I love camping, but I can't deny that when I have to get out the tent in the middle of the night for a pee break, I feel scared. In the forest, with just my flashlight, I figure all sorts of creatures are watching me, some wanting to eat me. I don't like being in the forest at night... UNTIL NOW! After sunset we set out with our guide into the Similajau National Park Rainforest. With torch lights on our foreheads, we started creeping into the jungle, treading quietly. Now I wasn't the hunted, I was the hunter! When hiking through [View Full Entry]

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I told him so. As Craig chose a seat in the very front row of the theatre for the cultural heritage show at the Sarawak Cultural Village, I clearly said “If we sit in the front row, one of us is going to have to go up on stage as a volunteer for something... and it had better be you!” Half way through the show, as soon as the loin cloth clad, shield wielding, blow pipe toting man walked on stage, I knew it wasn't going to be Craig. But the theatre was full, we were sitting on the floor, and [View Full Entry]

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"Craig, if we travel in Borneo, do you think we'll see Proboscis monkeys?" I asked repeatedly in the lead up to our trip. I really hadn't thought of much else about Borneo. The trip, as has become usual, was not really planned. All I knew while flying to Kuching was, I hope I see Proboscis Monkeys. On the second day we hopped on a city bus with our friend Natalie to the Bako Jetty. Here we purchased our tickets to ride a speedboat through the crocodile infested waters to Bako National Park. Yes, man-eating crocodiles. The previous day, while visiting the [View Full Entry]

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Once again that gripping fear sets in. We’ve spent a year in Malaysia, but have we seen enough? Did we waste too many weekends trying to recover from our work week, rather than exploring this tropical paradise? How many amazing sites have we missed? Will we regret our use of time here upon our return? So, once again, just like our last weeks in China, we find ourselves desperately cramming our last weekends with little trips to try to minimize the guilt. This blog will cover a few of those trips. Adventure # 1: Beth learns to drive on the “other” [View Full Entry]

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I’m not sure if you’ll believe this, but it has been hot lately. Yes I know I’ve been living at 3 degrees north of the Equator for nearly a year now, but we’ve felt comfortable in the heat for quite some time now. But then, near the beginning of April, it stopped raining. Our daily downpour has ended, and we only get a small rain event maybe once a week. As a result it is heating up, we are venturing outside less, we are dreaming of Canada. About 4-5 hours North and inland from KL lies the Cameron Highlands. Reputed to [View Full Entry]

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Giant Blog: Catching up on Many Adventures First Guests Well it finally happened, after moving to Asia some 18 months ago, finally this January, we had our first guests!!! First, our good friend Samoa, with whom we taught in Tianjin, stopped over on her way to Bangkok for the big teacher recruitment fair. The visit wasn’t long, but it was so great to catch up. We had dinner, and toured around Sunway Pyramid, our local West Edmonton Mall, watching little kids practice figure skating, and enjoying the fanfare of the lead-up to Chinese New Year. She left early [View Full Entry]

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The night train back to Hanoi was so much more comfortable than the trip there, if for no other reason than the other two beds in our cabin remained empty, nonetheless, it wasn’t much comfort when the attendant woke us at 4:15 am, announcing it was time to disembark. Weary and groggy, we made our way to a taxi, and there back to the IndoChina II hotel, who had promised us a shower and breakfast, before we set off on the trip to Halong Bay we had booked through them a week previous. The taxi dropped us off in the now [View Full Entry]

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Two Canadians living in the tropics is worthy of an anthropological study. For instance, the favourite topic of discussion for Canadians is the weather, and our favourite pastime is choosing the best outfit to survive the day’s many weather changes, and we are all closet meteorologists. We all think we could do a better job than the person on TV, but it seems in Canada, you need to be a curling star, synchronized swimmer or from some other sport where you are protected from the elements to actually be a successful weather reporter. And so the rest of us, we like [View Full Entry]

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After a long night on the train from Hanoi to Danang, we awoke to the once familiar sound from China, of a man doing his best to cough up his morning phlegm in the train washroom. This sound greeted us every morning in China, and more than once had us in tears we were laughing so hard. This time was no different, and almost comforting in a very bizarre kind of way. We made our way down to the dining cart with our compartment buddy Murat, to find some breakfast. We squeezed into a tiny wooden booth, I looked around the [View Full Entry]

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Despite our flight being delayed due to strong rains (KL mid-afternoon regular occurence), we landed in Hanoi without any real hassles, quickly made it through customs, picked up our bags in record fast time and headed to the ATM where we proceeded to withdraw the some of 2 million dong. Its a strange feeling to hold in your hands, the sum of 2 million, even if the exchange rate is 17 000 to 1. Our taxi driver started teaching us Vietnemese on the way into town. We discovered elements of French and Chinese incorporated into the language, so I'm not sure [View Full Entry]

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