Monday November 4

Hindu Temple Roof

Sleeping Buddha

     With a few hours to spare in Georgetown, I visited 3 Temples this morning.   First the Hindu temple at 7 AM.  Joan and I had walked through the grounds the night before and they had been very welcoming.  Joan was invited to meet the head Brahma and I talked to one of the priests about Canada.  The priest told me they opened at 7 so I was the first tourist there.  They held a very noisy ceremony with lots of bells and lots of fire.  I was allowed to wander anywhere but I was hesitant to take pictures of the worshippers,  so I left after 40 minutes.

                   

       After breakfast I went to the Sleeping Buddha temple.  It is a Thai temple with a 130 foot reclining Buddha.  All the tourist maps call it the Sleeping Buddha, but his eyes were definitely open.  Across the street was a Burmese temple with a Standing Buddha.  He seemed to be 60 feet tall but it’s hard to tell when you’re looking at his kneecaps. 

        Since we first started touring in Asia I have been practising the opposite of a Photo Bomb.  When I see somebody lining up a picture I sneak up behind the photographer and take a picture too.  I have lots of photos of people I don’t know.  A very pleasant girl from India posed for me after the couple asked me to take their picture with his camera.

Girl from Southern India

   Late in the afternoon we flew to the island of Sumatra.   Tomorrow the jungle!                 

                                 

Standing Buddha

Sunday November 3

                                                        

Caroline in the clouds

    Barb and Caroline wanted to try Parasailing so they signed up for a flight.  Because of low winds they had to be transported to an small island offshore.  I went along as the official photographer.   Because the winds were tricky the crew would not let them fly together and the instructor insisted on going with each of the girls.  While we were on the island another group was there for parasailing as well.  I watched the other couple.  He was first and I didn’t see him take off, but his landing was a solid face plant into the sand.   The girl’s takeoff was pretty ugly as she got dragged 10meters on the beach and then 20 meters through the water.  Her landing was face first in the sand.  Then came Caroline, a quick 3-step takeoff and a graceful 2-step landing.  This was Barb’s second time at parasailing and her experience showed.  A one-step takeoff and a perfect one-step landing.  She aced it.                                                                                                                       

Barb's quick take off

Barb coming in

Barb Landing

  This was our last day in Langkawi so we caught the 2:30 ferry to Penang and we are overnighting in Georgetown.  We fly to Sumatra tomorrow.

Saturday November 2

                              
 Today, like yesterday, started as a serious beach day.    But Ali, who is considering an Iron Man Triathlon next year, was off at 8 am to tackle the highest mountain in Langkawi.  He survived but showed up late for the all day tanning session.  Round about 3 pm Joan and Barb headed out for some shopping, while Caroline Ali and I decided to try snorkelling on a nearby island.    We were dropped off on a deserted island that looked like a setting from an old James Bond movie. 

Spiney that punctured me

The snorkelling was tough.  The tide was low and we had to swim through the reef to get to the deep water.  The reef was populated with spike-like animals with one big eyeball.  When we got to the deep water the current was strong and we had to avoid be swept into the rocks.  The second time I went out my mask kept filling up with water so I couldn’t see properly and I hit the coral coming back in.  I now have 4 punctures in my skin and several scrapes.  The only picture I got was the spiky plant/animal that injured me.    

Friday November 1

                

Sky Bridge

                 
Today is a serious beach day.  We rented our chairs at 10 am and planted ourselves on the beach.  I have an E-reader with several new books and Joan swam in the ocean all day.  Caroline and Ali arrived mid morning and joined us on the beach.  Caroline had brought beach towels for all so we look like serious beach people.  The mornings are hot, but the afternoons are very hot, so we dunk ourselves every hour to cool off.  (except Joan who stays in forever).  Shortly before sunset we got a cab to the Skybridge in Lankawi and took the Gondola car 700m up to the top.  The Skybridge was closed but the view was great.  Sunset was slow that night so we started back down shortly before sunset.  What luck!  The cable car broke down.  We were stranded for 45min hanging 100meters above the jungle gently swaying in the wind.   Sunset came and went.  It’s a good thing nobody was afraid of heights.  After 30 minutes we called the emergency number posted on the Gondola door and they actually answered.  They told us they were switching to emergency service and we would be running again in 5 minutes.  Indeed shortly after 5 minutes we restarted and the gondola crawled back to earth.  We were each given a free bottle of water for our ordeal.                                                     

At the Top

Stranded

Thursday October 31

Ferry crossing

                                                      

