Back to Neenah

[Monday Oct 29th]
After an exhausting commute around the planet we affectionately call Earth, I have made it back to Neenah. Thanks Tom for picking me up at the airport! So sleepy... Must stay awak sq;kjsbdlkqwc Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Japan and Yen

[Monday Oct 29th]
Well I made it to Japan, the flight was fast because I was zonked out the entire flight. I am flying on a new airline that I enever heard of before 'ANA'. So far so good. Now of it only had one more N...

Nothing too exciting going on here. I was walking around the airport looking for some shops to browse in. I found this really neat remote control plane in one of them. Its real small and meant to fly in doors. It was 4000 yen(￥) so I choked on that one. I thought to my self, "You better just keep shopping...". As I kept walking, I came across a vending machine. I hadn't found the lounge yet so I decided to check prices. Yikes, 120 yen(￥) for a Coke (which incidentally was in a very strange container)! That seems pricey. Well not having any yen on me I traveled on. I came across a money changer and gave him $5USD. In exchange I got 556 yen! I hit the jackpot, woot. So a yen is like a penny, I can handle that. Toy store, here I come ;)

Well off to the lounge to see if I can scrounge up a little food.
Take care everyone, I'll be back soon!

Happy Trails Penang

[Sunday Oct 28th]
Well this is it. My last day in Penang. (I know, I know, I need to update everyone on what I have done this past week but its been soo busy!) Hopefully I'll get a chance to post pictures and stories etc when I get back home.

Today I woke up at Jeff's place, ended up staying waaaay late... Also managed to get Jeff and I locked out on the ~21st floor balcony for about 30 minutes ;) Long story! I had a nice authentic McDs breakfast, thanks Jeff. Bruce and Angela treated me to one last Starbucks (mmm, Starbucks!) and some grub at TGIF... Hmmm, recurring theme here, think they are prepping me for getting back? Thanks guys! Mei Fong met me at the Penang Airport for one last stop at Nandos... Mmmm. Thanks!

Then the moment came, I left Penang. I met a professor from England (Cambridge) who specializes on the Placenta of all things. He's World renown for his research. His favorate, the cell that is the bridge from the mother and child. Amazing when you think about it. The child is 1/2 of the father. The body should reject it just like a transplanted organ from the father... But it doesn't. These cells are amazing. I'll leave it there but he got me interested!

Now I've made it to Singapore. In a few hours I depart Singapore for Tokyo, a few hours layover, then off to Chicago. I'll be back in Neenah around 11am on Monday.

Penang has been a fun, exciting, and rewarding expierence. I am glad I took the opportunity to live there. The people have been fastastic. More than willing to help, and also have shown me around. I really appreciate everyone who I've met and spent time with. The culture, the food, the enviroment has been great. So different than back home. It has really opened my eyes to new things and new thoughts.

South East Asia has been fun, some day I'll return and explore more. There is so much to see and do! Thus far its been great memories, great people, and great moments. And who can forget the 'engaging' experience!

Happy Trails Penang, until we meet again...
-Terry

Cantonese Movie

[Friday Oct 19th]
I went to go see a Cantonese movie Friday night. I thought it's be a fun and interesting thing to do. I've seen movies with subtitles before, but never in another country. Once we got in the theater, one of the people said that they didn't think the subtitles would be in English. Uh oh, thats no good for me. Usually the English movies are subtitled in Malay... This is in Cantonese, what will the Subtitles be in? I'm stuck, if they aren't in English, I commuted to the mall and didn't have a car to leave. It was 9pm so the mall would be closing too. Well I'm in for whatever comes! The previews weren;t subtitled, thats no good.

Finally the movie started and much to my relief, it had English subtitles! Whew! It had 3 different sets of subtitles! . The Movie was about some Brothers whose Dad was part of Hong Kong's business 'gangs'. It was actually quite good. The plot had some good twists and turns. The ending was a bit of a surprise but unfolded well.

