Bali, Saturday, June 30, 2007

We are staying the night at a sister hotel in downtown Kuta. Still a very nice place - but right in the middle of all the action - restaurants, clubs, stores etc. Kind of nice for a change since our resort is quite quiet. We go back there for the last 6 days of our stay here! Aislyn has signed up for 3 days of surfing lessons and we hope to go watch her the last day - hope she does well, but I'm sure she will enjoy it! We have been pretty sluggish this last week and don't really intend on doing too much for the next one. It is just nice to take it easy and eat and maybe do a bit of shopping. I would like to maybe go on another cruise - for a whole day to snorkel - we'll see. Brian has gone back to the room and us girls have decided to walk around a bit. Always looking for bargains. Aislyn got the bright idea of going into the department store to price certain items so then she goes out to the street vendors and gets them below the fixed price in the store. I should have been using those tactics myself but don't think I'm doing too badly! Hello to everyone, hope all is well with you all and we look forward to seeing you all soon!

Bali, Tuesday, June 16, 2007

Hello to all! We have justreturned from a sunset dinner cruise around the main harbour - Benoa - in Kuta - about 20 minutes from where we are staying. The food and entertainment were good - even Brian is starting to enjoy the noodles. Our day trip yesterday was great. We had our own driver from 9:00 until 6:00 an we drove into an interior town - Ubu - to o some shopping and lunch. Along the way we went to a bird park, reptile park, monkey park, Batik factory and silver & gold factory. My bargaining skills are being finely hone, but I still get caught! Aislyn, on the other hand, is an expert and saves us alot! Brian is feeling quite a bit better, but is still having lots of problems with the heat. Aislyn is currently signing up for a 3 day surfing course as the waves here are awesome. Maybe her snowboarding ability will help. Our evenings end early and I think because of the heat we tire more easily. While we are loving it here, I am looking forward to coming home and relaxing! Talk to you all again soon!

Bali, Saturday, June 23, 2007

Hello everyone! We have been here for 2 days and it is beautiful! Quite a nice change from the tiny island on Lake Toba, where, by the way the second hotel we stayed in - which was the #1 rated hotel on the island , cost us a grand total of 866,000 Indonesian Rupiah with exchange being about $121.00Cad for 1,000,000 IR!!! It was a lovely spot and we were able to get a look at the more primitive side on Indonesia.
Our 2 days in Jakarta were not all that great. Brian has had a cold since last weekend and it was just getting worse each day. We took him to the Dr. on Thursday, the 21st where he got some antibiotics. You all must know what men are like as patients. He was quite ready to head home but I convinced him after a couple of days he would feel fine and sure enough, he is much better - not perfect though!
Air Asia is definitely the way to travel between destinations here - none of our 3 flights here have cost us more that $140. total for all 3 of us and they ranged in duration from 1 - 2.25 hrs. each.
Tonight there is a BBQ at the hotel with Balinese entertainment - looking forward to that! There are tons of excurions here - boat trips, snorkeling, SCUBA, day trips to other villages etc. I think we all want to do some snorkeling and we will rent an a/c van with a criver for a full day to Ubud where there is a monkey park and a birk park and some shopping markets.
We haven't bought much yet - everything is pretty well the same everywhere and to tell the truth, I am somewhat tired of bargaining but have become quite good at it. I would like to mail everything home instead of carrying it with us but will see how it goes.
Aislyn & I are out shopping a bit now while Brian reads by the pool. I will join him shortly for Happy Hour. By the way - to all our pub friends - we were in an authentic Irish pub last night - Friday - and thought of you all. Not quite 12:15am for going home time though!

Jakarta, Wednesday, June 20th 2007

We arrived about 1:30am last night after an entire day of travelling from Lake Toba. Our hotel is beautiful, not quite the accommodations we had in Lake Toba, but here we do have a TV. We are right next to the 2nd biggest mall in the city so we have had something to do all day! Brian developed a colabout 4-5 days ago andI am afraid it might have turned into pneumonia so he has slept all day and we will take him to the Candian Embassy recommendedhospital forsome attention and hopefully some antibiotics to get him on the mend. It has really affected his ability to walk around and his desire - obviously - to do anything. There is not too much to do here so I am not too sure how we will spend the day tomorrow until our flight tomorrow night to Bali. We booked abeautiful looking resort - Rama Beach Hotel & Spa in Kuta, Balifor 9 nights so will get lots of R & R there. I'm sure with some medicine and sun Brian will feel better soon. This internet is not working too well, so will sign off for now and I promise I will getAislyn to help me with pictures soon!

