Singapore is beautiful!!

5 hour ride from Kuala Lumpur and we made it to Singapore.
Right off the bus a cute Chinese lady, Evelyn, immediately took us in and gave us a first hand tour of her city. She said she traveled around before too and knows how good it is when someone shows you around. haha. While we knew we could find our way around perfectly fine by ourselves, she was very sweet to take time out of her day to make sure we got where we needed to be. Right into the "Inn Crowd" hostel where we are sharing a room with 6 other people.

Tonight we went to a Chinese New Year parade. It was beautful. The outfits that all the dancers were wearing were so intricate and creative. There was one float where a girl was dressed as a pineapple and another had on a dress completely made of stuffed animals. They had a little firework display afterwards as well.

It was a great first night! And this city is the cleanest city we have ever seen!

Love at first TASTE

We have fallen in love.

Yes, true love.

Roti bread!! It is the key to all existence. Pure deliciousness!

Right across the street from our guesthouse we had our first encounter with this delicacy. Banana Roti. WOW! We tried a plain one today. Just as yummy. We can't figure out exactly how they make them. They are somewhat similar to crepes, but so much better they really don't even compare :)

Today, our last day in Malaysia, we made our way out to the Batu Caves. We had to fight the bus system to get there but after about an hour of trying to find the bus, we found it... bus 11.

The caves are huge and they are usually used for ceremonies. We either just missed the ceremony or they were just getting ready for one in the next few because they had all the stages and stuff half prepared for something huge. And speaking of huge, they have a Buddha at the bottom of the stairs that pretty much reaches the top of the mountain that the caves live in. Bright and shiny gold.

So we climbed up the 267 stairs barely noticing all the monkeys that were climbing with us. No joke, they were right next to us. Everywhere. Jenna you would have been in heaven. There were a few kids with food and they practically would crawl all over them until they got the food they wanted. You could look up the walls of the caves outside and see them crawling and jumping all over the place. It was pretty cool.

Off to Singapore :)

Hop on, Hop off - The Hopper!

We are in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia. Today we were 100% tourist. We rode a hop on - hop off bus all around the city. It was great! I think every big city should have one of these. Took us to all the major buildings / attractions around the city. We got picked up at stop #7, right in front of our guesthouse. We road the bus pretty much all the way around picking the stops we wanted to get off on next time around. There were 22 stops total so the whole round trip took a good hour.
Our first stop was the two towers. They were pretty amazing. Very similar to our late Two Towers. We got tickets to go up to the top to see the whole city but the only tickets left were at 6pm. We didn't make it back in time to go up to the top and acutally the weather here wasn't very good for anything at 6pm. It has been raining everyday around 3:30 and keeps on raining until about 8ish. We haven't had rain at all on this trip before here so we kinda like it. Makes this humid hot city a little cooler. We might start cursing it if it continues to hang around when we make it to Bali.

Our second stop was at the Menara building. This one we actually did get to go up to the top of. 441 meters high (or something like that). You can walk around the top and see the entire city from all the angles. They even give you a little dvd player to walk around with that tells you history and different facts about buildings and the city.

But the best part of the Menara was right out front...

The Malaysians apparentley think it is a good idea to keep a huge Christmas Winter Wonderland out in front of this building. We have no idea why by the end of January they still haven't taken it down or changed it or why they treat it as an amusement park. A little silly, but definitely good for a few pictures.

There was also an Animal Zone right next to the Menara. It was filled with snakes and turtles and lizards, but there were also monkeys and racoons and birds AND my new favorite animal:
The Fennec Fox. He is soooo cute with his huge eyes. He definitely wanted us to take him home.

The HUGE African Bullfrog was pretty awesome too!

Besides sunsets, we of course are also very obsessed with flowers. Along our hopper trip there was an Orchid garden that required a lot of our attention. It was so beautiful.

Combined we probably have about 50 pictures of these flowers. It was amazing to see how many different kinds of Orchids were growing all around the garden.

BE-A-U-TIFUL!

