Georgetown, Malaysia

There is just too much to say I don't even know where to start.  So I am just going to bombard you with pictures and let them speak for themselves.  The first few are of our last few days in Thailand, then the sleeper train and then many of Georgetown, Malaysia.  It is amazing here.  All we have really done is walk around and eat, but that's all you really need to do here.  It's a huge melting pot of cultures, mostly Chinese, Indian and Malay.  Food is very interesting and delicious and there is some amazing street art.   Oh and the drinks... every type of fresh fruit juice you can think of... soooo yummy.  There are hawker stalls everywhere, which are kind of like the Portland food cart pods, but they were made for public health reasons, to make the street food eating and cooking areas more sanitary.  Basically there are a lot of carts around one sitting area.  You order what you want to eat (from multiple places if you want) and then sit and they bring it to you when you're ready.  The centralized drink vendor takes your drink order after you sit.  It's a great set-up.  Wish I could give explain better but, alas, no time!  Look it up on Wikipedia :)  Yesterday we went to the Panang Museum (which was the best, least expensive and least sad museum we've been to this whole trip) and a group of Muslim schoolgirls asked if they could take a picture with me.  I have no idea why they wanted to, but there were thrilled and super giddy about it.  Then after the pictures, I saw them a couple more times around the museum and they would get equally excited and wave to me.  Closest I've ever felt to being famous :)

Goldilocks days

We went to Ao Nang because it has some of the most beautiful beaches in Thailand, if not SE Asia.  Like, Railay Beach, for example.  However, the weather wasn't very good and when the skies aren't blue and the waves are high, what is supposed to be turquoise water is instead brown, making the beaches still pretty but not magnificent.  We decided it wasn't much use hanging out at beautiful beaches in cruddy weather, especially in an overly touristy town, 

Beach near Ao Nang

Neat limestone cliff (karst) near Ao Nang.

so we left the next morning for Khao Sok National Park.



Khao Sok National Park was really beautiful.  We got there in the afternoon, grabbed a late lunch with monkey shaped rice and started planning for the next day.

You're really supposed to do one of the organized excursions there.  However, the excursions were expensive and none of them really appealed to us... well one did, but they weren't running it because it was low season.  So after experiencing intermittent electricity outages at our rainforest bungalow, during which we played cards on our back patio via flashlight, we decided to just hike for several hours the next day and leave in the early afternoon.

So we were the first people in the park the next morning (we knew this from the sign-in sheet).  And it was going great.  We saw some really neat giant bamboo, lots of pretty birds and butterflies and some monkeys.

But hiking in the rainforest solidified what we kinda already knew: we're not really rainforest people.  We prefer the dry forests in Colorado where there aren't weird, unexpected, creepy creatures.

Creepy creatures like somersaulting leaches (I tried to insert a video of them here but it was taking way too long to upload), for example.  Which were enough to make me want to leave after finding them on (but not attached to) my leg or ankle two times and enough to make Anson want to leave after finding one attached to his foot through his sock.  So we scurried the 2.5km we'd hiked into the rainforest out of the rainforest and caught an earlier than anticipated bus out of Khao Sok.

 Followed by an earlier than planned ferry to Koh Phangan.

There are three main islands in the Gulf of Thailand.  We went to two of them last year for our honeymoon, Koh Samui and Koh Tao.   We had previously decided that with the exception of our one day in Bangkok, we weren't going to revisit any of our honeymoon locations because we wanted those memories to remain as they were.  So here we are on Koh Phangan and after one night in a hotel here that we didn't really like,

 and Anson shuttling our bags via motorbike to a different hotel that we do really like,

here we are where it's just right.


We'll almost.  Koh Phangan is home of the full moon, half moon and black moon parties that attract herds of partying tourists (during the full moon one at least, the others are just copy-cat attempts to increase the money making).  This island is gorgeous and I can't totally speak yet because we haven't seen very much of it yet, but I would venture to say its Thai-ness has been nearly ruined by its extreme touristy-ness and huge ex-pat population.  We are still having a blast and have had at least some luck finding real Thai food amongst the larger spattering of Western food restaurants and restaurants claiming to be real Thai food (I'll tell you now, if the menu has more than a handful of dishes, none of them will be made well).

And there was a really fun walking market last night 

 were we got two rounds of yummy (and real) Thai street food.

Today it's onward to explore more beaches here - one you have to hike to and one that's actually a different island connected to Koh Phangan via a sand belt.

Apparently time to move on

After 5 days of perfect sunny weather with clear blue skies,

Koh Lanta has sent the monsoons that are typical of this time of year 

and the reason why this island is practically deserted.

Well that's OK, Koh Lanta, we won't take it personally.... we had already purchased our tickets onward.  Ao Nang, we'll see you in a few hours!

Why did the monkey cross the road?

Well if you ask me, it was to make our day.  Because we did in fact see a monkey cross the road when we were motorbiking today, Anson did indeed ask me that question, and that is indeed how I responded.  But the monkey wasn't the only thing that made our day today.  So did..

this cup of coffee (well, not the coffee itself, the coffee was just Nescafe 3-in-1),

this hike,

this cave (it wasn't the one from the guidebook, Shaina, just a small one we stumbled across),

this waterfall,

 this beach,

and the fact that we could have 2 bowls of chicken noodle soup, 2 sticky rices, a papaya salad and a chicken wing for 180 baht ($6) for dinner.

