A Sad Day

Marianne leaves tomorrow. So, we are a little sad today. I needed to come in to the office today (Sunday) to take care of a few things, so I thought I'd make a quick post; I will make a more detailed one later this week (and include some cool pics too!).

I had this last week off, so Marianne and I took advantage and did a little adventuring. First, we did a little trekking with TMC and a bunch of students. I'm really glad we did that because Marianne got to know some of the students a little.
After that we flew to the east coast and spent a few days snorkeling on Redang, a little island just off the coast. The water was spectacularly clear, and the marine life was amazing: we saw fishes and colours that I didn't know existed, black-tipped sharks, a cool huge turtle, and very neat coral. We spent a day after that on the east coast of the peninsula, checking out the very Malay state of Terrenganu. Marianne got a ton of stares! From both men and women! Of course, I figure they were really looking at me...uhhh the women that is:) Oh yeah, we also saw a bunch of monkeys while we were on the island.
We came back home and spent the next few days close to home. We went into downtown KL a few times: checked out Chinatown and Little India; walked through the central market; got some pictures of the Petronas towers; and took a day trip to the Batu Caves. These caves are home to a Hindu Temple. The caves themselves were monstrous. And the caves were crawling with monkeys. While the other tourists were feeding the monkeys, and taking pictures of the monkeys, playing with the monkeys, blah blah blah, Marianne and I hardly noticed them! There was also this giant gold statue there (off the top of our heads, we are not sure who it was a statue of, but I'll post a picture later). Either way, both the caves and the statue and temples were very impressive.

Ok, back to hanging out with Marianne and enjoying the time we have left.

Back from Living it up in Langkawi!!

La Dolce Vita!

So, Marianne and I flew to Langkawi for the weekend. It was a ton of fun! We hopped in a cab right after I finished teaching, got to the airport and took the hour flight to Langkawi (This is half-way across the country). Marianne (during her flight here) saw 5 different airports and says, without a doubt, KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) is by far the most efficient.

In Langkawi we relaxed on a beach, tried out local cuisine, took a cable car (allegedly the longest in the world) to the top of a mountain, relaxed by the pool, rode an elephant, had lunch while monkeys played on trees in the background, rented a scooter and booted around the island, checked out quaint, old towns, relaxed in a hammock on the beach, played with a snake (no, it's not what you're thinking: see the pics) and relaxed by the pool. Oh yeah, and got sunburned.

It was a great weekend. Relaxing by the pool and on the beach was great. My favourite part was the hammock on the beach. I'm thinking I might buy a hammock and a hammer drill and set one up on my balcony.

The views from the top of the mountain were spectacular; the pictures do not do them justice.

We loved the monkeys! We saw them first on our way from the airport to our hotel. They were just hanging out in the forest on the side of the road. Then later, while we were having breakfast at the resort, they were all over the place, playing around. I took possibly 100 pics of the monkeys (don't worry they are not all in the gallery).

The elephant ride was also very cool. Marianne and I hopped on and strolled (or kind-of lumbered) through the jungle, our guide leading the way. We got onto the elephant by walking up a set of steps and stepping into the basket, but the guide got on by stepping on the elephant's foot and the elephant lifted him up. Also, the elephant picked up the guide's sandals with his trunk and handed them to him while he was still on top. After the ride, we fed the elephant sugar-cane. Super-cool!

We went to this cute, little oriental village. There, we found this dude that was wrapped in a python! He asked if we wanted to touch his snake. Marianne politely declined. I was all for it. So, he unravelled the snake off of him and let it wrap itself around me. This pic is just for you ma!

