A-TEAM, THE

Two days ago we arrived back in Phnom Penh after several nights in Siem Reap, home to the famous Temples of Angkor. According to Lonely Planet, most travellors stick to the well-known sites of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and, unfortunately, rarely deviate from this main route. We were planning to take Lonely Planet's advice and stop off in a small town, Kompong Thom, to "step off the main tourist trail and catch a glimpse of rural life in Cambodia." (Tonto, you might be interested to know this town actually is very near Pol Pot's childhood home, we were looking forward to going there and eating a McTarantuala Burger). However after one particular experience yesterday in Siem Reap, we decided to change plans and go to Vietnam. We will not pass Go, we will not collect $200, but we will go directly to Vietnam.

Let me rewind a little bit and take you back to our last post. Bug and I were indeed hot, tired, disgustingly dirty and anxious to get out of this city but nevertheless, how many times do you find yourself in Cambodia just a few hours away from an incredible world heritage site? We had already spent hours discussing a variety of possible itineraries that would allow us to quickly zip through Campbodia, Vietnam, Laos and north Thailand in just 2 and a half weeks and finally we agreed that we simply could not do it all. We missed the slow-paced exploratory style of our journey through south Thailand and Malaysia and, with a sigh of relief, admitted to ourselves that we would rather sacrifice seeing everything quickly in order to take our time and really "get a feel" for the places we were visiting. We learned our lesson in Singapore and Melaka, one or two nights just does not do a city justice, nor does it increase our appreciation for what we're seeing. We have sadly decided to forgo our visit to Laos and north Thailand, but we are very much looking forward to spending the next couple of weeks working our way up the coast of Vietnam. We will fly from Hanoi to Bangkok around the middle of November and then end wind down by spending two weeks on the southwest islands and beaches of Thailand, still leaving five days for shopping and sight-seeing in Bangkok before we head home.

Relieved with our decision to slow things down, we decided it would be worth it to make the 5 hour bus trip up to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat, and all the other famous temple ruins that have just begun to kick start the tourist industry here in Cambodia. We risked our lives riding to the bus station on the backs of motos (you should have seen Bug clenching on to the shoulders of the moto driver!) and boarded the crowded public bus headed for Siem Reap. Even though the road from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap is supposedly well-paved and in fairly good condition, at least compared to most other roads in Cambodia which are only accessable by 4 wheel drive vehicles, when the bus driver handed out individual barf bags to everyone on board we looked at each other and simultaneously reached for the Gravol (once again, Mom, your advice has been appreciated). I guess the Gravol worked because we made it without tossing our tofu and more importantly, we were able to watch our surroundings transform from a dusty, dirty, cesspool of a city to a clear blue sky hovering above stunning countryside. Much like our Canadian praries (so Bug has told me since I have never been) Cambodia is a flat cyclist's paradise and you can see the sunrise or sunset from where ever you're standing. Just on the other side of the window was a checkerboard of fields and ponds, dotted with floating plants, lotuses and trees growing up from underneath the water. The contrast between the baby blue sky, the vibrant green rice paddies and the bus driver's easy-listening Cambodian karaoke videos playing in the backgound made for an infant number of Kodak moments. For a moment, we forgot about the poverty-stricken, G-d forsaken land we were in and for the first time we realized how beautiful Cambodia really is.

The magic ended abruptly when we reached Siem Reap. I guess it didn't matter that Bug and I were two of three white people riding the bus, the tuk-tuk and moto drivers were waiting for us before we even got there. As it turned out, I didn't need to pose as Angelina Jolie (but thanks for the advice Tonto and Kattie-K), being white and having a backpack is apparantely just as good. They spotted us in our seats and from outside the bus they plastered advertisements for various hotels over our window before the bus even stopped. When we stepped off the bus, we were swarmed. My foot hit the ground and a cloud of about 20 twenty-something year old men surrounded me, grabbing my arms, holding my hand, grabbing my bag, pushing and pulling me and shouting about all kinds of discounts and deals involving hotels and tuk tuks at the top of their lungs. They separated Bug and I, seeing us as two separate targets, and even though we were only a few metres apart we couldn't see or hear each other through the mass of crazy yelling drivers. They all tried to grab our backpacks and physically push and pull us in different directions toward their rides. Being unprepared for this frenzy, we were both caught off guard and weren't sure what to do. At first, all we could do was laugh. I have never had a group of people respond to me like that before. It was violating and awful and hilarious and sad all at the same time. All this insanity for a shot at a couple bucks. Bug and I maintained a deathgrip on our backpacks and desperately tried to get within earshot of each other. I finally picked out one face in the crowd and told him we would go with him. He told me if I gave him my backpack everyone would leave me alone because they would know that we had chosen him as our driver. Reluctantly, I let go of my bag, reached for Bug's hand and shouted to her to follow me. As promised, the crowd eased up and our driver led us safely to his tuk-tuk where we whisked away from the fading, disappointed cries of the remaining unlucky drivers.

We parked at the guesthouse and I waited with our bags while Bug went in to check out the place. I had the chance to talk to the driver and found out that he was 22 years old and hoping to go to college for business sometime in the future. He wasn't hopeful, however, since it was too expensive and his family couldn't afford it. He was working hard as a tuk-tuk driver in the meantime, and as we had just witnessed, the competition was painstakingly tight for tourist dollars. As we would later learn in Siem Reap, there are many other fierce competitions for dollars, not only among tuk-tuk drivers.

We checked in to what was, ironically, the nicest guesthouse room we have stayed at so far. We had our own bathroom complete with a roll of toliet paper, a large double bed with a matress in great condition, a glorious ceiling fan conveniently located directly above the bed, and the only uninivited guest we found lurking in our bathroom was a cute little toad whom I politely escorted to the roadside with the aid of my flip flop. The guesthouse restaurant also proved to be a nice little hide away from the overwhelming streets, complete with delicious Khmer cuisine free pool table, and very friendly staff.

The next three days we spent there were absolutely wonderful. In alignment with our previous decision to slow things down, we opted for the 3-day pass to the Temples of Angkor and decided to take our time. There are dozens of temples and the largest ones are enormous with elaboratly carved gates sometimes at a distance of 1 km away from the actual temple. We rented bikes and enjoyed a breezy, delightful ride to and around the temples. Hopefully Bug will post some photos to show you how these structures are truely an architectural feat in so many ways, as my descriptions would not even begin to do them justice. We explored different temples each day, and each day the temples we saw were more impressive than the day before. The temple we saw on the third day was especially mystical-looking as according to our guide book, it has "uniquely been preserved in it's natural state." It's a bit of an oxy moron, but the description is referring to the Angkor conservationists who purposfully did not remove the giant silk trees that were growing in and around the temple ruins. The result is an eerie display of ancient ruins with gigantic tree roots creeping out from in between the individual stones and winding up and down the collapsing temple walls. Lonely Planet even boasted that Tomb Raider was filmed there (perhaps I should have already deduced this from Tonto's Angelina Jolie comment on our last blog entry). We wandered in and around the temples and climbed over and on top of ancient ruins that no tourist should ever be allowed to climb on. There was tons of reconstruction in the works and the total area of the temple ruins was so large and spread out that there clearly were not enough resources to provide the comprehensive preservation that one would expect. We couldn't believe the number of broken stone carvings that were littered around the ruins, some waiting to be reconstructed and some just lying there as a piece of history poking out of the ground. We imagined what the site will look like in a number of years as the tourist world begins to take over Siem Reap.

