The Cameron Highlands

Like an Oreo, Malaysia too has a magical center.  Malaysia's isn't made of white stuff though, it is made of cool breezes, rain forests, and tea plantations.  And its name is the Cameron Highlands.  The humidity was still sheet-soggingly high, but we were pleased to feel cool air on our sun burnt and tanned faces from the moment we set foot in the town of Tanah Rata, our base for a few days of exploring Cameron's Highlands (that was for Eric Eng).

From our home base we went on a jungle trek (billed as a walking path), visited the Boh Tea Plantation, and ate the best darn banana pancake we've ever had.  The jungle trek involved climbing over fallen trees, pushing back overgrowth, routinely checking Annette's hair for phantom spiders, and getting really, really muddy from the waist down.  Once done with walking path # 9 (the biggest lie of a title since "Funny People") we walked for another hour and a half up a road to visit a tea plantation.  The Cameron Highlands are known for strawberry farms and tea plantations.  We didn't buy any of the horrible strawberry-themed souvenirs or visit any S-berry farms, but we did sip lovely Boh tea while munching on deee-lightful scones overlooking some beautimus hills covered in tea bushes.  After a self-guided tour of the facilities and a walk up to a stunning viewpoint we pointed ourselves downhill for a 4 hour walk home.  We kept our thumbs out, hoping to hitch a ride but we weren't sure what to expect.  We had only ever hitch hiked one other time between the two of us and, although we saw other hitchers zipping past us with their benefactors, we didn't really know how white hitchers were treated in Malaysia.

We walked for what felt like forever, but was probably only a half an hour or so, with Annette cursing every car that didn't stop but might have had a seat.  Finally we got picked up by the people who were meant to pick us up.  Let us explain: 

The family that scooped us up consisted of a mother, father, a three year-old boy, two twin girls (aged 7), and a grandma visiting for the day from Kuala Lumpur.  The mother spoke really good English and translated much of our conversation to the grandma and pops, who would ask us questions through her.  Pops seemed especially  curious about certain parts of our lives and travels.  Most of his questions came when we passed other white folks walking along the road and he would query through his wife, "Are they friends of yours?"  We rode and chatted (and pulled over at a view point for a photo-op) with this amazingly nice family for about 45 minutes.  We learned a little about them and they seemed to enjoy every little detail we shared about ourselves.  As in Korea, all the adults nodded approvingly and made corresponding sounds of approval when we mentioned we were married.  The mother in particular had a sweet smile and way about her.  We jumped out of the car feeling warm all over after we got into Tanah Rata.  We talked giddily about the experience and how little moments like the one we just finished with really helped illuminate new countries for us.  Enriched.  We both felt enriched.  We chattered this way for the next 15 minutes or so as we shopped on the main street.  We stopped only when interrupted by pops, who stood up and greeted us from his dinner table.  Before we knew it we were sitting with our family as they ate dinner (we declined their offer to buy us dinner) and we sipped teh terrik (which they did buy for us).  We chatted with them more about our lives and learned more about theirs: Mom is a stay at home mom, dad works at a hospital, and the kids don't like to sit still for long.

The Cameron Highlands were really pretty.  We ate some great food there (including two breakfasts from the deaf and insanely warm super husband and wife team located in a string of stalls near our guesthouse, the Twin Pines-pantomiming back and forth with them was another highlight of the CHs) and soaked in some really spectacular countryside.  But to us, Cameron Highlands will always stand out in our memories as the place we connected with a beautiful and kind family.  We'll remember coming to the highlands liking Malaysia for things and leaving loving the country for its honest, sincere, heartfelt people.

 

Penang and Melaka: Brilliant (and Delicious) Bookends for Malaysia

We didn't know much about Malaysia before we went and like South Korea, this fact turned out to be an advantage.  We visited Japan and China with plenty of expectations about their people, cultures, food, land, and other aspects.  Malaysia, on the other hand, was more of a mystery and we think our lack of expectations helped make our three weeks there that much more special.  There wasn't much we didn't like about Malaysia, but two of our favorite places happened to be the first and last areas we visited: Penang and Melaka.

