A quick KL trip

Our four days in Kuala Lumpur (commonly called KL) were great! We wish we could spend more time here. Many things surprised me about KL--the cleanliness, the minimal number of motorbikes and taxis, the fact that everyone speaks English... We drove through the suburbs when we first arrived and it reminded me a lot of rural LA. We made one quick stop for food (Our first Malay food, which was fabulous--but very similar to Thai).

So, here's the rundown: Sunday we went to church at 11 am. The church we went to had a guest speaker from Ghana--he was speaking on prayer and giving based on the beginning of the story of Cornelius in Acts. We went to church with a friend of a friend of a friend! :) He works with the Iranian immigrant community, so we ended up going to lunch with a group of them and then they invited us over for dinner. (Next two meals in Malaysia: Mediterranean and Persian.) It was a great evening/morning...it started after 9 pm and ended about 1:30 am! They were really a fun bunch though--now we think we'd like to visit Iran...

Monday we toured the city with Joshua--the friend of a friend. It was great to have a personal driver and tour guide! Joshua is very knowledgeable about KL and Malaysian history--it was fascinating. Now we think we'd like to come back here for longer... (Are you sensing a theme? ) We started at the National Monument, then went to see the Hornbills in the Bird Sanctuary, and next a stop for lunch was important (Next meal: Chinese). After lunch we visited the new and the old KL. First the Petronas towers and then the old British administration buildings. I'll spare everyone the exhaustive historical accounts--though you really SHOULD be interested--it's fascinating!

Monday evening we met up with an Iranian friend for dinner (we had Indian). It's just the end of the Indian New Year Festival of Deepvali, so we were given so much extra food. IT was all delicious, but we just couldn't finish it!! And I'd like to know how I've survived until now without eating cheese-garlic naan--it's amazing!

Okay, sorry, but a bit of history. Malaysia is very much a country at the crossroads of many others. Because of that, it's ended up with a lot of immigration and influences from neighbouring countries. Currently the population is about 60% Malay, 30% Chinese, and 10% Indian. Therefore the celebration of Deepvali and the prevalence of a variety of food makes sense...

Tuesday we also did a mixture of new and old. We started off the day in one of the newer areas called Putra Jaya where all the government building are built. It was very nice: beautiful gardens, shopping, fountains, an impressive mosque, and a huge "office" for the Prime Minister. Interestingly enough, the Prime Minister's building is nicer than the palace (in our opinion, anyways!). Next came lunch--it was a noodle soup that was considered Malay I think... Good too!

After lunch we reached the old port town of Malacca. This was the town that ruled the sultanate of Malacca and commanded considerable trade. It was captured in 1511 by the Portuguese--who burnt the old town to the ground. Then in 1641 it was captured by the Dutch who basically tore down the Portuguese town. In 1824 the British arrived (after it was ceded to them by the Dutch in a territory exchange treaty) and they stifled most of the trade so that Malacca wouldn't interfere with their formerly established towns of Singapore and Penang, turning it into a forgotten backwater. The current town is a fascinating mix of Malay, Portuguese, Dutch, British, Chinese, etc. influences in the architecture, food, and history. When I return to this country, I'll definitely need to spend more time there.

Wednesday we went back to nature! :) After sleeping quite late, we drove up to FRIM (Forestry Research Institute of Malaysia). While there, we spent several hours hiking through the jungle. It was beautiful! The highlight was the canopy walk though. It was awesome! Close your eyes and imagine a line of old weathered 2x4's strung out end to end...several hundred meters off the ground! At chest height there are ropes to hang onto and the area between the boards and the ropes were covered in netting. I'm not really sure the netting would have held the weight of a person, though, if someone tripped and fell. Needless to say--it was AWESOME! The pictures make it look way too safe though...pity! (Lunch: chinese).

That was just about it for Malaysia--except for our night in the airport! We were planning on sleeping in the lounge but it turned out the whole airport was closed from 10:30 pm to 4:00 am for pest control! So...we slept outside the airport on hard plastic seats... Not the best night's sleep I've ever had, but, oddly enough, not the worst either!

Good-bye Malaysia! We'll be back...

It's sad to say good-bye, but...

..as Christians we never truly say good-bye!

We left Bangkok in October, which was very sad--but on the plus side, it allowed us to have all sorts of parties in the last few weeks! There's always a silver lining... :)

Seriously though, we leave behind so many good friends and we WILL miss you guys!

Thank you to Christ Church first of all for taking in the two girls that randomly showed up last November with no organization and no contacts, looking for things to do! Thank you for warmly welcoming us to your church family and making us feel so much at home. Thank you for allowing us to serve with you and to learn from you and to meet so many wonderful brothers and sisters! Thank you for allowing us to share your kids (I miss my own nieces, nephews and cousins , so teaching and playing with your children was like adopting a whole church worth of honourary nieces and nephews!) and to share your lives.

