Siem Reap, Cambodia

Our trip into Cambodia was actually the easiest part of the vacation. We flew into Angkor International Airport in Siem Reap, which is not served by any one major carrier more than once a day, so it made traveling on a staff ticket (and thus standby) a challenge. My pal Carla was a great resource as she and her husband and parents had traveled their last year, so so suggested Air Asia, a Southwest Airlines low cost model type carrier. So we flew as revenue passengers into and out of Siem Reap. The nicest part of this was that we did not have to observe the business casual dress code that is required when on staff tickets, so I could dress like most passengers these day, a bum. Shorts and a ball cap on an airplane? Surely you jest! All that was missing a wife beater shirt.

We had a 7am departure out of Kuala Lumpur, so we arranged for a cab from the hotel at 4am, so we could make the two hour check-in suggestion. We flew out of the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) which is more like a refugee center..... very spartan, and packed with people who had more luggage than you can shake a stick at.

You have to pay to check luggage (kind of like here in the states) and we pre-paid for that service, but Marty still got a little testy when her suitcase was over 15kg and had to pay the extra Ringit for over sized baggage.

There is no assigned seating, so it is like a stampede of cattle as we lined up to board and then make the mad dash across the tarmac to our plane. Of course there was this one gal who had a bag full of what appeared to be concrete, who kept smiling at me, implying that I carry it up the air stairs for her (but she didn't know that I am a union worker and we don't lift passenger's bags) so I just smiled back and went on my way. :)

Stu, Marty, and I were able to get an open row for ourselves and we settled in for our two hour flight to Siem Reap. You have to pay for everything onboard. I made the mistake of ordering something called Nasi Goreng. It looked good on the little menu card, but when I opened the package it had little minnow like fish heads in it. Of course I still ate because I paid for it after all.

Stuart had what we jokingly referred to has a Halal dog. It was a chicken hot dog, but the main condiment looked more like guacamole than relish. The label on the package was "Food for Friendship" but it was mainly food for indigestion. Marty commented that in her 25 years of flying, this was the nastiest airline food she had ever seen (but one should note in case I forget, that Stu ordered the infamous Halal dog on our return flight as well).

After our inflight gourmet experience, it was time to land, and we touched down in Siem Reap around 8:15am (one hour time change behind KL). Cambodia requires a VISA to enter, but thankfully, the government offers a "VISA on Arrival" . You fill out your VISA application, submit a passport sized photograph, and $20 USD, and 10 minutes later you have a VISA. Sure beats trying to go thru an embassy and arranging it before you leave on your trip. Plus they had like 10 people working on it, so it provides jobs, so I am all for that.

While my VISA was being processed, I used the Men's Room, but they had a female bathroom attendant, so it was hard to use the urinal with a woman mopping the floor behind me.

By the time I managed to take a leak and wash my hands, my VISA was ready, however it looked like the man who signed it was named "Howdy", or was this just his way of giving me a warm Cambodian welcome?

We passed thru customs and immigration and got our bags. The hotel we stayed at offered a pick up/drop off service, so there was a bellman waiting for us outside the airport with a sign with our names.

The hotel was about 7km from the airport, so we got to see a bit of Siem Reap on our way. It reminded me of Vietnam, with lots of folks on motorbikes, bicycles, and tuk tuks weaving thru cars and trucks.

We stayed at the Angkor Palace Resort (http://www.angkorpalaceresort.com/) based on Carla's suggestion, and it was incredible. When we arrived we got little welcome scarves and a "mocktail" and a cold towel scented with eucalyptus. Stuart looked like he was being Bar Mitzvah'd.

It was low season, so we were able to check in right away as rooms were available. Since we had gotten up in the middle of the night, we took advantage of our free time and relaxed for a bit. We would have a pretty packed itinerary, so it was some much appreciated down time.

KL Finale

Our last day in Malaysia, we decided to go up in the KL Tower. It is the 5th largest tower in the world, after the CN Tower in Canada, a tower in Russia and one in Iran, sitting at 421 meters tall. It provides some pretty stellar views of the city, and so we decided we wanted to get to the tower early in the day before the usual afternoon thunderstorms hit. We actually could walk to the KL Tower from our hotel.

