Kuching

Hello! Sorry for the delay in posts. Brent and I haven't had the best Internet access. We arrived in Kuching which is in the state of Sarawak on Borneo island. They call the natives here the head hunters...and it has been an amazing few days. We decided to splurge and stay at a resort rather than a hostel and headed out to the beautiful beach resort of damai. It was a ways away from the city center so we didn't arrive until the late afternoon. We decided to take a quick nap before finding dinner...but slept until 8pm! We obviously hadn't had the best quality sleep in the previous couple of days. The next day we got up early and headed out on a jungle trek (more on this later) and then went out to this amazing orangutan conservation center. They call it a semi wild conservation area bc there are no enclosures so the orangatans can come and go as they please but the park rangers leave fruit and some yams out in parts of the conservation so that the jungle (which is suffering deforestation) can support these orangatans in months of the year where there is less fruit production. We were incredibly lucky and got to see the alpha male Richie up close and personal. We learned he is about 30 yrs old and weighs approx 70-80 kilos. He had this beautiful and very long orange red coat. He was able to smash coconuts open against the tree trunks with one arm as though it was swatting a fly. Once he left the area about 7 other orangatans came down out of the jungle to eat. It appears the rest of the orangatans stay out of his way and if I were them I would too bc he was about twice as big as the rest of them. Later that night we hung out at our resorts infinity pool high up on the hillside and just took in the views. Then we had an amazing malay dinner in the reorts scenic hillside restaurant overlooking the south china sea. We had it all to ourselves aside from the waitress, hostess, chef and resident bat that did fly bys every minute or two. We had our first cocktails of the trip, a headhunter (bc when in Rome...) and a singapore sling. Food and drinks were dilicious and the total bill was less than 20$ after tax and tip. Today we traveled out to Bako national park. It was a hour in a minibus followed by a 30 minute banka (small boat) ride thru the mangroves, onto the ocean, and into the park. We met up with a guide whose name we couldn't pronounce but that went by Issa. He warned us that we might not see all the animals and monkeys as they could be quite elusive. Again we lucked out. We saw all 3 types including the probocious (long nose) monkeys. These are apparently the hardest to find as they are fewer in number, stay mainly in the tops of trees, and become very silent when they hear humans approach. Amazingly, they seemed to find us on our trek thru the jungle. All of a sudden it just sounded like trees were coming down and it appeared to be coming toward us. The sounds were the big 40-60 kilo monkeys jumping from tree to tree. As they got close they made noises like snorting pigs out of their long noses. We also saw the silver tail monkeys and the macaques (called naughty monkeys here as they often steal people's belongings). Aside from the monkeys we saw a huge wild boar with 4 piglets, a monitor lizard, catfish, 2 pit vipers (which our guide warned us can kill a human in 2 hours after a bite- glad we didn't know that yesterday when we trekked thru the jungle by ourselves!!) 2 green tree snakes, one of which was huge and I almost stepped on. I jumped about 3 feet bc from where I spotted it right next to my leg I thought it was a pit viper (same bright green color) coiled up and ready to strike. The guide laughed and said it was just a treesnake. When I asked if it was poisonous he said "yes, but not like pit viper". We also saw flying lemur taking a snooze in a tree. We did not see any of the crocodiles that the many signs said to watch out for. We also did not see jumping spiders, scorpions, or the giant python which was ok by us. Upon leaving the park we came back to Kuching to stay in a hostel and are going to be flying to Kota Kinabalu at 6 am tomorrow. In other very exciting news we found out today that our offer for a beautiful house in pleasant hill has been accepted and we are in contract!!! Thank you very much family for all the hard work in making this happen while we've been away!!! Brent and Ash

Singapore

Day 3, Wednesday March 25: After getting to our hostel in Singapore and showering/changing our clothes (we had been in the same clothes since leaving the US) we set out to explore Singapore. We were staying on the border of the Muslim and Indian disctrict, so found some amazing food for brunch. I of course had butter chicken with garlic naan...bringing me back to my days in India, and Brent had the traditional Malaysian breakfast. This included rice, a full fish (we think it was the same type of fish that cleaned our feet the day before, so we were kind of sad) and some chili sauce...plus a bowl of coconut soup to help with the spice. Both were amazing, but I liked mine better :) We then jumped on the MRT (or mass rapid transit underground system) and headed out to the Botanical Gardens. We were planning on only spending an hour or so there, but the Gardens were massive covering 52 hectres and there was so much to see! We wandered around in the Healing Gardens and then went into the world renowned Orchid Gardens (I guess Singapore is known for their orchids...and they are amazing!). We spent quite a few hours there and then headed down to the Esplanade where we saw the true "glory" of Singapore...in the shape of three massive hotels with a ship on the top of them. We dined at another hawker stall with this as our view and then headed out of the city a ways for a Night Safari. Although slightly kichy and not a "real" safari, the enclosures were pretty natural looking and we got to see the animals very close up...we saw a ton of deer, lions, tigers, anteaters, civets, flying squirrels, bats, etc. etc. It was actually pretty fun, although we were both catching ourselves falling asleep while sitting by the end of the train ride! We headed back to our hostel and couldn't even stop to have some hookah along the way befor showering again (it is SO muggy here, we were still dripping from sweat even at 11pm) and face planted into bed. The wonderful thing about hostel sleeping is you never really know what you are going to get. In our case it was in the form of a child screaming around midnight (in the room next door) and then a father banging on his door to have his daughter let him in the room around 2 am. Also, because we were near the mosque, we also got serenaded to at dawn...it was still probably our best night sleep of the trip so far! Today we are off to Kuching, on the Malaysia island of Borneo. I'm supposed to have this part of the trip planned...but I don't, so we will see where we end up! Hopefully I'll get pictures uploaded in the next few days. Love you all!