Our time at the temples was thoroughly enjoyable and greatly enhanced by our daily bike rides along the country roads. One evening we stopped for a delicious Khmer dinner where I had the traditional dish, amok, a curry-soupy-fermented-fishy meal in a bowl that is actually much better than it sounds. What wasn't so delicious was the barbequed snake I had for dessert at a nearby stall. Bug and I walked our bicycles up to the stall to stare at the deep fried frogs and snake-kabobs and the vendor pointed to the snake and said, "Snake. You want to try?" I looked at Bug thinking that I have never seen anything more unappetizing in my life (which is no longer true because since then I have seen fried tarantualas, beetles, and raw intestines, heart, bladder and brain of some unfortunate animal) and Bug, who misread my look entirely, simply said, "Well if you're going to try one go ahead and get out a dollar." In my language those words are basically the equivalent of a double-dog dare. So I had no choice. I gave the thumbs up to the vendor and crossed my fingers. I soon realized that the dollar deal included the bonus snake eggs which you could see protruding from the snake's belly. I admitted that was more than I could handle and settled on the 50 cent non-preggers version. Bug and I watched as the vendor slid the sucker off the wooden skewer and held the stiff s-shaped critter down on a chopping block. He raised a cleaver, looked at me with a you-crazy-white-person glance, and with several heavy thuds chopped my dessert into several one-inch (or should I say bite size) pieces. He put the snake bites in a baggie with some sauce and mint leaves and handed me the tasty treat. When he saw that I wasn't quite sure what to do with the scaly morsels, he kindly picked one out of the bag, wrapped it in some mint, dipped it in to the sauce and handed it to me while motioning for me to put it in my mouth. I took the snake-bit, had one last look at the shiny scaled skin, thought "good food" and popped it in. It was a large mouthful, like a big piece of sushi, but when my teeth bit into it they were met with an unexpected surprise - hard barbequed snake bones - and with my mouth full of reptile I shrieked, "mmmpphhhh!!!"
"What?" Bug asked, "is it spicy?" All I could think about was snake vertabrae in my mouth and I tried to chew around the bones but this was impossible. The only way I figured I could it eat was by clamping the bones between my molars and chewing the leathery skin in attempt to pierce it and suck out the snake meat inside. It was the grossest thing I have ever done. And trust me, I have done some gross things. It was not long before I thankfully gave up and spit the masticated, saliva-soaked snake ball into my hand. The whole event was good entertainment for the vendor and other lingering locals. Bug had a good laugh as well but when I described what my snake-eating experience was like she alternated between laughing and almost vomiting. We were wondering what to do with the rest of the freshly chopped snake-in-a-bag that we had just purchased when a small dirty boy came over to us begging for money. Bug looked down at him and in her talking-to-small-child voice she said, "Oh hello. Would you like some snake?" At first I laughed at her sarcasm and then realized that she was being serious. I gladly turned over the bag of goodies to the kid and he happily walked away trying to open the package. Hopefully he liked the snake surprise.

Unforturnately, not all of our experiences in Seam Reap resulted in laughter.

Now Bug and I like to think of ourselves as relatively socially conscious people. We are both students of the social sciences and have learned about and worked with a diversity of marginalized, vulnerable, or at-risk communities (depending on which way you slice the socio-economic-politicial cake). Despite our education, research, paid work and community service, our ignorance to the massive devastation in Cambodia was evident by our weak emotional threshold. We were bombarded with constant begging or selling every place we went and from every sort of person you could imagine. Men and women with missing limbs, teenagers wishing to go to school, pregnant mothers, young children holding half-naked babies. Sometimes they would follow you for several minutes. They would shout horror stories about their lives. If you were on a bus they would bang on your window. Anything to slap their poverty, and our privilege, in our face. And each time they were just in doing so. We had nothing to say, they were right every time. And the injustice was glaring. But it was more than we could handle.

Bug and I tried to deal with it in so many different ways. We bought things from people selling items on the streets, we ate at small restaurants owned by locals, we rented bikes whose proceeds went to good causes, we gave money to child education funds, we visited a local landmine museum and gave money to their cause, we gave money to many different people begging on the street, we paid a local teenager to give us a small tour of one of the temples, we even donated blood to a local children's hospital. But no matter how much we gave it wasn't enough. Not even close. And for each person we gave something to there were hundreds more to whom we didn't. Giving has never felt so horrible.

Dad's comment on our last blog entry ran through our minds: was this a vacation or an endurance test? We weren't sure. Until our last day in Siem Reap when we decided to succumb to one of the ten or so children selling items on the street. We wanted to buy postcards anyway, so we thought we would buy some from one of the kids. What a big mistake that was. As soon as Bug pulled out her dollar we were swarmed by children all shouting various forms of heartwrenching guilt. She selected a package of postcards from one kid, gave her the dollar and we turned to leave. We were followed for several blocks by a herd of children cursing us for not buying postcards from them. Their ages ranged from about 6 to 10 and as we told them we were sorry they shouted up to us, "Take your sorry back to your country. Your sorry doesn't buy me anything!" And, "I fuck your mother. I fuck your brother. Fuck you everyday!" And, "I wish you bad luck every month. I wish you bad luck every two weeks. I wish you bad luck every week. I wish you death every day. Every day I wish you death!" And our ultimate favourite, "If I see you tomorrow, I kill you!" All these furious exclamations were followed by a chorus of "fucks" and tiny fists with their middle fingers pointing up at our faces. It was horrifying. Devastating. Tragically upsetting. And they they had every right to be angry.

We sauntered back to our guesthouse and hid there for the rest of the day. We decided that this was too much for us and we had to get the hell out of Cambodia before we both sunk into a deep depression. We bought our tickets back to Phnom Penh and jumped on the bus at 6am the next morning.

Since then Bug and I have spent hours discussing our reactions to Cambodia and trying to figure out why we seem to be the only tourists undergoing such emotional trauma in this country. We can't figure out how everyone else can still have a good time and enjoy their vacationMaybe we just have to "own our priviledge" and be the tourists we are. Or maybe as one tourist suggested, we should "just pretend they're not there." But no matter how much we tried we just couldn't strike a balance. Either every other tourist is unbelievably ignorant or we are overly sensitive. Or maybe a bit of both.

