Welcome to the Jungle

Going into the jungle takes some preparation - lots of water, insect repellent, long pants and hiking boots, food, and a lighter to kill leeches if necessary. I was very hopeful that I'd get to use the lighter. I was hoping of course that I'd get to use it on Michael and not the other way around.



The humidity must have been close to 100% so even though the temperature was in the mid-80s we were both dripping wet before even hitting our first trail. Our first stop was the canopy walk, a creaky, narrow "bridge" that spanned the treetops. The height of the bridges ranged from 50 to 150 feet. It was very cool.









After the canopy walk we continued climbing straight uphill for about an hour. During our hike I stopped to take a picture of an enormous ant. While I was bent over I heard this rumbling in the woods behind me and then Michael yells, "there's a wild boar." I turned around to see two baby boars ripping across the trail. They move very fast and did not look very friendly. We saw a guide a few moments later who told us we were very lucky to see the boars as they're usually not that close to the park entrance.

After reaching the summit we then started our hike straight down hill. I think somewhere along the way we got a little lost as we stopped seeing other hikers and the path seemed to get very narrow. At one point we followed a sign that pointed toward our destination but had scratched on it "bad path, felled trees." We took that path anyway and sure enough spent a lot of time climbing over big felled trees.



This little detour did, however, bring about the most exciting part of the hike. As we're wandering about sweating profusely Michael feels a little bite on his leg, lifts up his pant leg and finds this little critter.



I was pretty excited and started fishing around for the lighter not knowing exactly what I was going to do with it. Not wanting to be accused of overkill and not wanting to get a 3rd degree burn, Michael suggested maybe I try spraying it with insect repellent first. While this was less fun for me it was probably safer for him and the result was still pretty cool. The leech instantly curled up and bright red blood started gushing and the little critter just kept hanging on. We finally flicked him off with a stick and inspected the damage.

Once one gets on you it becomes an obsession where you're convinced that every little pinch or scratch is a leech. Right after we got Michael's off I found two on my shoe trying to crawl into my sock. They are ruthless. At this point I started to get wigged out and kept repeating, "this is freaking me out, let's keep moving." They seem to love it when you stop moving so they can just hop on your shoes and dig in. When we finally got home a few hours later we checked obsessively for more leeches and scolding ourselves for not taking more video of the whole leech episode.

On the way out of town the next day we passed two noteworthy bathrooms. The first one has a sign that says, "Don't go here - snakes inside" (yikes). The second was just a really poor excuse for a toilet.

It's the Journey, Not the Destination

On the move again, this time eight hours by taxi, bus, another bus, another bus, and boat. The destination was Taman Negara, a primary jungle which is over 130 million years old and covers 4300 square kilometers.

The boat trip was the most fun. You board these very long and narrow boats that probably seat about 20 people total.





The boats sit very low in the water so you feel like you're just skimming over the water during the three hour journey. Our boat had a slight leak so our driver stopped about two to three times during our trip to bail water out of the back seat.



When you're off the boat you slog up a steep little beach and then set about looking for that night's lodging. Often when I make lodging choices I am too taken by the kitsch factor of a place and forget about practical considerations for what would help with a good night's sleep. Consequently we spent our first night at a motel where you might expect to find Papa and Baby Smurf. A series of squat, pink A-frame houses painted bright pink and blue. The room was almost passable but the bathroom really hit a new low. Gecko droppings on the wall, no drain for the shower so the floor stayed wet all the time, mold, and a slug on the floor. I've gotten so used to weird bathrooms that I didn't even notice there was no sink as we've been sinkless for the past few weeks. You just use the hose coming out of the wall.







The next day we picked up and moved to a much cuter place, the Durian Chalet, which was a bit of a hike but well worth it. Still no sink, and a bathroom made out of concrete which absorbs all smells if you get the idea. We picked the least stinky room and settled in.

Cherating

Our next stop was Cherating, about half way down the east coast of Malaysia. Again, another long day of travel here but not too difficult. We arrived and found some sweet little bungalows where we are hanging out trying to get better as we've both caught colds in the last day or so. This is not such a bad place to be under the weather. It's practically empty, it's not horribly hot, and it has been raining a lot so you don't feel guilty about sitting around reading and napping.

One reason these bungalows are nice is that they have the trifecta of ammenities - the three Ts. Toilet paper, towels, and top sheet. You often have none, sometimes have one or maybe two, but I don't know that we've ever had all three so it's quite a treat.



As part of our "getting better" plan we spent one morning walking along a rather pretty beach. Part of what made it so nice is that there was barely anyone else around so we had the place to ourselves.





Feeling somewhat better, but still not great, we headed off to the jungle.

Paradise Island?