Once you arrive at the grounds of the tower, you have a very steep hill to take to the tower entrance, but they provide a little shuttle that goes back and forth, as with the heat and humidity, you would be wiped out before you even started. Once you enter the base of the tower, there are express elevators that take you to the observation floor. There is one floor above that, but it's a rotating restaurant, and you can only go there if you have reservations and it is pretty pricey. Outside the base of the tower, there is a reflecting pool/water fountain with the flags from all 14 states in Malaysia.

The shots were pretty amazing. I managed to get some good pictures of The Petronas Towers, the Batu Caves and our Hotel.

When we were done with the tower, we decided to head to the Butterfly Park. It sits within the Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve, which is this huge expanse of land in the middle of the city, left natural. We took a series of cabs to the park. The first cab we got in was fine until about 5 minutes into the journey when the cab driver pulled over and made us get out because he claimed the cab was overheating (although we saw no sign of this). We hailed another cab, but he told us it would be 15 Ringits at which point I tried to be all know-it-all and said "Aren't you required to use the meter BY LAW?". So we bailed on that cab, the next one told us it would 20 Ringits, so we sent him on his way, and when the fourth cab pulled up and offered to take us for 15 Ringits, and we realized that was like less than five dollars, we decided the second cabbie wasn't so bad after all and took this guy up on his offer.

The Butterfly Park was pretty neat. It's an enclosed area, with a mesh roof, so it still gets sunlight and is outdoors, but it keeps the little butterflies from escaping. They also had a turtle pond and some big honking carp and I made sure I bought some fish food for 1 Ringit so I could feed them.

They estimate there are about 6,000 butterflies in the enclosure, with up to 120 varieties. The entire compound was heavy in various types of flora and fauna as well.

As you exited the enclosure they had an exhibit with more"exotic" bugs and insects, including some snakes and scorpions that looked so threatening, just their glaring at you made you want to scream. The most interesting thing I remembered was the Snake Head Moth exhibit they had. The wings of the moth really resembled a snake's head. It was kind of freaky.

When we left the Butterfly Park, we took another cab to the National Museum. This attraction was a great way to learn about Malaysian culture and it's history. There were a series of four halls (one was closed for renovation and smelled like lacquer which gave Marty a headache) that covered themes of archeology, sociology, and politics. I had always assumed that Malaysia was always a British colony, as I have traveled to Penang several times of the last few years when my friends Carla and Steven were living there and one of the things we did was visit a British garrison there. It turns out for most of the colonial period, Malaysia was a Portuguese colony, followed by Dutch occupation for about 100 years before the Brits took over in the mid 1700s. There was no photography allowed so I wasn't able to take any pictures inside, but managed a shot of the rather plain sign over the entrance.


After leaving the National Museum, and what felt like a full day of touring (which in reality was only about 4 hours), we headed back to the hotel. The heat really zaps your energy, and of course, the storms started rolling in as usual during the afternoon. We wanted to make sure we turned in early that night because our flight to Cambodia left at 7am the next day, and we needed to check in two hours before, and it took an hour to get to the airport, so we would be leaving the hotel at 4am.

Corn in a Cup

Not sure why, but it seems the Malaysians have a fascination with corn. Everywhere we went we saw adds for Corn in a Cup. At least it isn't like Thailand where they use corn as a topping on ice cream.

A little sightseeing outside of KL

On our first full day in Malaysia, we decided to head out of town and see some of the sights in the countryside. We signed up for one of those little organized tours that had a set schedule. Of course it included some shopping stops, which I was not real thrilled with, but it still gave us a chance to get out of town and see some things we couldn't get too on our own.

Our tour guide was a guy named Shaun. The only other folks on the tour besides the three of us were a Dutch couple who were on their way to New Zealand to start a cruise to Australia. As we left town, we got a little history on Malaysia. Tin mining used to be the main industry here in the area, and was the main motivator for the many ethnic Chinese who migrated to the area, seeking employment in the tin mines. Tin was the largest export until the collapse of the industry in the 1980's. Petroleum and natural gas are now the biggest natural resources.

We learned from our tour guide that Kuala Lumper got it's name from the Gombak and Klang Rivers, which met at a confluence (or Kuala). Sungai (River) Gombak was originally known as Sungai Lumpur, which means muddy, so KL means "muddy confluence". Might need to know that for Final Jeopardy or something like that some day.