Anyway, to end the story we have now left Cambodia and are living it up in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. We are having a blast once again and the only thing stressing us out is the massive typhoon heading straight for central Vietnam. Apparantely this typhoon, named Cimaron, which means "wild ox" in Filipino, is as big as Hurricane Catrina. It has already thrashed over the Phillipines leaving tons of damage and about 10 casualties. But don't worry about us, we are safe in south Vietnam, far from the coast and no one here is even blinking an eye. We have been desperately trying to watch the news but there is relatively little coverage on Asian TV despite the fact that central Vietnam has been evacuated. We don't know whether to laugh or cry. But the weather looks ok and it isn't even raining. But seriously, we are totally safe and this part of Vietnam will not be hit but we'll be in touch to let you know that we're safe and sound in Saigon....and of course to keep you posted on our latest adventure.

Love,

Puff

Your comments make us feel closer to home than ever...and here in this incomprehensible humidity we are wishing we were with you more than ever. It was 40 degrees yesterday and I don't know what it was today but you can bet it didn't feel like fall.

Bug and I have realized the end of our trip is sooner than later and we still have a lengthy itinerary ahead of us. We have been rushing around the past several days trying to pack in as many sites as possible and as a result, we're exhausted. We're longing for our beach days at the end of our trip and we have finally come to a decision....our itinerary has to change. We felt our 3 weeks in Malaysia was necessary to give us a chance to let the culture really soak in and compared to the last several days of hitting only the major tourist spots, we feel we're not getting as much as we could out of the places we're visiting.

Having said all this, I must say that we have had quite the adventure over the past few days. I'll quickly take you up to speed on where we are today.

Since our last post, we left KL and boarded a bus to Singapore for two nights and one full day of jam-packed excitement. Even though the bus ride was only 5 hours, the trip took all day and we didn't make it to our hostel until late in the evening. Thanks to Lonely Planet, we were aware that Singapore is one of the most affluent countries in Southeast Asia and so we expected to find inflated prices compared to what we had been used to spending. We also expected to have our hostel room include free internet, movies and a comfortable lounge. When we arrived, late and tired, at our residential destination, we were pleased to find that the hostel had all of these wonderful frills. What it didn't have was any vacancy. In our rushed preparations for Singapore we had overlooked the fact that it was Deepavali, or Dhivali, the Hindu festival of lights, and also Hari Raya, the Muslim celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. We sadly asked if there was a decent hostel nearby and were directed to "Prince of Wales" hostel, just a few paces down the street. We were pleased as punch that this hostel had two beds left, and even though they were in a dorm, it was much cheaper than a double room, which we had been spoiled with so far on this trip. The hostel was the only one that did not include internet services or movies(yay!) and in lieu of a nice, relaxing lounge area was a stuffy, cramped bar with the worst live music in the world. I don't know where they hired those punks from but they could have taken a serious lesson from Gwar. The hostel did, however, forget to advertise the one freebie they did have: bedbugs.

We discovered the bedbugs right away when one of our dorm mates switched to our room because he woke up with bites all over his stomach and legs. When he lifted up his shirt to show us the welts, Bug and I began searching through our beds and our sheets. It wasn't long until we found the damned critters and we each took turns pinching off their heads or smooshing their bodies, since they were apparantely resistant to getting hit over the head with a flip flop. Now that all of us were grossed out and felt itchy all over our bodies, we decided that there was nothing we could do about it and we would just sleep with our pants tucked into our socks, shirts tucked into our pants, and hoods pulled up over our ears. We both seemed fine the next morning, but sure enough through out the day, the welts started showing up one by one on poor Bug's arms, legs, back, neck and even forehead. Funny, I didn't get one little bite. I guess Bug is just much tastier than I am.

We tried to make the best of the day and take the bites of Bug's mind. We actually succeeded and ended up having an awesome time in Singapore. We spent the day wandering around Little India, China Town, Arab Street, and trekked down to the water to see the famous Merlion statue. That's right, Merlion. Half fish, half lion. And this crazy mermaid statue...sorry, merlion, is not only a simple piddly little statue that looks like it's made out of dry wall, but it has a large stream of water spewing out of it's mouth making it look like it's projectile-vomiting into the sea. Classic. But we loved it. We even secretly posed behind a wall of Japanese tourists cramming in to have their picture taken next to Merlion.

We spent our last night in Singapore walking around Little India on the eve of Deepavali. The streets were packed, the music was blaring and we were so excited to have been able to witness the amazing holiday celebrations. Our hostel was also in Little India so it was not a long walk home. We were surprised at the overwhelming amount of same-sex hand-holding, especially among men! At first we weren't sure if it was Deepavali or Pride, but finally we just figured it had to be a part of the culture in this part of the world. Despite our this new piece of cultural knowledge, even two homos like us found it difficult to get used to.

The next day we rushed back to Malaysia to spend one night in Melaka, also spelled Melacca, a historically interesting city due to the Portuguese, Dutch, English, Malay, and Chinese influences. We settled in for another day of travel and one-by-one Bug's bugs' bites revealed themselves again. She was so itchy and uncomfortable despite the anti-histamines. We swore we would never sleep in a dorm room again and we started looking forward to having our own private room again in Melaka, where we could afford it.

Well, the price certainly was right when we got to Melaka. Only 4 ringgot a person....to sleep on the floor! (What were we thinking about not making reservations when travelling the day between Deepavali and Hari Raya? And here I am thinking about Thanksgiving and Halloween.) The guest house we went to, "Sama-Sama," was awesome and the hosts were wickedly nice. They were actually super amazing for letting us sleep on the floor even though their rooms were full (all nearby guesthouses were full, of course) and they even did our laundry for us that evening. We were also exhausted from our late arrival and were de-moralized after our bus driver had yelled at us in Malay and then dropped us off 40 minutes from our guesthouse. Nevertheless, we had a awesome night at the Chinese Night Market and enjoyed exploring the little town on a personalized trishaw tour the next day. We later found out that we were devoured by mosquitoes during the night, but what the hay, nothing's perfect.

We headed back to KL for one night before we flew to Phnom Penh, and man, were we ever looking forward to finally having our own room and two beds. When we got to the hostel we were lucky enough to have the last two spots in the building...of course, they were in the dorm.

Now that we are in Cambodia, however, I can officially stop complaining about mosquito bites and bedbugs. There is so much poverty here, you can smell it in the air. Bug and I spent today walking around in the gruesome heat trying to describe what we were seeing and "chaos" was one of the first words that came to Bug's mind. Let me explain.

For starters, the local currency, riel, has such a low value that almost everybody uses American dollars (4000 riel is about $1 US). The money is worth so little that there aren't even any coins. 100 riel is the smallest note you can get and it's worth less than a penny. Lonely Planet told us to get our money changed into small $1 US bills, but of course the ATM at the airport only spits out $50s and $100s. It was no coincidence that our taxi driver did not have change for us when we handed him a $10 US bill for our fairly short cab ride to the guesthouse. We have since been asking every business for change in riel or dollars and no one seems to have anything. We still haven't figured this out.

Other than being sickly hot, our room is decent and we have a gorgeous view over the lake. That is really the only beautiful thing we have seen in Phnom Penh.