We really liked bombing around the island on the scooter. It was a monsterous scooter (for Malaysia,that is). It was 150cc. Because it was so small, I didn't think it would be as much fun as it was. I got it going just over 100km/h, but then Marianne yelled at me, so that was the end of that. She's sitting beside me right now, yelling at me not to write the previous line...Ok it wasn't really yelling, she just got a little scared, I guess. I dunno...
In all seriousness, going around on a scooter was great! We rented it for RM40 for 24hrs (that's $12.30Can). I did barter with the guy: He initially asked for RM50. After talking to a few people back here, we found out that we overpaid. It also cost us RM6 in fuel (we drove around for probably 5hrs total).

Best weekend ever!!

Try pic post again

I guess it worked now. I'm not sure why.
This is our descent from Bukit Tabur. Looking down on the town.

Marianne will be here tomorrow!

First, let me start by apologizing for any typos or errors in this post. I'm a little rushed, so I'm not going to stop and fix any of my errors (hopefully this won't become a habit).

With that out of the way: Marianne'll be here by tomorrow afternoon! As we speak (or rather, as I type), she is in a plane over the ocean. Total travel time for her: I think over thirty hours. From TO to SanFran to HongKong to Singapore and to Malaysia. I hope she's still doing ok. She left TO around 17hrs ago. 13 more to go!

So, I've been doing lots of work trying to get ahead so that when she's here I'm not at the office all day, and instead we can go out on the town, Baby! Yeah! ...Or something. Actually, this weekend I have a trip booked to Langkawi: a little island off the west coast. It's supposed to be very nice. Although, the airline that I wanted to fly with (Air Asia) didn't have any late enough flights on Fri. So we're flying with the "good" airline: MAS (Malaysian Airlines). Turns out with MAS, the flight costs us over twice as much as it would have with Air Asia. So in total, for both of us it came to $315CAN. Outrageous. Hopefully we'll have some decent photos to post of the beaches! I'm also definitely going to take pictures of my place in the next few days and post them. I know what you're thinking, and yes you are right...Marianne will probably take pics of my place and post them.
She's staying for just under three weeks. I am super-pumped that she's coming!!! (I actually wrote "super-pimped" by accident, but I figured that was a typo that definitely needed correcting).

Other than getting into the office at 7:30 in the morning and leaving at around 10:30 or 11:00 (I'm at the office right now), I did find some time go on a trek with a few locals. It was an unofficial trip, since we didn't have waiver forms for the students to sign. As such we only took one student with us (a guy that the lead trekker/lecturer knows from before). So we went: Myself, TMC (Tan Meng Chwen) the master trekker, climber, everything basically),a former student of his (from 4 years ago) by the name of Neon (I'm serious), and Shima (another lecturer at the school).
It, uhhh...It was, shall we say, an adventure. Anyway, the important thing is that everyone is still alive and has their vision and feet are still in one piece.
It was extremely hazy that day, so it wasn't a picture day. In spite of that I did post some to my album just because I know that's what people want to see (if anything).
The trek was awesome. It was a hill called Bukit Tabur. Bukit meaning hill in Malay. TMC said it would take about 2hrs to get up to the peak and back down. Well, about 2 hrs into it, we weren't nearly to the peak. I'm sure if he was on his own he could do the entire thing in two hrs...Anyway, it was starting to get dark and we were worried about being stuck on the hill (in the jungle) in the middle of the night. This hill did have a trial (you might call it), but it was quite rugged. Anyway, the short version...right: We turned around and came back down. On the way, a branch nearly took out my eye. But hey, now I've got a cool new scar! Also, poor Shima: her shoe got caught in between two rocks and she couldn't get it out. Now we were on the side of a cliff at this point. There was no room for me to go up beside her and help out. So, since I was behind her, me thinking that I'm a smart guy and all decide I would slip my toe underneath her heal and prop her shoe out. It makes sense, right? Anyway, As I provide some leverage, she pulls up with her foot. What happens? Her foot comes out of her shoe, just as her shoe pops out from between the rocks...And goes flying off the side of the cliff. I'm not talking a few feet. It fell off a vertical wall, easily 300ft down. The shoe was lost for good. I felt terrible. Shima would not hear of taking my shoes, and got quite upset with me for asking repeatedly. She walked down the hill in sock feet! But now we were moving even more slowly and darkness was falling quickly. So, TMC told the three of us to go up ahead and he and Shima would come down by the light of a little penlight he had with him. (I know good preparation; but we were supposed to be up and down in a few hours. We started at 3:30!). Anyway, the three of us got down before it was pitch black, but TMC and Shima came down after dark. I guess somewhere along the line, TMC conviced Shima to take one of his sandals (Yes, this dude was climbing this thing in sandals:take a look at the photos to see how crazy that is). Well, shortly after he was barefoot, he stepped in a large colony of red ants and they chewed up his foot pretty good. Oh yeah, Amir also fell down the hill, but TMC was there luckily and caught him just before he would have plunged into a roll down very rocky terrain.

