Exfoliating Experience in Kuala Lumpur

After an amazing experience in Cambodia with beautiful people, good food, extraordinary sights and a rich history we were wondering how our next destination, Malaysia, would stack up.

At the end of the day, it turns out Malaysia does not stack up. Kuala Lumpur is a relatively generic city that is difficult to walk around, lacks overly interesting sights, with a generally less than pleasant smell. Also, as a woman I was dismayed to see the treatment of women in the Islamic country. During our two days in the city I was pushed aside, ignored, and looked at like a harlot for not covering my head and entire body (despite the 95 degree+ temperatures!!) Our experience in Malaysia caused me to question the line between respecting the culture of another country and feeling appalled at their sense of equality and tolerance.

That said, we did try out one pretty cool experience in Kuala Lumpur. . .



Tom and I tried out a "Fish Spa"-- a new spa treatment taking Asia by storm. I'll admit, the first few minutes of allowing fish to eat the dead skin off your feet and legs is utterly bizarre and elicits squeals and squeamish noises from even the burliest of men (including Tom!) Once you accept that your dermis is dinner for hundreds of fish, it actually feels pretty amazing. After 30 minutes in the "fish spa" my feet have never felt so smooth!!!


I've heard rumors that Alexandria really opened a fish spa, I highly recommend it!!

Wat's Up? . . . Angkor Wat!

After our hair-raising bus ride into Cambodia, we arrived in the charming town of Siem Reap. After hours and hours on a dirt road through rice paddies, we were pleasantly surprised to find that Siem Reap is a town filled with nice restaurants, open markets, museums, world class hotels, hot air balloon rides and more to see and do than we could possibly have time for in our three days in town.

The reason the town is so developed is the millions of tourists that come from around the world to visit the ancient Khmer temples of Angkor Wat. These temples were created over a few hundred years from about 800AD to 1200AD by various kings of the Khmer Empire, which stretched across SE Asia before its collapse. Many claim these temples were lost and only recently discovered in the 1800s by a French explorer, Henri Mouhout, but the Cambodians would strongly disagree that they never "lost" hundreds of acres of ancient sacred Hindu and Buddhist temples and monuments, they always knew it was here.

With the help of Lucky, our fearless Tuk Tuk driver we spent the first day diligently touring as many temples (including the one used to film Lara Croft Tomb Raider!) as our legs and feet could handle before heading back for a nice dinner in town.

The following morning we did as every guide book and friend has told us we must, and awoke at 4:30 to make the trek to see the sunrise over the temple of Angkor Wat. This experience has been described to us as "soul-inspiring," "transcendent" and "a spiritual experience." We stood on the grounds of the temple from 5am-6:30am with hundreds of other tourists hoping for the same life-changing experience, cameras ready to capture every breath-taking moment.

We waited... and waited....

90 minutes later it was a little lighter out, but no blaze of blinding light, no moment of indescribable beauty, just haze and clouds covering the gray sky.

We walked back to our tuk-tuk worried about what we would say to Lucky about the experience, after he woke up so early to drive us and clearly wanted us to love it. Lucky, however, said it best as soon as he saw us, "the sun did not rise today."


It turns out, Lucky informed us, a typhoon was in the process of pummeling the Philippines, the effects of which we felt a few minutes later when the heavens opened up and it began to pour. We bought matching ponchos and gave it our best effort to continue touring the temples, but eventually gave in and decided it would be much more pleasant to return to town and eat pizza in an Italian cafe :-)

Crossing the Border

Time: Monday afternoon
Setting: Bangkok travel agency:
Tom: "So you're saying for 600 Baht ($18USD) we'll get two seats on an air conditioned bus that will take us to the border, a guide through the Cambodian border, and an air conditioned bus to meet us on the other side and drive us straight to the city center of Siem Reap?"
Travel Agent: "Oh yes, absolutely. It will be easy!"
Tom: "okay..."

Time: Tuesday afternoon
Setting: Cambodian border
After picking up the bus at 6:30am in Bangkok and arriving at the border by 11:30, we were in high spirits about how easy the whole experience had turned out to be. A quick trip through immigration, hop on the next bus and off we would go.

It was not meant to be.

