2024.03 - The one with jellyfish and elephants

I've now given up any pretense of my blog being a regular thing. There might be a time in my future when I get the luxury of writing whatever I want, whenever I want, but this is currently not that time. I know there is a time and season for everything in life, but it can be challenging to wait. 

As a teenager, I remember my mom telling me, "Joanna, you can do anything you want in life, but you cannot do everything you want." I think about that a lot; it helps me actively choose what I give attention to. While I'd love to have a fancy blog with specially curated stories, themes, and pictures, I am learning to accept that less can be okay, too.

Between Christmas and now, we've kept busy. Lunar New Year is a huge celebration here, bigger than Christmas, and there were lights and lion dance performances and mandarin oranges and decorations everywhere. We had a lion dance troupe perform at our building, and no one could drive in or out past security for two hours. We didn't actually know about it until a delivery person told us that they would have to come back in two hours to bring our plants.

We also did something very hard and very satisfying—we became Open Water SCUBA certified! We flew to Indonesia, Banda Aceh, then took a ferry to Pulah Weh, a small island where the diving is amazing. It was low-key, with very few people, and the perfect environment for me to learn. 

I had difficulty with our initial dive the next morning. Abbi and Erik seemed to go down effortlessly to the bottom (12 feet), but I had difficulty equalizing the pressure in my ears. I also floated extremely well and couldn't manipulate my BCD (buoyancy control device) with enough finesse to not send me up and down like a raisin in Sprite. The instructor had to take a weight off her belt and add it to mine. My snorkeling mask (which would always leak a little bit when snorkeling) was continuously filling up with water, making it nearly impossible to see.

The water was very choppy, and because of the extra weight on my belt, when I would surface to try again, I kept rolling face down into the water. All reason fled, and I started to panic because breathing underwater is instinctually unnatural. My dive instructor towed me ignominiously back to shore, sobbing and crushed that I would never be able to dive the reefs on my bucket list with Erik. Did I mention that this was my birthday trip?

Abbi and Erik did perfectly fine, and so while I showered and napped, they went back out and got their skills tests done. When they returned that afternoon, they mentioned that our instructor (Anna at Lumba Lumba Dive gets 5+ stars!!) offered to spend some time with me 1 on 1 the next morning and take as long as needed to feel comfortable underwater. I was grateful for the second chance and her ridiculous amount of patience, and with a borrowed mask (smaller, so no leaking), I finally figured out how to equalize and adapt. Seeing all the beautiful things under the ocean was the thrill of a lifetime. Learning can be intimidating because they teach all the ways you might die and how to prevent that, then make you practice them. It was so worth it in the end, and I'm grateful for a supporting dive group (Erik, Abbi and our instructor) who made it possible for me to learn. Also, massive props to Abbi, who also learned and certified WITH A HEAD COLD. I'm so proud of her determination and toughness.

The resident cat resting after a vigorous game of checkers

Forgot to mention that on our last skills test dive we surfaced in a hatch of jellyfish. I started feeling a stinging sensation on my legs, then on my neck, and when I looked down into the water, I could see millions of tiny jellyfish, about the size of a BB pellet. Dipping my face underwater, they started stinging my face, and there was nowhere to go for relief. We started wildly swimming for the shore, and it felt like the longest swim ever since my face felt like it was on fire and I just couldn't see anything but jellyfish. I was wearing a swim shirt, and on land we carried our tanks to the dive shop, shaking and stinging. I was still hurting when our instructor told me to rinse out my swim shirt. I had jellyfish stuck inside there, and ended up with these welts that have almost faded 40 days later. 

