Kula Lumpar - Petronas Towers

Mon June 11 & Tues June 12

Our last few days in Lombok were low key. We rented the scooter for another day of galavanting. And spent our last day just lying on the beach and eating.  It was lovely and relaxing.  

View from our window

Wednesday June 13 morning  we caught a flight to mainland Malaysia, into the city of Kula Lampur.  At this point we finally had to accept that the size and weight of one of our bags has now moved it into the checked baggage category.  This was very hard for N, as you pay quite a bit to check bags.  We did so well for so long!  Nearly two months with only two carrying bags!  

We're in nicer hotel, although it is teeny tiny and looks like the Easter Bunny decorated it.  We can see one of the Pretrona Twin Towers just through the trees from our window.  

We are now into the last week of our time in Asia!  Naturally my body would assume this is the time to fall ill,  again! Thank God for N!  He takes such amazing care of me: goes out to find the food I that willl settle my stomach, finds a clean sock (no face clothes)  to dampen to cool my head, turns the A/C off and on about a thousand times in the night and also gets no sleep because I am up every hour.  I am so, SO grateful for him!

I'm very eager to get out and explore the city.  One of its main attractions is supposed to be the food, not sure how that is going to sit today maybe we will put our emphasis elsewhere for our first day and go all out the second. 

A sample of the hilarious decore and poor sicky N in bed 

Thursday June 13 2013 

Sadly, instead of my health improving N joined me on team bed rest. Poor guy is in rough shape.  We spent very little time outside our room yesterday and a lot of time admiring bathroom tiling.  

Feeling a bit better in the after noon I decided to brave the streets on my own, while N rest and recouped.  I felt a bit intimidated in such a big city at first but I managed to find my way to a major mall, of which there are many.  I  found a hair salon that looked decent.  I am trying to grow out my short hair and it is always an awkward phase.  I was pleased with the result.  

Friday June 14

We are both a bit better today so decided to push ourselves to see some of the things on our short list.  In truth just wandering around the city feels like enough for me.  This is just such an interesting place.  

We were headed to Starbucks for breakfast but passed a little cafe called The Loaf. We were lure in by the amazing smell.  I don't know if its just been a long time since we had real breads but I'm pretty sure these were some of the best pastries I may have ever had.  My latte was also worth bragging about.  The chocolate pistachio croissant literally melted in my mouth, and all over my face.    (That may have had something to do with temp being well over 30).   I picked up this random little thing that I thought was a cranberry scone but turned out to be extremely moist and filled with a cream-cheesy kind of custard.  It took me about twenty minutes to finish because I just never wanted it to end.  It was so delicious!

Downtown KL feels a lot like Manhattan, NY.  It is all glamour!  There are designer shops on every corner.  The whole downtown area is just one mall bumping into another mall.  Some places we have travelled my camera is always horizontal.  All the shots are landscapes: beaches, fields, winding roads.  In cities like KL and NY it's always portrait mode.  The camera in in a constant vertical state to capture the colossal giants that adorn the streets.  It's not all posh, the city still has its own very authentic, unique flavour.  It's a really neat place to just amble around and window shop (since I'm not in the market for Louis Vuitton luggage).  They do have lots of my favourite stores from home too but I find it depressing to try on clothes when the other women shopping are too small for the xs!

The mix of people in KL is also fascinating to observe.  The local people are a cross section of mainly Malay, Indian and Chinese.  There are many visible Muslim's: women in bright patterned hijabs (head scarves) fastened with glitzy jewelled broaches and quite a few full burkas.  You see many badly dressed Caucasians (I assume mainly tourists) as well as those who appear to be doing business here in suits.   I think there is a significant expat community in KL as well.  Some people dressed extremely well in designer clothes or just fashionably trendy but not high end with cutting edge haircuts.  It's a really diverse metropolis.  I enjoy the vibe of the city.  It's the kind of place where it seems like no one really blends in so you don't feel like you stick out so badly.  

We headed to the Bird Park, which is the largest in the world.  I took two photos and the camera battery promptly died.  Charging it apparently got overlooked in our delirium yesterday.  We wandered around trying to find somewhere to sell us a cheap one with no luck (it's a stupid $80 specialty battery) so we headed back to the hotel to charge it.  

