Coasts of Malaysia and Tea Time

 From Langkawi we set sail to the island of Penang where we checked out some beautiful temples and ate ALOT of street food. (Mystery Meat)

 Tom had his fortune told by Auntie Sim and she went on and on about his future marriage(s?) and children (or none?) and his lucky numbers (or ages of his life?) and etc. etc.
All of this was summed up by an underpaid interpreter (Uncle Something or other) in about 6 words.
So in old Uncle style: Very lucky if married if you want to get married, good business stuff and 27,29,41, 44, 57.
Oh and also, most importantly: You should wear a good moustache from ages 51 to 55.
This last one was enough to make the whole thing a raging success for Tom who looks forward to Double Moustache Prosperity in 30 years or so.



From there we travelled to the Cameron Highlands, home of Malaysian Tea.

We really loved CH for all of it's multitude pleasures, 'civillized' and less so, and delicious fresh Strawberry Jam.










High tea at a fancy British teahouse in the hills.

 We toured nearby villages and learned how to use a blowpipe, did some 'Xtreme' 4x4ing and even saw the worlds biggest flower, the Rafflesia ...

 Isn't it... breathtaking!?
Oh by the way it smells like rotten meat and has flies coming out of it at all times!

Actually it was really neat but seemed unreal, as it was nearly a metre wide and looked like plastic.

From CH we travelled to the Perhentian Islands which... were not particually photogenic at the time and included some fun times such as a terrifying boat ride and a tsunami avoidance picnic in the hills. Stories better in person.

Both of us feel really terrible for the people of Japan and it was alot different hearing about such a big tragedy when it might affect all of the people around you. Thanks to our Dads and families who called while we were on an island without electricity and phones.
Our hearts really go out to Japan.


On a lighter note, Chelsea has gone on a cuddling spree and no charismatic baby animal is safe - take note, all you little baby monkies, kittens, puppies, tiger cubs, human and elephant babies... etc.

all in a day's work...

Love Tom and Chel

Ice cream man!

One thing we forgot to mention about Borneo was also one of the funniest - the ice cream trucks.

When we saw this particular one we imagined one back home on a happy little street with the music playing and excited little kids running out to the street in the sunshine.Like this:

Now try to imagine the ice cream truck reality we saw in Kota Kinabalu; picture the same excited kids but on a dim back alley in Chinatown at night, oh and there is still music...but ice cream trucks here play:

The Halloween (a horror movie) theme song

unsettling, spooky, delicious. Ice cream was 30 cents.

Pulau Langkawi (Paradise #1)

Langkawi is Beautiful! We just spent two weeks on the beautiful sand... and that's pretty much it.
We also:
                         
Visited a huge Waterfall.                                   

Got Mugged by these monkeys on the way out.

 (Please do not mention to Chelsea - traumatized.)

 Visited an Aquarium and were attacked by an escaped Malaysian Otter.

We ran through a coi pond to escape.

The zoo kept the otter in the coi pond.

Next to a sign that says they eat fish.

Langkawi is Beautiful.

Today, we left the beach and have arrived in the city of Penang. Tom is grumpy now.

So, hopefully you look forward to more pictures of beaches later in the trip.

Sick in Singapore and Borneo Adventures

 Singapore was a blur of big city, Chel was sick and we breezed threw in a few days, but checked out some cool sights like a botanical garden with more than 50,000 kinds of orchids and a whole bunch of ukuleles!!!

 

 

Arriving in Borneo, we saw that Kota Kinabalu was a big and developed city with huge shopping malls and great food and not everything was exactly as we expected it...
















 ... but then again some things were exactly as expected!


Life was reminiscent of Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and the Jurassic Park theme song was song quite often for a month or so.
















We took a Jungle Safari down the Kinabatanagan River, a huge mud brown crocodile "infested" flow of water that went through some of the most bio-diverse rain forest on the planet. Chelsea and Tom take turns narrating like a PLANET EARTH DVD while we float past families of 8 different species of primates including wild orangutans, monkeys and lemurs and thousand of species of brightly coloured birds. 

Trekking through the jungle at midnight we stopped to hear the growls and trumpets of a herd of WILD PYGMY ELEPHANTS that we stopped to watch through the trees - an unforgettable experience!

 A family of wild Probiscus monkeys at the river side.

 A glimpse of the WILD PYGMY ELEPHANT... Celebration Dance. 

Taking place after our jungle trek discovery!

Just when it seemed Borneo couldn't get any more unforgettable... Chelsea Cowle decides that she will attempt to climb the highest peak in South East Asia. Full stop.

 Super Majestic.

