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Published: August 22nd 2011
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Hello family and friends! As many of you know, we are currently traveling through southeast Asia. Because many of you wanted to see pictures and hear more about it, we thought we'd take advantage of a rainy afternoon in Kuala Lumpur to write a quick update!
Bangkok
We left our cozy apartment in Santa Barbara on August 6 (after putting everything into storage) and started a 35-hour+ trip to Bangkok (through Shanghai and Singapore with some very generous layovers!). In Bangkok we attended a friend's wedding (Nam, for those who know her) at the swanky St. Regis Bangkok, where we spent one night (at the wedding-guest rate of only 1/3 the normal price) at the fanciest hotel in Bangkok. We had a 24-hour on-call butler, but it turned out we had no need for his services (although Paola did take full advantage of the travel-sized bathroom goodies!). For the following 3 days we spent in Bangkok, we roamed the city while sweating profusely and trying to cool off with cheap Chang beers (despite swilling cerveza, we tried to be good ambassadors for our countries and didn't make any scenes!).
For Paola's birthday (August 11), we went to a
Thai Cooking Class
The birthday girl, the chef, and the a very friendly helper! Thai cooking class, where Paola learned to make some incredible Thai food. For her dishes, she choose Pad Thai, Tam Yum Kung, and Green Chicken Curry. Because it was her birthday, they also taught her Rice Pudding, which we enjoyed with a candle on top after singing happy birthday. She's looking forward to cooking amazing Thai food in the States for those of you who will visit!
Did we mention, it was really hot in Bangkok?
Singapore Layover
Singapore has the cleanest, nicest, fanciest airport (and bathrooms--e.g. airport-landing view above the urinals!) we've ever seen, staffed by the friendliest people and most active cleaning crew!
Kuching -- "Cat City"
Next stop: Kuching City in the Province of Sarawak in the country of Malaysia on the island of Borneo (pull out your atlas and learn how many countries share Borneo--we had to!). Kuching means cat in Bahasa Malay, which is the official language of Malaysia. Not surprisingly, they had a cat museum there. The museum was serious and we learned lots about cats, including seeing a 3,000+ year mummified Egyptian one.
Kuching is a city of 650,000 people situated on a
jungly-looking river surrounded by jungle. The city has a mix of Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, and indigenous influences. You can stand in one place and turning around see a new Hilton, an old Chinese temple, a hard-to-describe-but-really-cool golden legislative building, and what Paola kept calling an Aladdin-looking mosque. The city has a beautiful waterfront, which is great for walking along in the evenings to cool off and a popular place for teens to gather.
In Kuching we developed an addiction to Kopi (i.e. coffee). You can order Kopi C (with condensed milk and sugar), Kopi O (just sugar), Kopi C Peng (sweetened and on ice), and about a hundred other variations. Those tasty coffee drinks just hit the spot at any time of the day--which was hot hot--but we limited ourselves to only a few a day!
We explored the jungle outside of the city. There are national parks all around, but we limited our excursions to the most accessible one, Bako National Park, which we visited twice, including one overnight stay.
Jungle Hiking. Jungle hiking takes lots and lots of water, not too much bug spray (in comparison to Minnesota or the Amazon), definitely sun screen, only
Pandan Kecil
The amazing beach we hiked to in Bako National Park. sealed food (or the monkeys will get you), and the right state of mind. We hiked twice to a beautiful beach on the South China Sea and once to a "waterfall" where you could go "swimming"--it was more like the place where the creature from the Black Lagoon lives and neither of us could bring ourselves to jump in (when we threw in a peanut, it was eaten by something before you could say "saltwater-crocodile" or "Burmese python").
Monkeys. We saw two kinds of monkeys: the rare proboscis monkey and macaques. The proboscis are extremely funny looking and rare, but we will focus on the macaques, aka the "naughty monkeys." They were all over, wild, and fearless of us fearful humans. They would sit by a narrow trail and dare you with their eyes to walk past them. If you made eye contact, they hissed. We saw them steal toast and a Coke can (which he opened with his teeth, dunked his paw into, licked his paw, and repeated the dunking and licking with something resembling the Coca-Cola ad for happiness). We even met a man who had his spare camera memory card stolen from his backpack while wearing
it! One monkey side-effect is that when we stayed in the national park hostel, we had to keep the doors and windows closed and bolted at all times, which turned the room into a delightful 24-hour sauna. All that said, we sat down in the evening near them and had a blast watching them. They gave literal meaning to the expressions "jungle gym" and "monkeying around."
Orang Utans. Orang means people and Utan means forest, and these "people of the forest" were amazing to see! We visited Semenggoh Wildlife Centre and saw 6 wild orangutans moving around trees and vines with incredible ease and strength. It was amazing to watch!
We spent 8 days in Kuching and enjoyed the food, place, and people. We are really happy we went there!
Kuala Lumpur
Last Thursday afternoon, when we had three days left in Kuching, we made the spontaneous decision to pack up and come visit Kuala Lumpur. AirAsia, the world's three-time winner of best low cost carrier, had $40 tickets one-way and we hopped aboard (AirAisa, by the way, is great).
We arrived to "KL" on Saturday the 20th and have been here for 2.5 days.
It's a great city with lots to do and it's super easy to walk around. Yesterday we visited the Petrona Towers (designed by Cesar Pelli, the architect of Grinnell's Bucksbaum fine arts center, just fyi), which were really cool. They are currently the tallest twin towers in the world and soar up into the sky in a mix of metal and glass. On the ground level and up is a primo, every-girl's-dream 5-story shopping mall. For those unable to afford the designers from around the world, Chinatown offers a deluxe black market with the same designers--just swap leather for plastic and knock off three digits! We have eaten amazing food here and are still smacking our lips from an unbelievable Nepali lunch.
Tomorrow we head to Singapore on a 6-hour train and the day after we jump on a plane to the Sulawesi island of Indonesia. We will get very remote there as we visit the Togean Islands for the next 2.5 weeks. We are looking forward to great snorkeling, lots of hammocking, and plenty of reading (then we'll finally be able to drop off all the books we have been lugging around!).
We hope everyone is doing
Bangkok Shopping
In one of Bangkok's many ritzy shopping malls. great!!!
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Bridget
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You guys are fabulous! So fun to keep up to date on your travels! xo