 I had partaken of happy hour on a rooftop bar and ate a meal too hot for me to handle, so it was with trepidation I boarded a 3-hour ferry ride to Langkawi Island in Malaysia.  However the seas were calm and I didn’t turn green.  We arrived in Langkawi and when Joan saw a Starbucks coffee shop, there was no holding Joan and Barb back.  They both have a serious caffeine problem.  After their fix, we headed to our hotel – The tropical Resort.  It is a nice hotel, situated 100m from the beach and we walk through the woods to get there.   It is clean, has hot water and a very nice staff.  I quite like this place.  We walked through the town and we have several nice restaurants to choose from.  The beach is clean, with a bathtub hot ocean.  Joan is turning into a water baby.  She spends more time in the water than any of us.  Another thing we like about Langkawi is – laundry costs $1.50 per kilo.  We are superclean now.                                                                           

Ferry at Dock

Wednesday October 30

Fishing Boat deck

Fish Delivery

 We had a great day today. We wanted to tour the island of Penang and so we hired a taxi with driver and set off. Our first stop was at a fishing village right next to the entrance to Penang National Park. We watched some catches being unloaded and transported into town on motorcycle delivery vehicles. We clung to the pier posts when the motorcycles came by to avoid any incident. The pier was colourful and interesting.

We went next into the national park and hiked about 1 ½ kms into the jungle to reach a canopy walk. The walk was definitely the highlight of the day. It was a rope and wire construction, 250 meters long in 5 stages from tree to tree and it swung 15 meters high over the jungle. It was just plain fun to be up there!                                                

After we returned to our driver, we asked him to take us to two other fishing villages which were over the mountain and down on the coast. Trouble is, they were not on the coast nor were they fishing villages. This was one of the very few times that our Lonely Planet guidebook has been wrong.

Joan and Barb on Canopy Walk

  We then went to the Botanical Gardens. The highlight here was not the flowers but the many monkeys roaming the grounds. They are always fun to watch.

We finished our day with a drink on a rooftop bar overlooking Georgetown

Tuesday October 29

We did a walking tour of Georgetown today. Georgetown is one of the 3 straits trading cities set up by Great Britain during the 18^th century.  It has a long British history and is now one of the top tourist cities in Malaysia       

State Mosque

Temple Roof

Clan Jetty

We started at our hotel and took in the old colonial buildings first and then after our café latte we went into Little India.  This has to be as close to India as it gets without actually being in India. Gold, jewellery, and clothes are all in the Indian fashion and the food is all Indian as well.  We all decided we like Indian food.   We visited the clan jetties where the Chinese clans own the jetty and there are hundreds of homes and businesses clustered on 1 jetty.  The newer additions have stilts made of concrete filled plastic pails.  It really is a city within a city.                                                                             

   Just before sunset we took a funicular up to the top of Penang hill.  The funicular goes up 800 meters in one shot and takes about 15 minutes.  It was built 100 years ago, but it has new cars and it runs very smoothly.  The sun set and the city lit up and I got my pictures of Georgetown and the Neon lit temple at the top of the hill.      

Georgetown at night

                 

Monday October 28

             

Malaka - Sultans Palace

Joan in Trishaw

             
We took the train to Georgetown today.  Travelling by train or bus in Malaysia is not that interesting.  Lots of Palm Trees and not much else.  We ate bananas and cookies for 8 hours on the train and arrived in the dark at Georgetown.  Georgetown is alive and happy at night and we had tea and beer at midnight, right on the street by our hotel.

Sunday October 27

Malaka has spent money cleaning up the riverfront the runs through the town centre.  We took a riverboat ride yesterday, and today we walked along the river.  There is a 10 km walk that leads past house and shops, most of which have murals on the front and sides.  The murals seem to depict a lot of history. 

      One of the hotels in Malaka offers a high tea.  We decided to try it out. We sat on the riverfront and watched the thunder and lightening and rain for 2 hours while we ate everything but cucumber sandwiches.  Alistair and Caroline  then departed for Singapore. 

      Because of the rain I went back to the hotel, but Barb and Joan went shopping.  While walking by the shops a man told them to look down.  They were beside a 6 foot Montor Lizard.  They might have panicked, but they got some pictures first.       

5 foot lizard in ditch

Saturday October 26

                                     

Doors to a Chinese Temple

Caroline and Ali had joined us late last night, so we all toured the European area of town.  The down-town core has the official buildings and old Dutch architecture.  We went to only 1 museum but that was enough to give us nightmares.  The museum of beauty chronicles the brutality heaped on mostly women to make them more desirable.  From lip disc’s, nose plugs, ear stretching to tattoos and scarification – it all looks painful.

