Asia . Thailand . Bangkok . Team Canada

February 3rd, 2010 - February 4th, 2010

The trip to Bangkok was pretty straightforward. Our flight was early in the morning so we decided to just stay in the airport. The plan was to find a quiet corner of the airport, create a baggage-nest and sleep until the alarm went off. There were a couple of failures in the plan:
  • instead of finding a quiet corner of the airport, we found it's noisy-neighbor the food court (the airport was not 24 hours, but the food court was)
  • instead of creating a baggage-nest, we sat in hard-plastic-fast-food chairs (one of the fast-food managers told us it was inappropriate to nest in a food court..)
  • instead of sleeping until the alarm went off, we lay our heads on plastic table and waited until the alarm went off
Arrival in Bangkok was easy. Just hopped off the plane and hopped on the shuttle bus to Khao San Rd. Checked into Khao San Palace, which included a rooftop pool, air conditioning, en suite bathroom and television. Not our usual style of accommodation, but "Team Canada" needed an easy place to meet!

Team Canada? Yes, that's right, "Team Canada." A carefully selected group of young Canadians brought together by chance in order to be awesome. Chance? Yes, that's right, "chance." Here's the how the roster was put together.. Tyler has a girlfriend: Jenny. Jenny had a coworker: Brigitte. Brigitte has a sister: Christelle. Christelle has friends: Mel and Milaine. Awesome! Awesome? Yes, that's right, "awesome". Here's some tabular data that describes all our awesome skills:


Name
Drinking Skills

Eating Skills

"eh"-ing Skills

1
Haggling Skills

Nursing Skills

Shopping Skills

"Pep"ing Skills
Dorge, Brigitte¤¤¤¤¤
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Dorge, Christelle
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Giberson, Jenny

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¤

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¤

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Lesage, Mel

¤

¤

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¤

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Rondeau, Milaine

¤

¤

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Speakman, Tyler
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1 "eh"-ing Skills: ability to use the Canadian word "eh" in a grammatically correct way

EXAMPLES.
"How's it goin', eh? "
"I'm bloated, eh."
"Eh?!"

Curious about what will happen to Team Canada? Wondering about what adventures they'll have? Unsure whether the "nursing" skills will compensate for the "drinking" skills? Tune next time for answers to these questions and more!

Asia . Malaysia . Tanah Rata (the Cameron Highlands)

January 31st, 2010 - February 2nd, 2010

Kuala Lumpur was interesting, but it was also hot, humid and crowded. So after a couple days it was time to move on to somewhere a little more relaxed. Tanah Rata fit the bill. Situated in the Cameron Highlands the temperature was a couple degrees cooler, the humidity was less and the crowds were non-existent. Nice and easy. We stayed at the Cameronian Inn:
  • beds clean
  • prices affordable
  • food good
  • trekking available
  • management strange..
The in-house food was pretty average aside from the scones. The scones are delicious because the setting is perfect scones. The mornings are cold. The Inn's garden is green and groomed. The tea is locally grown and brewed. It's nice.

The trekking was excellent. The guide, Yen visited the hostel almost a decade ago and never left. At some point he took on the local trails as a pet project. He hikes everyday at 10 o'clock with or without tag-alongs. He works diligently to maintain the trails: picking up garbage and cutting back growth. He's knowledgeable, social and keeps a good pace. The trekking information sheet says it costs 25R, but Yen never mentions the money so in the end it feels more like a well deserved donation / tip. In regards to the trails, they are comfortably challenging.15-20 minute up-hills followed by look-outs and meandering down-hills. The walk we went on passed through the tea fields, which carpeted huge rolling hills. Never seen anything like it. Also saw a good assortment of butterflies and some sizable pitcher-plants. Very cool. Lasts the whole day so bring water and snacks (or money for the cafe attached to the tea plantation).

The Inn's management was strange, but in a charming way. He was always about, hunting for conversation and servicing requests. Talking with him was circular and confusing, but there were some really interesting tidbits that have stuck with me.

Also of note was the business model for the Inn: honour-system. Pay on departure. The owner doesn't take passports or credit cards as collateral. He simply trusts people to do the right thing. And apparently people do! Aside from the paranoia it caused me, the system worked well (it felt like some psych experiment -- like there were hidden cameras everywhere!).

All in all the highlands were well worth the visit.