Today our goal was to walk to the Vietnam Embassy to get our Vietnamese visas. We decided to skip the cab this time and walk. It took us over an hour but the sights were unforgettable. The roads seem to be an absolute chaotic mess of motos (like mopeds), bicyles, tuk-tuks and cars. There are lanes on the roads but nobody uses them and sometimes motos drive head on into oncoming traffic or sidewalks. The sidewalks are few and far between and mostly covered with parked cars and motos. Pedestrian rules are "fend for your life." Most riders have faces masks because the pollution is so bad and few of them have helmuts. There are often more than 3 people crammed onto a moto and today we even saw one crammed with a family of 5 and another with 4 grown men. We've also seen motos carrying several naked babies (held on to by their mothers), a dog, a pig, 3-metre by 3-metere boxes and other enormous loads.

The garbage in the streets is atrocious. There is muck and dirt everywhere and there are people in the middle of it. Today we say several dirty sheep with dreadlocks eating some fruity garbage off the street. I also looked over once and saw a huge pile of garbage with a women sleeping on top of a piece of cardboard laid on top. I looked closer and realized there was a baby sleeping next to her. On a busier street I saw a man cooking several pig's legs over a pail on the ground. One of the legs rolled off on to the ground and he just put it back overtop of the homemade bbq. And even though it is really hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, the only side-walk cooking we have seen is with rice. Seriously. We'd be walking down a street looking at the endless streams of garbage in the gutter and then in between piles of filth we'd see an upside-down lid to a cardboard box with rice and water literally cooking in the sun. Not only was the rice always cooked when we saw it, but most of it was actually burnt. It was truly unreal.

Our walk around the town made us feel like privilidged fools. You would have to be crazy to vacation here. Despite our discomfort, we felt deserving of the constant stares. Our glowing white skin, straight teeth, and relatively clean clothes was an obvious reflection of our privilidged up-bringings. It's not only humbling, it's embarrasing. Unfair. Unjust. And worst of all, we're dying to hit the beaches.

We finally made it to the Vietnam embassy and albeit happy to have our visas processed in one day, we were not so happy to have the attendant rip us off by over-charging us $15 each. We felt had once again and we trodded off to see what we could of the city in 3 hours while we waited for our visas to be processed. I can't explain to you how hot it was in the streets. Without the haze we were used to in Malaysia, the sun seemed to beat down directly on to us. The unbearable heat knocked the Jew-stamina right out of me. Even I had beads of sweat dripping off my upper lip, down the backs of my knees, down the small of my back, my neck and gushing waterfalls were flowing from under my boobs and down my stomach. You could have cured a global drought with the fountain of sweat spraying off of poor Bug.

In the devastating heat and disgusting air, our patience was cut drastically short. We decided to skip the crowded Russian market and try our luck with the Teul Sleng Museum, as we figured it would probably be air conditioned and we could break some of our $100 US bills. As it turned out, the museum was a genocide museum dedicated to commemorating the thousands of Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge regime not 25 years ago. Aside from this delightful surprise, we were also shocked to find that the museum was actually inside the building where all the torture and murder took place. Needless to say, there was no air conditioning nor change for small bills. Silence was mandatory during one's walk around the building so Bug and I walked together in silence, under the scorching sun and foul-smelling air, through cells containing graphic black and white photos of tortured bodies and various pieces of charred torture equipment. When we got to the last room with hundreds of photos of the people who were slaughtered, many of them small children, we bitterly bit back our tears and despite the silence, we both came to the same decision to cancel our planned trip to the Killing Fields. After this joyous experience, we left the museum and were stopped by 3 amputees with out-stretched hats begging for change just outside the entrance. We gladly parted with our only 3 one-dollar bills, so much for trying to hang on to our small change.

We were now frustrated with being ripped off at the embassy, light-headed from the heat, drenched in sweat, nauseous from the mueseum's graphic images, and had headaches from dehydration and hunger. We left the area as fast as we could trying to keep it together and began searching for a restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet, as we were sure all other eateries would not take our large denominations US dollars. We couldn't find the restaurant and we walked around in circles for an hour until we finally lost it in the middle of one dusty street. We both keeled over in fits of laughter at the ridiculous situation we were in and how all we wanted was to be back in cool Canada and to cuddle up together in nice clean sheets in a large king-size bed with and watch all 3 Lord of the Rings Extended Versions back to back.

Ahh. Those were the days. Here's to better ones.

Love,

Puff

I know it's not the first time you've heard this, but your comments are fantastic. We loved reading all of them and laughed about them for hours! My apologies for scaring you, mom and mom, you'll be glad to know we are still safe and sound and we will not take Tonto's advice about strapping raw meat to our backs to up the ante next time we are in the jungle.

After our exhausting (and exhilarating) jungle trekking in Taman Negara, we headed west to Cameron Highlands. As I mentioned briefly in my last post, Cameron Highlands has a gorgeous landscape of rolling mountains covered with lush forest, vegetable and flower farms, and of course, tea plantations. Cameron Highlands is best known for their incredible tea, Boh tea, which is actually an acronym for Best of Highlands tea. Since our visit to this part of Malaysia Bug has conveniently replaced her old coffee addiction (which she had kicked just prior to this trip) with a new-found devotion to delicious teh terik (tea with milk and sugar). So far she has allowed herself one scrumptious mug with breakfast and one delightful mug with dinner. Except tonight where she had her usual dinner cup and then ordered a second for dessert.

The bus ride up to Cameron Highlands was absolutely amazing. The scenery was unforgettable - almost as unforgettable as the cramped mini-bus stuffed with 11 backpackers and the incredibly windy roads which reminded me to never travel again without a gravol handy. We were so far above sea level in the highlands that our ears popped several times and we could see clouds drifting by below us as our mini-bus bravely negotiated hairpin turns and s-curves. We arrived safely, however, and we graciously unloaded our luggage at Father's Guest House, the guest house with the most frills so far on this trip. We were especially appreciative of the spacious common room with comfortable couches, large tv and movies playing every night at 7pm. And we could, of course, help ourselves to a hot cup of Boh tea for 1 riggit (1.50 for flavoured tea) when ever we so desired.

One of our greatest surprises of Cameron Highlands was the cool climate. We couldn't believe how chilly it was when we stepped out off the bus and we were in disbelief when we discovered that the bed sheets and blankets provided were not enough to keep our cute little tushies from freezing during the night (our previous rooms usually didn't come with top sheets or blankets and we were using our sarongs most nights, if anything, due to the hot, humid nights). Despite the cold, we found ourselves actually appreciating the cool weather as it was a refreshing escape from the dense humidity everywhere else in Malaysia. Who knew that we would need sweaters so close to the equator?