At over 4000m Mt. Kinabalu is almost half the height of Mt. Everest! It was a serious hike to the high camp at 3600m where we stayed the night before ascending the mountain at 3:00am to be at the peak for sunrise. Chelsea and Tom were the second party to reach the top, even before groups of spandexed super hikers who cleaned out MEC on the way to the airport. 

At the top, sunrise was replaced by a torrential downpour and we hightailed it off the summit. But as if we wouldn't get a picture to prove this one!

Rain drops and headlamps of other climbers from the summit... basically the view from the top!

 Doesn't this look fun!?

Quote "Okay. Joseph (our guide) snap it and get us the **** off this ******** mountain. ****."

Yes, we have been taking French lessons on the trip!

 Anyway onto Kuching, the beautiful capital of the other province of Malaysian Borneo.

 

Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre.

 A close relative - the Orangutom.

Discovered in Borneo after Tom didn't shave for a month and made Malaysian children cry at the mall (haha seriously).

 Borneo was a huge adventure and we would go back to see everything that we missed!

With sore legs making us walk like cowboys for a few weeks after the mountain, we decided that the near freezing temperatures on the mountain were too close of a call to seeing snow this winter (sorry) so we headed to Pulau Langkawi in West Malaysia!

One more thing about Bali: Black Magic.....Believe it or not

We thought too soon that our adventures here were over and that we had Bali figured out until we met a man on the street, the myth and the legend: The Wayan!

Anyone who visits Ubud will meet many, many taxi drivers but some like him are very special.

After taking us to some amazing temples and teaching us about the jungle, Wayan took us to meet a magical cat who turns normal coffee beans into gold... well, gold made out of slightly less bitter coffee beans - with his own butt! Wayan tried his first cup of this delicacy despite living right down the road, and also because we forced him to.

Chelsea ... with some cat poo.

 

Roasting Cat Poo into delicious.

One of the most amazing parts of our trip was visiting Wayan's village and meeting his family. We shared dinner with Wayan and his daughters who taught Chelsea a few dance moves and then helped Tom pick out a fancy new shirt at the tailor shop on their property. We needed new duds because Wayan had (perhaps controversially) invited us to the village temple to attend an ancient Balinese Black Magic Ceremony.

Wayan taught us alot about Balinese religion and beliefs, educated us about his view of Karma and showed us a side of Bali that very few tourists or even foreign-residents of Bali ever see, it was an amazing and incredibly candid view of genuine Balinese cultural which we were very honoured to be a part of. But it was so overwhelming that the following is the best way we can describe the experience:

The ceremony was ... completely overwhelming and involved (pseudo...we think?) human sacrifice and dancing which went on for hours and then suddenly turned into mass histeria after midnight as the evil spirits called in to finish the job on the sacrafice possessed an innocent dancer who started speaking (screaming) in tongues and flailing about to be taken care of only by the highest priest. And then, again unannounced, a battle scene breaks out on the steps of an ancient mossy temple between a giant dog monster (a Barong) and a black magic warrior grandmother with a real sword (Rangda).

This whole time an Indonesian Hulk Hogan complete with blonde mullet and red bandanna has been screaming into a microphone at the demons to arrive to kill the person involved when all the lights are cut and the thousands of Balinese scatter as unannounced fireworks explode at the level of the tree tops and children start to wail and dogs are barking and ... the only two whities are in shock. The "body" has been ritually cleaned and is raced to the cemetery.

Dropping us off at our hotel as the sun was rising around 4:30am, Wayan gives us a friendly goodbye and suggests we drop him a line to find out how the man in the ceremony was doing "Dead, maybe sick or probably - maybe ok."

If anyone is travelling to Bali / Ubud please contact Wayan for any taxi or informal tour-guide needs that you have, and you might just have an experience that you could not pay money for anywhere else!

I Wayan Tagel (Ubud Tour Guide and Driver)

Phone: 081 338 664 812

Email: iwayanborneo@yahoo.com

And of course we couldn't write about guides without mentioning Dewa Nyoman Arsana who was the planner and host of Andrew and Lauren's beautiful wedding and everything that went along with it. Look him up on facebook with the same name to request hotels, airport pickups, any kind of planning!

Bali really is full of great people, and crazy spirits! :)

Indonesia (Mostly Bali)

Our adventure began Dec.27 when we made our way to the Vancouver airport to connect to Hon Kong. Tom and I were so excited we were basically skipping our way through the airport when we looked to see in CAPITAL RED LETTERS that our flight was delayed until further notice. This was a huge let down, but we knew we would get to Bali eventually. Cathay Pacific was amazing and took care of us. We lost our connecting flights and scrambled to find a new one so that we would not be stuck in HongKong for Lauren and Andrew's wedding. We found one and barely made it aboard the next day when our luggage was lost in transfer at HK after the 12 hours flight!