TMC took us on this trek because it was a nice easy one, just to get warmed up.
Overall, it was super-cool! He wants us to work our way to climbing a mountain that actually takes 8-12hrs of climbing time: just to ascend! If I had this much fun on this one, I can't wait for that! I really hope next time I go that it is nicer out so that I can take more pictures of the rainforest canopy as we climb. It really is spectacular! It was just such a phenomenal experience. This is the Malaysia I came to see! Lots more of this type of thing to come!

I tried to post a pic here, but it's not letting me (I'm not sure why...no time to play with it now)

I drove on the other side of the road!

So I moved into my new place this weekend. So far, I'm liking it a lot; It's really nice (I will post some pics when I get around to taking them). My new residence, Palmville, is only about a 5 minute walk from my old place, so I was lugging my stuff over on foot when a dude that I had met here a few weeks back saw me and offered me his car. He's a Canadian Chiropractor that has been living/working here for 5 years. He just gave me his keys and said, "bring it back when you are done!" It may sound silly to many of you, but I was pumped to drive on the other side of the road. It was lots of fun. It wasn't as strange as I imagined it would be, and I got used to being on the other side of the road fairly quickly. Now I didn't go driving downtown or anything like that...we'll have to see how that goes. What was the most difficult adjustment (you were right, Scott!) was shifting gears. I kept bashing my right hand against the car door as I went for the stick that wasn't there. Also, all the levers on the steering column are on opposite sides to what we're used to. So every time I went to put my blinker on, I would turn on the windshield wipers. I never did learn that one; I did it even as I was returning the car after having driven around, moved myself in, picked up my new roommates and their stuff and moved them in, and drove a local friend in to work (at a nearby bar): I saw her walking to work(it was raining, so I offered her a ride). I'm looking forward to more driving around here! The drivers here are definitely insane, though. The drivers are crazy in Toronto? Montreal? I don't think so!

I also went rock climbing with the climbing club. That was my first time climbing. It was great! This is something I can see myself really getting hooked on. Especially doing it outdoors once I learn how not to kill myself!
Also, the jungle trekking club had its first meeting yesterday. We're planning our first trek up a mountain this Saturday, pending we have transportation. Things work quite differently around here. Most of the staff (both locals and expats) do not have vehicles. Also, the school doesn't usually charter buses to go on trips. So how does everyone get there? The students drive us!! I am very unused to this idea, and not sure how comfortable I am with it, but that's the way it's done here! Basically, when students signed up for the club, they also signed up if they have a vehicle and if they can drive us to our trekking areas. This is definitely different...
The trek should be about 1 hr to 1hr45min from the base to the peak of the mountain (hill, really). But the teacher that is leading the club is a big trekker and wants us to work our way to climbing a monster by the end of the semester: An 8 to 12 hour climb! Then an overnight stay at the summit, and the descent! I really hope that this club runs smoothly and everything works out, because it sounds super-cool! We are also waiting on the director’s approval, and waiver forms for the students to fax to their parents to sign.

Another long post. I was going to start by saying that I didn't have much to say (insert your own jokes here)...

And finally, as promised: