Conservationists Extraordinaire

Well, internet access here in paradise is sketchy, to say the least. We are however more than pleased to have any of it at all. With that in mind, here is a summary of what we took notes on while we worked.

We are thoroughly sleep deprived, but loving every moment of it. Every spare second that isn't spent working to help as many sea turtles enter the wild safely, is spent either sleeping, or diving. With those as the three activities, sleep is left to a few measly hours a night, never more than four at a go.

The Bubbles Turtle & Coral Project and those who run it, is/are truly incredible. The resort is such a slice of paradise, its hard to believe. A small place with a private beach and bay, its just a few wonderful guests, significantly fewer volunteers and staff working with the turtles, and the South China Sea. Toss in a bit of Malaysian jungle, and its a recipe for an unforgettable experience. The diving we do, as well as nightly educational lessons to the guests called 'Turtle Talks' (we will give one here in writing very soon!) are critical pieces of the conservation project, in my humble opinion. Each person can only do so much, and the more people that are educated and taught to appreciate the delicate ecosystem, the greater chance that these precious creatures will return to the very beach they hatched on after more than 30 years at sea. Along with teaching appreciation, while diving we  work to maintain and grow the Bubbles 'house reefs'. In the decades to come these reefs will help to ensure that this beach is still available to the turtles that come here to nest. As you can imagine with that lengthy maturation process, it will be a whole new generation of conservationists that are here at this beach, and similar beaches world wide, when this years' hatchlings come back to nest.

We released no fewer than 135 baby turtles to be free in the wild. Krissy fell in love with each and every one. Sadly with a survival rate of just 1/5000, the chances of any of those babies surviving to return to this beach in 30 years is small. More than 80% of the eggs that are laid on this beach are turned over to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, for better or worse, which is why in a one week period when a single nest can be 135 eggs or more, we release only that many.

Regardless, every little bit helps. With the addition of programs such as ours, in recent years that survival rate has rocketed from the atrocious rate of 1/10,000. We can only hope that survival rate keeps on climbing.

So, to those parties who are interested, here is a (probably exhaustingly thorough) rundown of how we spent our days. Maybe you are interested in volunteering this program, or a similar one. Maybe you just want to know how we spent our time. Regardless, every second was worth it. We wish we could have stayed longer, and will be back. After almost a year of travel, enjoying what the world and its people have to offer, and finding out a lot about ourselves, we truly appreciated the opportunity to be here and give something back. We sincerely hope that in another 30 years when these hatchlings come back to this very beach, there will be such an incredibly beautiful place for them to return to.

On a side note, this was painstakingly typed out on our iPhone (as with all the recent posts - since our laptops went kaput) so please forgive spelling and formatting errors.

15/8

10:15 am - Our boat to Bubbles from Kuala Besut

11 am - arrive on the most perfect beautiful beach, in a coral bay with clear calm aquamarine water. There are no roads or vehicles other than boats here, indeed it would be impossible. A small bay, with just the right size beach, and impassable jungle hills all around. 

11:30 am - check in

1:00 pm - met our 'boss', had first buffet lunch

2:00 pm - orientation tour

3:00 snorkeling with volunteers!

7:30 buffet dinner

Cards (Uno, anyone?), hangin out

9:30pm - release baby turtles!! (4)

16/8

12:00 midnight - most people head to bed, Chris volunteers to stay up with our 'chief' so she doesn't have to do her shift alone. Poachers - yikes!

3:10am - Chris' shift over, heads to bed. 

8:20 am- alarm!

8:45 am - buffet breakfast

9:00 am - first SCUBA class!! Videos and book work

12:30 pm - lunch

1:00 pm - more scuba class, videos and bookwork.

4:00 pm - free time. Beach, swimming, etc.

7:30 pm - dinner

8:00 pm - first 'turtle watch' shift starts. Hatchlings! (41)

9:30 pm - release baby turtles!! (41)

17/8

3:00 am - shift over, bed time.

7:00 am - hatchlings during the late shift while we slept. (29)

8:20 am - alarm!

8:45 am - breakfast

9:00 am - SCUBA class! Dive skills, and first dive!! Amazing. Practiced partial mask clear underwater, buddy breathing

11:00 am - free time, beach swim.

11:45 am - fire ants discovered in the hatchery! Three nests attacked. Fortunately some hatchlings had come out earlier. We lost some. :-( We saved more than we lost however - in the wild the whole nests would have been lost. Picking dozens of fire ants off of the few turtles that had hatched and not emerged was heartbreaking. 

1:30 pm - lunch

2:00 pm - head to dive class, but instructors went diving. Decided to nap. 

4:00 pm - alarm. 

4:20 pm - check in for dive class, postponed til the next day. Very sad we interrupted our naps, tried to sleep more and failed. 

7:45 pm - dinner

8:00 pm - turtle watch shift starts. 

9:00 pm - release baby turtles! (29 - 4 brought back for next release)

18/8

1:30 am - released 8 more babies. Swim and be free!

3:00 am - shift over, bed time. 

4:30 am - while we slept. Poachers! Pulled their boat up to the beach and despite our people showing up, got out to have a look at the beach. Upon friendly questioning, indicated that they were looking for turtles. How cheeky. They got back in their boat and left. 

8:20 am - alarm!

8:45 am - breakfast

9:00 am - SCUBA class! Skills testing. Removing mask, weights and BCD underwater, and at surface. Tired diver assisting. (push and pull) buoyancy tests. Cramp removal, self and buddy. Also tested 'running out of air'. Instructor turned off our tank underwater and let us experience feeling it 'run dry'. Yikes!

Krissy had a few minor blonde moments. First when trying to practice removing her cramps, she couldn't reach her flipper, and in trying kept tipping forward and dunking her face. I mentioned she might try bending her knee and grabbing on, then extending leg. Whoops! Later when removing and replacing mask underwater, she had trouble clearing out the seawater. She was blowing out her mouth, not her nose. Hehe!

One other minor issue - the cute yellow and blue striped damsel fish love the taste of Krissy! About 2 inches long and seemingly harmless, they dart at her repeatedly, and occasionally take a chomp! 

11:00 am - clean gear, and prepare dive 'kit' for after lunch dive. 

11:15 am - free time. Quick swim, then chill. 

12:30 pm - lunch

1:00 pm - dive two! Gambon? Amazing! Great vis, amazing corals and fish. 

3:00 pm - dive complete, clean kit and prepare for third dive of the day, after some decompression time. 