About three weeks later, we headed to Thailand to visit Krabi and Chiang Mai. Abbi's roommate Emma came over to visit with us; she served her mission in Thailand and was so helpful with the language (besides being a fun person to hang out with too!). It was a short flight there, and Krabi was spectacularly beautiful despite being overrun with tourists. The tall cliffs just outside our hotel, the bat cave where we watched thousands of Flying Foxes stream out at sunset, the entertaining monkeys (dusky and macaques) jumping around the trees with their babies, and the quiet beaches in the mornings. The coconut shakes are the best I've ever tasted. It is a big place for rock climbers to visit, and they are up early in the mornings climbing the limestone cliffs. There were a few jellyfish there, too...with the water being almost uncomfortably warm this year, there are lots of jellyfish. We got away with only a minor sting each, but it kept me out of the water. A few pics and videos:

Finally we headed to Chiang Mai...a wonderful area in Thailand with NO HUMIDITY! It was so comfortable. It was 100 degrees, and it was so much more comfortable than Krabi's 89, plus the humidity. We stayed in an arts district, and the food was incredible. There are so many places to try and so little time. The trip's highlight for me was the visit to the Elephant Farm. The Ka Ren people have lived in the mountains of Thailand for hundreds of years and have been working with and training elephants. We felt so lucky to bathe them; they walked them down to a dammed stream near a waterfall, and the elephants sat and let us scrub them, take pictures, and splash us. Seeing their intelligence and gentle nature was incredible and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We're looking forward to a return trip to Chiang Mai and Thailand - this time hopefully to do some diving!

The CatchUp Post

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR

We meant to send this picture out for the holidays, but with our somewhat last minute trip back to the states full of too many things to do we missed getting Christmas cards out. We did have a lovely trip back to the states and it was hard to leave all of our loved ones yet again. Luckily, Abbi has come back with us so that helps ease the homesickness.

Just before we left to come to Oregon for the holidays, our church had a Christmas pageant that we had been for nearly 3 months. I was in the choir and Erik was a wise man (His audition consisted of his looking the part of a hairless sheik). The director of our pageant was a wonderful woman from Taiwan named Jodie. She is a kindergarten teacher which uniquely qualifies her to direct a bunch of adults and talk them into wearing costumes and being substantially out of their comfort zone. She would tell us to smile and be sweet and gentle and the next minute yell at everyone to QUIET DOWN for BABY JESUS.

 

I was the only female expat in the choir, so I was singing songs with other people who hadn’t grow up singing Christmas music. They didn’t know the tune to Away in a Manger or O Holy Night, and our choir director’s main goal was to help us all hit the same notes. I kept trying to sing the alto line, since that is what I have sung for years and it really threw everybody off. I had to relearn how to sing a hymn in a strong soprano to help others who didn’t know the song, so we were all “new” to the music. I’ve always loved singing in a choir, especially sacred music, as it helps me feel the Spirit of God in a way that is powerfully personal.

 

The big event was the Saturday night Christmas party. There was an expat family who was Mary & Joseph, and another expat guy was the angel (he has long silver hair, so kind of resembled an angel). He is the most mild mannered person I have known, and so when he said “Mary, be not afraid” in nearly a monotone voice it was hard not to laugh out loud at how un-scary he was.  Two little girls played the shepherds, and they relished the part where they got to take care of their sheep when the angel appeared to them, petting their fur and reassuring them. These were the sheep for the shepherds:

 

It all reminded me of the book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Everyone had brought family and friends to see our nativity, and many of them took videos the entire time. As I sang in my Santa hat along with people in the choir, and watched the scene of Christ’s birth unfold with our group of actors who tried hard not to laugh (Erik was hilarious as he wandered through the audience asking them if they knew where the baby Jesus was), I was struck by a feeling of love for the people of Penang who had welcomed us into their congregation with open arms and hearts. It was a little ragtag compared to how a nativity would likely have been performed in the US, but that made it all the more special because they truly loved Jesus and were giving their all.

 

We’ve been following the snowpocalypse that we are missing in Oregon, and it sounds really really cold. I am enjoying being warm, even though I am bummed that we missed getting to see snow when we went to visit over the holiday. In Penang, I seem to be cold at only two places: in church when we sit underneath the AC unit and in a restaurant after I’ve been walking quite a bit and gotten sweaty. 

 

I’ve realized that very few people in Penang walk anywhere. My doctor’s office is in the hospital that is only three quarters of a mile away, so I walk when I have an appointment in the morning. The sidewalks are shaded from the sun, and there aren’t as many cars on the road, so it can be fairly peaceful. It takes me about 20 minutes, and by then, even at a slow pace, I’m sweating.