I hope you had at least one 'monkey crossing the road' in your day, as well!

Oh and I forgot, these gas pump vending machines (one we used later played music) made our day too!

Lazy in Koh Lanta

I haven't been keeping up with posting for the past several days, which mirrors the same recent change in pace of our trip.

Cambodia was mentally exhausting.  The main tourist attractions there are memorials related to the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat in Siem Reap.  If you're like I was a couple of weeks ago, you probably don't know much about either of these things (except for maybe the tidbit on Angkor Wat that I previously posted).  So let me help by giving a very abbreviated overview.  Cambodia is about the size (geographically) as Washington state with a population of about 8 million.  Most of the country is extremely rural with the vast majority of the land being untouched forests or farmland (mostly rice) with very minimal, rustic housing.  During the second half of the 20th century, they had unstable governance and were experiencing side effects of the Vietnam War, including bombing by the US.  In 1975 the Khmer Rouge overthrew the prior government (remember I am sparing the details here), which was initially celebrated by the locals who thought the Khmer Rouge would be a positive upswing for the country.  However things quickly took a very dark turn.  The Khmer Rouge believed that what was best for Cambodia was for everyone to live the simple life and become rice farmers in the countryside.  They renounced any and all religion, education and luxuries.  They forced everyone out of the cities and into slave labor or joining the Khmer Rouge as combatants, prison guards, etc.  Temples and schools were destroyed or turned into prisons.  Anyone who had too much education or was suspected of being a traitor of the KR was tortured and killed or just killed.  So was everyone else in their family, including children and babies, to prevent them from seeking revenge in the future.  Many people starved or were worked to death.  In 1975 there were 8 million people in the country and when Vietnam freed Cambodia from the KR in 1979, there were 6 million.  That means that one in four Cambodians died during a 4 year period.  Needless to say, it was a huge and devastating crime against humanity.   The leaders of the KR have yet to be prosecuted, they are still awaiting trial over 30 years later.  What's even more appalling is that after the mass killings ended in 1979, the US was just so terrified of communism that we (or, can I separate myself from this since I wasn't even born yet?) still recognized and supported the KR as the political leaders of the Cambodia.  Sorry for this very crude overview, but I know you all know how to learn more about it if you want to.

Of course the aftermath of such travesty is immeasurable but they seem to be doing pretty well now.  Phnom Penh and Siem Reap both had infrastructure that was on par with the bigger cities we saw in Vietnam, the food is delicious, the temples whimsical and incredible, Khmer physiology lends itself to the most beautiful smiles and the people are playful and seem happy.  We did see a lot more begging in Cambodia than in Vietnam (partly because in Vietnam we really didn't see any), but there also seemed to be more disparities in wealth among the locals in Cambodia than in Vietnam.  The people begging were targeting locals and tourists alike.  But it's hard and exhausting to say 'no' to young mothers, to people missing limbs from either mines or KR torture, to children selling 4 bracelets for a dollar outside Angkor Wat at 11am on a Tuesday when they should be in school and to tuk tuk drivers all day long.  And that's being on the easy side of the exchange.

After Siem Reap, we took a bus to Bangkok, spent about 28 hours there and then took another overnight bus (but this one was very different - no bunked sleeper beds and it was full of European tourists heading to the full moon party on Koh Phangan) from Bangkok down south to meet up with Jessica (Anson's prior coworker from ChefStable) and her sister, Shaina, in Koh Lanta.  Seeing other countries in SE Asia puts Thailand into more perspective.  The infrastructure here is so much more established and I don't feel like nearly every young woman in Thailand is pregnant (unlike the last two countries).  Remember the 383 mile 18 hour bus ride we took in Vietnam?  It took 11 hours to go 411 miles in Thailand.  Amazing what some well-paved, multilane freeways can do for your average MPH.  We were really ready to relax when we got here and after we got upgraded from what was supposed to be a tiny one-room bungalow into a two story one with a full kitchen, family room and pool side patio, we extended our stay on Koh Lanta from 2 nights to 5.  It's low season and the island is full of empty bungalow resorts and closed bars but we are having lots of fun with Jessica and Shaina.  We have found some good beaches and yummy food and we are enjoying cooking our own breakfast, spending lots of time in the water, playing with the frogs that emerge around the pool at night and staying put... for a little while, at least.  

A small spattering of pics below.

Children selling eggs on ferry ride on the way to Phnom Penh

Eating at night market in Phnom Penh (this was right after the daily night market opened that day, later in the eveing, it would fill up with mostly locals and some tourists)

Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh

Monkeys and Monk Feet, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh

Cambria, inadvertently dressed as a Monk at the Silver Pagoda

Khmer food and Khmer text, Phnom Penh

Cat sleeping cutely, Koh Lanta.  (I took this one for you, Bridget - the owner of our hotel in Koh Lanta has 5 cats, tonight one of them was sleeping on the seat of the motorbike when we got back from dinner)

Beach in Koh Lanta

Sunset (in case you couldn't tell :)), Koh Lanta 

 On the snorkeling boat, near Koh Lanta

And you should check out Shaina's blog at www.chezshai.com!