Lake Toba, Indonesia, Sunday, Father's Day, June 17, 2007

Happy Father's Day to both Charles & James and to all our father friends. We are on the island of Sumatera, indonesia on the far North end ion a small island - Samosir - that is a caldera formed from a gigantic volcano eruption 75,000 years ago. We arrived here on Friday after spenind another couple days in KL basically doing a bit of shopping and continuing to bargain with taxis to get them to turn on their meter! Quite an accomplishment when it happens. Because of the heat in the city we had to take it pretty slowly so it seemed to take a long time to get anything accomplished. Aislyn walks twice as fast as we do and Brian generally lags a little behind - he is really feeling the heat so we have to stop often for rests. Got a great flight out Thursday night on Air Asia to Medan, Indonesia. $210.00 for the three of us - total. Very much like Ryanair in Europe. Efficient and cheap! Medan is the third largest city in this country and is filthy and overcorwded so we were thankful we only stayed the night before heading up to this somewhat mountainous region. We took a "tourist" bus to Parapet which took us 4.5 hours with no A/C and a loaded minivan!!!! Arrived unscathed but hungry so while waiting for the ferry had a bite, experienced the local (non-western) squatting toilets! What an experience for a woman. At the ferry station we had about 1.5 hours to wait so were approached by young men who were hunting for customers to stay at their hotels ?!? on the island. We did stay at one of them since once we arrived at 7:00pm it was dark, there is only 1 road around the island and we didn't have a clue where we were. We got a couple of rooms and today changed to another spot which is double the price but at least the matress is soft and has sheets on it! nOur total stay for the 2 nights with all our meals for the 3 of us came to a whopping $55.00. I still can't get over the prices but they all seem very happy here and don't seem to care too much about money. When we walked to this new spot they even drove us back to the first place so we could pack up and check out - all for free! Brian doesn't do too well with lots of walking even though it is quite cool here and there is no a/c anywhere. It rained all day yesterday and I mean almost 24 hours solid so caught up on lots of reading and talking. This new place is very nice, has a bit of a beach and seems to be a weekend getaway for alot of the locals. We will be here until Tuesday morning when we will reverse our last trip and then fly from Medan to Jakarta for a couple of days. Talk again soon!

Kuala Lumpur, Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Another great day here in this lovely city. Yesterday we went to the Petronal Twin Towers and it is free to go up to the skywalk. when we got there at 1:00pm we found out that all tickets for the day were gone, but if we showed up in the morning at 7:00am we would get tickets for the next day. Needless to say we aren't up at that time so no skywalk for us. The shopping at the Suria Centre there is amazing in that it is all designer shops. Brian had broken his glasses on the train so we got those fixed there and treated ourselves to an Ice Mocha at the Hagen Daz store - delicious and refreshing! Came back to the hotel for a nap and in the evening we took the local bus to the Central Market where there is every possible thing available to buy with some bargaining - looked at a bone necklace for myself but wasn't quite in the mood for buying so we took a cab home and tried to get a good nights rest. I woke up at 1:30am to go and wait for Aislyn in the lobby - expecting her around 2:00. She finally arrived at 3:30am so got back up to the room and crashed for thee night - or what was left of it. Great to have Aislyn with us and look forward to spending some time with her on a not too busy schedule.