Funny enough, both of us thought the weather reminded us of a Canadian fall. Perhaps the very same weather that you (or at least most of you) are experiencing right now. I don't know if it was the weather, or the typical highland rainy afternoons, or the fact that we had passed the one month point in our trip, but for some reason we both felt a little homesick for our family and friends. We even got a little teary imagining the maple trees starting to turn colours, our families eating turkey and pumpkin pie without us, and how we'll miss all the halloween specials at Shopper's Drug Mart.

Being the super troopers that we are, we put on our big girl panties and dealt with it. We spent the next five nights exploring the breathtaking scenery of Cameron Highlands.

After much convincing, Bug finally agreed to go on another trek up and down one of the jungle-covered mountains. She only agreed, however, after grilling the guest house clerk on a few small details about the jungle:
"Are there leeches?" she asked. "Are there tigers? Will tarantulas crawl into my hair? Are there any rats? How about mosquitos? Is the trail clearly labelled? How long will the trek take? Will it be longer than 8 hours? What happens if we're stuck in the jungle after 6pm? Are there any poisionous snakes? What is the probability of our survival? Has anyone come out alive?"

As it turned out, the jungle is actually more of a forest. The trees are more linear and crooked, rather than twisted and spirally. Due to the cool climate there are few mosquitos and much to Bug's delight, no poisionous snakes, spiders or other dangerous animals. Only a few monkeys and crickets and the occaisonal bird. We had a perfect 3 hour trek through the forest and we gasped at the awesome view we were rewarded with at the top of the mountain. We snapped dozens of photos once again trying to capture the magnificance of our surroundings. We were lucky to have a crystal clear sky that morning. (Most days now are cloudy with haze so thick the visability is drastically impaired. We thought the haze was just due to a turn of the weather and part of the natural climate this time of year, but apparantely this is not the case. Rumor has it that in Indonesia many people start illegal fires as a cheap way of clearing land - one backpacker politically referred to this as a form of "deforestation." There are so many fires that the ash fills the sky and blows into Malaysia causing a thick haze over the entire country, even in the highlands, and also into part of Thailand.)

Another surprise on this trip has been my overwhelming and unexplainable interest in plants and flowers. I am actually a little embarrased about this but I'm telling you that I have been so amazed with the wild flowers in Malaysia. I have often looked up from a dazzling display of spider lilies to find Bug staring at me strangely, holding in a fit of laughter. I can't believe I'm turning into my mother! Mom, what have you done to me? When I agreed to visit the Canada Blooms Convention with you, I didn't think it would have this much of an impact on me. I remember thinking how crazy my mom was going nuts over the bird-of-paradise flowers in Cuba...well, I couldn't believe I almost peed my pants with excitement when I saw them for the first time in Malaysia! They are phenominal flowers. And further back in my mind are memories of my mother's search for pitcher plants during some family vacation...little did you know mom, that these memories have made the plant legendary in my mind. When I saw my first pitcher plant on our 3 hour trek I almost fainted with happiness! (Pitcher plants are insectivorous - not carnivorous as most people mistakenly think - just like the infamous venus fly trap. These plants are shaped like a long cup, or pitcher, and when insects fly into the cup the top leaf shuts and seals tight. As the plant digests the insects, the cup fills with water and eventually the top leaf opens again "for business" - as our tour guide put it. In Malaysia the pitcher plant is also called the monkey's cup, even though it is apparantely a fallacy that monkey's actually drink from it.)

In attempt to quench my thirst for more floral knowledge, Bug and I embarked on a half-day guided tour of Cameron Highland's famous Mossy Forest and the Boh Tea Estate. I read a local newspaper article that described the Mossy Forest as looking like a scene from the Lord of the Rings. Now Bug and I have only seen the Lord of the Rings once, so I'm not quite sure what type of image this description was supposed invoke, but nevertheless, we were excited. We entered the 25 million-year-old forest and slipped and slided along the insanely narrow and muddy path. Our feet were covered with mud by the end of the tour, but the dozens of amazing pitcher plants and mysterious moss-covered trees we saw made for an all-around educational and super cool tour. We spend the latter half of the morning learning about the history of the Boh Tea Estate and the tea industry in Cameron Highlands while overlooking the rolling hills of the tea plantation. It was jaw-droppingly beautiful and Bug's favourite part of the tour. We finished the morning walking through the tea factory and sampled tiny cups of the delicious final product: the Gold Blend, Boh's highest quality tea.

We spent the rest of our days at Cameron Highlands walking around the town, sifting through various shops, visiting the Butterfly Farm, the Honey Bee Farm, the Agrotechnology Park, snapping pictures of wild orchids, buying treats at one of the many Strawberry Farms, wandering through vegetable markets, and sampling fresh passionfruit, mandarin oranges, and sweet corn-in-a-cup. Our evenings were spent dining on most-amazingly scrumptious tandoori chicken, sipping tea in the guest house common room, playing cards, trading travel tips with other travellors, and watching the occaisonal movie (unfortunately, there were no DVDs of the Lord of the Rings: Special Extended Version lying around). Our time in Cameron Highlands was throughly relaxing and enjoyable. We felt well recouperated from our jungle adventure and ready for our next big city caper.

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur (or KL, as everyone calls it, in fact it actually took me a couple of days to realize that there wasn't some imaginzary city called Kay-ell. Haha, silly me) two nights ago. We have heard several backpackers complain about this big city, commenting on the lack of "backpackerish" things to do and the annoyance with all the regular urban hassles like tons of traffic, noisy crowds and inflated prices. Despite the forewarning, we headed to KL with the hopes of making the best of whatever the city has to offer. As it turns out, we're having a great time. We've been slowly touring the city on foot, visiting the bustling Chinatown and Little India, and constantly on the lookout for new mouth-watering treats served at one of the many Indian-Malay restaurants. We haven't quite figured out how to eat a quarter of a chicken with a fork and spoon, but we're definitely on the right track with dipping the naan ( a type of Indian bread) into the dahl (lentil puree). We are also having difficulty adjusting to the humidity combined with the heavily polluted air. The haze seems to help lock all of the smog closer to the ground and even though we haven't had a cigarette in weeks, our lungs feel heavy.

Today we explored a Buddhist temple, Hindu temple, and the enormous National Mosque and tomorrow we look forward to roaming around the Batu Caves, 13 km. outside the city. In two days time we'll head south to Singapore for two nights and then travel north again back to KL where we'll catch a flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and begin our adventures in the northern part of Southeast Asia.

Love and miss you all!

Puff

Well, I have somewhat regrouped since my traumitizing experience in the Jungle and thought I would post some pictures of what we saw.

So Bug and I have now officially burned off those glorious calories from our mass coconut shake consumption in Thailand. In fact, after 4 days exploring the jungle our appetites have reached a new peak and we are desperately trying to tell our bodies not to worry, we are no longer trekking through a mountainous jungle gym and our diets have now thankfully expanded to more than cans of tuna and dried salted broad beans.

We arrived in Kuala Tahan, the small town just across the river from Taman Negara (the jungle park) after a refreshing 3 hour trip on a longtail boat. We took one day to relax and get an early night's sleep in preparation for some long-awaited jungle trekking over the next couple of days.