Phuket - Koh Phi Phi - Malaysia

We actually flew directly onto the beach in Phuket. If you look closely at that picture you can see the beach right behind the trees. Runway was practically the sand. As we were landing we both just looked at each other with the biggest grins on our faces. Like it was Christmas for the next four days!! We stayed one night in Phuket town which was nothing really special. We did stay in our first "dorm" hostel with four beds. well two bunk beds (jenny, just like mine and yours in our first apartment but a WAY smaller room!!) We got the top bunks of both beds. We met our roomate but only enough to see who he was. we all were waking up at 7 am to head over to Koh Phi Phi Island, so sleep was needed.

It was about a 2 hour boat ride to the island. The weather was perfect and we snagged seats on the top of the boat. When we arrived we checked into a guesthouse and immediately headed to the beach. We pretty much didn't leave the beach for the next two days. Absolutely gorgeous.
I mean we honestly rolled out of bed onto the beach and didn't leave until sunset. We lathered ourselves with 30 sunscreen and still managed to get a little color. It was sooo hot out but the water was perfect. Crystal clear and perfect white sand. Honestly a paradise beach for sure.

The island got hit pretty hard by the tsunami, but they are doing a really good job getting it looking nice again. Tons of hotels and restaurants and little shops.
This is a view from our guesthouse balcony. You could pretty much walk from one side of the island to the other in about 30 minutes max. AND if you played your cards right you could get free buckets of alcohol every night. Yes that is right, buckets. It is a very popular thing over on this side of the world. They are usually whiskey and coke which neither of us like, but when you do run out of money... a free bucket here and there can be a great time.

We also met some really fun people over here. This one guy opened a restaurant called the Banana Sombero. He was from Washington D.C. so we were immediately "American buddies". But the crazy thing was... he used to go vacationing with his family in PALM COAST!!! They actually owned a house there. For those of you who don't know, that is pretty much where I grew up. We met another guy that lives in the exact same town that April is living in right outside Sydney where we will be heading in March. Seriously small world!

We unfortunately had to leave Phi Phi, but we discovered the very cute town of Patang in Phuket. The beach was just what we needed after our hard long days in Phi Phi. hahaha. We were only in Patang for one day and night, but we both really loved the city. Like a way smaller Santa Barbara. The beach is covered with yellow umbrellas and beach chairs. Suzy has discovered the Color Accent on her camera and it is definitely a fun way to take some different pictures. Notice the yellow is the only color really showing up. hahaha. we amuse ourselves!



We made it to Malaysia today. Kuala Lumpar. Big city. Smaller than New York but definitely similar. Very clean though. In fact the airport was spotless. The cleanest quietest airport we have ever been in. They even had reclining chairs in the terminals.

Our guesthouse is very cute. A new one call the Tropical Guesthouse. TINY. ITTY BITTY! I mean the smallest rooms we have ever stayed in. Check us out...

Chang Mai

1.5 days to spend in Chang Mai is definitely not enough time. We flew in yesterday around 2pm and headed directly to a fabulous cooking class. Our chef was great and they gave us a cookbook to take home. Hopefully we can remember everything he taught us. I think the fried bananas were definitely my favorite. We also made Tom Yum soup, Curry, Stir Fry and Pad Thai. (And yes, even Suzy cooked)

Elephant snot. We can safely check getting elephant snot all over us off our list of things to do in our lifetimes (although I never knew it was on my list until today). Suzy finally got to ride an elephant today (hooray!) and as you ride along on your elephant he perioducally stops and asks for a delicious banana snack by throwing his trunk back. Well, I think our elephant, Vadi, had a bit of a cold as every time he threw his trunk back for a snack, we got an elephant snot shower. mmmm....it was still great fun though.

We continued on our tour through a village of Karen people and later through a Hmong village, which were both actually interesting to see because our guide was great and told us some things about the different tribes rather than just walking through. Life in the suburbs sure is easy with our neat gadgets like electricity and running water! We also stopped at a waterfall between the 2 villages, get excited for more waterfall pictures!

Suzy also made her first strides towards making the 2012 US Olympic arching team today by shooting her first crossbow. She still has some room for "improvement" before trying out for the team.