Penang is a small island just off Malaysia's west coast, barely south of the Thailand border.  Penang's main tourist attraction is the city of Georgetown.  At first glance Georgetown is a decrepit and crumbling city, desolate and bleak.  Further inspection reveals hidden charms in the forms of diverse architecture and temples, rich cultural history, friendly people, and amazing food. Penang's diversity makes its food utterly awesome and the island a fascinating place to explore.  We meandered streets boasting Portuguese, British, Chinese, Indian (Hindu), Chinese, and Malay influences while we munched food with roots in almost all of the same places.  It is almost impossible to describe here the nirvana achieved when we took our first bites of a magical coconut tart we found a bit off the beaten path. These things were invented by the current baker's father and are different (by leaps and bounds) from the other coconut tarts we found in Malaysia. You have to weave your way through a few side streets and alleys and into a place called "People's Court," which is more like a dilapidated parking lot perched in the center of some very rundown and grotty looking apartment buildings, to get to this baking wizard, but once you do the payoff is huge.  We went back two more times after our first visit and never got sick of the tarts. Trying to describe how these tarts taste in writing would be like attempting bake a cake to convey the beauty of the Sistine Chapel. So we guess to really experience these tarts, you'll just have to go to Penang yourself!  (Jeff contends that these tarts are the best thing he has eaten over the course of our entire adventure!)

The other, more traditionally Malay, Chinese, and Indian food we experienced in Penang was fantastic, too. We shoved roti (described on English menus as "Indian Bread"), teh terrik (literally "Tea Pulled"), coffee (like the teh terrik, Malay coffee is served pre-melded with sweetened condensed milk[!]), kaya toast (kaya is a Malay jam made with eggs, coconut, and sugar), samosas, and many other very bad-for us, but very delicious street food delights.  We ate mainly from small stalls and street carts while we meandered the city gawking at temples, warming to nearly toppled buildings, and learning some Malay history. 

We ventured out of the city one day to inspect an enormous temple on a nearby hill.  The temple is known for its striking architecture, but we marveled at the pond filled with turtles down below.  The pond is populated by turtles released by locals.  By releasing a turtle into the pond, one is said to be letting go of the past and hoping for a bright future.  Apparently, a lot of residents have let the past go, because the pond is almost overflowing with turtles! 

The sights in Penang and Georgetown were interesting (especially a "lodge" built by a Chinese clan society similar to the Knights of Columbus with obvious Indian and Malay influences in the architecture), but we found ourselves always drawn back to the food.  After the hillside temple we immediately tried our first (but not our last) ais kacang, a Malay sweet treat consisting of ice cream, shaved ice, flavored syrups, corn, jellies, and red beans.  Ais kacang was far, far better than it sounds and we tried it again, despite the fact that it sounds like ice cream and shaved ice mixed with the findings of someone's trash bin.  Indeed, Penang lived up to its reputation as having the best food in Malaysia.  We were introduced to many of what later became our favorite things to eat in Malaysia. 

We took what we learned about Malaysian food in Georgetown and promptly ate our way in a zig-zag pattern down the country.  Our feast ended (appropriately) in Melaka, another fantastic food city and a town we enjoyed very much.  Melaka had it's ignored and crumbling bits just like Penang, but it had more tourists (carted in by the busload) and shine in it's tourist center.  We (happily) stayed outside of Melaka's center and, as a result, enjoyed some less touristy pursuits: We saw two movies (each less than $3 per person[!]), Jeff played pop-a-shot at an arcade neighboring the movie theater, we enjoyed brightly flavored doughnuts a-la America's cupcake trend on an expansive lawn with locals, walked to a beachless-shore lacking any other white faces, and toured an old restored Dutch shop/home with a friendly and super-informative guide (who we could tell was itching for someone - anyone - to stop by his brilliant, but empty restored home).  We also saw a five-foot water monitor lizard in the sewers through the bars of a storm drain.  The man chopping up chickens behind the restaurant fronting the drain smiled widely and told us that the lizard comes by every morning, around the same time.  He made this statement as he tossed chicken bits down to the hungry maw of the animal. (!)

The main sights in Melaka included a batch of red British colonial buildings, a bustling Chinatown, and some ruins on a hill.  But the main event was Annette's first meeting with rojak (a delicious fruit and vegetable salad covered with a sweet and salty sauce).  Annette declares rojak as one of her favorite things we have eaten on our trip so far!  The same place we ate rojak also featured an old lady making banana leaf-wrapped rice pyramids using blue rice.  The same lady also whipped us up a Malaysian burrito called poppiah, which was almost as good as the rojak.  Jeff loved the poppiah and the rojak, but the most memorable food moments for Jeff were trying the disgusting, but edible-enough looking, durian cream puffs and eating dinner with some friends we ran into who we met in Kuala Lumpur.  The best part about the impromptu double date was that the fella, Dimitri from Canada, and Jeff could make jokes about the food all night since we decided to try the local specialty of chicken balls.  How marvelous!