 

This particular time, I walked into the hospital where the AC seemed to be on full blast. As I walked toward the first checkin desk, I was looking through my bag trying to find my phone, since I was seeing a new doctor and I couldn’t remember her name. There wasn’t a line at all, so I popped right up to the desk and told the young man that I had an appointment and I just needed to find the email with the name of the doctor. 

 

I’m searching through my phone, trying to remember what to search for in my inbox, when I hear the guy ask me, “Madam, are you alright?” I look up at him and say Yes, why do you ask? He then gestures towards me and pantomimes the sweat that is dripping down both sides of my face. Embarrassingly I tell him yes, I’m just sweaty because I had walked to the appointment and that we just moved here from the US and I hadn’t adapted to the humidity yet. While I’m explaining all of this to him, he is pulling out three paper towels to hand to me so I can soak up all the sweat. As I finally find the email and hand him my phone to check me in for the appointment, I feel sweat continuing to running down my neck and back, almost as if my sweat glands declared that they will not be shamed at sweating, and in fact, show off just how much sweat my body can produce. 

 

I now make sure to travel everywhere with my hand fan, so that at least people can see that I’m trying to stay cool and collected, no matter the humidity. I do make an extra effort to stay hydrated here, but then my body betrays me and tries to shed all of it at once through my skin. The worst part is after walking around outside and feeling the sweat trying to start up, and then I step into our elevator. Going up to our condo takes a little bit of time (its high enough that your ears pop) and there is only a tiny breeze coming through little holes in the corner of the box. Our building doesn’t air condition any of the common areas in the building, so the heat just hangs out waiting to envelope its next victim. By the time I get into our condo my clothes are completely drenched, requiring a shower and fresh set of clothes.

 

Abbi came home with us now that she has graduated with a degree in Wildlife Biology (hooray!!) and we’ve been showing her around Georgetown. We’ve seen some fun things and eaten some good food. More on that in a later blog…there are several campy “museums” here that I plan to write about, but think it will be more entertaining to have them all in one blog. I am sad that the Cat Meowseum closed before I got a chance to go through it, but have high hopes for the other tourist attractions.

 

A semi-regular feature on my blog is As Seen On A Scooter…and I have three pics to post! The first one looks fairly tame. It is two guys on a scooter, who are actually having a conversation while driving. The conversation lasted the entire length of a street, and as a result they were only driving about 15 kph and backing up all the traffic. I only got a pic of the one guy with his head turned, but the guy in the black helmet was definitely turning to share in the conversation.

 

The next guy has collected all the recycling he can possibly attach to his scooter. I was impressed that none of it was flapping about, but he was driving slower to prevent that. Recycling isn’t as big of a thing here so I’m happy to see it when it happens.

 

This guy has some ingenuity. I have seen this a few times, but the first time I was able to get a picture. He has welded his food stall to his motorcycle, and you can see his QR code to pay for whatever food it is that he cooks on top of his scooter. His umbrella is conveniently attached and this is the very definition of a food pop-up. 

 

We’re planning a trip to Pulah Weh in Indonesia in a few weeks to get scuba certified, so I’ll have more exciting pictures to share. We didn’t get Christmas cards out this year – and I’ve been remiss in keeping my blog up to date, but will try to be a little more regular. I hope all is well with you and as we celebrate the new year (it’s a big big deal here) I wish you all prosperity and good fortune!

Butterfly Pea

I admit that sometimes I have the humor of a 12-year-old boy. When we arrived at the hotel in Langkawi, they asked us if we would like some Butterfly Pee to drink...at least that's what I heard. It made more sense once I saw the sign, but the little kid in me kept giggling. It was good, although the color makes it more appealing than it actually tastes. When they first bring it to you, it is blue on the top and purple on the bottom, but it does start mixing after a drink or two.

We took a long weekend and traveled to Langkawi (a lovely island in Malaysia), stayed for a night, and then took a ferry to the even tinier Thailand island of Koh Lipe. It was my first local travel experience, and I learned a lot of things to do and some things not to do.