Our first stop was the Royal Selangor Pewtor Factory located just outside of town. It is the largest supplier of pewter in the world and known as an "Icon of Malaysia". It was founded in 1885 by a Chinese immigrant named Yong Koon. While waiting for our tour to start, we did get a chance to see the largest pewter beer stein in the world. We got to see a little bit about how the pewter is melted and cast, but then were herded off into the gift shops. We did not stay very long and then our driver picked us up and we were on our way to a Batik shop with traditional Malaysian, Indian, and Chinese crafts.

We drove by a brand new Mosque that was gearing up to open on our way further out of town. We stopped briefly at a local park and our driver Shaun gave us demonstration of how you tap a rubber tree. Years ago, rubber tree plantations were also a major industry here. It declined when the British snuck out some rubber tree seeds and took them to Brazil which is now the predominant producer of rubber in the world.

The Batik shop was set off in a warehouse district. I thought most of the stuff was a bit out of my poor blue collar working class price range, but Marty did find a very interesting Batik print.

We then headed out to the Batu caves, the main part of the tour. The caves are actually part of a limestone hill estimated to be over 400 million years old. Inside the hill are a series of caves and cave temples. The Batu Caves draw their name from the Sungai Batu River which flows nearby. The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside of India and is dedicated to the Hindu icon Murugan. There is a major festival at the caves every year called Thaipusam, attracting scores of people. The large statue outside the main cave is fairly new, having been consecrated in 2006. It is made of concrete with the gold paint having come from Thailand.

The main temple cave has 272 steps from bottom to top. Let me tell you, in the heat of the day, it can really take your breath away climbing those steps to the top. I was caked in sweat about half way up.

The strangest event of the day was when I was on step 160 or so and I looked up and I see this random girl named Emily who I went to school with in Salamanca, Spain back in 1997 during my study abroad term. What are the odds I would run into someone from Utah who I studied with in Europe more than a decade ago, as a tourist site in Malaysia?



After spending some time at the top of the open air caves, looking at the native macaque monkeys that inhabit the caves, we began the trek down the steps, which actually proved harder on the old calf muscles than going up the steps. We still had a bit of time before we were scheduled to leave for the city, so we went to one of the numerous cafes and had some beer. I had a little meltdown because as soon as I took my first sip, I spilled my beer all over my shorts. So while everyone else enjoyed their cool drinks, I sat there and pouted.

We headed back to town later that afternoon, just in time for the afternoon monsoon rains, so we sat in the covered area outside the pool and watched TV, had snacks, and cocktails. While nobody likes to be caught in the rain, it does cut the intense heat of the day, so as long as your covered, it is quite pleasant.

SE Asia Vacation begins

I guess I will have to blog this over a couple of posts, a little bit at a time. I just returned from 10 days in the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia and Cambodia. I have been wanted to go to Cambodia for a few years now, but didn't want to go it alone. I traveled on this trip with my friends Marty and Stu. Marty is a co-worker of mine at the airline, and Stu used to be a stew years (and years) ago, but is now a professor. They are travel warriors like myself, and enjoy traveling to places off the beaten path.

Traveling standby is always a challenge, and we actually circumnavigated the globe on this trip as we went to Malaysia out of Newark with a stop in Stockholm, as Malaysia Airlines has a direct flight and it was wide open and we came home via Hong Kong to Los Angeles.

We arrived in Stockholm the morning of the 19th and had a two hour wait. The crew had been really great to us going over and had given us four bottles of wine to take with us (they got off in Stockholm and a new crew flew on to Kuala Lumper with us). The Swedes had a problem with my wine as they made us go thru security, so they confiscated it, but returned it to me before I reboarded the flight.

By the time we landed in Malaysia, two days after we left Newark, we were pretty whacked out, after having flown two red eyes in a row, but we arrived so early at KLIA (Kuala Lumper International Airport) that we breezed thru customs and immigration with no troubles. The airport is about 45 miles from town, and they offer a bullet train, but with the cost of that, it was actually cheaper for the three of us to take a cab directly to our hotel.

We were able to check in upon arrival, even though it was early in the morning. We were afraid they were going to make us wait until check in time at 2pm. Since Marty and Stu wanted a smoking room, we were on separate floors. My room faced the Petronas Towers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronas_Tower).