Now that I have my diving certification I'm interested in trying to get as much diving in on this trip as possible as a) there's a lot of opportunity; b) it's awfully inexpensive; and c) it must be better than diving in Boston. That said we headed to the east coast of Malaysia to the Perhentian islands. We had high hopes as we headed this way - awesome diving, relaxing beaches, cool little bungalows.

Getting here was a bit of a chore. Required two minibuses and a boat. No big deal for us at this point, but everything seemed to be running just a bit late which is a drag when you're trying to get somewhere, especially an island with no cars or transport other than boats, before sunset. I suppose the problems really started when we arrived at the jetty and the boat we were supposed to take didn't even exist. So we bought new tickets for the "fast boat." This boat is supposed to take 45 minutes but 2.5 hours later we were no where close to our destination. Factors including crew seasickness (not particularly confidence inspiring) and really rough seas resulted in us arriving close to our destination but not quite close enough. The rough seas are an issue as there are no piers and you need small boats to come meet you on your big boat to bring you ashore. Given the bad conditions no one would come to meet our boat so we were dropped off on the Big Island at the Paradise Island Resort. I only mention the name because the place was anything but paradise. Dingy rooms complete with cockroaches. Not our first cockroaches mind you but it's really just about the last thing you want to see after 12 long hours of travel. Here Mr. Cockroach is seeing the toilet after been squashed by Michael's flip flop.



The next day we managed to make it to the Little Island, our original destination, where we secured a little bungalow and set about finding a good dive for the next day.



We settled on diving the Sugar Wreck, which is the remains of a cargo ship that was carrying sugar that sank in 2000. While the visibility was not great it was very cool to swim around a wreck. We even got to swim through big hatches which was a little scary as I am new to diving and certainly not used to diving with anything hanging over my head. Michael and I were dive buddies for the first time and I only abandoned him once which I thought was pretty good for our first time out.

The real excitement came on the ride home. We were diving off a tiny boat - held only 11 people and our dive equipment. It had been raining a bit when we originally descended but was clear when we surfaced. Once we were all ready to go we headed back toward the Small Island. We could see rain ahead but were truly unprepared for the huge storm that we rode in to. We were totally exposed on this boat and it was raining so hard that it felt like hail. People had their dive masks on because it was the only way to see anything. Visability was almost zero and, no surprise, we got lost. Somehow the boat got totally turned around and after 30 minutes we were back where we started at the dive site. When someone finally got a compass out we moved in what we hoped was the right direction and finally found our way home, very, very cold and wet and an hour late. While I was never worried about making it home the experience illustrated how easy it is to get lost at sea and lose your bearings. Why these boats don't have GPS or even a compass is a little mindboggeling.

Heidi is Malaysian?

Our next stop was the Cameron Highlands about 5 hours southeast of Penang. This place was so cool - literally. As it's in the "high lands" it's about 30 degrees cooler than Penang, which was a welcome relief. We stayed in this charming little place called Father's Guesthouse. I think it used to be a missionary in the 1920s and was also used by British soldiers during World War II. It had a great vibe and was charming with well tended gardens and an attentive staff. And the view from our front garden was great.





This area has a whole Swiss Alps theme going on. I'm not sure how this started or whose idea it was but it's everywhere from the mock tudor condos to the tea, scones and clotted cream served in the local restaurants.

For our one full day in Cameron Highlands we rented a motorbike - one of only two in town we think. After a false start with a bike with a flat tire we were off.....to get gas. The closest gas station was 10 miles away, straight down hill on some of the craziest roads I've ever seen. Michael was an excellent driver though so no worries (other than our slight "falling off the bike" mishap which is described in Michael's blog).



Our daytrip consisted of a visit to the Boh Tea Plantation (beautiful), two stops for tea and scones (very yummy), a visit to the butterfly farm (many cool critters), and an afternoon of driving in the pouring rain (wet). All and all a great visit. Now time to get hot again.

EZ Bake Oven Part 27

Time to move again, this time Malaysia. It's fun to be in a place where Michael has spent so much time. It's interesting to hear his recollections and remembrances from his childhood here. While he has only visited a few places in the extreme north I think we'll be in more familiar territory as we head south.

First though we need another hot bus ride. I've decided these bus trips are like being trapped inside an EZ Bake Oven, just right under the lightbulb that bakes your chocolate cake. Here is Michael when we're at about 102 in the back row of a minivan where the windows don't open.



We finally reach the island of Penang at about 9pm after a good 11 hours of traveling. As Michael describes in his blog we stayed in a real crap of a room that resulted in a pretty horrible night's sleep. The next day was not much better as it's just ridiculously hot there - over 100 with no breeze in the middle of a city. These guys sort of say it all - it's just too hot to do much of anything.



That said, we left the next day taking the public bus to the bigger bus station. Notice the sign reminding you not to spit (it's on the left in the 2nd picture). Nice touch.