DON'T: Forget to pack snacks; the airports in Malaysia have different snack options than you are used to being able to pick up in a US airport. They'll either have very deluxe gift shops where you can buy a small pewter figurine of R2D2 for 1,250 RM (about $270 in USD) and alcohol in fancy bottles and boxes, a restaurant or two, a coffee shop, and randomly, a Bath & Bodyworks store (because who doesn't want to pick up some yummy smelling lotion and soap when you are traveling). There was a distinct lack of goodies on this trip...so we bought a slice of chocolate cake at Starbucks, which was ridiculously rich and gave us both a headache.

DO: Pet the monkey IF the hotel staff is petting them first, and IF they say it is okay. After drinking our Butterfly Pea drinks at the hotel in Langkawi, we walked toward the service desk to call a cart to drive us to our room. The concierge was petting a black monkey. Typically, those are shy and avoid people, so I've only seen them a few times from a distance at the botanical garden. I didn't want to frighten him, so I slowly reached out to him and was so surprised when he held my hand. It was delightful and unexpected. His hand felt papery and cool, not warm and furry as I had expected.

The hotel "rooms" all consist of bungalows that are either over the water or tucked along the shoreline. They blessedly had AC and lovely bathrooms, and I was sad that we only stayed for one night.  We did go the weekend of Deepavali (aka Diwali in the US), and the hotel lobby had created an image of two peacocks using colored rice on the floor. It was beautiful and reminded me of when I learned about that style when I used to teach Art Literacy in elementary and middle school. 

DO: Eat at the beach at night and watched all the fishing boats staked out their locations and then turned on their bright green lights after the sun went down (at 6 pm). This picture was taken without any filters or any editing:

DON'T: Go walking through the jungle if you are squeamish. The next morning, Erik saw some crazy animals/insects/invertebrates on his walk; check out his blog to read that post...I honestly was glad I had to work that morning; it might have been too much nature for me. Abbi, you would have loved it.

DO: Get to the ferry terminal early, but not nearly as early as the books suggest. There is no where to wait in the blazing sun except outside. We were fortunate to get a little bit of a spot under cover, but we just sweltered and then we crammed into a big unorganized line to go through immigration, during which I nearly dropped my phone through a grate to the sewer. 

DON'T: Sit in the back of the ferry, or the very front, if the exit doors are mid-ship. When going to Koh Lipe, the island is too shallow for the ferry to get very close, so about 4 long-tail boats drive up to the ferry on the ocean, and then people try to lower themselves into a rocking boat, while the guy driving the boat tries to keep his boat from hitting too hard against the ferry. There is no dock or anything, just a mid-water transfer. After arriving at the island, we were probably waiting for another 40 minutes since we were at the very back of the line.   

DO: Remember to be very patient as you wait to go through Customs/Immigration once you are finally on the island. We surrendered our passports at Immigration in Malaysia just before stepping onto the ferry, and then when you land in Langkawi, a man just pulls out a stack of passports, and reads the name of the passport one by one. Everyone is standing around in the sand (luckily, it was cloudy that day, otherwise we would have a serious sunburn or heatstroke), and trying to hear your name in a very thick accent. It was a unique situation, not unlike that day in 1st-grade gym class where they weighed us, measured our height and tried to see if we could climb up a rope (clearly a lost skill). Once your name is called, you go up and get your passport and then go through Customs, which is in a little shack. The military mans the customs stations and it was funny to see the guy dressed in his fatigues but then wearing flip flops since his station was out on the beach.  

Our ferry had seats for 133 people, and every seat was full. There were only two other Americans, most of the visitors were either Australian, Mayalsian or Chinese (with a few Brits, Germans and other Europeans). After you get through Customs, you have to wait for your luggage to be unloaded from the ferry.  They unload the bags the same way that they load the people, except the tide had continued to go out and the long-tail boats couldn't come in to the shore as far, so one guy would walk out through the water up to his knees, be handed a suitcase, and would carry that to the beach. And over and over again. I think the entire ferry experience was around 6 hours by the time we arrived at the ferry terminal and then received our luggage (some of the last off the ferry). 

