Well, sadly our dream of Christmas surfing has died. Drowned, to be specific. It seems that the region of Malaysia which holds our surfing hotspot has been visited by freak rainstorms over the past couple of days and the whole region is flooded. Hospital patients are being evacuated, drinking water is contaminated, looting of stores is occuring.... it's ugly. Luckily, one of the guys who runs our hostel on Pulau Pangkor alerted us to this fact before we set off on our journey to ground 0, so we were able to make alternate arrangements. We're in Georgetown right now, which is [View Full Entry]

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At this point I'm asking myself why we didn't come to this country earlier. It's wonderful! I was reserving judgement on the country until after we had left the big city, just in case I wasn't getting an acurate portrayal of how real Malaysians live, but we're out of the city now and I'm still really impressed. We decided yesterday (well, OK, I decided because I was the only one that was going to put in any effort to plan anything) that we would head to Palau Penang, and island off the west coast of Malaysia, for 4 nights. Then.... and [View Full Entry]

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Hello from Kuala Lampur! City of Lights and Entertainment. Wow, am I enjoying this place! Kuala Lampur is much more in line with my visions of what a huge Asian city would be like. Massive highrises with incredibly architetural detail and bright, colourful lights all over the place. I must admit, though, that my high spirits are probably quite correlated with our new digs: the luxurioius Renaissance Hotel Kuala Lumpur. You've got to check it out at http://www.kl-hotels.com/renaissance/ I simply cannot tell you how nice it is to be abl [View Full Entry]

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Back in Bangkok, yet again, and glad I'm only here for 24 hours. Try as I might--and I *really* am trying hard, I just can't like this place. Not at all my cup of tea. Too noisy, too busy, too... crazy, I guess. Oh well. Our day in Nong Khai was generally boring and uneventful. We definitely just wasted time the entire day. Much of it was spent sitting on some steps beside the river reading our books. It wasn't that bad of a way to spend an afternoon, but time definitely dragged on. The train ride was worth it, though! [View Full Entry]

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It's funny the things you miss when they're taken away from you (or when you leave them). After having Pad Thai pretty much at least once daily for the past 30 days, I was pretty eager to eat some of the readily available, cheap western-style food in Laos. Today, though, as we returned to Thailand, I found myself quite looking forward to a pad thai supper. We'll see how long that lasts.... Pad Thai and fried rice are consistently at least half the price of any other kind of food here in Thailand, so that's what I eat. ALWAYS. I wonder [View Full Entry]

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So here we are in Vientiene, the capital of Laos and the biggest city in their country. It's not a very big city by any means, but it's just as unappealing as all the other larger cities I've visited in SE Asia. Why would anyone leave the paradise of the Laos country to move here? Why? Why? Why did we leave Vang Vieng? Why? Why? OK, I'm a little upset with out decision to leave Vang Vieng a bit earlier than we really needed to because it truly was SUCH an amazing place--definitely my favourite stop in SE Asia--to come to [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the long time between updates recently. I'm in Vang Vieng now, and internet access is 3x more than in Luang Prabang. It's still not really expensive, I guess, but it's the principle of having to pay 300% more for the same service that sort of erks me. Oh well, obviously I got over it because here I am! Updating the blog and responding to a billion scout-related e-mails. There's always a big increase in e-mail traffic after the national AGM (remember the e-mail volume graph, Brian?) I cannot reiterate strongly enough how wonderful Laos is. At least, this part [View Full Entry]

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A great day was had, today! It was nice to be able to sleep without setting alarms last night, because we were pretty run down. Our beds were comfy and we all slept well. After a tasty breakfast of baguettes and jam (and a fruit salad for Derek that included, *gasp* APPLES! He didn't even recognize them at first, lol) we wandered around town with the sole aim of exploring. Before long, however, we realized that Luang Prabang is quite a hot place during the day! Too hot, we decided. You just can't really do anything when it's that hot out. [View Full Entry]

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We made it! It was quite the journey (more on that later) but Luang Prabang here in Laos seems to be everything it was said to be, and it had quite a reputation to live up to. It's a lovely town with really nice, french buildings in quite decent shape, and gorgeous woodwork everywhere. Even the most run down building has an ornately carved, wonderfully varnished door and various accents around its trim. The people here are very nice and curteous, as well. Aside from the tuk tuk drivers (and what's new?) we haven't really been hassled at all in the [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone, So sorry, but I won't be giving you much of a Pai update, afterall. I've taken nearly 2 hours uploading photos and videos from the trek, and my time here has come to a close. We've had a lovely 2 days here in Pai, though. Rented motorbikes again (I know, we're dumb, but we had insurance this time!) and it was a great way to see the gorgeous country side. Really a lovely time. We also met up with Vicky, Jost, and Rob from trekking, and we've been hanging out a bit (along with a friend of theirs, Lauren, [View Full Entry]

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