Given that we had two days of filth on us after our long trip over from the states, we decided to chill in our rooms for a few hours and regroup at noon. I took what felt like the best shower of my life, and took some time walking around the property, got some postcards, mailed them out. We wanted to go up into the Petronas Towers, but we found out you have to queue at 8am for tickets and they only let you go to the skybridge on the 44th floor, so we passed on that. The concierge told us how to get to a part of town called Bukit Nanas, which was two monorail stops away, where we could find some restaurants and do a little exploring.

We quickly discovered that the traffic in KL was horrendous and made pedestrian activities very difficult. The best way to cross a street was to cross when someone who looked like they were a native did, otherwise you would wait 15 minutes for a crosswalk light.

When we got to Bukit Nanas, we were ravenous, and ended up eating at a place called The Ship (http://www.theship.com.my/home.htm) which was credited as having the best steak in town. I got the fixed lunch menu and got a free hand towel as my gift at the end of the meal. I also introduced Marty to Tiger Beer, a popular SE Asian brew.

When we left the restaurant, it was pouring rain, so we went to an Irish pub and waited out the storm. On the way back to the hotel, we passed a Mickey D's and I snapped a rather interesting shot that reminded you Malaysia was an Islamic country. Actually, the population is a mix of native Malay people who are predominantly Muslim, as well as ethnic Chinese and Indian populations. The three groups do not usually intermingle socially, but there is harmony and not really any religious tension over differences that you would find here in the US or other countries. All the rooms in the hotel had a Kiblaat, which is an arrow that points towards Mecca too.

One of the things I found made eating easier was that everything is Halal. I do not eat pork, but neither do Muslim folks, so I found it nice to know that all the ham and sausage and bacon was either beef or chicken based.

We booked ourselves on a little day tour for the following day that took us outside of town to see various sites and spent the rest of the day relaxing and trying to get over our jet lag.

Follow Up Video on Keai

A nice wrap up piece about little Keai and his medical care here in the US.

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/Boy_heads_home_with_a_healthy_heart

Farewell

So this will be my last post about Keai Sun. He has been cleared and the good news is that one of the board members for Heart Gift is going to Shanghai on business Monday, so he is going to take Keai home. Otherwise he would be here a few more weeks until a flight attendant escort could be procurred. So he's good to go and will be back with his dad and step sister by Tuesday afternoon.

Thanks to all my friends and family for taking an interest in this trip and for all the prayers for this little guy's recovery.

Keai is going home (Yippee!)

I got the following email from the folks at Heart Gift.... Good news for my little Chinese friend. I am just sad that I was not able to be the one to take him home, but he will be in good hands I am sure.

"Keai had an appointment with Dr. Wright yesterday, and he has been released to go home. He will remain on lasix for several months, but will have plenty of medication to take home with him when he returns to China.

Many of us have become very attached to young Keai, as he has been here for quite a while, and has been somewhat of a celebrity while in Austin. So, it is with a heavy heart that we will send him on his way next week. He will most likely leave on the 23rd or 24th. We are waiting for an American Airlines escort to determine which day he will travel, and then we will let you know when he will embark on his long journey back to China, with a suitcase full of Happy Meal trinkets and a lifetime’s worth of memories."

Another update on Keai

Requests for prayers and postive thoughts for Keai Sun, the little boy I escorted from Shanghai to Austin in August.... his departure has been delayed due to a continual fluid build up in his lungs and chest cavity. Drainage stents have been re-inserted so he is unable to travel as long as he is taking meds and has those stents.

He was due to travel last week back to China, but was not cleared by his Doctors for travel.

The Round Rock leader, a local Austin paper did a story about him, which a shot of us upon our arrival in Austin in late August.

http://heartgift.org/downloads/sunkeaiarticle.pdf

They are hopeful he will be able to travel back to Shanghai at the end of October or early November. He is still full of energy and really thriving now that his heart defect has been corrected though.

UNF Reunion: Texas Style

I flew down to Austin for a little mini college reunion weekend with my friends Crystal and Jenny. We all went to the University of North Florida about a million years ago and have continued our friendship ever since. Crystal flew in from Florida, met up with me and then we took the short hop down to Austin, where we stayed with our friend Jenny and her family.

This was the first time the three of us had hung out together in over two years. Normally, one person is missing for some reason or another, so it was nice to hang out, like the old days.