Special thanks to the staff: all of you! Panjit, Manita, Opat, Pete and Ineke, Harry and Deanne, Ross and Sonia, Matt and Cathy--we love you guys for so many reasons: guitar lessons, Christmas dinner, coffee times, emails, prayer meetings...for everything! Thank you! It's been so wonderful to be part of the team...

Another special thanks to our small group! Food and fellowship--it doesn't get much better than that. We'll miss our Wednesday nights --it was always a fun and funky time. Keep in touch! Extra-special thanks to two very special people from our "original" small group who took two strange girls (emphasis on strange) into their apartment and into their lives! We will really miss you Gary and Claudia!

XOXO

L&A

A few small vacations...and one long one!

Our summer this year was very hectic--but fun! However, we were looking forward to a little r&r come September.

As September began, we managed a few small excursions--the first was to Ayutthaya with Bernice, a friend from church. Ayutthaya is the old capital of Thailand that was destroyed by the Burmese in 1767. I'd been before, but neither Amanda or Bernice had--and I'm always up for visiting ancient sites again! It's not hard to get to Ayutthaya--it's only a few hours by train from Bangkok, so we decided to go there just for the day.

The fun started with the train ride (see previous picture)--we bought third class tickets (of course) which didn't come with seat numbers (naturally)...and just few other people seemed to have followed suit! Oh, and we were late (go figure...). After literally jumping on the train seconds before it left (it's always a bad sign when the locals are also running for the train--not just the foreigners) we found the third class section. According to the guide book, "Don't bother booking ahead--just show up and get a third-class ticket--there's always lots of seats."

Right.

There was one third class car and it was packed!!! We ended up sitting on the floor surrounded by crowds of people. Despite being squished in and sitting on the floor though, our friend Bernice managed to fall asleep for the entire journey...

As soon as we arrived, we jumped onto the little foot ferry to get across the river and then rented bicycles for the day. Thankfully Ayutthaya isn't too hilly--so most of the ride was quite leisurely, despite the heat. It was fun: temples, palaces, and more temples--all in ruins since the city was sacked by the Burmese--but still impressive. It's interesting to me that a Buddhist country (Burma) can attack a Buddhist country (Siam) and the Buddhist attacking army feels the need to sack the Buddhist temples and lob off all the buddha heads....? It seems weird to me. Some really beautiful sites there though--if you consider crumbling ruins beautiful like I do. :)

Our next "vacation" wasn't so much a vacation--but it was so much fun!!! It was called the Vertical Marathon. The tallest building in Bangkok is called the Banyon Tree and every year they have a charity run--straight up! :) Sixty-one flights of stairs, over 1000 steps, to the top. I ran it in under 15 minutes which put me at about 200 of 400 people. Amanda was just under 13 minutes! It was tough--but not as tough as I thought...and the view from the top was incredible!


Like the Vertical Challenge, our next bout of time-off also took place in Bangkok. Liz, a friend of a friend, came to stay with Claudia (we lived with Gary and Claudia for part of our stay in Bangkok) and she really wanted to go to the snake farm. We decided to tag along, 'cause snakes sounded kinda fun! It was great! They had a snake handling show where they brought out cobras and pythons and other deadly snakes and showed them off. The highlight was getting a python wrapped around our neck though--that was cool.

Finally we come to our "long" vacation--still not too long, but longer than most we've taken. At the end of September we took six days off and headed to one of the southern islands: Koh Lanta. It was beautiful! It was still off-season which was great because there were very few people. Unfortunately the reason it was off-season was because it was monsoon season--but what the heck. We're not made of brown sugar... Actually, we missed out on water sports, which was sad, but we also got to enjoy a stormy sea which strongly reminded us of the beach off the Olympic Penninsula in Washington where we spent lots of great time as kids. Really! It was like Kalaloch with palm trees. How awesome is that!?

The other fun part of our trip was the accommodation. Some friends of ours gave us a voucher for a stay at a 5* resort! It was amazing--I've never stayed at anything like that before. It was only for two days though, so we went from the cheapest place on the beach--to the most expensive place--to something mid-range (the picture is the balcony of our third "home.")! It was kinda fun. Since it was a smaller beach and off-season, the people at the restaurants and hotels recognized us as we popped in and out of several different places. They thought we were rather strange...

Despite the lack of water sports we still managed to swim in the ocean everyday and when I say swim I mean play in the waves! We did swim in the infinity pool when we were staying at our 5* resort though! We also did other necessary beachy things--built a sand castle, went beachcombing and took long walks. Actually, the end of the beach was blocked by a rocky point and we really wanted to see what was on the other side, so, one day we went trekking over the point and along the coast. It was fabulously beautiful and good fun--even if we never found the secret beach I was hoping for!

Our beach vacation took us to the end of September. We spent the next two weeks madly scrambling to get everything done and saying good-bye... God really does work in miraculous ways--we were in Bangkok eleven months even though our plan was to stay only five weeks! It was hard to leave Bangkok... We met so many awesome people there. I can't believe we were there almost a year! However, more of that in the next post.