There was scene in the movie that was actually *in* English. I didn't even realize that until the end of the scene and I was very surprised. I had been reading the subtitles the entire scene, d'oh! You get so used to the reading that it becomes subconscious, just like there was actually dialog you were hearing and understanding.

Anna Returns Home

[Friday Oct 19th]
Anna made it back to Neenah on her Thursday night. Her flight was delayed in Chicago. Does anything ever go through Chicago on time? ;) Debbie, who offered to pick Anna up from the Airport, was very nice and waited for Anna. Thanks Debbie!

Anna's Last Day

[Wednesday Oct 17th]
Well today's it. Anna's last day in Penang. We went to Kek Lok Si one last time, strolled through, its an impressive place. After that we drove to find the Reclining Buddha.

There are two Buddhist Temples here, right across the street from eachother. Both quite big and impressive. One of them has the 'World Famous' reclining Buddha, noted as the worlds largest reclining Buddha...

Also inside that temple are many other Buddha statues. We had our pictures taken if front of 'ours'. There was one for each Chinese Zodiac. Mine Being the Year of the Monkey and Anna the Year of the Ram/Goat/Sheep.

Not all the statues were simple or normal statues. There is a rare custom where certain individuals/monks, when they die, are placed into a large Egg-shaped capsule without any special treatment. After several years the capsule is opened and if the individual was pure, etc, they are preserved. A lengthly process is followed where the body is slowly repositioned. Then it is encased in layers of gold and becomes a statue. It is important to note that the individuals are not treated like mummies in Egypt, they are just put into one of these cases. I don't know what this is called so I can't point you to a reference...

We did a brief tour of both temples, brief because out time was running short. We started to head back to the apartment. I got lost driving, was fooled by signage. After some tense traffic, detours, unexpected site seeing, a deceptive map, and ending back up in Little India (this time in a ca, we finally made it back to a highway I knew. From there it was easy to make it back to the apartment. We ended up with plenty of time to finish packing, get prepared, and head to the airport.

We had dinner at Nando's at the airport and then Anna left to catch her plane.
Have a fun and safe trip, I Love you Anna!

War Musuem

[Tuesday Oct 16th]
Today we headed to the South East corner of the Island and visited the War Museum. The story of this place is interesting. They just found an old British base here around 2000. They've been cleaning it up, restoring it, and opened it as a musuem shortly there after. The grounds have been reclaimed quite nicely while keeping all the new forest growth present as well.

The British built a fort here in the 1930s. During WWII Penang was taken over by Japanese. Interestingly the day the Japanese attacked was December 8th 1941, the day after they attacked Pearl Harbor. Quite strange.

Alot of the commentary at the museum was dedicated to the WWII usage of the facility as a POW camp and of the atrocities that occurred there.

It was fun to walk around, walk through the underground bunkers and command centers. See the emergency escape routs. Walk where the huge guns used to sit (The British destroyed their armaments before giving up the Island). See the living quarters and cooking facilities. Read about how base life was before the war.

For you 'Lost' fans, you'll like this photo. Its looking down and escape hatch. Does it remind you of anything? It reminds us of 'The Hatch'. Makes us feel like John Locke...

Up and Around

[Monday Oct 15th]
Today's Adventure? Up the Northern Coast of the Island, through Batu Ferringhi, up around the North West corner, and back around circumnavigating the Island.

Our first stop was was Batu Ferringhi. Its a big tourist destination here on Penang. There are several hotels/resorts along the beach. On the beach there a are a bunch of operators with Jet-Ski, ATV, and Horse rentals. They also have parasailing. We opted out of these. I've seen a few too many parasailing crashes on the beach, and we all know how I faired the last time I had a parachute strapped to me ;) BTW, this is the place where they have the Batu Ferringhi night market, that's the 1km long market that we strolled through last week.

