Kuala Lumpur

Well here is the extent of our photos from KL: Ah, Canon. How we loved spending hours and hours navigating the suburbs by public bus to find you.

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OK, OK, I did sneak in a few more photos, but only about three. And I got lost taking them. Josh was waiting at the bus station as we were leaving for Singapore, while I set off to get at least one photo of the Petronas Towers (I am an architect after all. Also, Bird needed a photo with this recognizable icon. For those of you who haven't met Bird, maybe I will introduce him later on.) Anyway, I set off on my own, forgetting that you can't just walk around the corner to get a better photo of a skyscraper when other skyscrapers abound. I pretty much ended up walking all the way there, but then taking a street heading back in a different direction without realizing it. I knew where I needed to be, but I just couldn't get there! Streets here are not like that loveable Manhattan grid... I also didn't have any Ringgit (Malaysian currency) since Josh was spending the last of it, so I couldn't get a taxi... my "30 minute trip" ended up being well over an hour. Enough to get both Josh and I a bit worried! I don't know if these photos are worthy:

As for Kuala Lumpur, we do have a few comments (with no personal illustrating photographs, of course). Mostly, we liked it a lot more than we were expecting! Most travelers we've met don't have much to say about KL. Here are some reasons why:

1. We weren't overly impressed our first night, but after walking around a bit, we discovered a suprising number of beautiful or interesting buildings. Like George Town, the city was full of shophouses and covered sidewalks (the required five-foot way). Along the river were some amazing colonial buildings and a number of buildings with a decidely Mughal look. KL is also full of beautiful mosques- especially the massive newer National Mosque and the small but quaint Masjid Jamek. We attended a service at St. Mary's Anglican cathedral, which looks like it came out of an English storybook. We also liked the art deco Central Market, which was almost torn down before some concerned citizens saved the day! I also randomly recognized a Ken Yeang building as we went past in the depths of KL suburbs (bus to Canon), on whom I gave a brief presentation in a sustainable design class a few years back. Just thought it was cool to think, hey, I know that building.



2. What an international city! The movie we saw had two different subtitles, and we saw plenty of Indians, muslim women in full berka, women just in headscarves, Chinese, Sikhs... you name it. We were impressed they get along as well as they appear to.



3. Thank goodness for air conditioning. We spent an afternoon "decompressing" at the mall at the base of the Petronas Towers and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The bathrooms were clean and free, and everything was shiny. Amazing!



4. Finally, an absurd amount of our time was spent running errands- fixing the camera, our water purifier, getting documents about the camera for insurance... it's unfortunate, but after some islands and the rainforest, thank goodness for cities!

Diving a.k.a. I couldn't come up with a more original title for a post about diving

So, as we've commented on before we have now entered the ranks of certified divers, an activity that I think we've both always had a passing interest in. Anyway, since we are in SE Asia and diving is relatively cheap here when compared t the rest of the world we thought we should give it a go. Its an interesting sport/activity and something we both enjoy but not quite in the ways that we (or at least I) expected.


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Most of the sports and activities I've done throughout my life have one thing in common, that being there is a sense of rush or thrill in doing them. I've been climbing, kayaking, I grew up playing soccer and played Ultimate Frisbee throughout college and all of these have some sense of a rush to them. That feeling of adrenaline that pumps you up and clams you down all at the same time either through physical exertion or through a little bit of fear. In many ways it is this rush (I think) that makes these sports/activities fun and exciting. As an example, in climbing there is a continual sense of fear and a knowledge that you could fall and possibly hurt yourself, not to mention that falling is always a little scary even if you know you're safe. This same kind of rush happens in most organized sports, the rush after a goal is scored or a touchdown is made and/or the feeling you get after winning a close game. A rush has always been part of my mindset and I entered diving with those ideas kicking around in the back of my head, for better or for worse.

However, diving has proven to be unlike that at all. Diving is an activity where the goal is to move with a little effort as possible to save your air(e.g. as slowly as possible). So where as before I would huff and puff and get a rush from the exertion, now the goal was to move slowly and to remain calm... almost like meditation. The goal is to feel peaceful and happy as you gently "bob in the water looking at fish" as our instructor was prone to say. This is inherently quite different than someone who normally has been looking for that thrill to simply "swim around and just look at fish."

And to be honest I was a little disappointed by this at first, the whole process felt a little anticlimactic. On my first few dives I enjoyed myself but I just felt that something was lacking. I had a great time swimming, I saw some interesting stuff but when I was back on the beach I mostly thought... "well was that it?" It was fun but there was just something extra missing, later I realized I was missing the rush I was used to.