All in all, Penang and Malaka left a very tasty impression on us both.  But wait!  Our love affair with Malaysia continues in our next post, the Cameron Highlands!

 

We're back from the Outback!

We just completed a two week drive from Darwin to Alice Springs and have returned to civilization in Adelaide.

We are uploading photos on our Picasa album as we write this and just updated the Oh, The Places We've Been page.  Check out what where we've been while we whip up some new posts and try to catch up to the present!

We also wanted to take this opportunity to shout out all of you who have been reading and commenting on the blog.  We really appreciate all of you who take the time to read, and especially those who take even more to comment.  (All of your comments have been wonderful, but special honors must go to professor Toby Geotz for his comment on our Penis Park post from Korea. Just marvelous!)

Coming soon: Penang and Melaka; The Cameron Highlands; The Perhentians; Kuala Lumpur; Singapore: City of Food; and Brisbane: The City We Would Move to if it Wasn't Half Way Around the World from our Friends and Families.

Thank you all again for reading and traveling along with us in spirit and we look forward to catching you up!

Pool or Beach?

You know you are doing something right when your most difficult question to answer over the course of a week is, "Pool or beach?"

That is where we found ourselves during the second half of our first stint in Thailand.  We  moved from one resort to another (this second one was more a resort than the first, though) and found ourselves with, happily, very little to do.  We went out on two fun-dives (a dive for no credit toward moving up the PADI certification ladder) and they were two of our favorites on Koh Tao, mostly because we were more comfortable with what we were doing and could focus on the fish and coral and rays, rather than the skills and trying not to drown.

Beyond the two dives, we watched a new DVD almost every night ($2 at the good ol' black market DVD shop--Holla!!) and chilled out a lot. The chillage was supposed to be simple:  Go to the beach, snorkel, get hot, repeat.  But this fancy-pants second resort decided to complicate our already over-stressed lives by adding an obstacle in the form of a pool.  This pool was slick, infinite, and nestled awesomely beneath a small cluster of swaying palms.  The beach was small and private.  But the pool was clean and super cool looking.  It was slightly raised from the ground, black, and looked as if it belonged at a billionaire's home in the Hollywood hills.  The chairs were more comfortable at the pool and it was the perfect depth for handstands.  Our everyday chore of deciding whether to hang at the beach or pool (first) was really a tough one.  Ugh!

While the food at this second resort was inferior to the first, the rooms were all little cabin-esque bungalows that were private, roomy, and homey.  They let in giant spiders and cockroaches, but they also let in the sound of the ocean and felt just plain goooooood.  Not much more to say - nice rooms, fantastic service, comfortable beds, amazing beaches, and beautiful tropical surroundings.  We spent almost two weeks in paradise and loved every minute of it.  We felt the hurry and grime and edge of China slip off us, but the memories and experiences that taught us so much about a culture so much different than ours stayed with us even was we roasted on the beach and cooled off in the pool.  We left Thailand with renewed energy, diving certifications, and a little less tension in our shoulders. China is all about balance - the yin and the yang.  But Thailand is where we really found ours as we managed to get the pool to beach ratio right before we had to catch a boat to a bus to the train that would take us to the surprise hit of our trip - Malaysia!


Note:
Although the pool was pretty awesome, we did see an octopus while snorkeling off the beach (as well as a shark!) and we also witnessed the cutest most randomly funny moment of our trip there.

A couple was walking on the beach after a big snorkeling session.  They each had on a mask and life jacket and were carrying their fins.  A little naked Thai boy (presumably a local, as he had been swimming with mom and dad) came up out of the water and approached the woman with the snorkel gear.  The boy, probably between three and four years old, grabbed the surprised girl's fins.  Pretty quickly he made clear that he wanted all of her gear and before we knew it he had her mask, fins, and life jacket on (as best he could, bless his little heart) and was trying to enter the water with it.  The couple, mom, dad, and us all had a good laugh as the boy tried the gear in the water for a total of ten seconds after five minutes of getting the stuff on and gave it all back.  How marvelous!

