Buddhist celebration

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Wednesday 11th May, 2011

I am sitting in a little wooden bungalow ($20/night), about 5m by 3m plus bathroom cubicle. The room contains two double beds swathed in diaphenous blue mosquito nets, two fans and two small cupboards. Outside is a small balcony with two old cushioned chairs and a fold out table. A large mango tree deposits ripe mangos on the ground about 2 metres from our door. Last night we had a tropical thunderstorm for most of the night with torrential rain. ,The temprature in the afternoons is just bearable and made more so by frequent cold showers and visits to the beach 100 metres walk away.
Across the road from the Payung Guesthouse which sits on the edge of a deep green, primal looking, tidal mangrove river are several family run Warungs (restaurants?) that serve delicious roti cannai for 30c and many different dishes with rice all day and evening of which we avail ourselves on plastic chairs and table cloths several times per day.
The days go by very quickly when you are absolutely carefree. If I had nothing to do all day at home it would be interminable but here we are flat out eating three meals a day, reading, swimming and playing. Yesterday Eva, Scarlett and I took a batik lesson for 3 hours, this made for a very hectic day or so it felt compared to the other days we have spent here.
We are in Cherating, a little seaside town on the east coast of Malaysia. Its the sort of place that as the Lonely Planet says 'you just forget to leave'. Its so peaceful and easy to be here that there doesnt seem any need to move on.
On a less positive note the Malaysian people have a long way to go on their journeey to being a healthy society. Whilst many things are very relaxed, it has like any other South east asian country a rubbish/pollution problem (Australia was the same until 'Do the Right Thing'😉. As a health professional I can only see problems here too. All day and night the Malaysians drink large excessively sweet drinks (high fructose corn syrup?). Early on we started asking for no sugar in our fresh juices as they were as much as one third sugar syrup and huge. All food is fried in palm oil and the minimarts are full of the most amazing variety of packaged food that are all different ways of packaging palm oil, sugar, additives, colourings, msg. Its incredible, even what they call jam here is a mixture of palm oil, sugar etc etc. and the bread which they dont eat a lot of has, yes you guessed it, palm oil in it.
As we dont wish to imbibe any of these evil little snacks we are actually enjoying a really healthy lifestyle. No snacks except fresh fruit and three hot meals per day. When you eat a proper meal at each meal you do not feel the need to snack at all. As with any developing country the locals wish to buy things that have that commercial vibe, things that we know are absolute crap, they dont know yet. Oh well.
We are spending around an hour each morning with our homeschooling. We each take one child. At the moment Scarlett and I are working with the consonants through stories, verses and pictures and knitting a bookmark and Eva and Evan are doing the 7, 8, 9 times tables and consolidating some of the harder maths facts. I threw a bit of a tantrum today as Eva decided that she was unwilling to share her modelling wax with Scarlett, on the whole they are quite miraculous and get along amazingly well, maybe I'm spoiled so I cant cope when they are unreasonable??
Tomorrow we are going to head off up the coast to an Island called Pulau Kapas for a while before heading into the jungle clad interior on a train the traverses the country, stopping at a town called Jerantut where you can hop on a boat up the river to the famous Taman Negara national park. Apparently we can sleep in hides (platforms high of the ground in the trees) and watch for jungle creatures. the monkeys are the main problem as they will steal food from under your nose.
Until next time..

May 18, 2011

As I write I am sitting in a gorgeous old guesthouse (Old Penang Guesthouse) on Pulau Penang. High ceilings, tiled mosaic floors, fans whirring, white walls, ($35 per night with ensuite!!!) We arrived here yesterday at 6.00am after travelling across Malaysia overnight by bus through the jungle highlands.
Prior to arriving we spent 5 gorgeous days on a little island off the east coast called Pulau Kapas. We stayed in a tiny family run resort called Qimi Chalet run by a Malay goddess called Rose who lives there with her husband Noli and her 11 year old son Qimi who taught Eva and Scarlett how to shuck their own oysters fresh off the rocks. The Chalet has its own little beach and the snorkelling was really great, both the kids learned to snorkel and were happy in really deep water. It was a little nerve wracking at first as we floated over forests of poisonous black sea urchins but enchanting when we swam down to touch the nervous but curious little nemo's coming up to meet us from their wavy homes.
Last night, our first night in Penang, was the day of the most significant Buddhist celebration of the year (for the Theraveda Buddhists) we happened to be walking past a buddhist temple and a man asked us to be a part of the parade which was to go from 7-10 pm (dont forget we hadnt slept the night before on the bus), we said yes. We arrived at the temple at 4.30 to be dressed in our outfits, there was much excitement at the spectacle we would present. There were 10,000 spectators and we felt like celebrities as we were photographed parading and giving out sweets. The thrill wore off for Eva and I pretty quickly as it was such a long walk so we took refuge in our support vehicle for about an hour,not so secretly wishing that we hadnt agreed to join in. Scarlett and Evan however were unstoppable, we could just see them, Evan in his monks outfit, joyfully giving to the people of Penang.
After about 3 hours some in the pouring rain it was enough even for their generous spirits and we staged an escape through the dark wet streets to a little hawker centre where we ate increadible fresh squid, clams and stir fried bean shoots washed down with Tiger beer.
As would be expected we all slept very well last night...

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