Turtlebutt

I'm fully frustrated, we arrived back to HK today and changed our last $100 to pay for our lodging since no one here takes anything but cash if you're not staying at a higher end hotel. That went off fine but when I went to find an ATM to withdraw money from my capitalone360 account (formerly known as INGdirect) the machine says my pin is incorrect. So now we're pretty much cashless and I'm not sure if I should be mad at capitalone360 and its stupid pin, or the atm machines here if they're just rejecting my card. ARGH. So now I'm just sitting in our small little hostel trying to figure something out while John is snoring away. We did get up around 5am this morning to make it to our flight at 8:55am. We ... read more

Our last full day in KL! The plan of the day was to go check out the bird park and maybe the butterfly park, at some point see the Petronas Towers and do whatever else that comes in between (forecast is high chance of food involvement :)). We started out with breakfast at the place we are staying which consisted of roti canai, roti tissue (also known as roti helicopter), dhal, chicken curry, and fruit. I'm not sure I've seen roti tissue in the states, but it's like the normal roti canai but super thin and crispy with of sugar sprinkled in it and sometimes sweet milk, some places make it very thin and long so when they plate it it's a tall tower, so I guess it can look like a helicopter blade. It's super ... read more

The thing about airports are that they take a whole lot of your time. Our flight from HK was just 3.5 hours but we ended up really killing the bulk of our day due to having to be at the airport early including any travel to and fro. We left at 8:10am from our guesthouse in HK and got on the bus that took us to the airport, the ride about 1 hour. From then on we checked in and then waiting at the airport since Air Asia advises to come extra early for their flights for 'just in case', they also mentioned that often time their gate changes so you have to keep checking the information board. So I got some noodles at the airport, after which I sat and waited to board the plane. ... read more

***Updated: link to photos: url=http://s9.photobucket.com/user/Tanyahh1/slideshow/The%20Eating%20trip/Day%201%20-%20HK%20Island%20and%20Temple%20Street%20Markethttp://s9.photobucket.com/user/Tanyahh1/slideshow/The%20Eating%20trip/Day%201%20-%20HK%20Island%20and%20Temple%20Street%20Market I gave up on the photobucket stories features, so here is just the link to the album, password turtlebutt. The wireless connection for all the spots we've been to have been too slow to upload the quantities of photos I want to upload, so I've had to resize them in batches before uploading to reduce the load time but still, it's not broadband speeds by any means! I'm working on next ones, Enjoy!*** Muggy, Humid, Sticky! (Ok, so it wasn't THAT bad, I've been in worse but it always seems worse when you're in a nice air conditioned building and then you step ... read more

It's done! I finally booked the remaining flights I needed for this trip. It feels good when you complete something and now can move on to the next steps. So I decided that for our leg in Penang, we will be busing there from Lumut (3hrs) and when we arrive, we will wing it and figure out our lodging when we get there. Then after our 1.5 days and 2 nights there (I'm a little concerned that we may not have enough time in Penang though), we will check out and fly to Singapore by noonish. Then in Singapore, we'll hopefully will be crashing at Wendy's parent's house. I decided to ax the night sleeper train back to KL and just fly back (1 hr vs 9hr ride) so we will be able to stay another ... read more