Learning to Dive in Thailand

China kicked our butts.  And because Annette is a genius, we planned for total post-China exhaustion.  Our solution was to schedule a vacation from our "vacation" immediately following our month in China.  Annette knew even before we left Seattle that if we would ever need a break from our travels to re-energize and get our minds right, it would be after China.  We flew directly from Hong Kong to a small island called Koh Samui.  We slept at a pleasant beach-side resort on Samui for one night and caught a ferry the next morning for the smaller, beginning-diver mecca Koh Tao.  Samui and Tao are two of three islands in an idyllic string
just off Thailand's Eastern peninsular coast. Samui is the glitziest, most resorty island of the trifecta, while the

third, Koh Phagn Nagn, is famous for it's bohemian party scene and ultra-hedonistic full moon parties.  We

Too much scuba time in the pool!

skipped the more expensive (for Thailand) Samui and the party-tastic Nagn and headed straight for Tao, the smallest and most laid-back of the three.  We chose Koh Tao because it is known as one of the best places to get dive certified in the world.  We spent our first five days on the island learning to dive (four dives, hours of classroom time, several tests, and a practice run in a swimming pool all over the course of four days).

The combination of several good dive sights near by, low cost, and high quality and safety standards (due to the saturation of dive schools) has made Koh Tao a very popular stop for travelers and backpackers.  We met more than a few people who had learned to dive on Koh Tao five or six years ago, so the island really has made a name for itself.  We both enjoy snorkeling, and since we would be spending so much of the next few months in areas known for their excellent diving, we took this opportunity to strap on our wetsuits and give it a go!  The Great Barrier Reef, Malaysia (though we didn't know it yet), and Vietnam were all calling for us to come dive their tranquil and bountiful waters.  The first step to taking in underwater sights along our journey was to get what is called the Open Water Dive Certification from PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors).  The Open Water Certification allows a diver to dive up to 18 meters alone (though one would normally have a dive leader in new areas).

There was nothing particularly difficult about learning to dive on Koh Tao -- everything from choosing a shop to mastering the basic skills of operating the equipment and a few emergency skills was fairly easy.  As far as dive school selection goes, the choices ranged from large or small, closer to where we were staying or slightly further.  Since all the prices were the same for most schools, we went with size.  We wanted a larger, well-established shop where we would feel comfortable and figured safety would be a priority.  (Man, we are so not backpackers sometimes...!)  We went with a school called Crystal that has a good reputation, and reasonable class sizes even though it is one of the largest schools on the island.  Our instructor was a friendly Israeli with a quick tongue and good sense of humor named Liran.  Liran was patient, clear, and experienced.  Although he could have spent more one-on-one time with each student (not his fault since he had five ), Leron was a good instructor and we walked away from the class feeling pretty confident in our basic skills. 

Our favorite Liran-ism was, "Pump up the dolphin," which was his way of reminding us to pump air into our BCDs (buoyancy control device) when we entered the water.  His, apparently, made a sound like a dolphin when it was over-filled in the water.  Liran also had a really funny way of describing the underwater hand signals, though those are more difficult to describe in writing.  The one that struck us was his super-slow-mo explanation of telling your buddy you were out of air and needed to share air. "Budd-ee," he would say as he ran through the motions. "I. Am. Out. Of. Air. I. Need. To. Share. Your. Air."  We're not sure why, but the way Liran said and motioned this particular set of signals stuck with us vividly (and comically).  So cheers to him!

We also learned how to find our regulator if it should get pulled from our mouths, flood and clear our masks, remove and replace our masks, some basic navigation, and how not to die by surfacing too quickly (this one is pretty important, apparently).  Getting into the water for the first time and descending with all our gear was a trip.  There was something special about swimming side by side and eye to eye with the fish.  The first few dives lacked much aquatic life of interest, but they were neat since everything was brand new.  And it was super sweet to pause and think, "Hey, I'm freaking breathing underwater right now!" 

***

We don't have many photos from our first five days on Tao, but some highlights were:

Splashing in the ocean a few ours after our arrival on Samui that first day.

Lounging on the beach of our very pretty resort (we use that term loosely here) - Charm Churee Villas.

Getting our dive certification after four days of hard work and the most time in a classroom either of us has had since 2007.

The fruit and other goodies at our pretty swell buffet Charm Churee breakfast.

Our own room complete with king bed and humongous balcony!!

Making friends with our fellow divers from our class - including a hilarious couple from Seattle (by way of Detroit ["They took our jobs!])."

(There was also a couple from Scotland and the gentleman, Ally, kept trying to show everyone photos of himself in a kilt. Yes!  And guess what?  They really wear nothing underneath!!)