Christmas 09 (finally)

One thing Kuala Lumpur has over the Kootenays is thunder storms. I sat on the deck for over half and hour this evening watching one pass by.  The sky would flare up and thunder would crash about every 20 seconds or so.  I was literally in the middle of it all.  This is a fairly regular occurance, a bit unnerving but quite spectacular.  And then the rain.  The sky literally opens up and it comes down in sheets.

Cole and Alana have been gone for three weeks.  So much anticipation, a blur of activity, and now it is a memory.  It was great to have them here. We had a wonderful Christmas together. Cole arrived on the 14th of December, about a week before Alana.  He hung around with us for 4 days and then took off to Yogyakarta, Indonesia's cultural/spiritual centre.  From all accounts he enjoyed his trip throughly.  He spent a couple of days visiting the temples of Prambanan and Borobudur. 
Alana arrived in December 21st.  Unfortunately her plane was late and she had traveled for over 31 hours so our plans to show her the town didn't materialize.  We left early the following day for Bali where Cole met us.  This is our third trip there and we sort have things figured out for us.  We drive past Kuta, the Aussie party beach, as fast as we can and head for Ubud, which is the art/cultural center of Bali.  We stay at the same hotel and do some of the same outing.  The bike ride down from the volcano is wonderful.  Another of the Canadian teachers working at the school joined us and she commented that this was the highlight of her trip to Bali.  Cole and Alana went on a rafting.  We figured out which dance performance we like best, the Kecak.  Our favourite activity though is just to walk in the countryside through the rice fields.  It is so beautiful.

We traveled to Lovina Beach in the north for a few days around Christmas.  We stayed at a very nice boutique hotel.  It really is unbelievable what something the price of a Quality Inn will get you in Bali.  The hotel had 8 rooms and only one other was occupied while we were there.  It was fully staffed with reception, chef, service staff, bartender, garden and pool staff, and security. Interestingly enough the other room was occupied by Grace and Ken Wilson's ex-son-in-law.
Lovina was wonderful but the ecomonic crunch and lack of tourists has really hit there.  It was a little sad on Christmas Day evening walking to a restaurant we had chosen and to pass many others that were fully staffed, bands playing, and not a soul in them.  The owners would be waiting expectantly with Santa hats on at the entrance for potenial clients.
Far too soon after we returned to Ubud Cole had to leave to head back to Canada.  We stuck around another day and left with Alana to return to KL.  We spent New Year's Eve with some friends in an area near our school.  We went to dinner at the biggest buffet thing I have ever seen.  It was all Japanese and although it was buffet style everything was prepared fresh.  You just went up and told them what you wanted and they cooked up and delivered to you.  Incredible.  Alana did have a 4 am start to head back to Canada so we did have an early night.  Fireworks are really big here so it was impossible to sleep when midnight hit so Maureen and I watched them ignite the sky from half a dozen different venues from our condo.
After Alana left was spent a few quiet days in Kuala Lumpur before heading for Langkawi, an island in the north of Malaysia not far from the Thai border.  We spent our time reading, lounging on the beach, and exploring the island a bit.
We did manage to spend some time with Pat Dooley who was here attending a conference.  She took a couple days after the conference and we headed to our favourite town in Malaysia, Malacca, to show her around.  It was nice to touch base with her and get caught up on Nelson and the school district.
School is always busy but rewarding.  The students here are really nice.  Last weekend was the night of the brewery tour.  One of the dads from the school is the brew master at the Heineken brewery and he invites the teachers to the brewery once a year.  He gives a tour of the facilities and access to the brewery pub.  Heineken brews Heineken (of course), Guiness, Tiger, Ankor and a number of others.  Opening the taps for teachers is kind of a dangerous thing to do but everyone behaved him/herself.  He also puts on a buffet supper and at the end gives a goodie bag.  This year there was a shirt, some coasters and other stuff I didn't really take note of.  Quite nice.


I've a number of pictures that follow.  They are a bit out of order but I will try and caption most so you have an idea of what they are.
Sorry for this line thing but I couldn't figure out how to turn off.  It is actually driving me crazy (not that it takes much)







Langkawi





The top photo is from lookout at the top of the cable car ride in Langkawi.  The views are incredible and the karst outcroppings are spectacular.


Sun set on the beach we stayed at in Langkawi.


The old man a the top of cable car ride in Langkawi.