After lunch we did some bamboo rafting, very Tom Sawyer-esque. Alana did a great job row, row, rowing our raft down the stream as well as being the choosen victim of our guide, Cosmo's, continuous attempts to throw people in the river - "no wet, no fun!"- twice. Although she did manage to bring him along with her once.

Wish we had more time in Chaing Mai, but the sun, sand, and Chinese New Year festivities beckon us South to the Island of Phuket.

For anyone else planning on coming here two things:

1. If you come from Laos make sure to switch out your money beforehand or you will be stuck with unwanted kips. No fun at all

2. There is a tour where you can actually play with Tigers. We met several people that said this was awesome and from the looks of their pictures it was.

Oh and, think we fixed the comment error. Comment away now :)

All by myself...

I think I have walked up about 2000 stairs in the past two days. Hiking waterfalls and temples. If I can keep this up I will have a mighty firm tush by the time I get back. The V-neck tshirt farmers tan will come with it. nicceee!








Quite the adventure today. Suzy was sick so I had to hang out all alone which I decided, 20 minutes into it, I am not at all a fan of at all. We had planned a tour to ride elephants and to see the second waterfall in Luang Prabang. The elephant riding was fun, kinda. They are very slow and very smelly and actually have really sharp hair on their hides. But, my guide let me pretty much take the reins of my elephant friend. I got to steer him around the entire trip. It was pretty cool. We waded through like a 4ft river. My toes almost touched the water. The elephant was a good sport though. Posed for a bunch of pictures with me.

After that I was taken to the Tad Sae waterfall. Nothing compared to the one we saw yesterday but it was very beautiful. You could play in the little pools of water.






Laos is really a great place. They have street buffets for .75 cents where you can fill up a plate with as much food as you can fit on it. We walk away from the stand looking like total fatties, but usually eat the whole plate. The pineapple, rice, and green beans are the favorite. Although we did have a bite of a friends fish and it was amazingly delicious. We were planning eating that tonight, but since we are unsure what took Suzy out, I think we are going to stick with a very simple meal tonight.


There are animals everywhere here. Cows, chickens, goats, dogs, cats... everywhere! In the streets, on the side of the street, in houses. They pretty much rule the town for sure. It is really funny to see all the cars and motorcycles and bikes have to stop and wait for the cows to mosey across the road followed by the chickens. We do dispise the roosters though. Up before sunrise everyday. Makes for sleeping very difficult.

We are off to Chaing Mai tomorrow!!
Get better Suzy!!!

Vang Vieng: Yahoooweee!

This is Suzy and I being extreme adventurist!! It was really fun swinging over the water like that! I felt like I should have been doing some flips or something though. More like they do in the circus. Maybe next time!

...school kids for Mrs. B

Luang Prabang: BEAUTIFUL!!

Ginnie Springs has nothing on Vang Vieng

We did a caving/trekking/tubing trip around Vang Vieng. The caves we saw were awesome. One we just walked around inside and the other we tubbed through. Flashlights and headlights were all we had to see around the place and the caves were massive. It was hard to get any pictures since it was so dark, but they were really cool. Kinda creepy when we all turned out the lights and it was pitch black. We didn't see any animals but I am sure they were just lurking around the corner.

We got put with a group of 6 older guys who were on a reunion. They all used to work together in Singapore and met up for a trip around Laos. They were hilarious. Laughing and making fun of each other the entire trip. Very loud and very slow. haha. We were ready for the next part before they had even started.




The last part of the trip was tubbing down the river. We wish we had more time on this part since it was pretty much the equivalent to any Spring Break trip ever taken. Within the first 100ft there was a bar with a zip line and a rope swing. Then within the next 200ft was an even bigger bar with another zip line, rope swing, slide AND a bonfire so after you adventured into the water you could warm your tush by the fire. It was great fun. We both did the rope swing and Suzy did the slide too. Got us totally pumped for our sky diving in New Zealand. Such a rush swinging out over the water and dropping 30ft. We could have stayed there all day.

In Luang Prabang now (after a 6 hour bus ride through the mountains of Laos).

Laos: Vientiane & Vang Vieng

We spent yesterday in Vientiane, Laos. It was a really fun little city. They had a ton of little bakeries and restaurants. Very delicious cheese croissants!! We watched the sunset over the river playing Gin like two old ladies. It was so relaxing and fun.