DON'T: Forget to wear mosquito repellant. For some reason I was thinking that this would be an island similar to the big island - long stretches of beaches with some jungle-ly parts. Instead, it was a jungle with a few strips of beaches. Our lodgings were right on the beach, in individual bungalows that were delightful. There was a ceramic vase with cool water to wash the sand off your feet before you entered, and AC inside. Our bathroom was completely outside. There was a high concrete wall, and a palm tree was growing in the middle of the area. Toilet and sinks and shower were open to the sky. It was super cool at first, then I started getting bitten by mosquitoes WHILE SITTING ON THE TOILET. Defenseless in that position! Plus these mosquitoes were like the Navy Seals of mosquitos; big tough and able to extract your blood through clothing. I found that I was happiest in the water (where they couldn't get me) or on the beach IF the wind was blowing.

This friend came to visit our bungalow the first night:

DO: Be prepared for some of the most amazing snorkeling you've seen. The next day, we got on a long-tailed boat and drove for an hour straight to our first island. When we jumped out of the boat to snorkel, it was like jumping into a bath tub...incredibly warm. The fish were incredible, the water was amazing clear and I have never seen coral like this. It was vibrant and alive, with giant clams all around and bright purple anemones and clown fish and Finding Nemo all over again. We saw a sea snake that was at least 4 feet long, and a jellyfish, as well as new color variations on fishes that I have seen while snorkeling in Hawaii. 

Look at the color of the water!

The rest of these photos were taken by the boat driver, who didn't speak any English, luckily there were other Thai/English speakers on the boat who could interpret for us.

A Normal Week - Finally!

I am so grateful today that I didn't know what to write about. Nothing traumatic or ridiculous or earth-shattering. It was just a nice, normal week. It's interesting to be living in a place with just a single season. It feels like a vacation every day.  I'm writing this during a lovely thunderstorm. Lots of lightning and loud thunder. It still seems so exciting to me: nature making itself known, and probably because I'm dry and cozy.

Two thoughts come to mind tonight. The first is that Malaysia keeps its clocks on the same schedule all year long. I am so grateful. My news feed is all about how people can try to adjust and whether they will continue to utilize daylight savings time. It throws me off every time it changes, and I don't feel right for the first three days, so I'm glad to skip that.

The other thing that I wanted to share was that today, after church, we stayed afterward to practice our parts in the nativity play. I am in the choir (now that I can breathe again!), and it was my first opportunity to work with other women in our congregation who are not expats. It was so lovely to bond over the same things (I'm the only female expat who sings, apparently), and it reminded me of how much we really have in common. We were all starving, and our choir director (bless his heart, he's 20 and trying very hard - he's another expat) just kept wanting to keep rehearsing, and it was so good to laugh with other women about how our singing voices were faltering because we were feeling faint with the desire for food.

I've kept myself a little apart socially, especially at church. I have felt very sensitive about this small congregation; I didn't want them to feel like the expats were coming to "fix" anything or make it more like it is in America. There are so many expats now - three families with 4+ children each, two families with young adults/teens, and two families whose children are grown. On some Sundays, we make up 40-50% of the congregation, and nearly all of us have been lifelong members. Probably 80% of the local members have been converted to the gospel within the last few years. 

I love that my Sunday experience is completely unpredictable, week to week. I love that they do things differently here because those differences reflect the local culture. I wanted the local members to feel comfortable around me, and as a result, I have been a little quieter than I typically am. I can be irreverent and bossy, and I certainly didn't want them to think of me as another loud, well-fed American. 

Being able to let down my hair (so to speak - it's too hot to let down my hair) and just be a little silly today while we worked on hitting the right notes of Joy to the World helped me remember that it's okay to be myself here. I get to teach Relief Society (our women's group) in a few weeks, and I'm excited to be able to engage with and hear from so many sisters with different experiences. Ultimately, though, we all are united in our love for Jesus Christ, and I can feel the same truth here as I did at home, and it brings me peace.