We pushed onward and made it to the Butterfly Park. This park is great. Its an enclosed area, like an aviary. There are thousands of butterflies just flying about. Tons of different species. When we first got there a bunch really mist have liked Anna's pink shirt. They swarmed her. After the first little bit though, they left her alone. They had several paths go go down and just be with the butterflies. There were little stand out where they had placed fruit or flowers for food for the butterflies. Seeing so many was just staggering.

Butterflies weren't the only things they had there. They had a pit of scorpions. They sure look ugly and nasty in person. Stay clear of these guys. They has some huge millipedes, nearly a foot long, yeech, no thanks! There was a big lizard, he was pretty cool. It was basically a big Iguana. He was right near the exotic bugs.

They had a few plants sitting out, you could walk right up and touch them if you wanted. They had them out because you could have a close encounter with some the the strangest bugs on the planet. These huge bugs have adapted to conceal themselves. Some as leaves, some as sticks, sum and I don't even know what. They're hard to spot at first because they are so well concealed. After you see them you don't know how you could have missed them. They are huge!

They had a pond, a waterfall, a bunch of overgrown Koi, and some ducks too. Now the ducks were amazingly beautiful. They were Mandarin Ducks, related to the Woodland Ducks of North American. These ducks has do much color, looked very ornate. Wisconsin should get some ;)

After or Butterfly tour, we headed to Taman Negara. Thats the national park on Penang, with the Trail to Monek Beach (remember the Monkey in the Coconut Mask?). We strolled around there, and walked out onto the Docks.

We hit the road and drove through the back country around the Western side of the Island. Most of the driver is through the mountains, winding narrow roads with great views. Very little of that part of the Island is inhabited.

Grandpa, you'll like this story ;) Near the end of our journey, we thought we'd take a detour and try and find an old fishing village. One of the old villages on stilts. We saw a green sign with Yellow lettering and thought that maybe it'd lead us there. Silly us. After about 20 minutes, getting off the main road. The road getting narrower. Parts of the road washed out, falling down to the sea below. There were a lot of 'AWAS' signs. Awas means Caution in Malay... We couldn't read the rest so we had no idea what to be cautious about. So we just kept going, naturally ;) I joked that we were probably on a road to some secret military base... We came to the end of the road. It was a gated end too. We stopped. At first we turned around but then we went back to see what we had discovered. I walked up to and through the gate. My glasses were fully fogged. I could hardly see. Before I knew it I was standing within a few feet of 3 guys just sitting around. I asked where we were and they were baffled. "What do you mean" they said. I said, "are we at a town, a village, what?". "You want town?" they asked. "No, we want to know where we are." He said a training facility... Hmm I though, what kind? So I asked. He said a Military training facility. With that, we left. It was just like several times with Grandpa, we'd drive up to a military base, such as Fort Knox, with the motor home. We'd get let in past the gates because we couldn't turn around and got to go in the base ;)

We made it back around the island and back to the apartment. No Military escort required ;)

Fish - Head and all

[Sunday Oct 14th]
Today we chilled at the Mall for a while. Chill is right, its got to be 65 degrees or less in there! Burr! As we were shopping around, we had to get a picture of Dave's Deli for Dave. Always an option Dave, if it works here in Malaysia, why not back home? ;)

The highlight of the day was actually the evening. We went out to dinner with Mei Fong and Mei Ying. They took us to Peninsular Malaysia to a Hawker like seafood place out in the middle of nowhere. Strangely on the way we passed a large stadium, on the scale of Camp Randall, that didn't really have any use! How strange. We kept driving and made it to our destination.

We've got a bunch of food pictures for ya! First off was drinks. Somehow without knowing it I was the only one who didn't get coconut! Not that you'd believe it in the picture but thats Watermelon Juice, and no its not Bitter. In front of us is Fried Calamari (Squid). Mmm, thats good stuff? What isn't good fried anyway?

MF and MY had ordered for us so we weren't sure what all was coming or how much. To us it was course after course, a never ending stream of food! After our Calamari we had the full fish... head, tail, fins, skin, and everything... That was really good. Just slide the meat right off the fish, oh so tender! That's not all, they had us try the fish cheeks too. They plopped them right out of the fish's face and yum, they were excellent. Who would have thought?