Jenny had a weekend packed with activities. One of the many hats she wears is as "Coach Jenny" for her son's T-ball team, so we tagged along for that. We drove down to the Natural Caverns, outside of San Antonio (http://www.naturalbridgecaverns.com/). We seem to have a caving tradition, as we all first went spelunking about 8 years ago when Jenny and her husband Jon lived in Ohio. That day was marred with bats, inbred Indians named Chongo, and lots of flies. A few years later, minus Crystal, we went to some caves in Alabama filled with no bats, but gaudy religious symbolism, so this time around we hoped this would be a happy median.

We took the Discovery Tour, which goes about 200 feet down into the earth. The caves were humid and hot, and you had to be careful where you walked because everything was slippery (and the handrail had been grabbed on to by probably a million dirty hands).

Our tour guide was a little snippy, but we still had a good time. It was dark in certain places and I was afraid that Jenny's son would be a little nervous,but he did fine.

After our exploring of caves, we tried a little panning for gold and other precious stones (you have to buy your bag o' precious stones and dirt first so you are kind of guaranteed to find something) and Jenny's son found some arrowheads and colored stones. We stopped at Johnny Rockets on the way home for "bog old milkshakes" (it's a college thing that no one else is going to understand) and burgers (I had a grilled cheese). That is another tradition, as we used to go to the Johnny Rockets at the Landing in downtown Jacksonville all the time when we were in school.
That night, Jenny and Jon arranged for a babysitter for their son, and the four of us went down to Sixth Street, a big area with bars, restaurants, and nightlife in the heart of Austin. The mantra there is "Keep Austin Weird" and so you see lots of tattoo parlours and hard looking people mixed with preppy UT coeds and lilly white republicans. A strange mix.
As we walked past the Coyote Ugly bar, the bouncer asked me if I was in the military (I am currently sporting the shortest haircut of my life in preparation for my departure the jungles of Cambodia this weekend). I guess I looked out of place. We had tickets to Esther's Follies (http://www.esthersfollies.com/) which is kind of a musical revue, with comedians, improv, magic, skits, political satire, etc. etc. I had always wanted to go, so I was so glad when I found out that Jenny had gotten us tickets. The show was hilarious, and their main act was this musician who had us rolling on the floor and laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. Esther's Follies is a definite must for anyone who goes to Austin.

As we rolled out of there around 11:30pm, downtown was just starting to hop since UT had beat OU in the Red River challenge, and the fans were in a party hearty mentality.

We spent Sunday taking it easy. We all went to church (a little too contemporary for this Presbyterian) and had a late lunch at a local BBQ joint (we had a bit of a pork emergency, but I managed to avoid eating it) before Jenny drove us back to the airport. Crystal and I flew back to the Big D., and then Crystal continued on to Florida, and thus ended our little reunion weekend

Now I am on vacation for the rest of the month, and will be prepping for my departure for SE Asia this weekend, first to Malaysia and then Cambodia.

A Night with Garrison Keillor

For a while now I have been a fan of Garrison Keillor. I first discovered him on National Public Radio, which airs his show "A Prairie Home Companion". You can reference a blog posting from last year where my buddy Mark and I went up to St. Paul, MN to be in the audience for one of his live recordings. He is also a bestselling author and satirist, so I have been reading his books for a while as well and he is one of my favorite authors. His latest book, Liberty, just came out (the same Mark and his wife Tricia got me the book for my birthday) and he was at the Unity Church in Dallas last night to give a little talk and sign copies of his book. It's part of a series about Lake Wobegon (where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average).

I went with my ladyfriend Kirsten, and we had a great time listening to him recite "sonnets" and talk about growing up in a small Minnesota town (his inspiration for the Lake Wobegon books) and he fielded questions from the audience at the end of the evening. He is a HUGE liberal which is why I think I like him so much (he managed to piss off the Methodists a few years back when visiting Dubya's home church in Dallas, Highland Park United Methodist, where he referred to the congregation as Nazi sympathizers). He talked about the upcoming election, and how it will come down to a toss up between the "Skinny Guy" and the "Bitter Old Man", and managed to bring down the house when he said that the selection of a certain Alaska governor as a running mate was a serious mis-step, but that she will fare well in the end and probably land a book deal, which would be good because after November she will have a lot of free time on her hands!

We waited afterwards to get my book signed and I told him how much I love his writing and his radio show. Now I just have to be very careful with the book, taking care not to lose a signed copy!