It took us about thirty minutes to cross on foot through the shady no-man's land between the borders of the two countries. No man's land is a seemingly lawless place filled with casinos, vendors hawking any oddity you could imagine and sadly, droves of children clad in rags begging for anything we could spare--money, goods or even leftover bottled water. We were very relieved we managed to make it through immigration with our passport and all our belongings still in hand.

On the other side the situation was truly third-world. It is believed that a certain airline that has a monopoly on flights from Bangkok to Siem Reap is paying the Cambodian government not to finish paving the only road. The result is a 'road' of red earth, which in the rainy season (which it is now) turns to a soupy mud pit. Thanks to a little yellow sticker on our shirts provided to us by our travel agents, we were ushered through the muck to a dingy bus station office and told to wait in plastic orange chairs for the 'government bus' which might come at 2:00 and might come at 4:00, no one really knew.

After an hour or two we gave up asking how much longer it would be until the bus arrived because the answer was always the same "ten minutes, ten minutes, almost here." Hours later the famous bus finally arrived, and we could only laugh. No, the thirty year old jalopy was not the nice air-conditioned bus waiting for us on the other side we'd been promised, but at that point we would have gotten on anything for the chance of getting to Siem Reap in time to find a place to stay for the evening.

The bus rattled on through the mud for hours with a picturesque view of Cambodian rice paddies as far as the eye could see. After three hours we began to wonder where this bus was actually going, we had not heard or seen anything promising for a few hours and the sun was going down quickly (no street lamps, needless to say...)

Finally we stopped for a late dinner break and we got the chance to ask the driver what was going on-- where would this 'government bus' drop us off? Our fearless leader looked a little shifty as he explained, no this was not a government bus and he wasn't sure where we had gotten that idea, this was his personal bus and would be taking us to his private guesthouse to stay for the night.

At this point it's pitch black out, we have no cell phones, we're on a muddy dirt road in the middle of rural Cambodian on a decrepit bus headed for a destination yet to be determined.

And I guess that's where faith comes in.

We held on to our pillows and sat in the dark and let the hours pass until thankfully, blessed signs of civilization appeared on the horizon. We were, in fact, driving into Siem Reap!!!

Yes, the bus did drop us off at a random guesthouse in a back alley, but thankfully there were at least two dozen tuk tuk drivers just waiting to whisk us off into the night. The one we found, or at least the most persistent, was named "Lucky."

After a long and somewhat taxing day, it was relieving to sit on his little open-air three wheeled vehicle and let Lucky take us to a lovely place with a well-decorated private room and bathroom, a balcony, a free welcome joint Khmer full-body massage, free Internet and bottled water, a pool table and charming cafe...all for $15USD a night :-)

A truly surreal day--- next time, a post on the amazing ancient temples of Angkor Wat and our exfoliating experience at a fish spa in Kuala Lumpur.

Tigers and Elephants and Wild Boars, Oh My!

Ever ridden an elephant through tropical Thai jungle? Check. Petted a Tiger cared for by Buddhist monks? Check. Stroked a water buffalo as it defecated near your feet, splattering on your legs? Unfortunately, check (could this be Karma? See our airport story). Anyhow, these are just a few of the many things that we were able to scratch off of our list of "things to do before we die." Amazing.

The day began with a tour of the World War II memorial located about 2 hours west of Bangkok. Having seen a number of World War II memorials between the two of us, we were particularly interested in this one because it focused on Japan, not Germany. Apparently, in an attempt to take India in its advance west, the Japanese interned thousands of allied troops to construct a railroad from Thailand, then Siam, to Burma in order to transport the necessary troops and supplies to the Indian border.

Another interesting aspect of the WWII museum (called the JEATH museum--Japanese, English, Australian, Thailand, and Holland . . . no love for the U.S., despite the loss of hundreds of American lives building the railroad) was its placement directly on the River Kwai, apparently a very famous movie about the Japanese' internment of allied troops. Some of you may have seen it; for us, seeing the actual train tracks constructed through the backbreaking labor of 20th century slaves was quite impactful.

From the WWII museum, we moved on to the above-mentioned elephant ride through the Thai jungle. While this may seem extremely cool--it did to us--it actually ended up feeling conflicted; the ride was entertaining but we couldn't tell if the handlers treated the elephants humanely. Some of the elephants appeared to bear traces of continued beating on their foreheads by the elephant riding version of a spur--a large hook-like club that the handlers used to steer the elephants. It wasn't a pretty sight and kind of undermined our enjoyment of the trip. Feeling sorry for the elephants after our short ride, we bought them bananas to feed; they seemed to like that part quite a bit!

