Laine's Last Couple Days in Malaysia

Well, it has been a really fun three weeks with Laine here. As I write this, she's arriving in Seattle getting ready to start her freshman year of college at Seattle Pacific University. During her last couple of days, we went to Batu Caves which is a shrine with a huge statue and some pretty amazing limestone caverns. Van was lucky enough to get off of work a little early and we enjoyed having him with us. On Sunday night, we went to see the fireflies near the coast. I wish we had a photo for you, but we were rocking in a boat and it was dark. Without a tri-pod, we didn't have a prayer. Laine said we should just load one of the completely black photos onto the blog - ha. I expected them to be bigger, but it was like live "twinkle lights" in the trees along the river. Apparently, it's the kind of tree that attracts the fireflies. After seeing how muddy the river was, how much trash was floating in it, and then seeing one of our guides catching "river prawns." I'd say it's a safe bet I won't be eating any river prawns in the local restaurants any time soon. After Batu Caves and a good dinner, we took Laine up into the KL Tower. It's the fourth tallest tower in the world. It was beautiful at night and the KL Twin Towers were just as magnificent. After all our sightseeing, Laine drove us to the airport (about 45 minutes away from KL) and we saw her safely off. I must admit there were some tears saying good-bye, but I'm going to remember what she said to me..."Be Brave." I will have to be brave over the next couple of weeks because Van is leaving to go back to the States on business. I'll get to see how brave I really am, won't I? Stay tuned for exploits...

The boats we were in after dark looking at the fireflies along the river bank. This is the river they caught river prawns in. They are one of the largest prawns I've ever seen - as big as a salad plate!


This is one of the statues at Batu Caves. Van pointed this one out of hundreds of statues. I wonder what attracted him to this one specifically?


The view of the KL valley from the top of the Batu Cave stairs. There are 270 some stairs and they are numbered so you know how much further you have to go.


Van and Laine on the stairs happily together!


The main statue at the entrance to the Batu Caves. The statue is 140 something feet tall and is really impressive. You can see it from across the valley.




This is the KL Tower. It is easily seen from all over KL. It helps us find our way around town.


This is a photo (needed a tri-pod) of the KL Towers from the KL Tower. Now that's confusing, isn't it?




The flowers here are beautiful and incredible. I can't wait to buy some orchids for our home. A huge orchid plant is only about $5 US.

Tioman Island & Singapore

Laine and I got to spend five wonderful days on Tioman Island in the beautiful, blue South China Sea. We had originally planned to fly, but the airline lost our reservation and only had one seat available. So, we consulted with the hotel conceirge and found out we could drive and catch a ferry. The only problem was the guide book said it was a 5-hour drive and we only had 4-hours to do it in. No problem, put Laine behind the wheel and fly down the highway! We arrived in 3 hours and 15 minutes thanks to Laine's impressive driving skills. We also got to see a lot of Malaysia from the road.

Above is the pool at the Berjaya Resort where we stayed. Laine and I spent many a "Happy Hour" at the swim up bar - the legal drinking age is 18. They even had live music each evening.

Above are the cute little cabanas at the resort. The only bad thing about them was that they had metal roofs and twice the dead palm tree fronds blew off in the middle of the night and crashed onto our roof. Talk about making a lot of racket and waking you up out of a sound sleep! At least it woke one of us out of a sound sleep - Laine never did wake up.

The sunsets were beautiful. You don't get to see the sunset in Kuala Lumpur, so it was an extra special treat to watch the sunset on Palau (Island) Tioman.

There were resident monkeys that were so bold they would sit on the restaurant table and beg (or grab) for food. This fellow above, was the boldest one of the bunch. The waiters would chase him away, but it wasn't long before he would be back begging once again.

Laine's favorite way to while away the day... reading a good book, in a comfortable chair, on a beautiful beach, in the warm sunshine. What a life!!

Monitor lizards were everywhere at the resort. They were huge, creepy, and great swimmers.

Laine in the beautiful, blue-green water in her snorkeling gear!