 Maureen on the beach at Langkawi.  It is nice.  The water is ok for swimming.  You just have to watch out for the jelly fish.
The next two photos are from the cable car itself.  It is quite the ride up.  The vertical seems about twice that of Grouse Mountain.  If you look really carefully at the mountain behind Maureen on the beach you can see the cable car platforms.




Sunset on the beach at Langkawi.  This is right out in front of our hotel.


Bali
The following pictures were all taken on our trip in Bali.


Maureen came running back from the washroom for the camera.  Everything in Bali is presented so nicely.  This was the view from the toilet seat in a restaurant.


 We watched these girls play a game with their shoes.  They were so happy playing with nothing.


The following shots were all take on the bike ride down from the volcano.



This shows some of the hazards you have to watch out for on your ride.  The Balinese, as well as everyone else in South East Asia, pack every thing on their scooters.
Below is a picture of the gang.  We were all Canadians, us, another teacher from MKIS with her daughter and friend, as well as couple of nurses from Ontario who were working in Australia.


After the bike ride the spa was in order.  Alana is here in a flower bath taken after a full body massage.


Cole in the market.  Maureen has bought a few baskets from this guy.  The photo of the baskets that come later were taken at his stall, which is the market in Ubud.

Cole in the monkey forest in Ubud.  He had a banana in his pocket (really Mae West) and the monkey would take it from him

 Walking in the rice fields, while taking a break from the bike ride.

Cole with a rice field worker.  He really wanted his photo taken with Cole for some reason.  Probably because of the 'stach'.

One of the stops on bike tour is a family compound.  We found the children having fun playing in the yard.

This a view of the walkway at our hotel in Ubud in the early evening.  It is very beautiful.

Cole and Alana in the market above.  The aforesaid baskets at Ubud market.

At the Lake Batur temple on the way to Lovina Beach.

We stopped at the top of the climb up the mountain on the way to Lovina. For $2 Cole got to have his picture taken with a giant bat, a big snake, and a lizard, much to his mother's disgust.

At the hotel in Lovina Beach, the north part of Bali.

The hotel pool.  All to ourselves.

We resisted going out to see the dolphins until the last day.  Every second male asks to take you out to see the dolphins in the morning.  They come to feed in the shallow waters off Lovina Beach.  It is a bit of a gong show.  They take you out in these little narrow boats with out riggers.  The four of us plus the captain filled the little boat.  You are about 700 meters off shore with about 60 others filled with tourists waiting for the dolphins to appear.  When they do all of the boats chase them down to get a closer look.  Our captain seemed to have a better knack thank goodness.  He would predict where they would surface next and then take us out to wait for them quietly.  In many cases he was right and we did get some nice close up views of them surfacing.
The top photo is of some fishermen heading in from their early morning fishing trip.  The bottom is one of the dolphins surfacing.

Sri Lanka

The Blue Lotus is the national flower of Sri Lanka. It's beauty and uniqueness reflect the qualities of the country it represents. Sri Lanka is a country of stunning beauty. It is lush with enchanting beaches, mountains, and people. We spent 2 short days there, recognizing that we will be back for a longer and closer look.
The flight from KL to Columbo is 3 hours. We arrived in Sri Lanka at 7:15am on Friday. Hikkaduwa, our destination, was about 120km south of the airport. In my travel plans that distance would take about 2 hours and I estimated we'd arrive at our hotel by 10:00am. I forgot to take into account we were travelling in a third world country. We arrived dusty and weary about noon. We spent our first day at the beach soaking up the sun, the r and r, and the beauty.

The next day we hired a tuk-tuk driver, Anura, to show us around a bit. We went to Galle to see the largest European fort established in Asia. It is a world heritage site and sits right on the southern tip of Sri Lanka. It was established long before the Europeans came though and was a major trading center for the Chinese, Arabs, Malays, and Indians. The Portugese, Dutch, and English all realized the importance of the fort as center for the spice trade and took turns ruling until the British were finally kicked out in 1947. It was then that the island replaced its colonial name, Ceylon, with Sri Lanka.
After a good look around the old fort and parts of the city we checked out some gem shops. Sri Lanka is renown for gems and so we looked through piles of sapphires, agates, and other precious and semi-precious stones. Weary from this we headed to another beach a little south of Galle for a swim and lunch. The beach at Unawatuna is a little smaller than Hikkaduwa but better for swimming. We spent a couple hours hanging out both on the beach and in the water.
After the beach we tootled on a little bit farther to visit a tea plantation. It was a small operation but specialized in white tea, which is a delicacy. We were the only visitors and we were treated like royalty tasting tea in an old colonial home on the hill overlooking the plantation. We got to see the whole operation. It was a mixed farming affair with a few mango and papaya, as well as rubber trees mixed in among the tea bushes. The machinery they used to dry and crush the leaves was ancient, dating back to the mid 1800's.