4:00 pm - dive three. House reef two. Saw male green sea turtle. First on bottom, then swimming. Visibility was quite shit. First low-vis dive. 

6:00 pm - dive complete, clean and put away kit. Shower and dry, very 'pruny'. 

7:30 pm - dinner

8:30 pm - hanging out with James the dive shop manager, chatting, and playing ukulele. He has one also. 

10:30 pm - go for a bit of sleep before the late shift. 

19/8

1:30 am - while we slept. 

Nesting turtle!

2:40 am - alarm

3:00 am - start work, discover that first shift has been dealing with a turtle!

4:00 am - while waiting for the turtle to finish burying her nest, I take a few minutes to sit and take it all in. It's truly one of life's most incredible moments. With the (endangered?) sea turtle continuing its struggle to keep its race alive a few feet away, I look out to sea from our tiny remote jungle island beach. Bio-luminescents flash in the water as the waves gently crash on shore. Fireflies flutter along the beach, their green light nearly the same as that of those in the water. A brilliant mass of stars light the southern sky, and shooting stars are racing across it all. The swishing of our turtle friend burying her nest, and the waves of the south china sea beating their endless rhythm, are the only additions to the complete silence. Few moments could possibly hold more magic. 

4:30 am - nest is buried, turtle slips into the sea. We begin digging it up to move to hatchery. 

5:00 am - DFW (Department of Fish and Wildlife) comes, takes their eggs. It was them, not poachers the previous night. Between their language barrier and 'islander' attitude, head volunteer misidentified them. Whoops!

7:00 am - early finish, off to bed!

10:00 am - Chris wakes, heads to the beach to chill, something we have done very little of. 

11:00 am - Krissy wakes, heads to beach for a morning yoga!

12:30 pm - lunch

1:00 pm - 'nest review' meeting. Discuss what went right and what went wrong with handling the nest the previous night. Mostly all good. 

2:00 pm - diving! D'lagoon - beautiful corals, incredible visibility, and it's our first dive with no training or skills, just enjoying! Fun. Another diver took some pictures of us, hope to get some!

4:00 pm - return from dive, clean kit, shower off. 

5:00 pm - last chapter of theory. Exam tomorrow!

6:15 pm - theory done, head over to do work in the hatchery. 

7:45 pm - straight from the hatchery to dinner. 

9:00 pm - released hatchlings! (53)

9:45 pm - on our way back from release, we discover another nesting turtle!

10:15 pm - after watching the turtle find its nest sight and start digging, we head to bed, late shift tonight. 

11:00 pm - sleep

20/8

2:40 am - alarm

3:00 am - late shift starts. 96 eggs in the nest from earlier. Our last shift, and our only one without boss or chief. 

3:45 am - poachers!? We heard a boat in the bay. A slow pass on the beach with bright lights looking for tracks. Since the best earlier was at a high tide, and now it's low, there is a big stretch of bare sand, and they don't notice any tracks. After a few minutes they head off. 

4:30 am - with our final exam for our SCUBA certification today, we go trough our study books and quiz each other on anything and everything we think may appear on the 50 question test. 

6:15 am - krissy and I sit and soak up our incredible atmosphere yet again. The world is just starting to glow with that soft light and colors that exist only in these brief tropical moments. How lucky we are. 

8:00 am shift ends. 

8:00 am - not being sure that we were tired enough for sleep (...!) we decide to get some exercise. Krissy enjoys a warm tropical yoga in the sand, while I run laps on our small private beach, and we both wrap up with some strength training. Our routines vary little, as it's something we are now quite used to having perfected gaining some exercise with no access to equipment. Push-ups, sit-ups, plank. Find something a bit elevated ( a stair, the edge of a bed, or a log) and do some dips. When I have the luxury of finding somehing I can dangle from, I eagerly do pull-ups until my hands blister, since it's rarely somehing that is well suited to the task. Worth it. 

8:45 am - After our exercise with the sun rapidly rising over the hill, and light streaming across the beach, we enjoy another swim in the warm saltwater that one could never tire of. 

9:00 am - a quick bit of breakfast and some coffee to keep the energy up, we enjoy a quiet morning of snorkeling and enjoying the beach. 

11:00 am - exam time! We both do quite well, and are now certified scuba divers, trained at depths of up to 18 meters (60 feet). What an incredible experience it was learning to do this, especially while participating I the conservation project. Always keeping in mind the turtles and the environments that are important to heir life cycle. We help maintain the two 'house reefs' which the resort is growing to ensure the future holds more than enough life to sustain the nesting population. The turtles know the smell of their home waters, the makeup of the local corals, and the mineral contents of the sands and use all those things to find the very beach they were hatched on some 30 years prior to their first nesting period. 

12:30 pm - lunch

1:00 pm - we insist on some pictures with the rest of our team, to help immortalize this experience for us. 

1:30 pm - help with the chores that our project has determined fit within its scope on the resort. We clean he beach of garbage and litter washed up from the sea, to ensure the turtles continue to find it a habitable place to nest. We collect and sort the resort's recycling, since this can be sold to a local who periodically drops by on his boat, for a small amount of money that can go back into he project for buying supplies. And one of our primary chores, of course, is maintaining the hatchery. Turtles hatch about every day his time of year on our paradisaical beach, and the nests need to be carefully cleaned and prepared should we receive another mother laying her eggs. We use only the clean magical sand from below the tide line. We carefully place layers of screens and laboriously use a double nest-within-a-nest strategy to help keep out fire ants, the devils. 

3:00 pm - chores done, we gather as a group and do some brainstorming. Our amazing project coordinator is always looking for ways to improve on our facilities, never content with the status quo. We know right now what we have works. Temperature, drainage, etc. we hatch eggs nearly every day. But there is always room for improvement. Today's big question is: Can we create a nest that allows for transparency (literally) to the eggs. A display nest that still meets all our known criteria for bathing healthy turtles, while providing a visible experience for the resort guests to enjoy, and visual data for the project staff and volunteers to work with. We come up with a plausible, workable, visually appealing design that we are all pretty happy with. Prototypes will need to be built, experiments to ensure all parameters are still met. This will extend far beyond our time on the project, but we demand pictures if/when it happens. Our lasting legacy for the turtles. 

3:45 pm - we kit up for our first certified dive! Today a new dive master started work at the resort, a young girl who it turns out is from Seattle! She also has spent a year in Australia, and the three of us reminisce about Oz, home, and everything in between. Then we dive!