After that experience, we moved on to a river rafting adventure down the River Kwai on bamboo rafts. Margaret was again very nervous that things would somehow go horribly wrong and we'd end up floating sideways into a bridge. Well, we did end up floating sideways, but it was all part of the plan. To be fair, though, it did begin violently storming as we had to cross the most rickety and unsturdy suspension bridge we'd ever seen. It truly was straight out of Indiana Jones; we half expected a boulder to come rolling down behind us at any minute. Needless to say, we made it across unscathed.


Finally, and very much most excitingly, we trekked (i.e., rode in an air-conditioned bus) onward to the Tiger Temple, where Buddhist monks have dedicated themselves to tiger preservation and consciousness. We were pretty calm about knowing we were about to pet tigers, thinking that the monks do this all the time and it must be safe, until we bought our tickets. Before we could enter, we all had to sign our lives away--literally. The tickets made very clear that we were about to enter an enclosure with "untamed wild animals" and that the monks were not in any way liable for any harm that may befall us. We overcame our jitters, however; it turned out to be one of the most amazing things either of us had ever done. We each stroked a variety of tigers from very large ones to little kittens. Of course, the pictures we've attached explain our experience better than words ever could. Simply amazing!

Observations on Thailand

1.) Olympic Coverage: Bandminton, Synchronized diving, table tennis, weightlifting, and soccer. These are the sports Thais care about. Not gymnastics, not swimming, not even basketball and Team USA. I realize that perhaps focusing on Team USA's basketball prowess may be a bit Amero-centric, but it may be the best team to have ever stepped foot on the parquet. That, compared to watching a couple of portly Chinese men slap ping pong balls back and forth, albeit incredibly well, seems far and away more interesting.

There is one channel in all of Thailand that covers the Olympics, and it makes us envious of all those who enjoy the work of NBC. We took for granted the helpful tables and charts explaining scoring and ranking information. We have now seen hours of men and women weight lifting and we are no closer to deciphering what constitutes winning and losing. Here, coverage breaks at random for events such as a two hour ceremony to celebrate the birthday of the Queen, a fascinating look at golden artifacts in an obscure museum, or just local news and weather. One advantage the Thais do have over U.S. coverage, however, is a catchy jingle every few minutes that involves children singing "Beijing, Beijing, ohhh Beijing." We wish we could tape record it.

2.) Food: Neither Tom nor I have ever eaten so much Carbonara or pizza in our lives. Yes, the Thai food is good-- there is pad thai and green curry to be found on every street, but the Italian food is excellent. Apparently there are a number of Italian ex-pats living all over Thailand who decided to come and open restaurants. Today we ate lunch and dinner at the same little place down a back alley recommended to us by a British ex-pat working at a local travel agency. The decor is classic--a few small tables and plastic chairs on a patio situated around a large Banyan tree, and the food is outrageously delicious, all for about $12 for our entire bill.

3.) Internet: American naysayers are quick to note that telecommunications in the United States are years behind that of our Asian counterparts. American internet connections are, they say, much slower than in Asia. Not true; at least not in Thailand's capital city. The internet connections here are painfully slow; so slow that we spend thirty minutes online merely to upload ten of the pictures we've taken around the city. We're looking forward to finding this "telecommunications gap" in Hong Kong because maybe then we can actually find an adequate connection.

4.) Khao San Road: In the middle of Bangkok lies a place that is an extraordinary mixture of Mardi Gras and Adams Morgan. One strip of road offers anything and everything, including: fried grasshoppers and beetles, "ladyboys" , bars, restaurants, $1 pad thai, women dressed in sequins and costumes (supposedly traditional garb) selling oddities, fake IDs and diplomas made on the spot, a stall that will upload any movie or song to your iPod for you for a pittance, and most distressingly, a host of young men plopping their tongues and lips, offering to take us to a 'ping pong show.' (We don't know what this is and we never want to find out.)


