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).