      On a brighter note Malaka has trishaws.  Old bikes with a side-car for 2 and the most colourful setups.  Most also have a sound system that specializes in loud music.  After lunch we took a trishaw back to the hotel.  Because of her dress colour Caroline got the pink trishaw and I had to take the yellow flowered special.  It clashed horribly with my red backpack.                                        

Caroline and Ali in the Pink Trishaw

                            
     At night tracked down the number one restaurant in Malaka.  The Pac Putra is rated the best on Trip Advisor and in the lonely planet.  It is a Pakistani/Indian special.  The 5 of us ordered 10 meat or veggie dishes a lot of Nan bread and drinks called Mango Lassies.  We ate in the parking lot along with a hundred other patrons.  Some of the food was cooked on the sidewalk, some inside the restaurant.  It was

Trishaw at night

great food.  All at less than $8 per person. 

Friday October 25

Kampung Kling Mosque

We boarded the bus to Malacca this morning and arrived in Malacca at 1 pm.  We crossed onto Malaysia after 1 hour and the roads in Malaysia are good.  Malacca is a UNESCO recognised village that has been a major seaport and trading town since 1400.  It has been owned, at various times, by the Sumatrans, Portuguese, Dutch, English and now Malaysia.   It is a popular destination for tourists and is famous for it’s mixture of cultures and fabulous food.   Our hotel is in Chinatown and this is the happening part of the city.  Shopping is good, but at night the street is blocked to cars and 1000’s of vendors put up stalls or have their carts on the main road.  After dark we wandered down main street and marvelled at the pure junk and gaudy beads that tourists will buy.  There is lots of food on the street as well.  Home-made potato chips, tarts and pastries, small squid skewers,  quail eggs and much more.  Even if I wasn’t hungry Joan made me eat the squid and the quail eggs.  Then she tried the potato chip, which we both liked.  The potato chip was made from one whole potato that was skewered first, sliced partially through on a lathe and stretched out on the skewer, and then deep fried.   All of the hot food is cooked right on the street in various ovens and fryers.  This makes our barbecues look sad.       
                                                                 

Quail eggs

Potato Spreader

                                                                                                

     

Potato Slicer

Thursday October 24

Back Alley Barber

The Prayer Room

The Great Mosque of Singapore

The girls went shopping and I went to the barber.  I found one in a back alley near China town and for the first time I had my haircut outside.   He was good and cheap - $6 for a cut and trim.  Afterwards I toured the Arab district in Singapore.  I was able to visit to Sultan Mosque.  The Mosque is impressive from the outside, but very plain inside.  I had to wear a gown, because I had shorts on, but it was provided free.  The massive prayer hall was almost empty and I took pictures through the door, but I was not allowed to enter.  I must have looked confused or religious because one of the monitors asked me if I was all right.  When I assured her I was just a tourist she gave me a 10 min intro to Islam.  I did not get around to asking about the place of women in the Mosque.

   That evening we went to Raffles Hotel and we all had a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar.  This is where the Singapore Sling was invented.                             

Caroline and Alister with Singapore Slings

Wednesday October 23

                                                 

Tai Chi in the Park

I was up early in the morning to reach the Botanical Gardens by 6:30.  The Gardens open at 5:00 and I wanted to take pictures in the early morning light.  I thought I would be the only person around at that time.  I was met by hundreds of walkers and runners, hundreds of Tai Chi followers and hundreds of garden staff, hard at work.  The park is obviously the in-place for the early morning crowd.  Later Barb, Joan and I met and toured the Orchid Gardens together. 

    That night I had a special treat.  Caroline took me to a Yoga class at her regular place.  We did Ying Yoga, which is a slow Yoga where the positions are held for 5 min each.  The room was hot and crowded:  35°C, 25 girls and me.  The instructor seemed a bit worried when I told her I had bionic hips and when she realized how inflexible I was I got the special remedial exercise program.   However the Yoga felt good and I feel better.         

Crane Fountian

       

Tuesday October 22

      

Flower Greenhouse

Arial Walk in Cloud Forest Greenhouse

We visited the park near Caroline’s place today.  It was built in the 2000’s on reclaimed land.  The park has 2 enormous conservatories; 1 for plants (all sorts) and one for the Cloud Forest.  The entry into the Cloud Forest “Greenhouse” is most impressive as you come face to face with a 50 M waterfall. The waterfall plus the misting guns make for a damp eerie environment. 