5.) James Blunt: James Blunt appears to be the most popular person in all of Thailand, far surpassing the highly revered King and Queen, international sports stars, and A-list celebrities. For reasons that neither Tom nor I can begin to understand, he can be heard crooning "You're beautiful, it's true!" from nearly every bar and food stall in all of Thailand, from the islands of the south to the metropolis of Bangkok.

By Popular Demand: The Tale of the Airport, Alcohol, and one unfortunate Muslim Woman.

The day that we left D.C. for Singapore, we planned to arrive at Dulles 2 hours early. We wanted to leave plenty of time to get checked in, pass through security, and grab a coffee. Needless to say, when we arrive and looked at the line to get checked in we grew concerned. It seemed to worm its way back and forth endlessly from the counter all the way to the wall opposite the counter. We sat in line for a long time as the utterly understaffed United employees watched the lines grow as they slowly checked the baggage in and surely, although I didn't see this, took the requisite union-demanded coffee breaks. Gotta love it.

Anyhow, by the time we were through that line we moved to the next line where we had to drop our checked baggage off to go through security. Apparently, having just the one long line was too efficient. Finally, having checked our bags and entered them through security, we proceeded on a brisk walk around the corner to enter the third line, for security.

In the mad dash to remove all metal objects, take laptops out, remove shoes, remove belts, keep track of the wallet on the security belt, consolidate all 3 ounce liquids in the plastic baggy, and put everything nicely in those plastic tubs, Tom forgot something. He pulled out his Swiss Army Knife, which he intended to have for whatever southeast Asia might throw at him. In case you were wondering, post 9-11 airport security does not like people bringing knives on planes. That said, they were very nice about it and Tom ran off to the side to mail it home.

Watching the clock tick along, Margaret and Tom were becoming a bit more frantic as the mail machine did not recognize Tom's home address in New Hampshire. The knife was eventually successfully mailed, but time was running out. Reentering the security line, Tom tried to quickly arrange his things to go through the x-ray machine, and then it happened. As he swung his bag around, forgetting the pocket was open, the nip of Grey Goose neatly tucked away to ease Margaret's nerves on the plane launched into the air. Crash! Tom was startled and didn't even realize what just happened. Then, the smell wafted into the air. A woman, covered from head to toe in black turned to face him with the look of the Dickens in her eye. Alcohol, Alcohol, Alcohol! Ahh! Tom looked down and saw the woman's now-exposed feet sopping with delicious grey goose.

Heads all throughout security were turning to Tom and this disgruntled and slightly damp woman. Thinking quickly, and remembering that the Goose was sweetly flavored, Tom started yelling, "No, no, no. Perfume. Perfume!" A security guard came by and took an exaggerated sniff. For an instant, time stood still as the guard's nostril's flared. It seemed as if the moment stretched into minutes as the security-judge deliberated. "It's perfume," the security judge declared, just perfume. "Thank God! Tom thought. Then we--the knife-wielding, alcohol slinging pair of Wasps--brisked to the front of the line, past a forty-something Middle-Eastern-appearing man in khakis and a tucked in polo with two very American daughters in tow who was presenting a Virginia drivers license to two very skeptical security guards. Already, the trip had shown us some frustration, some adventure, a little bit of perspective on life.

Leaving Ko Phi Phi :-(

For our final day in Ko Phi Phi we had a lazy day of sitting on the beach reading a book and then taking a Thai cooking course. Our teacher was a very cute little Thai woman who thought Tom was a giant because he was the first person to hit his head on the hood above the stove. She also thought I was pregnant because I kept adding extra sugar to all the dishes (really it was to mask the fish oil.) I tried not to take it personally, the tiny little Thai chef ladies at least said I was a beautiful pregnant woman.

After six great days in the island paradise, we're on our way up to Bangkok. This morning we took the ferry from Ko Phi Phi to Phuket, (much nicer this direction on a sunny day than it was going to the island the rain.) Not much to say about Phuket, so far I've noticed nothing but some awful smelling food stands, a few dive shops, many questionable "massage" parlors, and most comically, at least a dozen karaoke booths and clubs.