Tyler and Jenny

Asia. Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia (Continued)

January 28th 2010 - January 30th 2010

Although arriving in KL was a bit of a struggle, we settled in pretty quickly. We ended up staying in Chinatown, which was great for cheap deals on food from stalls but not so great for walking down streets with vendors constantly trying to sell their goods to us. Thankfully we have gotten good at just saying a polite 'no thank-you'. They were trying to sell us watches, purses, DVDs... anything you can think of. The food available was interesting. We're big fans of red bean buns - delicious! But a lot of vendors would have this weird meat patty that was fatty but they would dry out and grill and it was really pricey (for the area) and seemed similar to bacon. Very distinctive smell. Tyler was intrigued to try it but never actually got to. They made it in the morning at like 7am and then would continue to sell it all day. Very curious....

We discovered that Malaysian tea is not like tea back home. It was made from a powder and tasted like tea mixed with Milo/Ovaltine. Weird experience. The coffee was very different tasting as well, but still worth the experience.

Malaysian food was not very spicy from our experience but I think they toned it down once they saw that you were a westerner. Nobody believes that we can handle spice. Tyler discovered that the delicious soup 'laksa' has fish in it by default, and he did not enjoy the fishy taste. Lesson learned. All the other soup we had was delicious, and we even became accustomed to having soup for breakfast just like the locals (mmmmm bbq pork was our favourite).

The things we liked about Kuala Lumpur were the Lake Gardens - beautiful area to have lunch/breakfast. The National Mosque was fun to visit as well, they make you wear a light purple robe so that you are dressed modestly (even Tyler had to wear one). We also walked through a protected forest area to get to the KL Tower, very pretty walk. But once we got to the tower we saw that it cost double the price in our outdated book and decided we'd rather spend our money elsewhere. You get a nice view from the top of the forest area anyway. And the highlight of the sights we saw in KL was the Batu Caves - a place of Hindu worship. We went on a a day that was also part of a festival for the local Hindus, and there were a lot of parades that made our bus slow but were amusing to watch. You have to climb a few hundred stairs (but there were kids and old people doing it so it wasn't that difficult) in your barefeet and then walk around the cool cave at the top. There are different areas to get 'blessed' or give offerings, and it's a nice atmosphere. There were also tons of monkeys by the side of the stairs on one side, they got lots of offerings that day and would abandon half a banana to get some new piece of fruit (very wasteful monkeys). All in all the Batu Caves were amazing. And we sampled some delicious Indian desserts after in the market.

Also of note is the fact that a random monkey climbed me while we were walking back from the KL Tower and the forest reserve. He just came out of nowhere and grabbed onto my little purse strap (over the shoulder kind) and used it to climb up into my arms. Funny monkey. He then proceeded to do a bunch of different poses and was resistant when I kept trying to put him back on the ground, he'd just climb up me again. Eventually a guard finished laughing at the situation and said a Malaysian command and the monkey jumped off me. And I checked my wallet afterwards and the monkey didn't rob me.... I had my suspicions but he was just being friendly.

The bad part about KL was that it was very tricky to navigate walking through with a map. Going to the Lake Gardens was tricky and involved crossing multiple highways (which weren't really labelled on the map) and walking around in a few circles. But we eventually made it. Definitely a good test though. When taking the bus back from the Batu Caves we actually hit a car! It wasn't serious, the driver inspected and there wasn't really any damage but I have to say that's the first time I've ever witnessed it happening. We also almost got run over by a school bus that was having a bit of a breakdown and decided to park on the sidewalk. The door was jammed and the kids were trapped inside while the driver kept trying to pry the doors open with his hands. The kids had windows open and were pretty relaxed about it so maybe it happens all the time....

And the big disappointment for our time in KL was when we went to see the fireflies in a nearby village that was mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide. We asked about when the last bus back from the village was (because it had to be after dark) and the lady told us 11:30pm which was great news. So we took the 2 and a half hour bus to the village. Got there around 5:30pm and asked a taxi driver how much it would cost to get to the fireflies. He negotiated with us a bit and then was saying that he would drive us back to KL (at a very high price) because the last bus left at 6:30pm (before sunset even happens). We didn't believe him so we asked around but everyone told us the same thing, we would have to take a very expensive taxi ride back to KL if we wanted to see the fireflies. It was a huge disappointment and I was angry at Lonely Planet and the bus lady for giving me false information. If we had known about that then we wouldn't have booked our hostel in KL for the night and we could have stayed in the village nearby instead. But in the end it would have cost too much money to go to the fireflies and either pay accomodation in two places or an expensive cab back to the city, so we just took the last local bus back to KL. We were very disappointed but the highlights of our time there outweigh the bad. We're a little more weary now about things and that's probably a good thing. We'll be more careful in the future.

But this last disappointment led to us being tired of being in a big city so we decided to move on to the Cameron Highlands to enjoy nature and hiking. :)