5:30 pm - our last dive is over at Bubbles Dive Resort, Perhentian Islands, Malaysia. How rad has it been? Words don't do it justice. We have bitter/sweet feelings as we clean and hang our kits forge last time. 

6:30 pm - its been a long day and early in the morning we will take a boat back to he mainland, and then a long bus ride to Kuala Lumpur. We begin packing our bags up. 6 nights here has been our longest stop, we think, since we left Byron nearly four months previous. 

7:30 pm - dinner

9:00 pm - after dinner we sit and chat with the team, laughing and enjoying our last evening. We exchange a few photos between each other, and say goodbyes. 

10:00 pm - we head to bed. Our first night since we arrived without a shift to patrol the beach, we are happily allowed to rest before we head out. Enough time for at least eight hours sleep! Easily double the single-session sleep record for the last week. 

21/8

6:30 am - alarm goes off. Despite a wonderful long sleep, we both wake groggily. Clearly we have more catching up to do. We didn't get much sleep, but we did get experiences that will absolutely last us a lifetime. A more than fair trade. 

7:30 am - breakfast

8:00 am - boat out to he mainland. While we gently bounce across the calm morning waters, we look back at our quiet bay, and chat about the experiences there. We both agree it is one of those rare special places in this world, and are determined to return. Soon. 

9:00 board our bus for the journey to Kuala Lumpur. We are told it's about a 10 hour ride, but knowing Asia like we now do, expect 12-14. 

Next Stop, Paradise

After our stint in the Malay jungle we head northeast, to the Perhentian Islands, and what sadly is the last leg of our grand adventure. When we leave, it will be to begin our long route home. It will take roughly 60 hours of travel, which will spread over 5 days. The cherry on top? An 11 hour 4 airport journey from LA to Seattle. Yes, you read that that correctly. LA to San Jose, San Jose to Boise, Boise to Lewiston(?!), and Lewiston to Seattle.

Thank you Alaska Airlines.

We appreciate that we were able to book our tickets using frequent flyer miles, and now realize that regardless of the savings, it probably wasn't worth it.

Anyhow, for the time being, it's onwards to paradise!

We have time as we sit on the bus to Kuala Besut to ponder all these things coming up, however mostly we are excited for our time in the islands. We are spending seven days at the Bubbles Dive Resort, where we are volunteering for a sea turtle conservation project that's based there. Seven days we realize will be the longest we have spent in one place since leaving our cozy home-away-from-home in Byron Bay, over three months earlier.

We have heard that Kuala Besut is a horrible place to spend more than an hour and sadly, we're staying two nights. Much to our delight however we find our hotel a welcome respite from the jungle. Free wifi and air conditioning. 'Nuff said. We also find a perfectly pleasant beach, a riverside trail to run on, and the biggest surprise, a fantastic restaurant! C'Putera seemed shockingly out of place in the run down town known only as the gateway to the Perhentians. Well designed elegant signage, amazing Malaysian food, and cheap-as prices. Done.

On the morning of the 15th, we head to the jetty and hop on a Bubbles boat for the 30 minute ride to the resort. We didn't really know what to expect there, with only limited information and pictures to base our judgements on. Small resort, with a dive shop. We've heard that there is likely no Internet access, and things like power and running water may only be available from 7:00 pm to 8:00 am.

What we found, didn't disappoint. The deep blue water faded to a brilliant turquoise as we neared our destination. A single small beach, perhaps 300 meters long, stretched between two outshoots of giant boulders which climbed quickly into steep dense jungle, forming a private and secluded bay. Barely visible in the thick foliage, a few buildings can just be picked out all belonging to the one small resort which will be our base.

We have arrived. The coming days we are sure will be full of adventures (we learn to scuba dive!), sleepless nights (volunteers patrol the beach 8:00 pm to 8:00 am), sea turtles (that is the point of all this), and many unknowns. Just our type of place.

Tarzan and Jane rock Taman Negara

Before you make assumptions...Tarzan and Jane refers to myself and my husband, who actually does swing from vines. Just ask the camera-happy group of tourists from Tokyo.

We booked a simple package through Han Travel that was basically transportation and a few nights accommodation in a hostel. A six hour bus ride was the necessary first step to reaching the jungle of Taman Negara in the heart of Malaysia. Hundreds of acres of palm oil plantation framed either side of the freeway. Chris spent an unfortunate couple of hours bouncing around like a rag doll in a broken bus seat. Another guy a few rows back was similarly afflicted, and it was like a bizarre synchronized routine when we traversed rocky roads with them both bouncing along to the tune of the highway.

This was followed by a three hour jungle cruise on a longboat following the Sengei Tahan river. Fifty of us patiently waited on a small floating wood dock at Kuala Tembeling Jeti as a line of covered wooden longboats waited to load its passengers. This part of the journey was lovely. I spy a long-tailed macaque, little blue parrots with a red head, young Malaysian boys swimming naked in the river, a few local fisherman checking traps - of which I can only see a dirty old water bottle buoy - and hours of undisturbed heavy ivy-draped jungle backing right onto the river bank.

Taman Negara is 130 million years old, older than the Amazon. There are a startling 200 species of mammal including tiger, jaguar, spotted leopard, golden cat, clouded leopard, spotted civet cat, Asian sun bear, wild boar, and wild elephant to name a few. While my concern lies with the tiger, apparently the elephants are a much more common problem. They are strong, fast, and not afraid to approach humans. There have been no reported killings of humans by tiger in Taman Negara. Of course I'm thinking there is a first time for everything.

We disembark at Mama Chop, a floating restaurant on the banks of Kuala Tahan. There's a fifty cent fee to cross from the restaurant to the sand island via two skinny splintering planks of wood over the river. Ha, surely that's a joke? Our hostel, Liana Hostel, is up a steep hill and is pretty much what you might expect for RM10 per night. No serious complaints, but no redeeming qualities either. Possibly infested with bed bugs.

We wake from a restless night with no top sheet, eager to explore the Malay jungle. We pay a RM5 camera fee and a RM1 entrance fee at the park ranger station before entering. This is worth paying because if caught without your camera permit you face RM10,000 or three years in jail. The canopy walk beckons us first, as it closes at 2pm and gets full later in the day. It is a stealthy 420m walkway comprised of aluminum ladders, wooden planks, and a hammock of rope cradling the whole package all 40 meters off the ground. You are instructed to keep a distance of ten meters from the person in front of you, and off you go - traversing through jungle canopy and pausing for breath at a series of wood tree platforms to enjoy the view you would have as a long-tailed macaque.