Today we jumped on a bus and came up to Vang Vieng. 3 hour bus ride, but this place is totally worth the trip. There are a ton of little bungalows and restaurants that overlook the water. We watched another beautiful sunset over the river and the mountains. I think we are going to have to stop watching sunsets or we will both be coming home with about 3000 photos of the sun.

Tubbing, caving, and trekking tomorrow...

Siem Reap: Temples, Temples, Temples

After visiting all the Wats in Thailand I wasn't expecting today to be much different. Good thing Suzy planned our adventures!! The temples we saw were amazing. We got up before sunrise and went to see Srah Srang. It was beautiful. The temple itself was sort of small, but the sunrise over the water was great to see. We also met a ton of the small children who lived right there. Unfortunately they didn't start school until 7am so we were stuck with them asking us to buy their stuff for over two hours. Coffee, books, bracelets, books, scarfs, books. haha. They get pretty angry with you when you decline, but how many books can we really purchase on this trip.

After that we went to Ta Prohm. Probably the most beautiful place yet. It was covered with huge trees that wrapped around the broken down temple. We jumped all over the place, bouldering up the crumbled sections only to realize we were in a completely different section that was just as massive as the one before. It was a maze of nature and temple. Anyone that is thinking about a trip over to this part of the world should definitely make it a point to stop by this temple!!!

We did a bunch of the smaller temples inside Angkor Thom... and then finished our day at the huge Angkor Wat temple. It was very beautiful, surrounded by a huge moat. It is pretty much an entire city within itself.

Cambodia: Siem Reap: Night one ;)

We made it!
6 hour bus ride through the beautiful lush fields of of Cambodia.
AND... Suzy ate a spider on one of our stops along the way!!! A tarantula at that. Ok, so it was only the legs, but still. I am super impressed with her ability to hold down the creepy crawler legs.

We are in a good hostel tonight. No mice. From now on that is our one demand.




We learned some good Cambodian words tonight from our bartender friend:
hello: suisa-die
goodbye: leah-sunhi
cheers: jol kaouh muin

(these are all our interpretations, so i am sure they are misspelled)

Mice 1, Suzy and Alana 0

Worst Hostel Ever. Don't ever stay at the Green Lake Hostel!! Even though Angelina Jolie supposedly stays there when she's adopting Cambodian orphans. Yeah right. Our room ended up having some guests we weren't expecting...mice! The little critters in the walls of this crap-tastic place squeaked all night long and were running around the floor every once in a while, needless to say we freaked out a bit and tried to get a new room around 1:30 am. No luck, all booked up for the night. It was either sleep in the rodent infested room or risk getting mugged looking for a new hostel to stay in. So instead of a new room the guy at the front desk gives us a massive can of mosquito repellent...to make the mice go away? Well, we gave it a shot and sprayed a nearly lethal dose of the stuff in the room. It did not work, weird. Being the brave adults we are, we pulled our beds together in the middle of the room, kept the lights on and passed out from the fumes.

After running out that place as soon as dawn broke we found a new, rodent-less place to stay and were able to start our day of adventures much happier. We tuk-tuked it out to the killing fields where thousands of Cambodians were murdered during Pol Pot's regime. Not a very large place, but really sad to see. After that we went to one of the prisons that was used as well. Really unbelievable this all happened in the mid 70's and is still to this day somewhat largely ignored on the world stage even though roughly 2 million innocent people were killed. We then headed down to the river and to what seems to be a newer, nicer area of the city.This is a pretty interesting place with the mix of old, crumbling buildinds and actually quite a few new buildings and construction happening too. Also swung by the Royal Palace, I think they used the same architect as the Thai's did to build their palace as they looked and were set up very similarily.

Heading to Siam Reap early in the am! 6 hour bus ride up north. Should be a great time!!

The day Alana made a new small friend

We made it to Cambodia!!!
20 minute flight and a 5 minute Tuk Tuk drive and we are at our new home for a few days. Alana has already been talked into buying a book from one of the local children that run the streets. Hard to deny them with their hope filled eyes and precious smiles.