Now what I've discovered that diving has instead of the traditional rush is a sense of wonder and exploration. Diving is an activity that focuses mostly on exploring, finding a new shelf here, or looking under the coral over there, sticking your head into a crack looking for eels, or some other such move. It is a slow process, a deliberate process, (once again always trying to save your air) where in you simply try to exist and watch everything swim around you. Its peaceful, its calming, its watching with a sense of wonder at the things I never thought I'd see with my own eyes. And so the more I dove the more I learned to appreciate this part of diving, I stopped waiting for a rush ans simply learned to "bob in the water looking at fish" and I had a great time. A soothing time, a relaxing time, but still something that was fun and exciting (or as exciting as bobbing can get) that I look forward to doing again. I'm not going to quit my job and go dive for the rest of my life but there was something particularly rewarding about diving.

Well, enough of my reflections on diving and what I think of this weird activity and time to show some pictures. We are still working on the whole underwater photography thing and we weren't allowed to take our camera on our first few dives, so there are some pictures I wish I had. Mostly a large green turtle (probably about a 4 foot long shell) that we got close enough to I could have touched him if I wanted to. Anyway, pictures!

P.S. I should also say that we saw alot of fish... many of which I still don't know the name of. So please roll with any names like, "fish that like swimming in tight schools and enjoyed eating the crackers that get thrown in the water" as they are all I could come up with.

P.P.S. So far we have been diving 13 times in both Koh Tao (Thailand) and the Perhentians(Malaysia) and have spent about 10 hours under water. Nothing great, but still kind of cool. We made friends with a guy in the Perhentians who has done a decent amount of diving, who said he was on about his 175th dive!

P.P.P.S. Pictures!
Clown Fish.. aka "Nemo" This are easily my favorite fish so far, they juts hang out in the anemone and swim out to say "hi" or "get lost" when we came by.

Lets call this one a Trumpeter Fish. I think that's right even!

An aptly named Wife Fish.

A picture of a wreck we dove at. The visibility wasn't that great (meaning not many pictures) but it did create a great effect of the wreck emerging from a inky blue.

A school of Silver Bat Fish. I don't know if you can get the idea of them in the picture but at times there were so many they would block out an entire view, as in "I can't see anything to my left but Silver Bat Fish.

A moral eel. There were several of these we saw some were about 6 feet long and about as wide as my bicep (for those of you not so familiar with my physiology that's about as 5-6 inches across).


A banner fish.

A bunch of "Like to hide in crevices as a school fish." I think whoever named them was onto something.

This picture is actually three different schools of fish swimming into one another. Pretty cool but not as cool as the Black Tip Reef Shark that came out, ate one and swam away right after this!

A solitary batfish, a photo with part of the school of them is above.

P.P.P.P.S. Brad Nydam (if you read this) I think you'd really enjoy diving...

Thailand: Culture shock, ruins, and bacon on a stick.

Dear... well anyone who is reading this. Blogger has become a pain in my rear and has been adding HTML tabs that we haven't written and finding other ways to screw up our formatting, so if this doesn't look right please forgive us. Its meant to have its own little page and as much as I mumble against blogger and pray to God about it... it still looks screwy. So... please forgive any weird spacings or that the whole texts appears when only the first paragraph should. Maybe you should just click on the "read the rest" just for the experience of reading the post the way it was meant to be... maybe you could offer a sacrifice to appease the blogger god that we have somehow offended...
Thailand, THE destination of south east Asia and place that (to be honest) neither of us were that interested in. It has its appeal (and we certainly have enjoyed it so far) but it wasn't a place that we were looking at as a highlight for this trip. We went from the back roads and slow boats of Laos to the expressway that is Thailand and most of the time I kept thinking, "What are all these other people doing here?"


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We started our time in Thailand with the city of Chiang Mai, which was quite a culture shock after coming from Laos. In Laos life was slow, things felt local, and we got to know some people in our brief stay there, however once we arrived in Chiang Mai we weren't really sure what to do with being in such a large and comparatively western city. We saw several McDonalds and Starbucks on the streets and never once had to speak a word of Thai, because everyone approached us and spoke only in English. The whole experience was rather strange because it simply was such a sharp contrast to everything else we've experienced.