The canopy walk takes a quick half hour, so we begin the Bukit Indah trail with plans to enjoy our sack lunch at its conclusion. Tigers and wild elephants aside (not to mention the deer!), we decide to undertake the jungle trail sans guide. We ford a few streams, clamber over thick twisted tree roots and duck under heavy vines, this trail is not well maintained. Every 1/2 km there seems to be a yellow blaze that lets us know we're still on the trail. Thankfully it follows the Sungei Tembeling river, so as long as we can hear the longboats, we're not far off course. The last few hundred feet is a steep ascent aided by ropes in case of mud or fear of heights - there are cliffs on either side. At the top we enjoy gorgeous views of the river valley and layers of jungle-laden hills hiding in fog. Thunder rumbles in the distance. The rapids serenade us from the swift river below. We dive in to our amazing sack lunch, purchased from the expensive and beautiful Mutiara Resort. Fried chicken, boiled egg, an apple, a slice of fruit cake, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (they even cut off our crusts!) and an orange juice box. Wow. The return hike is noticeably slower as we are considerably fuller.

The jungle is peppered with a handful of "hides" for enthusiastic trekkers who wish to spend the night in the depths of the jungle. Bumbun Tahan hide - near the resort, is a good sampling of what we almost spent the night in. It's a kind of tree house with stairs leading up to an a-frame cement platform standing two stories above the snakes, lizards, and insects below. We take a rest and watch a Samba deer eating lunch in the meadow just 20 yards from the hide. They are the best chance you have of spotting wildlife as they are placed deeper in the jungle, away from civilization. And many of the larger mammals are nocturnal.

We round out our long day in the jungle with a slow meander around the swamp loop. It is a nice boardwalk through the underbrush, and we see all manner of birds including black pheasants wearing blue party masks as if they're heading to the ball.

Did we mention it's 88 degrees and humid in here? We are both now (still) dripping with sweat and dying for a swim. There are only two places safe for swimming in this area, so we head to the spot closest: Lubok Simpon. This is one of the most sacred places I have ever had a paddle. Lubok Simpon is a beautiful, peaceful swimming hole deep in the jungle, a slower offshoot of the main river. Great big vine-covered trees shoot up like green walls on either side of the river, reminding you of this precious experience. A German decides to bathe in the nude for lack of a suit and is comically startled when longboats start motoring their way past full of tourists heading back to the village.

On our hike back we see a samba deer making friends with a group of Japanese tourists, rubbing his new antlers across the man's shoe and leg in the same manner as an overly affectionate dog craving a good stroke. The deer seems to get a kick out of the word "hi" which they repeat with great enthusiasm. I have never seen a deer behave this way and it's amusing but also a depressing sign of over-exposure to humans.

This is the jungle as we have found it in just a few short unguided day hikes, and we feel lucky to have witnessed it. I hope it's here for future generations to enjoy as we have.

You know you're a cheap-as backpacker when...

Your bed of choice is more appropriate for a five-year-old at a slumber party (a bunk bed in a room with nine other backpackers).

"Clean" becomes a relative state viewed as idealistic.

You start hoarding toilet paper as you find it for free in the hostels.

At each airport you conduct a rigorous testing of lotions, makeup and perfume so you can feel pretty for the first time in weeks.

You continue to use broken sunglasses.

$10 a night for one room between two people is over budget.

You eat just two times a day so you can have a beer with dinner.

Your biggest decision of the day is what cool thing to see and what kind of beer to have with your $3 dinner.

Noises from the bunk above waking you in the middle of the night have surpassed surprise and become expected.

You evaluate whether or not items like hair conditioner, sunscreen, and deodorant are a "luxury."

You keep the 'fish food' for breakfast the next day (four slices of bread).

You choose to walk one hour in hot sun to save $1.20 of cab fare.

A comfortable mattress is cause for tears of joy.

Clothing that is torn, stained, or otherwise mangled with holes is nothing more than happy evidence of your adventures, worn with pride.

Cockroaches are part of everyday life.

Rice is for dinner, lunch and sometimes breakfast. Occasionally you get the luxury of pig lung or oxtail.

You run from the tour bus, elbows flying, to find the good cheap hostel room ahead of the other backpackers, none of whom have reservations.

Everything you're wearing has already been worn at least twice without a washing.

You attempt to read a book in German because that's all you could find at the last two book exchanges.


More to come as the adventure continues!

Note from the author:
This is mostly a joke, but sometimes things got rough and much of this was reality at one point or another.

Onward to Kuala Lumpur

After the small town charm of Melaka, and having so thoroughly enjoyed the modern city life of Singapore, we were eager for our visit to Kuala Lumpur.

Trying to decide what to expect from this city, we got to putting together what we knew about it, and adding a few details via Wikipedia.

First of all there are the two factors previously mentioned, the two recent places we have visited and there relative cultural similarities. Following that, in my mind came the important fact that it is home to the Petronas Twin Towers - which I knew had been until recently the tallest buildings in the world. Definite cool factor.

Beyond that, Wikipedia informed us that at something like 1.6 million residents, it was something near 2.5 times the size of Seattle, our happy home town. Compared to our Seattle-metro area, roughly half the population.

When we arrived we were pleased to find that the hostel we had booked was just a few short blocks from Sentral, the main bus terminal. BackHome hostel had a lot to live up to. We were on a streak of great ones, and happily, we weren't disappointed.

Great friendly staff, comfortable clean facilities, and free breakfast that while on the spare side with coffee and toast along with fruit on some days, was welcome. Well branded and decorated, with a nice play of natural wood surfaces on heavy steel framing, it passed Krissy's critique with flying colors.

Kuala Lumpur itself (often abbreviated even in speech as KL) sadly was a little
bit of a letdown.

Not quite managing to hang onto its cultural heritage and character, nor make it to that modern city feel of Singapore or other places we've visited on this trip (Sydney comes to mind at a similar size, but clearly a modern city), it languishes somewhere in-between, to it's detriment.

Despite this, we found more than enough to occupy our four days here, and here are some of the highlights.

Our first night despite the weariness of a travel day (Which for the uninitiated, despite primarily sitting for hours on end while bussing or otherwise traveling around, is exhausting. Part stress of packing then checking out and making it to the mode of transportation, then the uncertainty of how exactly getting off the bus will lead to arriving at the only sometimes booked place to sleep, and part lugging around our bear-minimum load of roughly 70lbs of luggage.) it was a Gymnastics finals night in the Olympics, which given our separation from most news and world events became important to us to follow at least that one event, in order to keep some connection with "the real world". That in mind we went to hunt down a place to enjoy that, and if we were lucky perhaps a beer also!

