island

Don't you dare jump on me!

This blog is slightly out of sequence and should have been posted before Hollis' awesome video but hey, I've been busy! Read on....

Thailand has it's ups and downs but for us we found most of it to be up especially when we landed on a small island off the east coast of Phuket. It's tiny and can be driven around in less than an hour. There are no stop signs, traffic lights or even a Starbucks; although they do have a 7-11. It just wouldn't be Thailand if there was no 7-11. The main industries are rubber production, and tourism although the island doesn't even exist on most maps. It was on the advice of the owner ( Kim)  of our last accommodations that we decided to come here and are we ever glad we did!

The "sap" or latex being collected from the rubber trees

The latex is flattened and hung to dry to get ready for shipping

These rickety old machines are used to flatten the rubber. Driving through these forests it smells like balloons!

It's difficult to have the "beach hut" experience in Thailand much anymore. The huts have been replaced by towering condos or luxury resorts that can accommodate way more people, but not here. We have stepped back in time.

Our cute little bungalows on the beach!

Liz and Remy's front porch

Pasai Cottages are located right across the street from the Andaman Sea with a gorgeous view of the rocky karsts that jut straight out of the sea. Our bungalows rented for about $18/night  each and had their own bathroom with cool water shower. The boys were a bit weirded out by the flimsy nature of these little places but we loved them!

We spent our first 6 days enjoying the sun and puttering around the island on it's one 18km road that passed through several little villages. Each village had it's own personality and we quickly discovered quirky people and fun things to do and see in each of them.

Joy spoke very good English and quickly became our friend

 

 

 

Super cute musicians

A typical middle class house on the other side of the island

We would often drive all the way to the other
 side just to get cheaper water at the 7-11or feast on the most delicious pad thai. There is zero crime on the island so the one police station is pretty dull and the roads are safe because there are no cars so the boys were free to ride the bikes and explore on their own.

Let's get back to the main road!

The 5 island tour by longtail boat was one of the highlights for us . We spent the day with a nice German couple and visited some of the most beautiful beaches we have EVER seen.

heading out for an incredible day

we are VERY happy in this picture

A boy and his rope swing

Imitation of the little Japanese tourist

longtail boats

 The Thai cooking class was the other treat.  Remy and I made a 5 course meal with our teacher, Mina and brought it home to enjoy with the boys.

Produce from Mina's garden! She even grows her own rice!!

"What a paradise!! let's stay longer!" And so we moved to the more deluxo places down the street called Sabai Corner.  The bungalows were similar to the ones on the beach but these ones were built on the hill in the jungle so we could watch the birds and feel like we were living in a tree house! We found ourselves there every morning enjoying their ocean view and homemade bread for breakfast anyway so we packed up our stuff and off we went, happy as clams.

Moving day

Our bungalow is peaceful and private

And then the rain started..... At first it was pretty cool to see how much rain would fall in such a short period of time. It never got cold so we could enjoy it from the relative safety of our hammock on our deck while we sipped fruit juice or Lipton tea. This was fun for a day or two as we learned the cycle of the rain and could bust a move to the village or our favorite restaurant before the deluge started again. But it just never stopped.

waiting out the downpour

 For 7 long days it absolutely poured on and off and we just couldn't get dry. The air was so wet it crept into our bungalow through the slats in the walls and all our stuff was just ever-so-slightly damp.  By day 7 we were all kinds of cranky and ready to move along. Moving day was sunny and bright right until we got to Krabi via water taxi where we caught a car taxi to the airport bound for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We literally just closed the trunk of the car on our packs when the skies opened up. Phew- we dodged that bullet!
Kuala Lumpur will be another shock to the system and if it's raining there to it's ok, we will just go see a movie.


~Liz

Hollis' Thailand video

We hope you enjoy the show.


https://vimeo.com/108367267

More of Phuket

Hollis wrote a great blog about our time in Phuket but I thought we needed to show you more photos. One of our family rules is that you can't mess with someone else's blog so I am left to make a second one of Phuket.

This was a place I really wanted to see after I read so much about the devastation after the tsunami in 2004. I had a fantasy that it was white sand, palm fringed and very laid back. Quite the opposite is true.  Phuket is a huge island and very over developed. The traffic is chaotic and the pace is very, very fast. We are now lounging on Kho Yao Noi Island for a few weeks to recover! ( I'll about it soon) We did enjoy a few hours at the beach but as Hollis said, it was hard to relax when we were constantly bombarded with hawkers trying to sell us sunglasses.

Anyway.. we kept an open mind, we ate our way through the crazy vegetarian festival, we swam at the famous beach I saw on tv then got the hell out!

inside the tuk tuk on our way to ride go carts

Our transportation today

Bowen loves the tuk tuks

The bus in Phuket town

Thailand is full of temples all very beautiful

You can see the Portuguese influence in the architecture

Thais dress in white for the vegetarian festival. Lighting incense at the temple

Our hippie son making happy

Some beautiful places to explore

Bowen digs the spiral deep fried potatoes. About .50c

All vegetarian made to look like meat. All delicious!