We started off on the moderately easy trek, a four km. loop which included the famous creaky canopy walk - a series of about five swinging canopy bridges about 45 metres above the ground. Walking through the treetops was a thrilling experience...but what really took my breath away was the magical jungle interior. Uncle Brian, you would have been in heaven! We took so many pictures in attempt to capture our wonderous surroundings, but no matter how many we took it was just impossible to replicate the jungle's intensity in a photograph. Walking through the jungle was as romantic as I had imagined. The air was cool and humid and except for the occaisonal beam of light breaking through the trees, the forest was shaded. We trekked along a winding path covered with fallen leaves and embedded with enormous twisted tree roots. The tree trunks were like gargantuan elephant legs and their roots were like massive sinews stretched across the jungle floor. Above us giant ferns, 6 and 7 metres in length, arched over the path like economy-sized fans and strung between the trees were giant vines knotted together in intricate webs. Trees grew in spirals around larger trees and they weaved in and out of each other in perfect ringlets up through the forest ceiling and into the sky. I have never before seen so many shades of green - it seemed like vibrant 3-dimensional painting of jade and emerald and mossy greens. At times it was just surreal. We were in absolute awe.

We spent four hours trekking through the canopy walk, up a mountain to some view points, and then to a small swimming hole where we dipped our feet in the water and then had our first experience with leeches. Hot and tired, we trekked back to park headquarters and decided to plan for our next trek through the jungle.

Ok, that's about as far as the romance goes. What followed next was one of the most intense experiences of our lives, where we definitely put ourselves to the test. I'm still not sure if we won or lost.

Before we had entered Taman Negara we had read everything Lonely Planet recommends about preparing yourself for jungle trekking. Thank G-d for the life-saving guidebook, because when we actually entered the park we realized that there was no more free advice being offered. In fact, neither of us had ever seen so much disorganization in a park before. I mean a little disorganization is ok..but keep in mind, this is a jungle. There are tigers, king cobras, elephants, tarantulas, and hundreds of other potential hazzards waiting for us in there. At our hotel where we booked our trip to Tamaen Negara a park guide haphazzardly told us that we should always make sure to be out of the jungle at 6 pm, 6:30 or 7 at the very latest, and then as an aside he told us what to do if we happened upon a tiger or elephant on our trek. (Apparently you stare a tiger in the eyes until it, hopefully, walks away and if you see an elephant you run like hell). You think that with the severity of consequences for getting lost in the jungle there would be some protocol for signing visitors in and out of the park. Or perhaps a routine check by park guides along the trails. Or someone to check to make sure you have all you need before you head out for an unguided 3-day trek. Or even a map for Christ's sake!! Not in Malaysia. This was fend-for-yourself budget jungle trekking.

We tried to prepare in Jerantut, our stop before Kuala Tahan. Lonely Planet advised us to pick up everything we need in this town, namely long sleeve shirts and water purification tablets, as we couldn't get them once we hit Kuala Tahan. We had to attend the information session on Taman Negara (held at the hotel) before we left, and thank goodness it finished at 9:30pm, leaving us only 30 minutes to run around a strange town and try to find these necessary items. You should have seen us fly. Even better, you should have seen the long sleeve shirts we ended up buying for 5 ringgot each (about $2.50) at the night market. Let's just say fashion was not a priority. Bug and I split up to make things faster, she sought our the tablets while I went shopping for shirts. Would you believe the pharmacy was all out of water purification tablets? (We later found some in Kuala Tahan - thank the Lord!!) We conveniently lost our flashlight at a bar in Ko Phangan, so we rented one at park headquarters, but of course they don't come with batteries so you should make sure to buy those ahead of time. We also rented canvas jungle boots and were delighted to find out that they didn't have either of our sizes (excellent for blisters) and mine had two holes in one boot (of course I didn't discover the holes until after hours of trekking when I took off my boot to find several streams of blood and three enourmous leeches stuck to my foot). As far as a map went, they were all sold out in park headquarters and they gave us a pamphlet written in Malay (no more English) and a photocopy of a hand-drawn map that was so faded not even the park guide could read it. We ended up with 3 different photocopies of a map and of course all of them were slightly different and none of them were to scale.

Now Bug and I are two well-educated individuals and I have often thought about what a great team we are with two good heads on our shoulders. Well after this trip one thing is certain: we certainly are a great team.

Despite all of the obstacles we met during our preparation, we decided to go ahead with a big trek anyway and any mishaps that might occur we would chalk up to lessons learned and a memorable experience. Being the industrious movers and shakers that we are (I like to think of Bug as a mover and myself as a shaker), we decided to make things even harder for ourselves and do things the hard way, as Bug and I always seem inclined to do.

We excitedly started planing for an ambitious 3-day, 2-night trek in the jungle.

For starters, we were advised to take sleeping bags as the hides were only equipped with bare wood bunk beds. "Do we need the sleeping bags for the cold, for the bugs, or are they only for comfort," we asked the park guides. They were recommended for our comfort, but of course we decided we didn't need them being the tough, nature-loving girls that we are. Why should we spend money renting sleeping bags and them schelping them for 3 days when we could just tough it out and sleep on the hard wood. "Besides," Bug argued, "it would be great for my back."

Secondly, we could have gone on an organized trek with a guide and other tourist trekkers like us. A guide? Through the jungle? Surely this would be another unnecessary frill that we could do without. So what the maps are horribly inaccurate....if we get lost it will be a fun adventure trying to find our way back to the trail. And just think of how proud of ourselves we'll be when we have finally reached our destination knowing that we navigated the trek ourselves!

And thirdly, there are 5 great hides in Taman Negara, where you can trek to during the day and then sleep there at night and watch for animals. (A hide is like a large rustic bunk raised about 10 metres off the ground on stilts.) Although there are 5 different hides varying distances away, Bug and I both wanted to go to the furthest hide, Bumbun Kumbang, that was described as the best hide because it was the furthest into the jungle and had the highest number of animal sightings. Thus said, it was also the farthest away and the toughest trek you could do without a guide. We were told it would take us 5 hours, 6 hours at the most. When you do it "A Team" style, however, it will undoubtedly take you 8.

I can honestly say that I was thorougly enjoying the 8 hour trek through the jungle. Even Bug was super impressed with the stamina of what she calls my TLCLs (tiny little chicken legs). She was even more impressed with my incredible ability to not sweat buckets and not drink litres of water while hiking through intense humidity up and down mountain sides through the intense humidity. I happily took pictures of lizards and interesting bugs and brightly coloured fungi, while Bug chugged behind me drinking gallons of water and sweating enough to irrigate a small country. Poor Bug. She was so hot and sweaty that I started to feel bad about being the camel that I am. I told her that it was only because I'm a Jew and my people are known for walking for days through the desert with little water and food. After about 3 hours of heat and exhaustions, Bug's amazement with our strange jungle surroundings began to diminish at an exponential rate.

