Phnom Penh

We've discovered that you can't help comparing each new country visited to the ones visited before. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing, but that's just the way it is.

Malaysia and Thailand were very nice, very easy places to travel. We loved them both, but we missed the roughness and toughness of India, Nepal, and, to a lesser extent, Sri Lanka. It's difficult to explain, really. In those places, everything isn't always pretty, people aren't always nice and respectful, the poverty is in your face, and it seems like the hassling never stops. But there is a flip side to that also. Many of the most beautiful things we've ever seen are in these places, we met many warm, friendly, and amazing people, even though the poverty is tough everywhere you look people are trying to make a better life for themselves by being incredibly inventive and hardworking entrepreneurs. The bottom line is that life can be hard, life can be good, life can be cruel, and life can be beautiful. Not only can it be, but it is.

On the first part of our trip this is exactly what we saw, all around us, all the time. We didn't love every single experience. What we loved was the realness of it all. What you see is what you get and that's life, nothing is glossed over. You like seeing the Taj Mahal? That's great, it's part of life in India. You don't want to see a disfigured child crawling across a train floor sweeping up garbage and begging for rupees? Too bad, that's part of life in India. You like seeing the cultural diversity in food, language, and dress? Great, that's life in India. You don't like seeing kids pooping on the side of the road and smelling human sewage as you walk the streets? Too bad, sometimes that's just the way it is in India.

Things aren't easy, everyone is just trying to do the best they can to make it in this world. To make life just a little bit better for themselves and their family. That by itself is beautiful. We were lucky enough to see it in it's rawest, purest form and we'll never forget it.

We were very happy to arrive in Cambodia even though we had to leave some of the comforts behind. The reason is we left some of that gloss behind too. We were excited to shed it and get back again to having life come at us full on, no apologies.

Thailand

Yikes, it's my first post for Thailand and we're already getting ready to cross into Cambodia! It's been a busy few weeks. Our first week here we met up with my mom in Bangkok and spent our time seeing the sights in Bangkok and around. We saw so many things and were a bit worn out, so we decided to spend our second week in Thailand relaxing on an island beach paradise. Without a doubt, it was the right thing to do! It's a shame we didn't have time to see more of Thailand, but we enjoyed every minute of our time here and sometimes it's okay to take some time to relax.

There's way too many experiences from the last two weeks to write about in detail, but there was one I wanted to be sure and get down here. It's about Libya. I'm certain that if you're reading this from the United States you've had more than your fill of news from Libya, but hear me out.

Islands are nice, but they're really expensive. On Ko Chang, transportation was particularly expensive. Since it's impossible to get lost (there's only one road around the island) and people here were quite friendly we decided to try and hitchhike. After a while some friendly guys picked us up and we got the standard question "Where you from?" People are always excited when we tell them we're from the United States and these Thais were no exception. Their English was very poor, but this was typical. What wasn't typical is what came next. "Oh....America. Libya.....Qaddafi, booooooooom!"

We only read about it on the internet a day earlier. All we could do was smile nervously and say, "yeah, that's us!" It really wasn't what we wanted to hear from someone that just picked us up by the said of the road. After a prolonged silence due to an almost impenetrable language barrier we were comforted when he said "America....good," to which we replied "Thailand good" and everyone was happy. Just in case, we topped it off with a "Long live the king!" I don't think he understood that bit, but if he did he would have appreciated it. Thais really love their king!

Sadly, since then whenever someone finds out we're American, Lybia is the first thing they bring up. We don't really know how people around here feel about the issue and we don't even know very much about it ourselves. It's hard to keep up to date on the news when you're in a foreign country (or several) and in a different city an average of every three days. I makes things kind of uncomfortable, especially when you throw in language barriers. Usually people can communicate enough to say they know what is happening between the US and Libya, but that's about the extent of it. Maybe we will have to start claiming to be from Ukraine, a fabrication we usually reserve for people we don't want to talk to or those who are persistently trying to sell us things. No English....only Ukrainian!

Teluk Bahang

We rushed a bit through Georgetown so that we could have some extra time at our last stop in Malaysia, Teluk Bahang. We are so glad we did! Teluk Bahang is a small fishing town with easy access to a national park. There are hardly any tourists and that means hardly any taxi drivers, touts, or tour operators hassling us. Instead of all that we're simply in a quiet, friendly place.

The national park is well worth the visit too! It was surprisingly well maintained and entrance was completely free. The had a very large and informative visitors center that taught us about many of the animals in the park. The only thing that cost money was the canopy walk. We didn't have to pay for this either because the street vendor we bought our lunch from gave us extra tickets left behind by some departing German tourists. Free is great! The canopy walk was one the highlights for us even though it was slightly terrifying. The bridge didn't seem entirely.....stable. But we put our faith into it, had a great time, and took some amazing photos.

The next day we hiked for over two hours through the jungle stopping to rest at some of the beaches along the way. We saw plenty of wildlife including squirrels, monkeys, and lots giant water monitor lizards. Many of them were bigger than small alligators! We ended our hike at Monkey Beach.

Most of the few tourists that come to the park hire boats which take them straight to Monkey Beach and drop them there. Many of these were Malaysian, so we weren't that surprised to see fully clothed women walking the beach complete with hijabs (Malaysia is primarily Muslim). What did surprise us was a European girl that was walking around topless. I think it's great if women are comfortable with their bodies, but going topless in a Muslim country is not just unwise, it's incredibly disrespectful. Please don't be like her and try to respect local customs when you travel!

Cameron Highlands & Georgetown

Our time in Malaysia is just breezing by. I'm happy to report that we were able to do plenty of relaxing in the Cameron Highlands. We stayed in the small town of Tanah Rata in the hills. It was absolutely beautiful there, as lush and green as you can imagine. There are many things to see in this area - tea plantations, strawberry farms, rose gardens, butterfly sanctuaries, waterfalls, and more. We mostly spent our time hiking through the jungle, relaxing at our hostel, and eating Indian food.

Unfortunately for us, most Malaysian food is not vegetarian. However, historically, many Indians came to Malaysia from Tamil Nadu (southern India) to work on the tea plantations. This meant jobs for them, and today, it means Indian food for us (yum!) They are always so impressed when Heather greets them with "vanna kam" (hello in Tamil). They probably don't hear it much from foreigners and they really appreciate it that we know just a little bit more about their culture than the average tourists.

After our super-relaxing stay in the Cameron Highlands, we headed to Georgetown loaded with energy. In the past 24 hours seen all the major sites we hoped to including churches, mosques, Hindu, Chinese, Thai, and Burmese temples, a sleeping Buddha, the national museum, the clock tower, and Fort Cornwallis (from the outside). We also managed to go to the hospital to get our second vaccination for Japanese Encephalitis. All that and I've still got the energy to write about it all on my blog.

As usual, the highlight of the day wasn't the sights. The longer we travel the more we value the truly unique experiences, whatever they may be, over another temple or museum. Today, that truly unique experience took its form as a refreshing street snack we heard about from some locals, called ice kachang. The dish is made only on this small island and thanks to some excellent directions we were lucky enough to sample it at the stand of its inventor. Ice kachang is shaved ice with sweet syrup (sounds good so far), beans, corn, slimy gummy worm type things, milk, some kind of green jelly balls, and maybe a little rambutan (tropical fruit)? As you can imagine, it was....interesting. I don't have my photos uploaded yet, but here is a picture I found on google images that looks about as close to ours as I could get. Mmm....tasty.