Cloud Forest Waterfall

Monday October 21

Merpati DH-6 (Made in Canada)

                                                               

Today we returned to Singapore to stay with Caroline and Ali once again.   Our first flight was from the island of Flores to Bali.  We boarded on time and sat on the plane for 30 minutes.  Then we got off again and sat in the terminal for 20 min.  Then we boarded again and took off promptly.  There appear to have been some controlled burning going on too close to the runway and during our time in the terminal they doused some of the fires and cleared the crews and equipment from the runway.            We did have 4 hours to wait in Bali so no major problem.  The flight from Bali took off on time and we had daylight for 20 minutes, but we did not fly over any volcanoes. 

Sunday October 20

A very leisurely day by the pool side.                             
              

Joan and Barb in Infinity Pool

Saturday, October 19th

We were all anxious to leave and go back to Labuan Bajo to a nice hotel and better restaurants. Tim booked a car and driver to take us back. The driver spoke no English but understood ‘stop’, a word we used a lot as we wanted to take pictures along the way.  We appreciated that he went slowly and confidently around the same up/downhill hairpin turns.                                           

Drying and winnowing rice by the roadside

 We were delighted to be dropped off at ‘LaPrima’, a beachside hotel with a pool, and a spectacular view from our 6^th floor room.  Yahoo! A shower in hot water, pool warm as a bathtub, air conditioning, and linens on comfortable beds:  one extreme to the other!

Friday October 18

Boys at the Market

Tobacco vendor at Market

            We left at 8:30 AM to take a public 12 seat minibus to Ruteng, a small town described as charmless in the Lonely Planet guidebook but also as being set in lovely surroundings. The trip was 3 ½ hours long over several mountain  passes with many hairpin turns. The scenery was amazing but, of course, we could not stop for pictures. We had not been able to reach any hotels by phone to prebook but the bus company said no problem, the driver will bring us to hotels until we found a room. The bus stopped first at a hotel for us and we took a room as we did not want to make the other 9 passengers drive all over while we selected a hotel. BIG MISTAKE! The rooms were cheap but awful – no shower, no hot water, mouldy walls, no toilet paper. An old red blanket took the place of a top sheet.  We were dismayed by our choice of room but also by the lack of places to visit. We did take a motorcycle ride to a village that had a few traditional thatched houses. Barb really enjoyed being on a bike, as did Tim of course, but I was less enthused.

Joan with children

                                                                                                                     

 We decided that the next day, we would return to Labuan Bajo. Even though we were not happy with being in Ruteng, the people were as friendly as ever-so many hellos and smiles.  It warmed our teacher’s hearts that a few of them really wanted to try to converse

in English.

Thursday October 17

Komodo Dragon

            Our trip to Rinca hit a snag right at the start.  We were loaded into the boat and pushed off from shore only to find we could not lift the anchor.  The first mate jumped into the water and followed the line, upon which we were snagged, back to a boat still tied to the dock.  That boat backed up until we could untangle the anchor, and then off we went.  The trip to Rinca Island took two hours on very calm seas.  The boat travelled through several islands – large and small, but all very dry looking.  When we arrived at Komodo National Park, we were reminded of the guide book’s description -  furnace hot.   We were met at the dock by our guide and given the dire warnings about wandering off the path and staying together with our guide.  At one point we stopped so he could point out the 39 graves of the tourists who didn’t heed the warnings.

            There are about 2,400 Komodo Dragons on Rinca.  There were at least 10 hanging about the office area.  We were allowed to get as close as 5 metres with the ranger and his forked stick at the ready.  Without the ranger we would never have seen most of the dragons.  They lie perfectly still disguised as a log.  When he pointed out a baby up a tree, I couldn’t see it even when I was looking at it.  Until it moved it was perfectly camouflaged.  We went on a 4 km hike through the forest and fields.  Several times I thought our guide was pulling my leg when he pointed at dragons.  However, every time he was right. 

            We spent 3 hours on the island before our ranger escorted us back to the dock and off we went to Angel Island for snorkelling.  We docked at a beach in the middle of a deserted island and off I went through another amazing underwater garden.  Several times when I started back to the boat I was waylaid by another fantastic sight.  I was in the water for 1 ½ hours and my underwater camera was still working.

            At night, after a terrific sunset, I downloaded my photos to my computer.  313 photos in 1 day!