Thursday, November 27, 2008
Postscript
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Motorcycling in Europe
Thursday, November 13, 2008
South East Asia Final Leg: Langkawi
We ate our meals looking at this view.
We took the cable car up the mountain, which I obviously did not enjoy...
...although Toby thought it was awesome...
...luckily the views made up for the minor panic attack...
...but the lack of food and air conditioning down the bottom did not make us happy.
We worked out in the gym...those windows overlooked the beach. And yes, that's me not doing a very good job of hiding in the weights machines.
We played some outdoor pool, overlooking the ocean. And fell in love with the outdoor settings you can see in the background.
We had some tropical storms including a small earthquake which was promptly followed by two rings on the phone in our room. A new tsunami warning system? We will never know.
And we showed a disgusting amount of affection in public, as per usual. It was a magical week and we were not ready to leave. Ever.
But all too soon we were flying back into Sydney, driving back to Canberra, setting up our house, getting to know our dog again, seeing all our loved ones, and going back to work. I don't have to say how strange that process was, with its reverse culture shock and overwhelming sense of normality after the past three months. I will make two more posts, a motorcycling around Europe must do list, in case anyone is inspired by our awesomeness, and a rather sweet postscript, and after that...well who knows.
South East Asia leg 2: Kuala Lumpur & Penang
This was when I realised I’d taken off my watch and evil eye bracelet from Turkey in the first room, and left it there. Neither was worth very much, but the watch belonged to Toby’s grandma and I’d worn the bracelet non-stop around Europe and was therefore much convinced that it was working to ward off the evil spirits and bad luck. Once we were dressed we went back down to reception and asked them to see if they had been returned; since we’d checked in at 1am and it was now not even 1pm we figured it would have to still be there. Unfortunately we were wrong; they even let me into the room to check myself. I was pretty upset because KL is so full of cheap junky jewellery and I hated that someone saw fit to take mine, when it had so much more value to me than them. Writing about it now, months later, I am still cranky. It wasn’t a very good start to our time at that hotel, which was otherwise very nice.
On the final day we went to the train station and bought tickets to Penang, in the north. It was another long train ride but this one wasn’t delayed by quite so long. We got to see some more interesting jungle and mountain scenery, and were better prepared with food and drinks. The train terminated at Butterworth, on the mainland, and then we had to walk a bit of a way to the ferry that would take us to Penang. While we were waiting for the ferry we started chatting to an Aussie guy who had just come from the Cameron Highlands. When we told him we’d just spent five days in KL he was amazed. ‘How did you find enough to do?’ he said. ‘I had one day there and I was bored.’ We didn’t really understand. I think I said we didn’t need ‘enough’ to do – the weather was good, the food was good, and we were just relaxing. Maybe he was expecting constant entertainment? It was obvious we were on different kinds of holidays so we didn’t really talk much after that. The ferry didn’t take very long and we were soon in Penang where the four taxi drivers on duty were locked in the office playing cards and refusing to talk to anyone. There were no buses to be seen and two taxi drivers not playing cards. Unfortunately I was still on a high from our bargain hunting in KL and when one of the drivers offered to take us to our hotel for 10 ringgit I said ‘How about 7?’ He waved me away and got other customers. At the time it didn’t really bother me but when we were still waiting for a taxi 15 minutes later I was feeling pretty stupid. There were several groups of us waiting for taxis but Toby and I managed to get one eventually – which cost us 15 ringgits. Live and learn.
On our last night in Penang we decided to try the food court near our hotel, which was a great experience. You ordered your food from a stall and they would bring it to your table; there were also waiters to take drink orders, although I’m fairly sure a few of them were also drug dealers. It was hot (of course) so we both ordered iced tea. The guy asked if we wanted sugar or milk, which we thought was strange, so we said no but when it came we realised why he thought we were the strange ones. It really was just cold tea. It was really horrible so we ended up getting beer instead. There was a guy playing muzak on his electric keyboard and families having dinner and all in all it was a great atmosphere. After dinner we walked up to a street with lots of clubs and went to one that had a band from the Phillipines playing. I remembered the cover band at our hotel was also from the Phillipines. I don’t know what that’s about. Anyway we got some drinks and sat in the corner and listened to them play old school music like UB40 and Ace of Base, and tried to be supportive because the rest of the audience was doing that ignoring thing.