Phuket beach- finally

A typical long tail boat at Phuket Beach

Our oasis amid the chaos- Shanti lodge, Phuket

~Liz

Wandering the Island of Phuket

     Our journey to Phuket began with Bowen eating an entire fennel in the airport terminal. Turns out you can buy all kinds of organic vegetables, dehydrated food, and beer all in Don Mueang airport. That however was the peak of excitement to be had in the airport, and, after an unexpected and untold gate change, we were in the air headed to Phuket.


     We landed in the darkness, again, and proceeded to find a taxi and head to Shanti's island location. We were all expecting more of the same as the one in Bangkok, however were pleasantly surprised to find that this one had a pool, as well as multiple buildings, which all felt quite comfortable. Other than the noisy floorboards that existed on the entire top floor of the building pictured, this place felt 100 times better than Bangkok's loud, smelly, fast paced madness. We all got ourselves settled and decided to call it a night.

    The next day we decided, since we were on the island to check out the Vegetarian Festival, we might as well head into Phuket town and see what we could see. Mom and Dad asked what ways there were in to town, and decided on taking the local transit. This apparently impressed the manager that we had the patience for such a possibly tedious mode of transport. Now I'm sure you're all thinking of your stereotypical city bus, however the buses here are not at all like what they are at home. Here they are simply pickup trucks with benches, a roof, and some plastic curtains for when its raining out. Not to say that this is a bad thing though. I found it to be a nice change to the norm I've become accustomed to at home.

    When we finally got into the town we weren't sure what to expect. I for one wasn't expecting to be hassled for a taxi of damn tuk tuks the second we got out of the bus. That's one thing I find pretty annoying here, everyone is always trying to sell you something, even if you're literally walking out of a bus. After we told the tuk tuk driver to leave us alone, we made our way to the main street that we were told vendors would be selling vegetarian food along. I only pictured about a city block or so of vendors on maybe one side of the street, however it ended up being about 6 times that, along both sides of the street. And you literally couldn't find actual meat anywhere no matter how hard you looked. People seem to take this festival very, very seriously. You couldn't find a Thai in Phuket Town who wasn't wearing white. (the traditional color to wear during the festival)
   

    Normally, at home when we have something similar to this festival, we get the streets shut down right? Well apparently having trucks, scooters and tuk tuks driving inches from you while you buy fireworks and vegetarian food all day doesn't bother anyone. The road was constantly packed with festival goers, buses and food stalls. Personally I almost got hit by a few motorbikes, simply because I was in the state of mind that the streets would be closed off to traffic.

    As we further explored the streets, gawking at the amount of different ways people were able to sculpt tofu, we stumbled upon a very Chinese looking temple. Outside were some local kids throwing firecrackers at old people, who seemed to continue by unfazed. Inside the temple were tons of locals, all either praying, burning huge clumps of incense, or burning fake Chinese money. All of this, along with staying vegetarian during the festival would apparently bring you good luck. Also, if you light off a huge drum of fireworks in a tower that is literally built for said act, you would also become very lucky. At least that's what I've been assuming.

    After doing everything we could do at the festival so far, which took a few days, we decided to head to a beach that mom has been dreaming of going to since 2004. She made this very clear how long she's been waiting not only to us, but again to some guy hassling us to come to a timeshare presentation the second we got off the bus. We only walked probably a total of 35 feet to the spot we wanted to set up at, but you can sure bet we were harassed by people wanting to sell us this that and the other. It was a miracle we even got in the ocean at all that day! The one thing that bugged me the most about the beach salespeople, were the ones selling sunglasses. We were all wearing sunglasses to begin with, and then were told ours weren't "top quality polarized".

    However, besides being annoyed with these people, we did enjoy our time on the beach. Mom and Dad got their relaxing (or semi-relaxing) beach day they had been wanting for quite a while. After we left, Bowen and I convinced Mom and Dad to pay for us to try out some Thai go-karts. These turned out to be nothing like they are at home. The karts on offer (depending on what you pay, our karts went to 70km/h) could reach speeds of 110km/h. Compared to Calgary go-karts, these are traveling at Mach 3. Driving those around for 15 minutes was a great way to end the day.

    Our next move seems to be lining up to be the island of Kho Yao Noi. If you try finding it on some maps and probably any globe, you won't find it. We were shown by Kim, the owner of Shanti Bangkok and Phuket, that some maps seem to not even label the tiny island.

    Either way I personally am enjoying our time over here. It might get on my nerves at times but it can't be perfect.

       ~ Hollis

                    -A slightly unnerving sight to wake up to just outside your bedroom door

            -Brent, we had to take this for you. Electrical safety here is about #4 on the list of priorities.