After some lunch the battery was finally charged so we headed back to the Bird Park.  

It may be because I watched Free Willy too many times as a kid...but I really hated this place.  The park aspect is lovely.  The exotic birds in cramped cages next to blaring low heavy bass music and the peacocks missing all their tail feathers was extremely distressing.  Places like this make me like people a little less.  And also hate children a lot.  In my opinion if parents don't prevent their children from tormenting innocent creatures then there should be nothing preventing strangers from smacking evil children!  Obviously I would never hit kid but man there were some parents in that park I seriously wanted to punch in the face. Clearly,I have a high tolerance for the abuse of nature...I am now committed to stop visiting these type of places.  It's more of a necessity thing, before I end up in a foreign prison somewhere.  

I do love taking photos of birds though so that was a redeeming factor.  And I love flamingos...and I especially love when those hilariously awkward birds fly.  

Mandarin Ducks...little cuties kept splashing around and wouldn't hold still long enough to get very good pics of them.  The pond was filled with coy fish as well, you can see them in the water.  

Hornbill

In the afternoon we got up close to Petronas Twin Towers.  They are quite impressive.  There is a shopping mall between them.  We got some frozen yogurt and dinner while we waited for dark.  The towers look even cooler all lit up at night.  

 

Yea for selfies on the iPad!

 

As always, photos don't do it justice

Tomorrow at 2pm we fly off to Tokyo for a few days.  This is the last lag of our journey before returning to Canada!

Caves in Gunu Mulu National Park, Borneo Jungle

Friday May 24 2013 9 pm 

My alternate title for this blog was "Fighting Phobias".  I'm quite proud myself for overcoming a couple of my major phobias in the last few days!  Mainly heights and small dark spaces!  

Getting to this place was a long journey.  It took four flights with long layovers before we finally arrived.  Fortunately when we did finally get here, we could see it was well worth the escapade.  Entering Gunu Mulu National Park is like stepping into another world Louisiananter into complete rain forest.  The power of nature here is quite enveloping.  

The bridge into Gunu Mulu National Park

We arrived yesterday evening too late to go out on any tours and too tiered to do much trekking on our own.  We tried to go on a walk and ended up about a hundred meters out in a total downpour.  It was lovely but we were completely soaked.  There is a decent cafe where we passed most of the evening.  We turned in early totally exhausted from our journey.  I think we fell asleep shortly after 6pm!  

We had two cave tours with a guide booked for today.  Shortly after breakfast though I fell violently ill and vomited for half an hour.  So we rescheduled the morning tour for tomorrow and I slept off whatever they was with N at my side caring for me.  I was so grateful to have him!  And very happy that they rescheduled our trek hassle free!  

In the afternoons I was feeling mostly fine again.  

It is a 3 km walk through the rainforest on boardwalks, although it took us about an hour because we all wanted to stop about a million times for photos.  There is so much cool stuff to see:  plants and bugs.  It took us about an hour because we all wanted to stop and look at everything!  (Inside joke: I couldn't help wishing Enviro-Gord was there with us).  I took so many photos but I really don't think any photo could translate the depth or interest of the rainforest.  N and I both felt that they've done a very good job of making the park feeling natural and accessible to visitors.  

We went to Lang Cave and Deer Cave.  The caves far exceeded my expectations.  They are enormous! The magnitude of them really cannot be captured in a photo because of the dark.  Deer Cave is the largest public cave in the world.  And there is only one other known larger cave in the world.  Again the park has done an excellent job if these!  They at lit inside but just enough so that you can see the really cool stalactite and stalagmite formations and the boardwalk.  It is a huge!  And the formations and just unbelievable!  I am not a huge fan of small, dark, damp places but I really enjoyed the tour of these caves.  

In the evening you wait outside to see the "bat exodus"!  Every evening, that is not raining, 2-3 million bats leave Deer Cave in a thin spiralling cork screw formation to go out and hunt bugs for their late night dinner.  There at almost no mosquitos in the area.  We haven't even worn bug spray even though it is hot and humid.  It's really perfect mosquito climate but there are very few.  It's great!  For about a half and hour the bats spin and wind our of the cave in a long stream.  It initially looks more like bugs than bats.  It's quite cool though!