There is a lack of pictures this week because A) I continue to think I am recording video but am not starting it until I think I'm stopping it, so I had 9 minutes of black pockets with a lot of sounds of the food market around us and B) I find that if I'm worried about getting a picture, that I miss part of the experience itself. 

I leave you with a few pictures of things we saw this week: A cute robot who brought us our appetizer at a Japanese restaurant (but didn't bring us our soup; it must not be trusted for that yet). Some cows in a random empty lot in a residential neighborhood (they are all HUGE here). A cat sleeping in the middle of the chaos of the wet market. A woman on a scooter wearing her jacket in the US way instead of the Penang way (they put it on with the zipper in the back). The cool food center (hawker market) called Coco Island by our house. The lighting at the top of Tower B at night (we live in Tower A).

Nothing exciting happens when you are sick

I’m happy to have time today to write. It seems like our two last weekends were spent shopping, building furniture, fighting with our credit cards to work in Malaysia, and disposing of cardboard. Somehow I picked up another bug and have spent the week with coughing and chills, body aches and congestion. Made an appointment to see a doctor, which turned out not to be an actual appointment, it was first-come first-serve between the hours of 9-12. The hospital/clinic area was filled with people, who all brought family members for the appointments. You drop off your paperwork in a box on the doctor’s door, and then wait for them to call you in.  

After getting labs and a chest X-ray I finally saw the doctor and she was lovely and gave me all sorts of meds to manage my reactive airway issues. I will go back to see her in two weeks for a lung function test to see if my asthma needs to be regularly treated again.  At least as of today I can say that I’m starting to improve. I’ve spent both days this weekend getting 6 additional hours of naps in and I can tell that has made a big difference.

Enough of the health issues! I’m ready to start exploring again. Since I haven’t left the house much this week, I am going to sprinkle in a bunch of random pictures taken over the last 7 weeks…and hopefully next week I’ll have something interesting to write about.

The view from our home is stunning - here is a sunrise pic taken our third day here. They are building a park area along the waterfront that should be completed within the next 6-9 months. You can see all the construction occurring at the bottom of this picture, and they do seem to work pretty quickly.

I seem to take a lot of pictures of squid. Some are wearing Christmas hats (IKEA), others are served as food or waiting to be picked for dinner.

I do enjoy calamari, but probably because they are fried and sometimes have a yummy aioli sauce to dip…Erik ate both of these squid tapas because it was a little too realistic looking for me.

My candidate for As Seen On A Scooter this week is unfortunately lacking a picture. The scooter was understandably driving very slowly and we couldn’t lag far enough behind by the time I had my camera ready. You know those pallets of eggs that you can buy with about 30 eggs in them? This person had two of those pallets on the back of their scooter, about 4-5 levels high…about this many eggs:

Watching them go over speed bumps was comical. Would have made for a great pic if I had been prepared. Next time.

Modern Coffin Trading - who knew this was a commodity to trade? The Malaysia Casket Company probably doesn’t do much in futures trading.

I do love some gummy candies, like the gummy peaches, but this was mostly just creepy. Reminded me of the wax lips that we had as kids (although I remember only getting them once and thinking that they weren’t as great as I expected).

I bought a few puzzles here online, and didn’t realize until this one arrived that something was off with the name. I did develop a hankering for pastries while working on this puzzle…but had my Dounts about how good any of these would taste.

There is a shopping center that caters to expats here, called Straits Quay. They have a grocery store there and the section for pets was larger than the section for personal care items. This pic was taken in September, you should see it now that they have Halloween costumes in.

Also at Straits Quay this creature: 

And a restaurant that we ate at that specializes in Taiwanese Chicken - they cook it in a giant urn and bring it out attached to a rack. Then someone has the great honor of donning two pairs of gloves and deboning the chicken. Erik’s employee took us out to eat there, so he insisted that Erik be honored:

Lastly, for my nephew Henry: a snack machine full of his favorite things: Matchbox Cars

I’ve actually seen two of these in Malaysia so far, one at the airport and this one was in the Ikea mall.