Next course? Crab! Mmm, Crab. Anna wasn't a fan but the rest of us were. The crab came with these Pink and white buns, they were great. Anna thought they were the best part of the meal!

Ahh, then came the clams. I'm not a clam fan unless they're fried, go figure. Anna though. She braved through the clams. I had to take some pictures of the event. Just look at those expressions! Priceless! I bet you wouldn't believe she just kept eating them 'eh?

Well we have a few more dishes (veggies, Rice, etc) and dinner was done. Not before Anna had some local cookie type thingy. Funny how they look just like a hat ;)

Turns out it was close to MF's B-Day so we got together at her place and had a cake. MF's Brother picked it up, apparently had a vendetta against Anna. We affectionately called the cake 'Anna Death Cake'. It was a cheesecake with several types of nuts and Apple pieces, yikes! Needless to say, Anna did without! That didn't stop us from have a great time chatting, laughing, having a good time.

'Engaging'

We hope everyone had fun with the clues and hints, and the hidden fingers ;) Here it is, spilling the beans. Terry and Anna are engaged. Terry asked Anna the night before we left Singapore... Here's Anna showing off her ring while pointing at our full-fish dinner.

'BOH' Knows

[Saturday Oct 13th]
On to the Cameron Highlands we go. Why go there, whats the draw? Its famous for its Tea Plantations and beautiful scenery. Its up in the mountains, and they've been growing Tea here for quite a long time. People also like visiting here because its is much cooler than the rest of Malaysia (Funny how even though hot air rises, high altitudes are cooler...).

Its quite a drive, a great drive. It mountainous, with curves and bends. The best kind of lazy, just out for a drive, sort of drive. We didn't really have an agenda, just go and see the country side and tour a tea factory. Take a rest from the heat.

We pulled into the 'BOH' Tea Factory. Wow, what an amazing place that is. You drive in on this basically single lane road. Long, steep, and winding. All around you are 'fields' of Tea plants. The pattern on the mountainside is amazing. Pseudo-random growth, like a mosaic. Still orderly and 'row' like too. It looks like groomed chaos.

Before stopping here I never knew what tea 'trees' looked like before. They're pruned and trimmed all the time. It stunts their growth to more like a bush than a tree. It also makes them form a 'bend' of leaves for harvesting. They grow them up the wildest of slopes and need to go and pluck them all. Just imagine the work involved, still quite labor intensive! If they do it right they can have a single plant produce for up to 150 years.

After harvesting they get all the leaves and they head to the on site factory. On our tour we got to see the process. First is the drying, like baking the leaves. Then comes the rolling of the leaves for 45+ minutes. It softens the leaves and releases the juices. After that they let the leaves ferment, its on the order of an hour. Finally they sort the leaves from the twigs. Then, off to the flavoring station. Each of their factories ships its locally processed leaves to a central station for flavoring, such as peppermint, etc.

Pretty neat, I haven't been the biggest fan of Tea in my life but I'm coming around... Maybe, just maybe it'll take hold. Until then I'll remember the gorgeous vistas and the fun drive! Though the drive out that single lane road, ouch. Try to fit 20 cars going up and 20 cars going down, meeting on a single lane road climbing a mountain side. It got a bit hairy ;)

Kuala Lumpur

[Friday Oct 12th]
We decided to hit the road and driver to Kuala Lumpur (KL). Its a good 4 hours drive to the Capital. Along the way we stopped at a few Rest Areas, these things are massive! They have restaurants, gas stations, bathrooms, shops, fruits stands, prayer areas, the whole nine yards!

Before long we made it to the outskirts of the City. Getting there was easy, getting anywhere in particular in the city... not so easy... There were a complex set of turns and exits to make. We didn't make them ;) Signage, heh, yeah right... We pulled off into a gas station parking lot and believe it or not we were able to find ourselves on the map. Luckily the map we had showed some key landmarks such as McDonalds and Gas Stations ;) We figured out where we were, where the towers were and basically zig-zagged our way downtown.