We met a Dutch couple from our tour and had dinner with them and then played some cards.  It was a great day of exploring despite its rocky start.  

Saturday May 25 2013 

We have crossed the half way point in our trip, as we are scheduled to be back in Edmonton June 24.  

We got up a bit earlier this morning to pack up and then go up a bird watch tower.  It's about a fifteen minute walk and then a lot f stairs but to the tops of the trees.  I wish we'd had time for the canopy walk, which I think at some point gives you a view over the trees.  This one is designed for bird watchers so you can just see over the tree tops but mostly just into trees all around you, not over them.  

Next we joined a tour for two more caves.  You take a boat down the river to get to these caves.  Clear Water Cave is the longest cave in Asia, eighth in the world, at 190 km and still being explored.  It has a river running through it with, you guessed it, clear water!  We also went to Wind Cave.  These caves were darker, damper and the passages were smaller.  These caves had a lot more stairs in them.  I have officially worked off my winter weight! They were cool but I enjoyed the ones yesterday more.  

The major perk to this trek was that we got to go swimming in the river at the rest point outside the caves.  The water was chilly but very refreshing after the long hike.  It started raining while we were in the river.  It's a bit surreal to be swimming in a Malaysian Rainforest River in the rain!

We're flying to Kuching now for a few days.  The plan is to do some day tours into the jungle to see the orang utans.  

Angkor Wat - Tree Takeover

Saturday May 18 2013

Angkor Wat

Called the ultimate expression of Khmer genius.  It is a symbolic representation if Mt Meru (Hindu Paradise-home of the gods).  It is the worlds largest religious building.  It has never been abandoned like the other sites and in nearly continuous use since it was built.  It was built around the same time as the European gothic period, Westminster Abbey and Chartres.  The main temple is dedicated to Vishnu.  

The size and scale of the site are extremely impressive.  

We went for the sunrise but the muggy air meant we didn't see one.  

Angkor Wat from the back

Angkor Wat view from the front

Ta Prohm

This section is "nicknamed the Tomb Raider temple...nature has run riot, leaving iconic tree roots strangling the surviving stones" (this post is almost entirely borrowed from South East Asia on a Shoe String Lonely Planet).

12th cent Mahayana Buddhist Temple "reminds us equally of the awesome fecundity and power of the jungle" and for me likewise of God. It spoke so clearly of the fickle nature of even great human accomplishments!  

Built by Jayavarman VII from 1186 apparently looks much like all of the temples would have when European explores first came upon them.  

It was used as the location in the movie Tomb Raider.  

This was my all time favourite site to explorer! It was just so cool!  I would go just to see it!

Bayon

"The surreal state temple of legendary King Jayvarman VII, where 216 faces bare down in pilgrims, asserting religious and regal authority." The faces apparently hold a string resemblance to the egocentric king.  

Ancient Angkor Temples

Friday May 17 2013 6pm

We must have been weary with travel because slept in until 10 this morning.  We got some nice brunch and then found a great driver to take us to check out some the lesser temples near Angkor Wat.  His motorcycle rickshaws was all decked out with Batman logs, it said "The Bat Mobile" on it and he had a batman shirt and helmet!  

We were there probably 11-4:30pm

The ruins are very cool to see and very impressive!  We checked out about six sites and were quite weary with walking.  It's not that hot but we're not used to the heat or being outside so much.  We were just dripping both of us!

I can't wait to see Angkor Wat tomorrow!  We're planning to go for sunrise.  

Our Bat-mobile 

 

I wasn't a fan of going under these arch ways. They did not look the most stable. 

I love how the roots grow through the stone

You see many land mine victims begging for money. Sometimes they are playing instruments for donations to support their families. 

Floating Market - Bangkok

Wednesday May 15 2013

We got up early to check out the Floating Market near Bangkok.  It's about an hour drive through the country.  It's lovely and lush as you get outside the city.  