It wasn't that we didn't necessarily like it but just that it was an entirely different. We went from forging our own way and learning to speak the local language (how else do you pass time on a 15 hour train?) to being where we could take private mini-bus from guest house to guest house. It was just such a drastic change from what we had... and what we will have again. I think it was most weird because it felt like a different trip, people come to Thailand often in organized tours or to drink their brains out... neither of which were on our agenda and so the whole time I felt mild out of place.

From Chiang Mai we wanted to go out and see the Elephant Conservation Park (see post with the same name). But the actual fun of the whole thing was finally being able to do it ourselves and getting away from the well run backpacker circuit. We simply went to the bus station found a bus company and then showed them the words "Elephant Conservation" written in Thai and two hours later we were there... or more properly we were on the side of the road in front of the place. We knew that we could get dropped off outside of the center but the question we had is how to get picked back up. Everyone told us, "take bus, take bus. It just stop for you." I would normally respond with something witty like, "The buses just stop for you?" To which I was told, "Oh yes bus stop there all the time." Well, we ended up seeing the show and then just going back to the side of the road to wait, for an appropriate bus when it decided to rain. No big deal as there was a shelter not far away but while we were waiting in the shelter we realized that no one ever informed us which bus would stop. This meant that I got to go and wave at every bus that rambled past in hopes of stopping it, eventually succeeding... it took nearly an hour with many trips into the thunderstorm. Adding to this was that this particular bus is an "ordinary" bus, which means hard seats and no air conditioning... and no English! The woman told us our fair in Thai, we responded in Thai and oddly enough were quite happy with the experience, this is why we learn numbers after all...


I know its a little hard to see here but the bus on the left is the local bus and the bus on the right is the glorious long haul bus with AC. Hard to tell the difference in the picture but picture a greyhound and a school bus (with fans mounted on the ceiling)side by side.
After that our trip was easy enough as we headed to the ancient city of Sukhothai, one of the former Thai capitals. It was... well ruins. Pretty ruins of old buildings but still ruins all the same. Ruins are actually the most prominent thing that central Thailand is known for, I could go and give you a history lesson on Sukhothai but others can do it better... The park that contains most of the ruins is actually quite pretty one of the prettiest we've seen thus far and overall it was quite the fun day, we rented bicycles, saw a lot of old stones, and some quite large Buddhas. The town itself was lacking (nothing but a series of large concrete buildings) but they had some of the best street meat thus far. I've now found that I REALLY like things that look like big pieces of bacon, covered in satay, and roasted over a fire. I'd just call the stuff some form of pork, but it just has too much fat in it to be labeled anything that could even be perceived as healthy... still its good stuff.

My glorious rented bicycle, bell was included in the price even!

A big Buddha. Interesting way to frame the Buddha, as you see his face from a couple hundred yards off.

Me next to the hand of above-mentioned big Buddha.
Meg sitting in front of a Buddha... we've been working on our best Buddha statue imitations.

Meg's favorite temple in Sukhotai, it had carved elephants all over it. Personally, I think she's just become infatuated with elephants since we saw them.

My new favorite food (and best street meat). I'm still not sure what this is but man it is a good form of pork.

The next stop from Sukhothai was to head to another ransacked and abandoned capital, Ayuthaya. Ayuthaya is quite different from Sukhothai in that its located in the middle of a modern city, so there is the continual contrast between these ruins (many of which have been rebuilt) and the present urban sprawl. Whereas before we simply rented a bicycle and road around these green spaces, here we didn't dare for fear of getting run over by cars, motos, tuk-tuks, and anything else Thai's will attempt to drive (they aren't very good drivers). But the ruins themselves were quite cool, we saw the largest seated Buddha in Thailand, as well as some other ancient ruins.

Because everyone needs more big Buddhas... not the best picture but a pretty (and large) Buddha.


Why not have another big Buddha? There were actually several large reclining Buddhas in Ayuthaya but this was my favorite.

A line of Buddhas (or maybe disciples?) inside another temple.

Self Taken at another (beautifully restored) ruin at Ayuthaya. Isn't my wife cute?

From Ayuthaya we boarded the local train (more bench seats and open windows to keep you cool) for Bangkok to take a not-so-glorious tourist night bus all the way to Koh Tao. All in all Thailand has been good, though it has felt weird to back in the midst of things after working our way through more exotic parts of SE Asia. It feels good and I like that I can go find the Pizza Hut in Bangkok if I want and in the end we were able to do it ourselves and our own way (we were the only westerns we saw on any buses). I guess I was able to find some roads not as heavily run where we were able to find the experience we wanted, just like back home you just have to look for those roads that aren't always the most direct. easiest, or cheapest points between A and B. Thailand still feels like a highway to me but at least we were able to find our own way through the Thailand tourist through way.

p.s. thoughts on Koh Tao and diving to come, we want to wait till we are done to say what we think about the weird idea of breathing underwater.