Our new room has big gaps in the floor boards... lets hope no crazy animals or bugs make their way in tonight.

Our last night in Bangkok and it was election day the next day. Apparently they don't serve alcohol 24 hours prior to the election. We ended up having to jump from bar to bar trying to find places that hadn't been caught serving by the cops. It was quite an adventure.

BUT, we met our first friend... Tom! He has actually been on our exact trip just opposite of how we are doing it. He had a lot of insight for us. And the more fun things he had to say the more excited we got for the next few months (not like we aren't thrilled to be doing it already).

Off to Cambodia!!!!

Day 2: Bangkok

Exhausted!
Today we walked. From about 10-5 we walked around Bangkok exploring. It was great. We made it to The Grand Palace, down along the Chao Phraya River and all the way to the National Stadium where the Thai Boxing is held.

The Palace was amazing. It was built in 1782 for King Rama I’s because he was unhappy with his current palace. There is gold everywhere. The buildings, the Buddahs, even some of the statues. Most of the buildings were a mosaic of gold with little bits of color throughout. There were walls with huge scenes of the Ramakien (mostly battles and wars lead by the king). We got to see some of the artists working on them today. Such detail, they must have taken years to finish.

Definitely a site to see. Side note… you don’t have to wear long pants or a long sleeve shirt unless you want to sweat to death like we did. Flip flops, tee shirt and a calf length skirt would be a much better idea.

We walked down through China town along the river to catch the Chao Phraya Express. While we obviously stood out, people were very friendly and very helpful with directions. After yesterday we are still a bit skeptical when we get information from people. But we made it to the river and took the express boat down.

After our boat ride we decided we should take advantage of the cheap massages here in town. 1 hour for 10 dollars and that was a more expensive spa. The massage was very interesting. A little more like a trainer stretching you out for a big game. It was great though. Rejuvinated us for the next part of our walk.

We walked through a huge beautiful park. It was a great change of scenery since the majority of our day was spent walking on the crowded streets with all the car fumes blowing in our faces. There was some dancing and some yoga and some synchronized sword fighting going on.
Finally we made our way to the stadium. The cost to get in was a little more pricey than we had decided we would spend and since neither of us are really interested in boxing, we decided seeing the stadium was enough.

YAY for the Gators! Our Buddah bell must have done the trick... or else we are just the best in the nation :) We caught some highlights on the internet midday. Hope all you Gator fans got some good partying in for us!!!

Bangkok: Day 1

Happy Thursday!

Our first real day of the trip. Bangkok is a crazy city. Kinda like Downtown LA mixed with New York City. Shops stores and people everywhere. Cats and dogs too. It is just packed.

For us today was full of scams. From one Tuk Tuk driver to the next and every one of them seemed to have a sister who married an American and now lives in San Fran or Seattle or Chicago. After we got that story a few times we realized we were in for it. Of course we fell for the “Buddist holiday” scam. Our plan was to go and see some temples today and since it was a Buddist holiday, we got into all of them for free. It wasn’t until we talked to some monks at the last temple did we find out that it was not a buddist holiday and the temples are always open. OH WELL! We got to see them all anyway and had quite an adventure along the way.

The four temples we saw today were the Lucky Buddah, the Old Buddha (this is where we met the guy whos sister lives in San Fran and they own a Thai restaurant called Phuket… anyone been there?), the Standing Buddah, and The Golden Mountain.






The Golden Mountain was our favorite. We had to walk up about 400 stairs to get to the top but the whole way up was full of waterfalls and greenery.
This is also where we met our new monk friends. They practiced their English on us and we got to find out some cool stuff about them. And of course get a picture.





We also donated some money for a golden bell that was placed on one of the smaller blessing temples beside the main buddah. We got to write on the bell for good luck. If you can’t guess what we wished for I will give you a hint…
GO GATORS. We definitely sent some good luck to the Gators for tomorrows game. The bell will ring in their name for years to come.










We ended the night with some delicious Pad Thai for dinner (which ran about $3 each) and then walked around the city for a bit. We came across a perfect street for Suzy. At 9pm we are already exhausted and ready for some good rest.