We had been warned that it was extremely touristy.  And that definitely was the case, unfortunately.  All around the floating market is a barrage of shops selling cheap souvenirs, hippy pants and t-shirts.  We had a lot more time than was needed to browse these shops.  You take a motor boat with the whole tour group to the main site and then from there you rent a cheaper smaller hand paddled boat to slowly go through the market.  This market is lined again with souveneer items.  In the boats are some people selling more authentic things like fruit, spices etc but mostly it's hats, t-shirts and placemats.  

Overall it was a fun experience that we enjoyed.  

That night we checked out the giant gold reclining Buddha.  It was very large and the site was pretty cool in general.  

Buddhist monks walking outside the walls of the temple of the Reclining Buddha

Floating Market outside Bangkok

Reclining Buddha

Buddhas feet

Reclining Stray Cat

We packed up that night to take bus to Cambodia early in the morning.  We prebooked this trip specifically asking, "we make no other stops?" And we assured no.  So for $8 each  we had our tickets for our 7am-5:50pm journey to Siem Reap

Having a Blast in Bangkok

Tuesday May 14, 2012 9:20 am

We landed in Bangkok, Thailand last night at 3am.  We had already booked our hotel, so we just headed straight there with little fuss (aside from the can driver refusing to use the meter that the Lonely Planet had warned about).  The hotel is more like backpackers, and I was initially distressed by the dusty sheets on the single beds and the lack of AC in the tiny cell. This morning when the light flooded in its okay, despite the dust.  It's a comfortable hot here totally bearable, unlike India.  The area we're in is extremely touristy.  As in more ugly Alibaba pants and backless tank tops than you can count touristy!  I am currently enjoying a strong cup of coffee and American Breakfast # 2.  Now we're off to explore!

7:42 pm

Well turns out there was no need for nervousness, Bangkok has been lovely so far.  We spent the day wandering around the city in the area near our hotel.  We ended up in a web of sort of underground feeling shops.  They weren't underground, but they were all sort of like inside/between buildings so that there was little sunlight, and they wound round and through.  I don't think they were meant for tourists as they were selling unfamiliar religious icons.  

We have found the Thai people extremely helpful and friendly.  There are of course people trying to scam you like in any touristy destination but thanks to a little before and research and a bit of experience under our belts we were able to avoid the tricks this time.  The trick is someone offers you a day tour for less than a dollar but then you end spending all your time in tourist knick-knack shops feeling badgered to buy and the driver makes a tidy commission.  It started to feel like everyone was in on it after a while, but we still managed to avoid this experience.  

We checked out a giant standing Buddha.  

We took the sky train that is the main metro that runs through the glitzier part of downtown.  It's cool cause it runs quite high over the city centre, so you get an ideal view of things.  Right in the core is super high end looking.  It's all glass and metallic enormous skyscrapers.   It's one most impressive looking cities I've ever seen if you only saw that city centre area.  

We hopped off at the largest mall in South East Asia.  It was so awesome.  All the stores I love at home and many new ones. Plus delicious food everywhere!  Starbucks and Dairy Queen were familiar. Then they also have these wicked Sushi buffets where the sushi rides a little convert belt all around the booths, and you just pluck off whatever you'd like!  And gelato and steak places!  I got totally lost in this enormous stationary store.  I was in there for like an hour!  I know there a few of you out there who can appreciate my love for this place.  I honestly could have bought the whole store!  (Mom I think I found your fav Korean pens...not sure, but they're really nice and from Korean anyway haha!) I bought myself this awesome little contraption that cut perfect circles for $3!  Hopefully, it doesn't get taken away I the airport...just thought of that.  

As the train progresses you move from glamorous skyscrapers to plane cookie-cutter condos.  Slightly shorter whitewashed concrete buildings one after another begin to line the route.  They are not offensive in the appearance but decidedly ugly.  They gradually get worse looking as the train shoots along.  Near the end of the line, the skyline seems to disappear.  You have to stand at the edge to observe the grubby slummy residence below.  They are similar to what we saw in Mumbai, not a full on the actual shanty town but very rough conditions.  An expanse of tiny crumbling and filthy apartments toppling over each other, climbing in a sickly stairway around ten stories high.  These sort of harsh conditions in such proximity always make cringe and wish I hadn't seen them.  They make me wish there was a way to ignore the knowledge that human beings live there.  Likely large families cram into one small hovel each night.  They make me wish I didn't know the conditions that some people endure and the fact that I can do nothing about their individual lives.  They make me resume that desperate, helpless pit in my stomach I feel.  But I did see it, and I did feel it, and the train whizzed by.  