The Elephant Conservation Park

This post was written especially for our neice and nephews, Ian, Kendra, Gavin and Lucas, but you might enjoy it too...

A few days ago, we were able to make a quick detour on our trip South through Thailand to the Elephant Conservation Park near Chiang Mai. It really wasn't much of a detour, as the park is off the main highway heading south, but it's often overlooked by tourists because tour offices offer "elephant shows" that are much easier to get to. A taxi was out of our budget, so we found a public bus and asked them to let us off at km37. We weren't sure if we'd actually make it, but after an hour or two we were dropped off next to some huge statues of elephants. We were able to spend a full morning with the elephants (the real ones, not the statues) before heading out to the road again to flag down the "ordinary" bus (I think ordinary means old with no AC) to continue on our way!

See photos of the elephants...


Chiang Mai and northern Thailand seem to have plenty of opportunity for tourists to see and ride elephants. However, we've read that many of these beautiful animals get mistreated and overworked by their owners in an effort to make more money. The Elephant Conservation Park still trains elephants for working traditional Thai jobs like moving logs and you can ride the elephants and such (some "rescue" places won't allow anything that isn't a natural part of an elephant's habitat including carrying humans), but at least they teach the mahouts or elephant trainers how to properly care for and respect the creatures they work with. They also take in elephants who have been mistreated and the park holds the world's only elephant hospital!

We arrived early enough to catch the morning bathing session. We were the only tourists in the park besides one Thai family. There were about 20 elephants around for the bath and the following show, but we saw plenty more around the park.

The mahouts, who apparently only wear blue, scrubbed down the elephants.

The elephants here are Asian elephants (as opposed to their cousin, the African elephant). Asian elephants have 5 toes on the front foot and 4 on the back. African only have 3 on the back feet. They also have smaller ears and fewer ribs. Usually, only the males have tusks.

The elephant is a beautiful and inspiring creature. They also have a very similar life cycle to humans, making them even more interesting. They tend to live to be between 60 and 80 and have babies in their mid-twenties. The herd will gather around a mother when she is giving birth to "help." A calf weighs about 220 lbs when it is born, and the gestation period for a baby, though, is 22 months!

Even this place had a show for visitors. After bathtime, the elephants lined up with these first ones holding a drum. The elephant in the center played the drum with a surprisingly steady rythmn.

Some elephants walked trunk to tail.

The "performance" basically showed off what the elephants could do. Some of the things were obviously for tourists, such as...

...raising a flag......putting a hat on a boy's head......painting (another elephant did a very pretty painting of flowers, but this one was new at it and just did whatever it wanted!)...

... but they also showed how elephants are traditionally used in Thai culture, in particular to push, pull, or carry heavy timbers through the jungle. The Thai king also has a certain number of Royal Elephants for special occasions. The Park has four of these.

After the show, we could feed the elephants bananas or sugar cane. They ate the entire thing, banana peel and sugar cane stalk and all! Their trunks were hard and leathery, with an upper lip that acted just like a finger to strongly grab what they wanted. Elephants are so big they have to eat and eat to maintain their body weight. Another interesting fact... they urinate about 1-1/2 gallons at a time!

While we're at it, kids, why not show you some of the other animals we've seen so far. The photos are small, but I think you can click on it to see it larger.

Cambodia-This monkey climbed up into the biggest temple at Angkor Wat and just wandered around for a while.

Cambodia- a friendly lizard

Vietnam- there are a lot more butterflies around here.

Laos- The animal we've seen the most, the water buffalo!

On a moto with Mr. Minh- these Vietnamese children were giving their cow a new greener hair style... the little girl was shy.

Laos- some rescued Asian black bears. They have big white moons on their chests.

Laos- this bug was bigger than my thumb. No idea what it is, but it was scary-looking!







Thailand- another butterfly at Ayuthaya.











Sapa, Vietnam- yup, that's a fat boar.

Sukhothai, Thailand- a herd of cows was just wandering around this old temple ruin

Ayuthaya, Thailand- this very big lizard actually hissed at Josh.

Ayuthaya, Thailand- Here's a bird photo for you, Ian. See if you can spot it!