Dream Team

After spending the last 5 days in diving school we decided it would be nice to get a little R & R. Understandably the trip as a whole is R & R but we are running around so much there is often little time for just hanging out. Enter Koh Lanta and the Dream Team Resort.







Now this is classy. Fresh flowers on the bed, big infinity pool, and a sea side restaurant that serves, you guessed it, bad spaghetti. We spent three days lying by the pool just reading and relaxing. Most importantly, I was able to catch up on important celebrity news from December 2005 with an Australian tabloid.



It was a very relaxing 3 days and best of all I didn't even have to use the lodging upgrade coupon Michael gave me as a Christmas present. I'm saving that for Bali.



On our way off the island we read in the International Herald Tribune that Koh Lanta had received tsunami alerts for two of the three days of our visit. While absolutely nothing happened on Koh Lanta, Ko Phi Phi, the next island over, had people move to higher ground for 12 hours on one day. It was strange to hear this news after the fact as we had spent much time wondering what it had been like during the tsunami in 2004. Strange.

Team Open Water

Ko Tao is an island of about 5000 that caters to divers. We headed to the Buddha View Resort where I was to take the 4 day Open Water dive course and Michael was taking the 2 day Advanced Open Water course. After collapsing for a few hours I went and got my text book, had my lunch, and had my first class that afternoon. My group was very multicultural - Georgie from England, Peter from Australia, Sean from Canada, and Gustav from Sweden. The girls were allowed to pick from the boys our dive partners for the course. I choose Sean, my fellow North American, an 18 year old from Vancouver who was traveling for eight months. We watched about 90 minutes of video giving us the basics of diving and then we had 125 pages of homework for the next morning. Ugh, homework - I was not happy. Luckily Michael had homework too so we sat on our porch overlooking the sea reading our chapters.





After another morning in the class room which included 2 quizzes we finally got hands on in the afternoon in the pool. We were fortunate to have a great instructor, Jesper, and two dive instructors in training, Dani and Ricky. After learning some of the important skills like breathing, clearing your regulator, seeing how much air you have, etc. we moved on to equally if not more important things such as breakdancing underwater, having underwater races, and running up the side of the wall and doing backflips. Jesper had a little write on/write off board that he used to ask questions such as, "Does Ricky have a cute butt?," "Is your buddy sexy?," and "Does size matter?" which he would then pass around so we could all record our answers. I think he was trying to distract us from the fact that we were breathing into this funny contraption and his strategy must have worked because nobody freaked out and everyone showed up for day two.

Day two consisted of practicing our skills in the ocean - yikes. To get your certification you have to show that you can do a series of basic skills - for example maintaining neutral buoyancy, following a compass, and my least favorite - clearing your mask. This one we had to do every dive - five times in all. What's amazing is that by the end of your second day you're diving to 18 feet in the ocean. It was incredibly cool and I think the feeling of your first dive is probably something you don't ever forget.

The next two days were basically doing dives - two a day. At this point we were all putting our own equipment together, running skills with Jesper, and seeing many different dive sites. On the third day we dove to 36 feet and on the forth we went to 54 feet. As we became more advanced and comfortable with our skills Jesper ran through other important skills such as blowing water rings, underwater kissing (yes, kissing an eighteen year old), and the James Bond entry.





The James Bond entry is when you do a somersault off the boat into the water. Again no pictures but it was really cool, and I found it less scary then getting into the water by just walking off the boat which is what you usually do.

After all our dives we took our final exam and then celebrated our accomplishments over beers and kisses for Jesper.

Back to Where it All Began

Our next stop was Bangkok again, our starting point for heading south. Returning to Bangkok was somewhat momentous as it marked the end of our loop of the Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. When we first left Bangkok two months ago it was hard to imagine what the journey would be like. Now I'm back, now I have a better idea, and I can hardly believe all the things we've seen and done. Especially after Vietnam and Cambodia, Bangkok was like a huge dose of Western culture - big city, big noises, big prices - everything is big.

The plan was to just stay one night and head south the next day. As our guesthouse from the first visit was full we settled for one next door that while not great was doable for one night. This turned out to be a very long night. Michael got a really bad stomach ache after dinner (that ended up lasting for about 2 days), the room was sweltering, there was no window, we were right off the lobby so there were ringing phones all night, barking dogs - the usual. There was the worst smell that would just not go away. No sheets, no blanket, no toilet paper - no nothing. And, and, the woman who ran the place was not very nice. So it was a long night only to be followed by needing the spend the next 12 hours wandering around Bangkok with Michael sick, waiting for our bus ride south. After getting ourselves out of the hell hole we dropped our bags at the travel agent and spent the afternoon in a park reading and napping and trying to stay cool.