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Day 2: Tues March 24, 2012 Brent and I arrived in Kuala Lumpur around 1:30 in the afternoon. We were pretty lucky to have slept for a bit on the flight over and were ready to tackle the day. First, we decided to head to the train station to print out our train tickets to Singapore and stash our bags for the afternoon. Once all that was cleared we headed out on a self guided walking tour of the famous Chinatown. As what happens with most self guided tours in an unfamiliar city, we got lost. We ended up seeing most of the sights on the tour, but not in the exact order. We walked through their open market (full of American junk, seriously) and then headed over to an old Cricket field, Merdeka Square, which is also the location of Malaysia's independence from British rule. We also walked past quite a few mosques and temples and the city reminded me of a mix between Hydrabad in India and Bangkok in Thailand. KL is an incredible melting pot of cultures and religions...and yet surprisingly there were very few other "white" people (we are on the off season though). We ended up getting stuck in a thunderstorm though and got soaked through...Brent said it was our shower for the day. Whatever it was, it made us decide against seeing the Petronas Tower (which is actually what KL is famous for, but who cares about two huge man made towers anyway) and head back to Chinatown for some local hawker stall food. On our way we stumbled across a "fish spa" with "fish doctors" and became intrigued. The local custom is to have a mini spa pedicure with hundreds of tiny fish munching at your dead skin. Well the price was right so we decided to do as the locals do and get our feet wet...literally. It was a hilarious experience and while at first it tickled, after a few minutes you really got used to the experience. It made me wonder if my Dad could transform his koi pond into one of these fish spas...no more need for fish food, just plop your feet in the water and let the fish do the rest :) Maybe not...I think they were some special kind of fish...but it would still be fun. After the fish spa we found some amazing spicy sam mee noodles and washed it down with an ice cold beer. At this point it was getting later in the evening, it was still raining with thunder and lightening and Brent and I were exhausted. We decided to head back to the trani station and wait for our train to Singapore to arrive. Brent could barely keep his eyes open once we got to the station though and I have a good compilation of Brent sleeping (first standing up, then sitting up, then slouched over his bag). Once we got to our sleeper train Brent belly flopped onto the lower bunk and that was the last I heard from him until our arrival in Singapore :) It took us about 2 hrs to get to our hostel in Singapore but we have safely arrived, showered and are ready to explore the city. We are looking forward to a real bed tonight and maybe some quality sleeping in action tomorrow...although there is a lot to see in Singapore so we better get on our way! More to come. Love you all!

The Journey begins...

After moving all of our stuff down from Portland to San Francisco and sharing a farewell meal with family, Brent and I arrived at SFO airport. We were exhausted from our final days of medical school but excited to start our honeymoon adventure. As soon as we were dropped off we knew we weren't going on any ordinary honeymoon. Our first adventure awaited us, in the form of 200+ Asian people standing in line waiting to check their millions of bags. As we towered over them with our very light backpacks as our only luggage, we knew there had to be an easier way...and there was when we were told we didn't have to wait if we weren't checking a bag. Oh how lucky we thought we were...until the nice lady at the kiosk told us carry on weight limit was 15#...Brent was about 10 over and I was 5, there was no way they were going to make an exception. We quickly grabbed our "essentials" and checked the bags. We didn't want to have to return to the horrendous line. After our agony of having to check a bag was over, we compared essentials. Mine was my toothbrush and a blanket, Brent may have been smarter, he grabbed a whole extra set of clothes. Oh how I hope to see my bag waiting for us in kualu lumpur, Malaysia!! Our flight leaves at 1:35am and will arrive tomorrow (tues) at 1:30pm...wish us a good sleep and a calm flight. Next post will be somewhere in south east Asia. Love to all!