It was nice to get to know our driver, Anura. Like most of the folks along the coast he had a sad story to tell about the tsunami. He lost his home and meager possessions when it hit in 2004. Pretty well all the local fishermen and villagers who lost their homes were forced to relocate in land after the tsunami hit. They were told it was too dangerous to go back and it was a condition for aid. It didn't take long however after the locals left for the multinational hotel chains to scoop up the best beaches, after they were cleaned up with aid $$, for development at bargain prices.



This ox and cart was on the streets of Galle. I think this fellow must have delivered those sacks of cement you see in the background. He was rather ripped.


Picking tea at the White Tea Plantation. Apparently the first time a human actually touches white tea has is with the lips when drank. The Chinese emperors had their pickers use gold scissors to harvest. I don't think they had those here. We sampled some and it tasted delicious, smooth but we didn't want to sell our house to buy some. Apparently they get regular orders from Middle Eastern royal families.


The fishermen here are tidying up their nets after a day on the sea. When we watched the sunset and sat on the beach in the evening we could see hundreds of fishing boats out on the ocean. It is called the highway to India as they stretch from the south of Sri Lanka to the Indian coast. Many of these fellows went out in wooden catamarans with one pontoon.

A women selling her mangos on the side of road.

The streets of Galle were full of market scenes like this. Lots of produce and fresh produce for sale.

This snake had Maureen excited. It was scurrying through the newly planted rice field. It was about 4 ft. long. According to Anura it was a harmless one.

Vietnam

Almost two months have gone by since the last post. Hmm... time is slippin' away.
Shirley and Maureen returned in the wee hours from Hong Kong on October 5th. Things have been pretty hectic since then. The highlight of our time (except for the company, of course) was the trip to Vietnam.
We had a week long school break in October. We flew to Ho Chi Minh City(Saigon) right after school ended on Friday October 9. It is an incredible place. The city has a flow and buzz to it that never stops. It is a city of 7 million residents and 10 million motorcycles. The roar and flow of the bikes is the first thing we noticed coming into the city but everything is a feast for the senses. There is a unique mix of new and old, poor and affluent. There are modern highrise buildings and butchers cutting up meat on the street in front of them. Old ladies, like the one above, in traditional hats and baskets full of goods for the markets with chic ladies in BMW's roaring by.
We spent our first three days just exploring and looking around. We visited many of the war museums and got the 'other side's' view on things. A highlight was a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. The Viet Cong had built an elaborate set of tunnels to provide communications and supplies to the resistance. They were incredibly small and deviously constructed with traps for the enemies and escape routes for themselves. They did demonstrate the tenacity and craftiness of the Vietnamese. The farm boys from the Midwest and the poor boys from the projects did not stand a sniff of a chance against them.





After a couple days in city we flew to a much quieter location, Hoi An. Hoi An is an old trading town smack in the middle of Vietnam. Most of the buildings date from between the 15th and 18th century. It is most famous presently for its abundance of tailors plying their trade for tourists. There are about 150 tailor shops in town who can whip up pretty well anything you want from any fabric you desire for next to nothing. We arrived about 10 days after the typhoon had ravaged the area. The famous Japanese bridge in town, for example, was completely underwater after the typhoon. We did do our part to help out with the recovery by employing a few tailor shops. I came back with a suit and numerous shirts and pants, all custom fit and made. You can only imagine what Maureen and Shirley did. We did manage a couple excursions while we were in Hoi An. We went on a cycling/fishing trip. We got to see both farmland and fishing villages with this. We also took part on a motorcycle trip in the countryside. The story behind this adventure is much too long for the blog though.
The next two photos show a couple market scenes from Hoi An.


This photo was taken at the temple on top of Marble Mountain in Danang.


We returned to KL on Sunday, October 18th. Maureen and I were busy with work while Shirley toured around Malaysia a bit visiting Cameron Highlands, a hill station/tea plantation in the middle of the country and Malacca. Maureen took off at the end of the week to go on a build with Habitat for Humanity in Kuching on Borneo. This was a trip she thoroughly enjoyed both the experience of building and the Kuching and region. Shirley left on Monday, the 26th. A couple days after that Guy and Pam Woods arrived for a visit. We got to tour them around a bit but they were independent for the most heading off to Bali and around Malaysia while we worked on report cards and kept busy with coaching and other work commitments. It was nice to connect and see them and provide some tips for travel around the area.