3 or 4 days after leaving Calgary we arrived in Bali extremely tired and overwhelmed by the traffic. It seemed very late at night and we fell into bed but it turns out that was about 9:30pm.

Lauren and Andrew's wedding was beautiful. the setting was amazing, just outside of the town of Ubud in a country villa surrounded by bright green rice paddies, palm trees and gorgeous flowers spelling out their names in the grass. It was perfect for the two of them and everyone had an amazing time. We ate amazing Balinese food, made new friends and at around 8:00pm we bragged about being invincible to jet-lag. Around 8:15 jet lag set in and we both crashed at the table, wondering doubtfully if we would make it to midnight, but we were determined to make it. At midnight fireworks lit up the sky above the happy new couple and we checked our watches to make sure it was 12:01, we made it!, and then we staggered to the taxi home.

We spent a week exploring Ubub, taking in cultural events; traditional dancing, tours through villages, bike ride down a volcano and had the best massage of our livse (covered in avocados and yogurt? delicious.) It was so interesting learning about the Balinese culture and how their society and families work. Ubud is a fascinating place and very artistic (no not the hipster scene) with woodcarving, sculptures, painting and handmade silver jewellery.

 Lots to do and look at plus delicious food. Although we loved Ubud we craved the beach and decided to head to the Gili islands for relaxation and snorkeling. We moved from island to island and moved to Gili Meno to escape the drug dealers as it is the quietest and least "party-island" island. I truly enjoyed the islands but struggled to relax, I kept feeling like we should be doing something or planning our next step. We are both trying to get over this which i;m sure wont take long. We continued our trek through Bali heading to the north coast and a place called Lovina. We went snorkelling at one of the top places in the world. The reef was beautiful and I couldn't believe the colours and the amount of life. The day was complete by getting stung by jellyfish, and no, we didn't need to pee on each other - although Tom did offer once or twice.

We stayed at a beautiful resort that had many sculptures, including one of three ghetto-fabulous dolphins crypwalking (see Left). Waking up at 5am we also hit the waves to go Dolphin watching (although since we are certain that dolphins are the dance-machine party animals of the sea we doubted that they would be awake at such an early hour, duh) and it was an interesting experience. We were in a small outrigger canoe  boat on seas with 2meter tall waves next to a dutch couple who were given buckets to bail the boat as we went, to ensure our saftey and comfort - and to stop the boat from sinking haha.

Dolphin watching was a very conflicting experience. The dolphins were beautiful and it was wonderful to see them as the sun rose, but the trip was not like one you would take in Canada where the wildlife is respected at all. The dolphins seemed terrified as our boat, along with the whole fleet of camera waving japanese roared toward them at every sighting. I was not a fan and would not do this again!

Tom was dying to surf so we headed to a place called Medewi which was supposed to have the most mellow waves in Bali. Looking at the ocean I realized I would be way over my head but Tom was excited to go and joined the Balinese 12 year olds in the line-up for the waves. The easiest wave in Bali was an 8-foot fast barrel that beat Tom up pretty good.

We have had some pretty wild nights... in terms of bugs! ON numerous occasions I have had to sleep in my sleeping sheets to avoid getting attacked by bed bugs, spiders and weird looking beetles. Tom slept wrapped in his mosquito net and it was quite the sight! Our next destination was a place in the biggest city in Bali

 called Kuta which we had been told countless times to avoid, but we chose to check it out to have our own opinion. Well let's just say: Everyone else was right. It was a big horribly dirty red light district filled with drunk Aussies and the really angry Balinese people serving them/ripping them off.

We truly hated every second of being there. It was so sad to see Balinese culture twisted like that, and the result it had on the people who lived and worked there. We looked at each other after seeing a lecherous 60old weasel surrounded with Balinese teenage girls and walked to the bus station to leave first thing the next morning. 

We spent our last weekend in Ubud which now had the glow of heaven. We have met some truly amazing people who live here in Bali who have such an appreciation for life and have truly mastered living in the moment. They gave us incredible advice and have really given us a deeper appreciation for our experience.

We have really loved Bali but we are ready to see more, so next destination Singapore!

Ps. Monkey Attack! Our Hotel in Ubud was invaded by monkies everyday for a week, they ate everything in sight and threw coconuts at people in the pool. Here is one prying the lid off of our sugar jar and eating the offerings at the family's temple...

View from our window.