And we did.

We found The Reggae Mansion - a Hostel/bar not far from our own, with a WONDERFUL rooftop that had the Olympics on a big-screen projector, cold beer, and decent food! We enjoyed the warm night air, and our refreshments, along with our first views of the city's iconic towers.

That in mind we set out the next day to check them out. As I described much of KL is uninspiring at best. Even the nicer 'golden triangle' neighborhood was hardly worth any distinction. The Petronas Towers, however, deserve every superlative that could be thrown their way. By day, the towers themselves are majestic, rising into the oft-foggy (benefit of the doubt there - more likely smoggy) heights, they are simply incredible. By night, they far surpass that inadequate word - they are radiant. Like two shinning silver pillars rising to dizzying heights, the impression may be unsurpassable. At the base, is a wonderful complex including some beautiful gardens and a magnificent fountain, and really a very nice shopping mall. It's not the pure-luxury of Singapore's Marina Bay Sands, nor even Bangkok's Siam Paragon, but that didn't detract from it. While certainly none of the haute brands would miss a place here in Malaysia's premier shopping destination, it also included the far more worldly 'every mans' shops, and even the staple of cheap southeast-asian cuisine, their unique food courts.



It happened to be Wednesday night, where the resident Starbucks offered 2-for-1 drinks, and so we treated ourselves, for my first time since leaving its and our hometown 11 months ago. Yum!

The rest of our favorite adventures took place outside of the city. One day we headed out to the Batu Caves, a site where the local Hindu people have been worshiping since at least 1890 - and being over 400 million years old, likely much longer.

Another day we had a great time visiting the Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Center. While it isn't the number one place in the world to have a good experience with elephants, it's near the top of the list. The team that runs this facility isn't nearly so well funded as similar ones in nearby Thailand, but they do the best they can with what they have. We really appreciated their honesty and willingness to reveal this weakness. And yet, a few lucky people each day, get a chance to interact with these massive and majestic creatures in ways that simply don't happen outside of this part of the world. Krissy and I both treasured the opportunity to get into the river with a baby (Still far heavier than us together!) elephant and help bathe it, and even climb on its back and scrub it's head and shoulders! The best thing here is that in a region where everything is monetized to scrape every last dollar from visiting western tourists, this facility doesn't charge a penny. It's all run off of donations. Bravo! We happily contributed what we could, and wished it was more.

Next stop? The Jungle! A few days of trekking through the oldest jungle on earth, in search of elusive creatures such as elephants, tigers, and panthers. Oh my!

Melaka: A European City in Asia

Melaka: quiet, charming, historic, delicious. The word that best suits our first two days in Melaka: surprise. After Singapore, we wondered how we might enjoy the next town.

Melaka is beautiful. It's charming and full of character. All the buildings are pastel, two-stories high and cropped close together. The city is spread out but small, occupying just a few big blocks. It was Malaysian first, then Portugese, Dutch, and British respectively, before regaining its roots. The city acquired fame early in the fifteenth century as a spice trading hub, and today there are still Chinese medicine shops and Nyonyan food stalls showcasing the herbs and spices in strange and fascinating ways.

Our River View patio

River View Guesthouse is a lovely colonial house with ancient dark hard woods, nestled among a row of colorful townhouses lining the river promenade. Framed by gardens, it smells like jasmine at night, and has a patio on the second story overlooking the river. The kind owners of River View, Mina and Raymond, have armed us with a map of the city and several carefully recommended options for dining. Daily Mina also leaves wonderful little cakes for our gastronomic enjoyment at the kitchen table.

Our choice for our first night of Malaccan food is a family-run Indian restaurant close to our homestay, Selvam, specializing in Southern Indian food.  The menu options are simply chicken, mutton or fish. We each received banana leaf placemats and a nice Indian man walked around with a cluster of stainless steel buckets dumping great spoonfuls of rice, cucumber salad, spicy pumpkin curry, and a mustard seed coleslaw, each in their own separate tidy pile on our banana leaf. Then we look side to side to make sure it's culturally correct (we were not given a fork), and dig in with our hands. This had to be the most authentic Indian cuisine we've ever had, and also the most fun!

Walking home along the river bank is very romantic - it feels almost like Paris with its iron lampposts marking the way, or Amsterdam with its red tiled canal walk and tightly knit concrete houses. Light blue twinkle lights dangle like jungle vines from a long arbor hugging the bend of the river on the bank opposite our homestay. Ah, but this is Melaka.

The beds here are plush and cozy, accented by cool white linen. We sleep about ten hours each night, exhausted from eight hours of walking each day. We woke up to a passionate thunder and lightning storm and made some coffee to enjoy on our covered garden patio while we observed the village life. The patio is just off our bedroom and feels like our own, as rain pours down and I don't have a thing to do but watch it and revel in this small delicious luxury.

Once the storm clears we're off to discover the pastel majesty of the Dutch square, which dates back to 1660. The ambiance of the square is Salmon. Or perhaps Old Brick, though everything is made from concrete. The clock tower sits at the square's center with a Victorian fountain, bordered by the minimalist Dutch church, and town hall - all painted "salmon." The effect is quite festive, emphasized by the twenty modern rickshaws, bedazzled with flowers and neon lights and bumping with music ranging from Celine Dion to David Guetta, they offer personal - and loud - tours of the city.

A short hike up the hill from here leads us to the ruins of St Paul's Church, and a picture-window view of red tile roofs stretching out to the Straits of Malacca. The church roof is long gone, but a dozen hand scripted tombstones lean heavily against the walls, carved with stories of brave men and women who died at the ripe old age of 29 in the 1600s. We tip a jaunty Malay man rocking out on harmonica, and make our way to the old fort at the bottom of the hibiscus edged staircase. Several canons guard the fort, with elaborate curly-q iron work. Past the fort sits the Istana Ke Sultanan - a dark timber palace on stilts that was home to the Sultan in the 1500s. Not a single nail was used in the construction of this impressive house. It's currently a museum and houses scenes from Malay court life as well as a fabulous collection of traditional garments and delicate gold hair pieces.