Our next break is this coming weekend. We took advantage of yet another Air Asia sale and have booked to go to Sri Lanka for the three days. We've found a nice place to chill out in Hikkaduwa.
We are really looking forward to Christmas when both Cole and Alana join us. We are off to Bali with them to spend part of the Christmas vacation and can hardly wait.



An international squad from Switzerland, Singapore, India, Peru, Malaysia, the US and Canada.

My girls' soccer season wrapped up last week-end with a tournament. We play 7 a side which makes for a bit of a change from the regular game. Maureen's basketball season will start up shortly after the Christmas break.

Thoughts about Padang

We were in Padang one week before the earthquake hit. My thoughts keep returning to the sights and memories our experiences which seem so different from the images plastered on the television. In my last entry I did mention that Padang had a real 3rd world edge to it. A little dirty and run down, garbage all over. One night as we walked from the restaurant where we dined to our hotel we caught a cat and rat duking it out over some trash. The rat was literally as big as the cat.
The landscape and the people though were beautiful. I've provided a link to a little BBC news clip in which the reporter discusses the search efforts on the Ambacang Hotel, the place where we stayed while in Padang. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8286833.stm) I can't help but wonder what happened to the people we met who worked at the hotel. All of them were so friendly and helpful. I wonder what happened to the cute little desk clerk who had just finished studying English at university. She wore beautiful traditional clothes that Maureen really liked and desperately tried to find while we were there. Her dream was to save up a enough money to travel to other countries, something that she didn't know if she would ever be able to do. I wonder what happened to bell boy that bent over backwards to help us with anything we needed. He was a bit of an oddity in Indonesia. At 6ft 3in he was a giant in a land where even I am taller than most people. I wonder what happened to all the staff, the cleaners, food service, doormen..... The hotel offered swim lessons in their pool for some of the local children. The lessons were happening Wednesday afternoon when the quake struck. I've included a few pictures of happier times in Padang.


This picture was from our room in the Ambacang Hotel. I had to take it. Seeing the KFC bucket in the foreground and the tradtional Minangkabau buildings in the background typified the dilemna faced by developing countries. How do they maintain their own culture with the pressures of the western multi-national corporations? The KFC was located in the side of the hotel and was always packed. I can only imagine that it was full when the quake struck. Looking over the building you can see the Indian Ocean in the background.




The main market in Padang. Everyone was in a celebratory mood when we were there during Hari Raya.

We had a snack on the second floor of a little restaurant and watched the sun set into the Indian Ocean. The setting was gorgeous. Across the street and on the edge of the ocean little stands like the ones you see here sold local food.

The people of the area were so relaxed and happy. They love music and it seems every young man plays a guitar. Like most people in third world countries they have much less but seem to be very content. Living on the 'ring of fire' perhaps gives them a special way of looking at the world and enjoying each day.


We drove to a little bay on the out skirts of Padang. This was a view looking at Padang through it's harbour. The main part of town is hidden by the rise on the left.This is a view down the food stalls that line the ocean. Unfortunately the beach area in front of these was usually full of plastic and other trash.


The streets and market were full on the eve of Hari Raya. The oplets (the vans here) were jammed packed full of people heading home with their last minute purchases at the market.
I have seen a more recent photo of this area and all the buildings were destroyed.



Deepavali--
We have one more week of school and then a week off for a fall break. It ends with the Indian celebration of Deepavali. Below are photos of some of the Indian mothers in the school creating these beautiful rice decorations on the floor outside the elementary school entrance.
It really is rather nice to celebrate and learn about all these cultural celebrations from other countries. I had Chinese children bring moon cakes to school for the Moon Festival on Saturday. A Korean mom brought me some glass noodle dish on Friday in honour of Korean thanksgiving (the name of which it forget now).
Maureen is in Hong Kong picking up Shirley Neil this weekend. From the text messages I'm getting it sounds like are having a blast. I went to the Malaysian Open tennis tournament last night and got to see the semi-finals where Gonzales played Verdasco. It was an incredible match.
Next weekend we are off to Vietnam for 10 days or so. We had planned to visit Hoi An and Hue in the central part but they are still mopping up from all the flooding that occurred from the typhoon so we may have to do some adjusting. I guess I'll report in my next post.