Kuala Lumpur, Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Rather than taking the easy route and flying from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur, we decided to be a bit more adventurous and see some of the countryside so took an overnight train. We left the bustling city of Bangkok at 2:45pm on Sunday and arrived in Butterworth (still 350 kms outside KL) and 2:00pm the next day. We are having lots of luck meeting new people and we met a very interesting Malaysian 80 year old named Hassan who regaled us with stories of all his world travelling and his family. After a late lunch of Chicken and cashew with rice and Brian's drinking of a couple of Singha beer we turned in for the night in our upper and lower berth at 7:30pm!!!! Well, there we were at 2:00am both wide awake so while everyone else was asleep we got washed (somewhat) and read before nodding off again to the swaying motion of the train. We got up for good at 6:00am and had breakfast then spent the morning reading and then met Luk a blind Christian Malaysian who spoke very good English and just before we left the train he asked us for $$$ for a Christian book!! We had thought we had to stay in this little train station until 9:30pm to catch the connecting train, but as soon as we got off we were accosted by a local who sold us bus tickets leaving in half an hour for KL. Certainly was better than doing nothing for 9 hours. The bus was very nice and we had front row seats and Brian was quite happy to watch a Bruce Willis movie "Tears of the Sun" to pass the time.
Bargaining started again when we arrived and had to get a taxi to our hotel. After not too much haggling we arrived at a fair price and had a nice taxi ride with the driver and his 2 young sons. Our hotel is very nice and we are on the 23rd floor and have an awesome view of the Petronas Twin Towers from our room. They are all lit up at night and look beautiful. We were so happy to have a room and a shower - because of the heat your always feel dirty - and a late dinner. Got to bed about 11:00pm as we wanted to look forward to a full day.

Bangkok, Sunday, June 10,2007

We are up and about at 10:30 am. We have found it is better to get up early when it is cool then take it easy in the mid-day. We had a wonderful day yesterday. We left on a tour at 7:00am which started out by taking us to the floating market. You navigate the area in a boat for about 5 people rowed by a native. The boats go past all the individual vendors trying to sell you their goods. I bought a small buddha and they start of the price at $30 and I ended up buying it for $7.00. I guess the answer seems to be to start low and don't budge in price. If they aren't going to make any money they will not accept your offer. After this adventure we drove to an elephant and crocodile farm. First we had a lovely Thai buffet lunch. I really am enjoying their food and even Brian is starting to like it - a bit! We then saw a very interesting elephant show which included everything from how they were used for farming, hunting and fighting. Needless to say we are outside this whole time and the two of us are getting quite uncomfortable. It doesn't seem to matter how much we drink we are always WET! and HOT! Because of this we didn't really stay to watch too much of the crocodile show. Did see a bit of wretling but missed the part when he put his head into the crocodile's mouth. We were off next to the Rose Garden Hotel & Resort for a Thai Cultural show. We saw everything from Thai boxing and long & short stick fighting to a wedding ceremony and the traditional bamboo dancing. It was a very long day - returning at 6:00pm. We were supposed to meet a couple we had previously met from New Zealand to go to the night market, but they unfortunately had left so we nursed a few cool drinks and had a light supper then off to bed (at 8:30pm). We still haven't quite gotten used to the time change since we are awake and raring to go at 4:30 in the morning. Our day today will be quiet - an overnight train to Kuala Lumpur so will be able to get in some reading and just relax. You know how it is - when you are in a new place you really want to discover the local sights but it can be quite draining. We got some terrific pictures yesterday so shall send them off soon.

Bangkok Day 2

WOW! Is it hot! Until you are actually here you cannot comprehend the heat. It is about 35 degrees and I would say about 95% humidity!! Today we took an early morning tour to the Grand Palace which is beautiful. I will post pictures once Aislyn shows up and helps me but suffice it to say everything is so ornate and opulent. We actually were back at the hotel by 10:30am and Brian and I were both soaking wet! We just can't seem to drink enough water. We had a lovely day yesterday - rented a cab for 50Baht an hour which is about $1.50 and he took us to the Golden Buddha, the Sleeping Buddha, a very expensive Gem Store where of course they get their cut and then out to lunch to a Thai restaurant by the night market. We will have stories to tell about day one - you have to be so wary all the time. Our lunch cost us about $50.00 including the cab driver's lunch but in comparison to the cost of the cab I think they saw us coming. Will learn the ropes as we go I am sure.

JUNE 3 - PRE-DEPARTURE DAY

Just a day and a half until we leave on what is probably our most exciting adventure yet - Southeast Asia! Neither one of us has ever been here and considering all our travelling in the past, I am very nervous. Excited as well since we will visit our daughter whom we haven't seen for over 2 months. I think everything is organized at home and packing is just about finished. We will have a nice dinner tonight with my mom and sister to wish them goodbye. We love travelling but we always miss our family and friends. We will make sure to have our Friday night drink in honour of our PUB friends. We will miss our Westhighland Terrier - LOGAN - very much, but he is in good hands with our friends Lori & Len. I hope to hear from everyone as often as possible as that is one of the nice things about vacation - staying in touch!