At this point we are dragging our feet and cranky with hunger. We head back to the river for lunch at Riverine. Our table is on the promenade and comes with a sleeping cat and her rambunctious black and white kitten below my chair. Chris orders the Ayam Pongteh - a traditional Peranakan style chicken stew braised with tauchu, gula Melaka, soya sauce gravy with potato, and sweetened with sugar cane. Peranakan and Nyonyan food are unique to this area, referring to the merging of Chinese and Malay appetites. Myself, I am after Grandma's Chicken Rendang - curry with dried coconut and Nyonyan herbs. After this feast we allow ourselves an hour or two of relaxation before heading out to dinner, which promises to be a lengthy affair, but one we've been looking forward to.

By 8pm we are in line at Capitol Satay, maybe 30 people between us and a table at this popular local peanut satay restaurant. An hour and a half later we are seated at a large round stainless steel table with a hole in the middle of it. The restaurant lacks atmosphere and bears close resemblance to my junior high school cafeteria. A woman places a stainless steel bucket of peanut sauce in our table hole and adjusts the propane beneath our table. We meander over to the large open fridge where meats, seaweed, bits of fish, and even some angry birds (fish balls for the children we are told) are stacked in neat piles. We fill our tray with goodies - at RM0.90 per stick, how can you go wrong? Our peanut sauce is boiling when we return to the table and we eagerly plop our satay sticks into the strange fondue pot. The chicken is tasty, the fish balls are odd, and the fried bread is delicious. We forgo the seaweed, which we both agree looks like grass wrapped around a stick. Rabbit food. Overall the food is good, but not worth the long wait. However, it's great fun and a good experience to remember the town by.

Chinatown

Kampung Morten stilt house

More exploring to be done today. We walk north along the river to Kampung Morten, a small settlement of historic stilt villages. Many have now been renovated to serve as guest houses and as a result they have a similar look: red corrugated steel roof, yellow walls, and fencing around the porch leaving the stilts below exposed. The village makes sense here, as we've already witnessed a bit of flooding from the river. On our walk back we stop at Limau Limau Cafe for a late breakfast. It's a cute coffee shop with a wall of chandeliers at the entrance, all different sizes colors and materials. There's a distinct Parisian feel and the food holds up to the expectation. We wander through some art galleries on our way to the famed Jonker Street. Jonker runs though the center of Chinatown and is crowded with tourists and food stalls, souvenier and curio shops, as well as restaurants with specialties like chicken rice balls or cendol - a treat that varies but from our experience is like shaved ice with fresh fruit and syrup on top. Durian is a stinky but common and favored topping.

View of Jonker Street

Dinner and live music at the Geographer Cafe on Jonker. Our last night in a city we like to treat ourselves to a restaurant and beer (versus street food and bottled water that occupies most of our meals) We have a jug of Tiger beer, and I try the Portugese fish fillet. We were instructed in Singapore to try the Portugese food, which is supposedly quite good in Melaka. My fish arrives buried in a spicy chili paste and steamed peppers, the portion is small but delicious. Here we are confused in Asia once again at the clash of cultures: listening to a Malay woman singing Brazilian music as I enjoy a Portugese plate in the middle of Chinatown, at an English restaurant filled with expats and tourists.


It's late at night now so we're getting ready for bed. Chris is already asleep and as I'm reading I hear several siren cars go by. Chris keeps sleeping through all the noise. I can hear shouting now and for some reason I have the eerie feeling that there's a fire somewhere. Doubtful that this could be true, I pull back our curtain and there's a blazing inferno right across the river from us! Chris is awake now and we're on our little patio with everyone else from our small homestay, watching the fire engulf one building, then the one adjacent. Massive rolling clouds of smoke and large embers skyrocket from the site, which firefighters are working hard to quell. More shouting and then the sound of a crumbling building. Things are not looking good. At least we have a river between us, I have never been near a fire larger than those we make on the beach at the weekend. We all watch silently, captivated by the force of nature behind this fire. An hour or so later and the fire is looking more controlled, we head to bed one by one.


When morning comes we are still alive, and the fire across the river has been extinguished. The building has a black charred appearance now, and there's a hole next to it where it's neighbor used to sit. The news says nothing. It's astounding, and yet very telling, that events like this are of no great consequence in this country. It begs the question, what else happens that we don't know about?

Good Morning Singapore!

Wow.

We absolutely loved Singapore!

Lets see, I'll start at the beginning. From our penultimate stop in Thailand at the Khao Yai national park, we took a train south into Bangkok. Bit of a long ride, but pretty uneventful. For our last night, since we were flying out early, we stayed at a (relatively speaking here...) nice hotel near the airport. They had a pool. It was rad.

So, the next morning we hopped on our plane, and said goodbye to Thailand. We met some cool people, travelled with lots of friends, had some great adventures, and ultimately had a great time in Thailand. Singapore isn't exactly a place you hear a lot about in the states, at least we hadn't. So with that limitation, we didn't really know what to expect. We quickly found when we were booking a place to stay, that it is quite expensive in Singapore. We also travel with a guidebook on Southeast Asia, which gives us some basic information, and let us know that they love to shop, and eat there (Sounds nice!) so we went into it prepared to do those things, and dreading what it would cost to do so. We ended up booking three nights in a hostel in Singapore's trendy Chinatown neighborhood called Matchbox. We stayed in a 16 bed dorm (the largest of our trip - something we had been trying to avoid) and were paying what to us, was an astronomical rate. $36 a night. Each. For comparison's sake, in Indonesia and Thailand we lived off of about $30 per day. That included lodging, food, water, travels, adventures, etc. Our last place near the national park in Thailand was 200 Baht per night (total), or about $6.25. That was for a private room, with a private bathroom, etc.

Our 'pod' at Matchbox Hostel

Anyway... So we booked three nights in Singapore, as much as we felt we could without breaking the bank completely. Let me tell you - we were VERY sad to leave after three days. And the costs? Worth it. While lodging in Singapore is quite costly, the standards of living are also extremely high. Not only was the tap water clean and drinkable (!!!!) for the first time since we left Australia, but it is the cleanest, safest, most orderly place we have ever been. The food? Incredible. Shopping? Second to none. Public transportation? A joy. And the hostel we paid so much for? Expensive, but rad. I think its the best hostel we ever stayed in. They had pod-style beds, which, it turns out, are great. Rather than squeaky bunks filling a big room, its a hallway with built-in beds stuck into the wall on one side. The 16 bed dorm felt smaller and nicer than 4-bed dorms we have stayed in. The pods were VERY comfortable, each had their own lights and power outlets (let me tell you - that's rad!) and Krissy and I had a little window we could open between ours, to say hello. Fun! Matchbox was CLEAN too! Oh and, the best part? Free all-day breakfast. Two kinds of cereal, toast with jam, peanut butter, and Nutella, OJ, apple juice, milk, coffee, tea... Its hard to describe what kind of wonderful that is.