We climbed up and down huge rocky hills, supporting ourselves using ropes tied between trees. Bug exclaimed, "this isn't trekking, this is scaling cliffs!!" as we desperately tried not to lose our footing and tumble down the mountain side. We climbed over and under fallen trees the size of water towers. We walked through swamps. We plowed through tangled messes of thorny thickets. We got lost. We heard strange animal sounds. And there were no signs posted anywhere to signal how far we had come, how much longer we had to go, nor was there any indication that we were still on the trail. My spirits finally started to deplete and both of us were sure we would never find the hide and we were going to be stuck in the jungle after 6pm and get eaten by tigers. We desperately looked at our watches and the hours peeled away. Scenes from Jurassic Park frantically played in our heads. Finally after almost 7 hours, just when we had agreed that we would try to make our way to the river and flag a boat for help, we climbed over a huge tree and suddenly a clearing opened up in front of us.

A huge canopy bridge spanned across a muddy river and either side of the bridge was overgrown with ivies and exotic-looking tropical vines. We were sure we were in a scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We crossed the bridge and lo and behold there was a sign post indicating that we were only 1.5 km away from our hide! We only had 2 hours before dusk and so we tried to walk as fast as our blistered feet could carry us. After one last gruelling hour we reached the hide and were so happy that we could actually look around and once again marvel at the vast tropical forest that had nearly defeated us. We saw elephant footprints and tiger footprints and a giant pile of elephant poo the size of my nephew!

We settled in the hide and needless to say, we were relieved to be off our feet. We took pictures of our blisters and puddles of blood made by the leeches and sat back to watch the animals. We didn't see much, however, until nightfall. You would not believe the sounds that came out of that jungle. During the day you can hear hundreds and thousands of strange animal sounds, and the scary part is that you can't see any of them. The even scarier part is that you know they can see you.

During the night, on our dreadfully uncomfortable hard wooden bunks, we heard so many sounds that poor Bug was up half the night, wide-eyed and scared stiff. During the second night in the hide (we were too sore to trek anywhere the next day so we stayed another night) we had our first real contact with wildlife. As it turns out, we didn't have to go trekking into the jungle, because the jungle came to us. The loud, horrifying, scuttering sounds coming from the roof easily drowned out the jungle symphony outide. But the loudest sound of all came from Bug when we shone the flashlight on a 3-foot rat trying to eat through our bags of salted broad beans. I'm really not kidding, this rat's tail was 2 feet long...I've never seen anything like it in my life. It towered over the rat that crawled out from underneath our restaurant table in Bangkok. The rats kept coming in full force that night, causing Bug to stay awake in fatigued panic. She was armed with the flashlight and her face white with distress. For the hundredth time on this trek she was working hard to fight back the tears. Her fight or flight mode lasted well into the night and it was almost more than she could handle. When I shrieked at the bat who flew in and landed beside us Bug almost lost it. The backwards, tip-toed shuffle and high-pitched scream she did is still enough to put both of us in stitches, but needless to say it was not a high point for Bug on this trip.

The next day our nerves were shot and we were exhausted. We decided not to trek back to park headquarters, but rather head towards the river and flag a boat to take us back. When we finally got to the river, we were the only humans in sight and started to panic when we realized that we might be unexpectedly spending a third night in the jungle at one of the abandonded lodges near the river. After 2 and a half hours, a couple of local guys on their way to fish saw us and agreed to take us back to Kuala Tahan. Bless their hearts. They didn't even charge us, but we were so grateful we paid them 5o ringgot for their good deed.

We finsihed off the day with a huge meal and a night safari in the back of a jeep and then exhausted, we spent the night in an up-graded chalet and barely blinked an eye at the 3 and a half-inch spider that hung on the wall in our bedroom. The next day we said good-bye to Taman Negara as we rode the river boat back to town and looked at the edge of the jungle with a whole new perspective.

We have now settled into a beautiful room in the picturesque Cameron Highlands, rolling mountains of jungle, famous for their tea plantations and lush crops of vegetables. We're planning on spending a couple of days here so we'll be in touch again soon with tails from more adventures.

Love,

Puff

You can all breathe a sigh of relief because, despite the horror stories and dramatic plot of Brokedown Palace (thanks Sare for the excellent film reference - Mom, don't watch it until we get back), we made it safely into Malaysia and no one secretly stuffed 4 kilos of heroin in our luggage. (Well, to be honest we haven't really checked our luggage yet but fortunately for us neither did security at the Thai-Malaysian border. Phew!)

Our 10-hour train ride into Sungai Kolok was a breeze - all due to our lovely bungalow hosts in Ko Phangan who conveniently booked us first class seats on the night train. We didn't realize this however until we met a tremendously lovely couple in Surrathani who were also headed into Malaysia. We spent several hours waiting for the train with our two new friends from Turkey and South Africa, who tried several ingenious ploys to get us to trade our first class tickets for their 3rd class tickets. They told us our tickets must be first class because of how much we paid for them and then much to our delight they told us we would be in a comfortable sleeper car with a heavenly fan while they would be cramped on a tiny wooden bench with a hundred other people. To their dismay we turned down their offer to switch cars and in the morning the four of us laughed and joked about our rides during the night. We told them they were right about the comfort in first class, but they forgot to mention the naked ladies who fanned us all night with giant palm leaves and popped grapes into our mouths whenever we were hungry. Seriously though, our sleepers came with blankets and pillows and little privacy curtains and we had a full night's sleep until 9am.

In the morning, the 4 of us shared a taxi and crossed the border into Malaysia. Being a Jewish person about to go into a predominately Muslim country, being a gay person about to go into a country where homosexual acts are punishable by caning and imprisionment, and being a person who just generally looks like I stepped off a spaceship, I was a little worried about getting through with no problems. As it turns out, no one even asked us if we had anything to declaire from Thailand and when we walked past the luggage x-ray machine and the walk-through metal detector thingy-ma-jiggy, they weren't even turned on and the security guys were sitting around playing cards or something and didn't even look up to notice how much we resemble a half-Jewish gay couple who is worried they might be unknowingly smuggling drugs.

We parted with our friends at Kota Bharu, one of the most northern cities in Malaysia, and checked into a backpacker-friendly guesthouse recommended by Lonely Planet, of course (Mom #2, you can refer to the blurb on Ideal Travellor's Guest House in your copy on page 476). I mentioned that Kota Bhura is one of the most northern cities, and after you experience how hot it is in this part of the world, you can only imagine what it is like in Singapore, our later destination which is within spitting distance of the equator. Bug and I walked around to find some delicious Malaysian cuisine and after eating in the first Chinese restaurant we saw, we returned to our room for a little siesta. Even though we had been given a room with 2 single beds instead of the double bed we usually get, we shortly discovered that it is absolutely impossible to touch anyone in this heat (and I mean even shaking someone's hand is pushing it) and so we gratefully stretched out on our own separate cots and laughed about how retardedly hot it was until we fell asleep.