At about 9:30 pm we boarded an overnight bus to Chumphon, about 300 miles south of Bangkok. Somehow we ended up in the very back of the bus surrounded by four very large Swedish women - as Michael said, when do you ever see a large Swedish woman....let alone four of them? So we felt a bit cursed at this point. The bus did show Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith so at least there was some distraction. It was impossible to get comfortable and sleep was pretty difficult, especially as the bus stopped at 2:30 am at a roadside stand so we could shop for 30 minutes.

We arrived at Chumphon at about 5 am just as an enormous thunderstorm was rolling through. They don't let you stay on the bus so you file out and sit by the sea in these wet plastic chairs with very little in the way of covering overhead. Your bags have been dragged out of the bus and dropped in the nearest puddle. At this point it's just comical as there is literally nothing you can do except dig out your raincoat which is of course at the bottom of your pack.



After finding my raincoat I went in search of the bathroom. Upon entering I saw Mr. Frog just sitting on the little ledge, hanging out. I watched him for a minute and then decided, "whatever." When I turned my back I heard a splash and found Mr. Frog doing laps in the toilet. After taking a few pictures I used the little "Thai style" water sprayer to lift him over the edge of the seat - thank god a seat - and out he hopped into the storm.





Finally the rain stopped and we headed on the fast boat to Ko Tao, a ride that takes about two hours. Let's just say these two hours seemed like the longest of my life. I think it was the combination of practically no sleep for two nights, living on oreos and in this case M & M's, and being somewhat stressed from the 36 hours of travel that caused me to spend the entire trip with my head between my knees puking into a little baggie. It was not pretty. There are no pictures.

Searching for Angelina

Next stop was the Disneyland of Cambodia - Angkor Wat in Siem Reap. It seems, rightly so, that everyone who visits Cambodia makes a pilgrimage to Angkor Wat. These monuments were built between the 9th and 13th centuries and housed the kings of the Khmer empire as they ruled over territory extending through Vietnam, China, through to the Bay of Bengal.



After securing our driver, Suhkorn, we spent two days just exploring the different temples of Angkor. Traveling with Suhkorn was quite fun. He drove us around in his cute little tuk-tuk to the temples. When we'd arrive he'd give us a bit of the history, tell us what to look for, and then he'd wander off and take a nap while we puttered around.



Our first stop was Angkor Wat - the big mama of all temples. This is supposed to be the world's largest religious building. To enter you walk down this very long entryway, crossing over a huge moat. The temple complex itself consists of three levels each of contain many interlinked galleries. The largest tower in the center of Angkor Wat sits about 150 feet above the ground. It's difficult to describe in words and represent in pictures but it's really an amazing place.









Surrounding the main structure are 2400 feet of bas reliefs depicting all sorts of battles and scenes from everyday life in early Cambodia.

Our first day also included a visit to Ta Promh. Unlike many of the other temples in the Angkor Wat complex, Ta Phrom has not been preserved and has been left to nature to take over (albeit for regular pruning to keep some of the wildlife growth back). This Buddhist temple is a maze of corridors, crumbling walls and tiny crevices. Of perhaps greater significance - this is where Angelina Jolie filmed some of the scenes from Tomb Raider! Try as I might I never did manage a Brangelina sighting - oh well.

















As with all of Cambodia there are children selling you everything at every turn. This little girl, who was probably three at the oldest, could count to ten in three languages and managed to parlay this into quite the sales pitch.

Day two we did the sunrise thing which involved leaving the Smiley Guesthouse at 6 am. While sunrise was somewhat disappointing because of cloud cover it was worth it to have the temples almost all to yourself to wander around in peace. Our first stop was Angkor Thom which has this amazing entrance - the left side has demons and the right side has gods and they are all churning up the sea to extract the elixir of immortality. It's fittingly called the Churning of the Ocean Milk.



Next we visited the Bayon, probably the second most photographed spot in all of Angkor Wat. This temple has 216 huge identical faces which look suspiciously like the king at the time. It reminded me a little of Mohammed al Fayed (Dodi Fayed's father) and his faces all around Harrods - little weird.





The Bayon also has a series of bas reliefs. Much to my delight and fitting with my love of the circus there was a scene showing a Cambodian circus complete with a strong man holding up three dwarfs.



The Baphuon is an interesting temple that was taken apart by archaeologists before the civil war as part of a restoration effort. During the Khmer Rouge reign the records detailing how to put the temple back together were destroyed leaving a very large jigsaw puzzle to be completed. A team of Japanese archaeologists have been rebuilding this temple for the last 10 years - it's estimated to be completed within the next 24 months.



Banteay Srei is considered to be the most artistic of all the temples. Known as the Lady Temple, it has the most elaborate and most delicate carvings. The temple is quite small, and seems even smaller when you're trapped inside with half of the population of Japan.









While we only stayed for two days it was easy to understand how some folks stayed for a week just exploring the temples - there is a ton to see.