The best part of Singapore? Once you have paid for lodging, its CHEAP! The way to do food in Singapore, is at the Hawker Courts. These are big areas with lots of food stalls in them. Similar perhaps to what you might find at a festival in the states, these food stalls each serve their own specialties. For the most part a single stand wont feed you. Its a mix-and-match type of meal, and its fantastic. Our first day we tried: Spring rolls (amazing) BBQ pork buns (way amazing) curry pastry (amazing) little ball things with peanut, or coconut inside (way amazing), and pork dumplings - both fried and steamed. (and yes, way amazing). We both left stuffed to the gills, and managed all that for about $10. This would become a habit for the next three days.

Marina Bay Sands Resort

So - we lived the modern, jet-set, city-slicking lifestyle for a few days, with an Asian twist. It was about the best thing that's happened to us for quite a while. This is a city that we will definitely come back to visit, and hopefully with a bit of money to spend next time. What an incredible place for a high-class vacation!

Our first night after that amazing dinner, we jumped onto the MRT (Signapore's Mass Rapid Transit subway system) and headed over to the uber-posh Marina Bay Sands shopping center. This place has no less than three - three! - Louis Vuitton shop fronts, including a private island-store in the bay. For reals. Restaurants from the likes of Mario Batali, Guy Savoy, Wolfgang Puck, et al are just the icing on the cake. Just outside, each night, they run an incredible laser-light show overlooking the bay with the city skyline as the backdrop. We were simply stunned. Truly, this is one of the most incredible moments one could possible enjoy in a city. Just a few kilometers north of the equator, year round warm nights provide the perfect accoutrement to this stunning display of what it is to be in Singapore. What a first night!

Famous Raffles Hotel

Our adventures over the next few days did not become any less pleasant. We jogged through two parts of the city, and loved every moment. We ate, oh, did we eat! We also went to a microbrewery, for the first time in 2012. On the famous Clarks Quay right along the river, their beers were great, and the food delicious. It also was amazing. Have I used that word enough times yet? We managed to even find a place to watch our US Women's Gymnastics Team take home the gold! Another day we went to the Singapore Art Museum, the paid a visit to the historic Raffles Hotel, and enjoy the world famous Singapore Sling. A truly beautiful hotel (where we would love to stay when we come back) which was very swanky, but not too full of itself to keep away the free peanuts, with shells strewn heedlessly all over the floors.

There aren't enough good things we can say about Singapore. It may well be our very most favorite city in the world, and we have visited quite a few of them now. We loved every minute of our stay, and cant wait to come back.

Courtyard at the Singapore Art Museum

Sadly, as much as we wanted to stay, we are quickly running out of time on this trip! A few short weeks will find us back in Seattle. A time which I'm sure will be bitter-sweet for us, but never the less we are looking forward to. Next stop? Melaka, Malaysia. The whole place is a UNESCO World Heritage Site - a nice break between the ultra-modern Singapore, and Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur.






The Light and Water Spectacular - Marina Bay Sands

Khao Yai, Day One

29 July 2012

The next few days are set aside for exploring the jungle of Thailand at Khao Yai National Park. We are two hours northeast of Bangkok just outside the small town of Pak Chong. Our home base for this leg is Greenleaf Guesthouse. We have a rather large fan bedroom and an enormous private bathroom. The primary reason for staying here is to do their tours of the jungle, which are pricey for our budget, but highly reviewed among the best of the tours. Our plan is to rent a moped or bicycle, and grab a map of the park from the ranger before exploring a few trails on our own for a day.

First, the night tour. At only 300 baht each, it's a great introduction to the area. We depart at 3pm from Greenleaf, with a large group of people from our guesthouse. We stop at a natural spring for a swim. There are many locals jumping off a bridge into the spring, and many tourists in the upper portion as well. Jumping in it's the perfect temperature and surrounded by peaceful trees and fallen leaves blanketing the forest floor. A welcome snack is waiting for us after we dry ourselves off and jump into the truck. Next stop: cave.

The trick pulls into a gravel drive just short of the hill to a beautiful temple in Thai style with three roofs and little brass bells all around. We walk through the courtyard and approach a staircase into an abyss. Vines and jungle trees with large roots line the opening to a large cave. Down the hatch!

The cave smells dank and is uncomfortably humid. Sticky, damp and stinky is not a good combination. Nonetheless we are learning about bats. Our guide also points out a yellow python slithering along the cave wall above our heads looking for the perfect bat to be his dinner. We are fed all sorts of interesting facts about bats, bugs, and Thailand and our guide is absolutely thrilled with his job. Next we proceed to the garden outside where I am shown prize orchids.

This is the Garden of Living Things - little bean pods that explode in your mouth, ferns that close upon touch.

Our last stop is the bat cave - over 2 million bats live in this cave and, in order not to disturb them, we watch them supper from the bottom of the cliff. At sunset every night these bats make the risky journey from their safe cave into the hawk-infested skies outside in search of bugs to eat. The bats move in a beautiful undulating rythum like thousands of small birds flying close together. As the sun sets over the tapioca farm, we are contemplating the full day tour for tomorrow. And thinking how amazing this jungle will be, considering all the wildlife we saw in one medium sized cave.

Khao Yai, Day Two

30 July 2012

Poor Chris has contracted a bad cold and has decided to stay home today. When you're sick on the trail you have to what you can to heal fast so travel doesn't become too difficult, and sadly that means sometimes you miss out on cool stuff. So its into the jungle on my own then...well, not really. I jump into the back of a pickup truck with an Austrian couple, a lovely pair from England, and a gorgeous blonde nurse and a marine from Holland. She looks just like Amanda Seyfried. Her name is Yonnicka and I cant get that Adam Sandler song out of my head. The pickup truck. Right, this is a very typical mode of transport in Thailand. It resembles a modern hayride in that the truck has bench seats bolted to its bed and a canvas canopy to keep you dry. But no seat belts, and only a few stainless steel bars to grab hold of while the driver whips around corners, glimpsing sheer jungle cliffs as you swing out over the side of the truck, following the g-force pull.