We woke up later on in the evening and headed out in search of another meal. Malaysia is home to three predominate cultural groups: Chinese, Malay and Muslim communities. This is great news for our palates as this means we have 3 delicious cuisines to choose from. We settled on Indian (Malay) food for dinner and it was wonderful (It's Islamic holiday of Ramadan right now which means it's a little hard to find Muslim food during the day - they fast from sunrise to sunset until October 24, I think). We started off with rotis (one had sugar and the other had egg), then ate a main course of rice, curry and masala chicken (for Bug) and mutton (for me) and washed them down with 2 mango lassies. We were surprised that the lassies had salt in them and were not as sweet as the lassies we had had in the islands, but then Bug recalled hearing how lassies for locals were made with salt to replenish the salt that everyone sweats out because it is so hot here. (On another note, we find it amazing that despite this incredible heat, everyone is clad in long pants, long-sleeved shirts and muslim women wear scarves over the heads as well. We are sweltering in our short pants and t-shirts and don't know how everyone else does it).

This morning we left Kota Bharu and boarded the Jungle Railway at 6:25am. This was the beginning of us leaving tourist-land as we were the only white people on the train and all the locals made sure to get a good long look at us when ever they could afford one. Little do they know how white we really are underneath our super intense tans!! The train ride was thankfully air conditioned and we had a surprisingly amazing 11-hour journey. Even the toliet, which was just a bowl with a hole where you could see the moving ground and train track below, was a memorable addition to our trip. We spent our time napping, eating bland cream crackers, spitting out horrible sweet and sour preserved mangos, working on our scrap book, and of course, staring out the window and gaping at the magnificent, lush vegetation that grows in this part of the globe. We passed over bridges, through tunnels and valleys, and saw tree-covered mountains, huge rock formations, banana trees, some kind of huge melon trees, cows, goats, and cute little muslim boys riding their bikes on the way home from school. My dad was a huge lover of trains and I thought of him the entire way. He would have loved this trip to say the least.

We finally arrived in Jerantut and were lucky enough to step of the train and have a man approach us asking us if we were headed to Hotel Sri Emas. To our surprise, we were, only we hadn't yet made a reservation. As it turns out, they were waiting for another backpacking couple to take them, free of charge, to the hostel. Oh how we love capitalizing on the smart moves of others! We checked in to the hostel and were welcomed by a warm, large local at the front desk who had a voice so high I was sure he must have been castrated as a small child. He was lovely nevertheless and we walked into our room to find.......air conditioning and A TV!!!!! There's even a channel in English that plays really bad Austrailan Sci-fi tv shows (that's narrative tv to Princess Tonto and Kattie-K.) And we even have A TOILET THAT FLUSHES!! Who knew they even existed in Asia?! Bug was so shocked that when I told her about it she shyly looked down at the floor and admitted that after she used to the loo she hadn't realized since she was so used to the non-flush toilets. (Now she's telling me that she did flush...the Western flushing reflex kicked in apparently).

Anyway, we found an amazing food market with dozens of food stalls and feasted on delicious Indian and Muslim treats. We just got back to our hostel's information centre and are waiting for the free information session on the various trekking tours we can take through Temara Negara's vast jungle playground. In about half an hour we'll hear all about the excitment that awaits us in one of Malaysia's greatest national parks. Tonight we'll plan our trip and then tomorrow we'll head out into the wilderness. Hopefully we'll have some amazing pictures - and not so many mosquito bites - to show for our trekking adventure.

See you in a couple of days!

Puff

(I'm not too sure that is a saying, but I think it is.)

Love, Bug

Once again..your comments are greatly appreciated! Without them we would feel like we have no home and no friends and no one to love us at all. Thank you and thank you!!

I never thought I'd say this, but after 2 and half weeks on Thailand's east coast islands and beaches we are finally ready for some mainland adventure. Our tans might fade a little (much to the delight of Kattie-K I'm sure ;) but not to worry Kattie...we're planning on putting aside 2 weeks at the end of our vacation to top them up on Thailand's glorious west coast islands and beaches.

We're sitting now just outside of the train station in Surrathani trying to kill 6 hours until our train leaves at midnight for Sugaikolok, where we will board a bus to cross the boarder into Malaysia. We have been told by Lonely Planet to cover our knees and elbows as per Muslim ettiquette in the north and east coast of Malyasia. Our next destination is Taman Negara, at 4343 square kilometre jungle in the interior of pennisular Malaysia, where we will go trekking through the tropical forests in search of elephants, monkeys, pythons and insects of gigantic proporations. Tomorrow morning we will arrive in Kota Bura, our first stop in Malaysia, to spend one night and then at 6am the next morning we'll get board the Jungle Railway for an 11-hour train ride through the jungle to Taman Negara.

We have just left the island, Ko Phangan, where we spend about three nights on the east coast of the island and 3 nights on the west coast. We once again indulged in delicious coconut shakes, coconut curry and Pad Thai on restaurants on the beaches. The water was glorious...perfect turqoise and white sands. We rented sea kayaks and kayaked around the beach in Thong Nai Pan Yai on the east coast. We climbed up a waterfall and hung out with four bare-footed Thai hippies who proudly showed us their crops of every hallucinogenic drug on the planet. (Don't worry Mom, I said no to drugs.)

Ko Phangan is probably best known for their infamous Full Moon parties, which happen every month during the full moon of course. These all night raves happen on the beach with hundreds and thousands of people dancing the night away and fully engaging in all the tropical goods the island has to offer (including the hippies' wares). The parties have become so popular that there are now a plethora of other parties happening in between each Full Moon such as the Half Moon Party, the Black Moon Party, and the Moon Set Party. Despite my overwhelming desire to show all these farangs (Thai for foreigners) how Canadians party, you would probably be pleased to know that we said no to every single one for fear that I would somehow get us both arrested and end up staying in Thailand much longer than planned. We did, however, see postcards of people dancing at the Full Moon Party and they all looked like such cracked out losers that we were pleased as punch not to be two of them.

Last night we a good discussion about the Half Moon Party and the drug scene in Thailand with 2 German med students, an Italian and an ex-Israeli soldier who was running away from army duty. The six of us met at the bungalows where we were staying in Laem Son on the west coast of the island and talked until 1am last night in the bungalow's restaurant on the beach sharing stories about our lives, who we were, and who we want to become. Bug and I have had a lot of conversations of this nature on our trip and it's exciting and frightening all at the same time, but I finally think I'm starting to grow up.

Speaking of self-reflection, it's also Yom Kippur right now, the Jewish day of Atonement. I didn't attend any service like we did in Ko Samui, but I have been fasting for today and Bug has even fasted with me! We did have several sips of water though, it was necessary in this tropical climate. G-d would approve. The sun has just gone down and Bug is begging me to finish this entry so we can go and break the fast together over some scrumption Thai goodies.

If any Jewish non-diabetics are reading this blog...I wish you an easy fast and Shana Tova. Love you all and we'll be in touch again from south of the boarder.

Puff