Given that it's raining, our plan this afternoon is to go to the movie theater and watch the only film showing in English in town, the Mummy 3!!! (For anyone who missed the preview for this during The Dark Knight, it definitely could be Brendan Fraser's best work.) Thankfully, we are on an 8am flight to Bangkok tomorrow morning :-)

Monkey Beach

(by Margaret:) Things in Ko Phi Phi continue to go well. The weather is great and there is a lot to do. Yesterday we went on a hike through some trails to a beach on the other side of the island called Long Beach. Then we hired a long-tailed boat to ferry us back to our beach. At sunset we sat out at a beach bar drinking Singhas. This was the first night there weren't clouds obstructing our view of the show and it was breath-taking to watch the colors in the sky change from orange to red to colors I don't think I've seen before. We took a lot of pictures, but I don't think my poor little hot pink camera did all that great a job capturing it. For the record, we keep trying to upload pictures, but the network connections here are so slow we can only add a few each time we go to an Internet cafe.

Today we decided to rent a kayak and snorkels (for the handsome price of $6 for the day!) and go around the edge of the island to a place known as "Monkey Beach." I recognize that it sounds cool, but Monkey Beach is a really messed up place; it's pretty much PETA and WWF's worst nightmare. Having heard good things from people staying near us we thought it would be fun to check it out. We kayaked over and left our boat in the sand while we swam out to snorkel around the coral.

At first it seemed really cool, lots of monkeys and baby monkeys just hanging out on the beach a few feet away from us. Then these boats on tourist trips showed up and it got crazy. These two little boys with parents I could have killed started messing with the monkeys (poking them with sticks, throwing small rocks) and the big alpha monkey flipped and attacked the boy, clawing and scratching at his face. I was freaking out and definitely permanently emotionally scarred, the boy's Dad laughed it off and let him keep doing it. Then one group of Japanese tourists started throwing bananas at the monkeys and they all just went crazy. Dozens of crazy freaked out monkeys everywhere, running all over our kayak and stuff on the beach, Tom was fighting them off with one of the kayak oars while I ran away and watched from the water. I wish I had pictures of this, but one of the monkeys was clawing at the bag with the camera in it and there was no way I was going near them in their frenzy to get it. As soon as we saw an opening in the chaos, we kayaked the hell out of Monkey beach. I will never visit the monkey exhibit at the zoo again, those little guys are fierce.

Note: the picture left is of the idiot boy, minutes before he was mauled by an angry monkey. The next picture, you'll have to look closely is of some of the monkeys in the woods before they got mad and stormed the beach. The final picture is one of my favorites of the sunset.

"Sweet Room"

After a long journey, we are finally in the "chill out time" of our trip. If you're wondering why I am using terms like "sweet room" and "chill out time," it's because they are just a couple of the funny translations and advertisements we've seen so far.

As the plane descended into Singapore, the captain announced the date. It came as a surprise to us that an entire extra day had passed; we forgot to account for the fact that we had travelled twelve hours into the future! So, that night in the hostel we had booked for August 6th wasn't all that helpful. Thankfully, though, they didn't end up charging us for the room that night. The missed night did mean, however, that we had to leave Singapore the day after we got there . . . at 5:00 AM. Lots of travel.

We arrived in Phuket, Thailand yesterday at around 10 AM and took a bus directly to the pier where we waited for the next 3 hours for our ferry to Ko phi phi, the most beautiful beach either of us had ever been to. There is a narrow strip of land with pristine beach on either side connecting a wall of palm-covered mountains that protect the calm waters within the bay. We'll upload some pictures because you just can't put into words how beautiful the place is. We decided that we could cut some of our budget in places like Bangkok and Cambodia and really decided to splurge. We got a really nice 60 dollar-a-night room that overlooks both sides of the bay; this is the "sweet room" mentioned in the subject-line--I guess they meant suite! Margaret, not exactly the rugged backpacker type, is much happier in the luxury accomodations than she was at "Cozy Corner Guesthouse."

Dinners are 12 dollars a night and there are plenty of things to do like renting kayaks (6 dollars), getting massages (15 dollars for two of us for two hours). We have renting kayaks and going to monkey beach where you can feed monkeys and snorkel all day on tap for tomorrow!

In Singapore!

It's been a long journey, but we are here at the lovely and world famous Cozy Corner Guesthouse (read: un airconditioned hostel with surly front desk lady) in Singapore. It's lovely here and we're excited to sightsee this afternoon.

More later on the absurdity of the trip--- suffice it to say Tom spilled vodka on a Muslim woman's bare legs by accident and had an entier line of security at Dulles shut down... classic.