The guides are in the cab up to this point and now, with the car still rolling, one pops out and leaps up onto the back of the bed, standing and scouting for wildlife in the canopy. He is a skinny, good-looking Thai guy maybe 5'5" tall with a neatly gelled hair, designer jeans and a large silver belt buckle that says "50 Cent." Fifty is on the lookout for Gibbons. His first spot, as the truck lumbers along the forest service road, is a giant Forest Scorpion. I mean giant, the size of the palm of your hand. We all leap out of the truck to examine it, which he holds on his bare hand. "Isn't it very poisonous?" we all inquire. He insists it will remain calm as long as it's touching a warm surface, like human skin. He then places it on the marines bare bicep and numerous photos ensue. Our next stop is the ladies' which of course has a deadly poison apple green pit viper decorating the fence. Well who put that there? After we stop to check out an impossibly skinny long yellow snake that looks like a noodle come to life, I begin to wonder, did a truck ahead of us place this here for us to "find"? We spend a few minutes checking out a pair of large hornbill birds in a tree canopy through the telescope, and just as I'm wondering when we get to start hiking (enough with the truck already, I'm on a jungle trek not a safari in the 50s), we pull over on the side of the road and hop out. All of us receive two canvas booties and we're instructed to place them over our socks and pants like big tube socks, to keep out the leeches. Right, so where's the trail? We had passed another group who had embarked through the trees by a trailhead with a sign and everything. Fifty whips out his machete and starts working his way through the underbrush, we all look at each other with a silent knowing glance, we are in the hard core group. We're all reasonably fit and take to the jungle "trail" with the zest only fresh legs can express. Ten minutes later we are slogging through eight inch deep mud and most of us have fallen down once or twice.

A two and a half hour trek through dense jungle lies ahead of us. The sound of insects is sometimes deafening, but we can also hear monkeys, and they seem to be mapping our course. We come to a sort of valley, which is filled with thick red mud. I lose my balance in twelve inches of Thai mud and, for fear of falling face first into a pool of leeches and God knows what else, I reach against my better judgement for a swinging vine I see in my peripheral. It turns out to be a thick yellow vine populated by millions of inch-long spikes, which I delightedly discover are now lodged in my hand. When I finally reach a solid patch of vegetation I begin pulling out the spikes and readily I am still left with a handful of jungle shrapnel. Nothing to be done about it now, so onward I plunge, up a slick red hill, grabbing vines to help me get up without falling down and causing a domino effect on the English school teachers behind me, who quickly realized this isn't the pleasant trail hike they were hoping for. We pause after an hour and a half, streaked with mud and looking quite war-torn, for a packet of sticky rice wrapped neatly in banana leaf and held together by a sharp piece of bamboo. My hand is throbbing and swollen red. I distract myself by pulling twigs from my hair while the boys feed a leech to an angry mob of ants. Then we're off again, but this part of the trail is much easier. I think Fifty has given up on finding the gibbons, and we follow a proper hiking trail to the edge of the jungle. All of a sudden we're open savannah. The temperature has spiked by ten degrees and we walk through grass 3 feet high on either side, leaving a solid wall of evergreen jungle behind us. "Watch for tiger!" our guide enthusiastically warns us. Haha, I think as I nervously glance left to right.

We trek through the lovely tall grass, pale green and rustling in the wind, until we reach a deep red salt lick. There used to be a village here, Fifty tells us, and now the elephants come here to roll around in the dirt. No elephants are here now, but we hope to spot them later. We follow Fifty to a large teak observation tower where another trekking group is already having lunch. Each of us is handed a tupperware with rice and a kit of cabbage, carrots, onion and spinach in chicken stock. Up to the top of the tower for lunch and to enjoy the view. The savannah is large, all around us. The jungle we emerged from is visible in the distance and a mountain range beyond that. I feel like I'm in Africa. It's magical and I can't stop smiling. I am exploring the Thai jungle!

After lunch a few people are napping in hammocks set up by our guides, and most of us are lazing about. Our group is the muddiest by quite a measure, I guess the other groups stuck to the trail. Fifty, however, is still spotless except for small patches of red dirt on his boots. Yonnicka and I are dying for a wee, but there's no facilities and we're too scared of jungle creatures to venture out on our own. We hike for another 45 minutes - on a trail! - back to the truck.

On our way to the waterfall, our next stop, we see a family of Samba deer and a group of red butt baboons causing trouble by the side of the road. The king is eating a corn cob and smiling at us smugly. A smaller monkey rises up on his back legs, hoping we have some food for him. At the waterfall we are on our own. There's a bathroom - oh glory! Our truck takes a wander down to the base of the waterfall for a few minutes of wonder at the sheer force of the drop. The falls are not tall, but very wide and come crashing down to 90 centimeters of pool at the bottom, surging back up with almost as much force. There's no swimming here, and I can see why. The pool is rocking with waves and full of big boulders, and is very shallow. A few tourists die here every year jumping from the top without checking the depth at the bottom. The view is gorgeous. Vines draped romantically, moss and ivy clinging to the trees, and the silty waterfall misting us as we watch it's anger pounded on rocks in front of us.

Back at the truck we are rewarded with cokes, and there's another pit viper chillin' in the cafeteria on the fence. We get back in the truck and cruise the forest service roads for more wildlife. Our guides start talking excitedly in the cab, and the truck lurches into full speed ahead. We are all blinking our eyes against road dust and wind, hoping we make it to our destination alive, wherever that is. We are soaring over speed bumps as if they were flat, and now follow two other trucks going the same speed to the same place. Something is going on. I wonder what they've found. Five terrifying minutes later we are looking at a family of nine wild elephants sauntering lazily down the road.

The elephants are beautiful. Large, but not quite as big as regular zoo elephants. Jungle elephants are more compact for getting through the foliage. There are two females, one scrappy male in training (his tusks are just poking through and he's smaller than the females at three years old), and a group of younger baby elephants. There are several cars both behind the herd and in front, and all move slowly with the elephants so their movement is not impeded.

A few times a car zooms past the elephants from behind and scares one of the babies, causing it to trumpet in surprise. The overall effect is one of sadness at the lives forced upon these creatures. They are like celebrities who can't escape the menacing hold of the paparazzi, forced to live in a bizarre confinement. Every so often the male is pissed off by a car and makes to charge it, speeding up his gait and letting out a low, grumbling trumpet. Our own truck gets quite close to the elephants a few times and the male tried to charge us once and Fifty was, for the first time, visibly shaken by the wild. He takes elephants quite seriously and tells us a few stories about them charging cars, crushing the hoods, and even picking up motorbikes with their trunk. They are dangerous, unpredictable creatures. Though I would take one of these beauties over a pit viper if given a choice.

The excitement of the elephant sighting is the perfect end to our jungle trek, and the ride home is silent as we all contemplate the mark the jungle has left on each of us.