Traffic was real good until we got close, then, a whole new ball game. Imagine cars, bicycles, motor bikes, pedestrians, buses all forcing themselves down the street, less than inches from each other. All cramming and vying for position. After too many close calls, we made it through.

Some how, not sure how, we made it to the KL Tower. It was huge! One of the tallest in the world. We rode up to the top. Great views of the city. We could see it all, the KL Towers, all the landmarks, everything. Hard to believe nothing was here 150 years ago!

After going through our audio tour and taking in the sights, we headed back down. From there we drove a few blocks down the way and found some parking, surprisingly easy actually. We were just one block away from the KL Towers. The tallest Twin Towers on the planet (not the large disclaimer...). They are quite nice, they look like they are out of a 1930's futuristic movie. At night they are even better. No wonder the famous scene from Entrapment was filmed here! At the base of them is a mall (KLCC), a nice park, fairly large fountains too. The fountain was a real fountain too, not the spray nozzle in Singapore. These jets were great, they send a controlled burst of water up, it'd all coalesce together in mid-air, and fall back.

Unfortunately due to the Holday (Hari Raya), the 'bridge' tour of the KL towers was closed. Oh well. We went shopping at the KLCC instead. It was a pretty good an sizable mall. Two notable things occurred. First we bought a significant personal item, more on that later I'm sure, second we witnessed a theft. A little back story, we were approached a couple of times while we were outside enjoying our Starbucks whether we wanted to purchase a Rolex, "Hey Boss, Rolex?". We didn't bite. Later while shopping, we saw a guy run out of a Rolex store and bolt. A clerk went running after him. Everyone was pointing as he fled the scene. Jumping a head a little bit, the next day when we were listening to the radio, we heard a news story about the event. A guy stole a Rolex worth 26000RM, was chased by security, and shot a security officer! How crazy is that?

After we were done shopping, making our purchase, and viewing the sights we decided to start heading back to Penang. It was already dark and decided there was nothing else we really wanted to see in KL the next day anyway. Here marks the start of our long venture back.

We decided that we wanted to go to the Cameron Highlands the next day so we were hoping to find a Hotel on the way back. Not an easy thing to do apparently. It was raining, and dark. We stopped and got gas at a rest area. The gas attendant said there were a bunch of hotels at the next town. We took the exit. As we drove threw town and saw the hotels downtown, we both said No, not happening... They looked quite run down and, erm, grimy. We kept driving. Surely we'd find a hotel out of town somewhere. Soon it was raining harder, the road was narrower, the windows fogged up. We didn't have a defroster in the car. Down came the windows in the rain to help defog the windshield. Not much luck. Lots of houses that sorta look like motels along the road. No sign or placards. We kept driving and driving. More off the beaten path every minute. What should we do?

We need to get some sleep, its almost midnight. The bathroom is urgently needed. Ugh, middle of nowhere Malaysia. Just when it seemed like nothing was coming up, a small sign for a 'Grand' hotel appears. We take the turn. Seems like a false hope. Then wham, there it is. It looks very posh. This place has to be a few hundred US a night. I go and check availability. Whew, a room was available tonight, all booked the next night. I get the room. A mere 165RM a night (~$48US). The room was quite amazing, especially given the price. Ahh, time to get some Zzzzs.

Georgetown

[Thursday Oct 11th]
Today we ventured up to Georgetown. We started near Fort Cornwallis. History buffs may recognize that name from a different country that also has 13 stripes for 13 states... Anyway we saw the famous Penang Clock Tower (dedicated to Queen Elizabeth) and the goofy 'Egg' fountain.