One of the white sand beaches on Coral Island. The rock formations were very different from anything I've seen before and they added to the beauty all around us. We stopped and took a break from the waves crashing into the boat as we sped from one snorkeling location to another in a small boat.
We stopped at Salang (still on Tioman Island) for lunch. It was a quaint little village with a beautiful bay. For lunch we had fried fish that tasted like chicken, french fries that tasted like fish, and chicken that tasted like fried prawns. Seems they use the same grease to fry everything in.

Sidewalk of Salang on Tioman Island.

Fruit bats were something I never expected to see during the day. They were "huge" and there were trees full of them. Did you know, there are something like 117 different bat species in Malaysia? I wouldn't even have noticed them except for the fact that they were making lots of noise.

Another pretty sunset on Tioman Island. The island is called Rengett and we snorkeled around it on one of our snorkeling expeditions.

Laine's underwater shot of the Sea Turtle. Our snorkeling guide brought it up and we all got to see it up close. It was so wonderful.

Sandy and Laine on the crazy ship of death on our way to snorkel. The waves were huge and we were all soaked with sea water by the time we arrived at our destinations. It's safe to say neither one of us get sea sick.


Video of Sandy feeding the fish at the Marine Peserve.

A view of the beautiful water and the lush rain forest.

Speaking of lush...just kidding. Here's Laine, sunburned, tired, but she still has enough energy to lift the "Grasshopper" to her lips. She had lots of fun and tried lots of different island drinks. I believe the Grasshopper was one of her favorites!

After our relaxing time on Tioman, we drove a couple hours south to Singapore. We got a hotel on Sentosa Island and after a delicious meal spent the night there. The next morning we went to Sim Lim Square. It is a huge mall solely dedicated to electronics and the best part is they are dirt cheap, if you know how to haggle :)

Downtown market

Singapore Dollars

Sandy and Laine walking downtown

Inside Sim Lim square where bartering is a must to get the best price. Sandy surprised Laine with her keen bartering skills in the Nikon store. The only problem was she negotiated for batteries that ended up not fitting her camera. Dang!

Singapore was a fun place and much more "Westernized" than Malaysia. Laine and I had fun on the Luge Ride on Sentosa Island. You took a quad chairlift up to the top of the hill and rode the luges down. It was great fun! We didn't have long there and on the return trip it took us 2.5 hours to get over the border back to Malaysia. If I came down again, I'd fly or take one of the many public transit options. Waiting in the border crossing line was not my most favorite part of the trip.

Sunday!

Sunday Van doesn't have to work :) so today we drove for about an hour an a half following our relocation consultant Robert to a place where you can ride elephants. It was an absolute blast. We got to feed them fruit and watch the work-crew bathe the elephants in the river. 

Then we got to ride them on land for a short time.

Then we rode them into the river and they dumped us off the side.

Mom was lucky and got to go first. They brought the babies in afterward for her to play with too.

Afterward we drove just down the street to DeerWorld. (Kind of ironic since we moved here from Sequim where we had deer in our backyard most of the time.) Van got to feed the deer. Don't worry, he made sure the little ones got some food too :)

We also got to hold lots of different animals like flying squirrels, hedgehogs, and pythons. Laine didn't like the python too much haha. 

We also got our pictures taken with a sunbear!

After a fun day of playing with animals, we drove back to Kuala Lumpur and Robert showed us a very good indian restaurant. All seven of us ate our fill of Nan, Tandoori Chicken, and Mutton Soup for only $30! Great food and dirt cheap, gotta love KL :)

First couple days...

After taking a day or so to recover from the huge time change and jet lag we ventured out into the city of Kuala Lumpur. A few different taxi rides took us to local shopping centers to see things from an indoor roller coaster to Malaysian handicrafts.

We braved the streets full of crazy drivers in a recently acquired rental car and made our way to A' Famosa resort and Sunway Lagoon Theme Park.

Our home base is presently a five star hotel called the Traders Hotel. It's very nice, with an excellent view from our window. 

Today we drove around with our relocation consultant Robert. We got caught in terrible Ramadan traffic and a near flash flood downpour. We fed some monkeys by the side of the road and had lunch at a really good thai restaurant called The Basil Leaf.