From the train, we took a river boat.  

Now you have two options with the river boat:

A) Book through a tour company

Cost: $30/person

For a one hour trip 

B) Follow the locals

Cost: $0.50

To get off where you please-near your hotel

Guess what we chose?  Obviously B!  A dollar is not too shabby for a sunset river cruise with my hotty husband!

Turns out riverboat is one of the primary modes that people commute home after work.  You can take e express from one end of the river to the other, or you can take the one we did which makes regular stops at various little docks along the way, like a bus.  It was totally great.  

For dinner, we found a great little spot near our hotel for some fantastic Pad Thai!  I must say tofu is growing on me.  Aside from the large rat that ran past our table mid-meal it was a romantic evening.  Rats are terribly alarming though cute if I did not know they were disease infested, I will never get used to their presence.  

Seeing Singapore

Friday May 3 2013

We wanted to just get a taste of daily life in Singapore so K took us to:
- Park View Square which is an enormous old hotel that has now been turned into office space.  It was raining on and off all day, so we had umbrellas with us.  the rain is actually very pleasant in the heat but we didn't want the camera and stuff to get so wet.  When we came into any public building from outside they have these skinny little umbrella bags for everyone to use so that they don't drip water everywhere.  Outside they have all these bronze statues of random famous men throughout history. So in one section we saw Plato, Dante, Dali (as in the artist Salvador), and Lincoln or Newton, Churchill and a Chinese politician I didn't know.  It just looked super arbitrary who they had together.  It was pretty entertaining to say the least.
 It has a restaurant inside that serves wine and cheese in the evening.  We didn't get to see this in action (because we were there in the afternoon) but we saw the evidence...they have this huge tower of very expensive wine and they have a harness for a woman dressed as ferry zooms up the tower and gets your bottle and then flies down with it for you!

- We checked out the fancy, fancy Raffles.  You can pay $10 000 per night!
The gift shop was selling $1300 wallet! So needless to say we bought all our souvenirs there, not.

- Next we went to see St. Andrews Cathedral aka the sugar church.  The white plaster on the outside of the building is made from sugar, egg white, lime (not the fruit).  It creates a very beautiful white effect.  N reported after a lick though that the resulting plaster was not sweet tasting, as we had hoped.

- Fort Canning Park was a lovely gardens that we Moises through.  Unfortunately the Mosquitos and ants were rather unwelcoming hosts so we didn't stay as long as we might have liked.  Kind of random but I thought interesting, there
Also used to face ocean now cannon shoots into city

- Lunch at Boomerang an Australian restaurant N and I had kangaroo pizza.  It was delish!

- We went to the Fullerton Hotel that used to be a post office. mot was beautiful inside!  It had a very funny elephant-unicorn sculpture inside.

- There are Starbucks all over the city, which made me very happy.  So we got frappe chinos before heading to Merlion Park.  On the the way to the park we passed a number of bizarre sculptures including a bird with giant feet and a tribute to Isaac Newton by Salvador Dali that was kind of disturbing.
The Merlion is a national symbol of Singapore.  It is half lion, half mermaid.

- To finish off the day we headed to Orchard Road which is a large series of shopping malls.  They have every store imaginable.  There are tons of designer brands (Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci) but then they also have lots of familiar stores from home (H&M, Levi's, Mango).  Sadly we have no space in our luggage for me to get to shop.  Very cool to see.  In the middle of it all we saw a couple getting wedding photos, outside.

- Went to Cafe Rouge, for dinner.  It was delicious French food.  Although seeing a meal for $6 N ordered something more local that was very interesting looking and tasting.  I had to laugh at him.  My meal came with coffee and not wanting to stay I asked for it to go.  They gave me a styrofoam cup in this interesting bag-carrier.

 Over all an awesome day!

 Randomly bridal photos in the middle of a shopping centre