Our handy-dandy Lonely Planet had a couple of Antique Shoppes listed so we went on a tour to go find them. Our hunt took us through the heart of Little India. What an experience that was! Loud Indian music playing throughout the area, tons of cars zooming through the streets, and us strolling down the road in absence of sidewalks. It was fun checking out the shops. In one Terry knocked over a large concrete statue right on top a ornate wooden statue! Yikes, we thought we had a newly acquired piece! Fortunately only minor damage was done and the shop let us go.

We found our antique shops, very much like the ones back home. One guy showed me a little small container. He didn't speak English. I asked him what it was as he made some hand gesture as if he opened the container, put its contents on his extended index finger, raised the finger to his nose and sniffed... My best guess, and old Opium container... Needless to say, we didn't purchase it ;)

We continued on our walk and stopped at a Indian Hawker and just had some Cokes and poori, mmm, Poori.

Near the end our our tour we walked past some of the government buildings. They are old colonial buildings and look pretty impressive at dusk.

Around the corner we saw a Bas Sekolah, Bas meaning Bus, Sekolah mean school. I've been meaning to get a picture of one of these for a while, so here it is!

Tour De Jour

[Wednesday Oct 10th]
Today we headed out to get a little lost while driving. Ok, not our objective but we knew it'd happen! We found our way though and headed for Kek Lok Si. It's a huge Buddhist Temple, it was started in the late 1800s. They are under constant construction and expansion. Their current large scale project is a statue of Kuan Tin. The Bronze statue is the largest of its kind in the world. They are building a huge pillared roof around it to protect the statue from the elements. We donated to the cause and bought a roof tile with our names on it.

Up at the highest level of the ground lies the huge statue, a small temple with a massive Buddha Figure, and a Koa pond with with a fabulous Asian Gazebo at its center.

On the second level of the grounds is the largest part of the temple. The biggest structure you see there is an authentic Pagoda. In the picture it's the large white one in the background. We got to take the stairs all the way to the top! We've been in a Pagoda ;) Along the way though we walked through many small shrine areas. One had dozens and dozens of Buddha statues lined up. Our picture just doesn't do it justice.

The new and main temple room is magnificently carved out of stone. It really gives a new meaning to relief carving! We will have to show you all the pictures we took of this room. They had about 6 beautifully carved wooden Buddhas, ornately carved stone pillars, just spectacular.

On our way out of Kek Lok Si we walked by a huge rock with lots of inscriptions carved into it. We have no idea what it says or what its significance was but it sure is impressive!

After we finished touring Kek Lok Si we had a quick bite to eat. Anna got to try Char Koay Teow, my favorite Malaysian Dish. She really liked it.

We headed to the Botanical Gardens. Terry really likes that place. Why? The Monkeys! On this fateful visit however, the Monkey encounter was a little more, um, exciting... We bought some Ice Cream cones. Mint Chocolate Chip (We passed on the Cream Corn and Yam flavors...) We took our newly minted ice cream and walked to the gardens. As we were crossing the street to enter the park a Monkey got keenly interested in us. We spotted him. He scurried down the fence post he was perched on and started running full boar toward us. Anna was a little bit ahead of Terry. Terry, in defense, whipped his ice cream at the Monkey to stop its charge. Whew, an episode of 'When Animals Attack' has been averted ;)

We backed off to a much safer place, the locals gave a chuckle and thought we were funny. Soon enough we were ready to brave the wilds and head back in. The scenery there is awesome, the trails fantastic. We spotted a large bug, turns out to be a massive ant. One of the largest Ant species in the world! That's Anna's foot next to the Ant, it huge!

After our stroll, we decided to cool off with a Coconut drink. Mmmm, fresh chilled coconut straight out of the coconut! This one seemed like the bottomless coconut! It was like the Energizer Bunny, it just kept going and going and going...

After the rest of our day we stopped at a place at Gurnee Plaza for supper. We spotted that they had Anna's Sticky Rice with Mango... So we had to stop and try their food. It was quite good. Anna had a dish with hand made noodles, fantastic. It also has the longest carrot strings ever, just look at that! Its a carrot!