Judith and Mark D. S.E. Asia Trip - 4

This email arrived from Judith this morning. The only thing that the pictures have in common with the email is that they were posted by Mark in his series on English advertisements encountered on their trip. Enjoy (or Enjoh)!

Hey!

Our last day in Saigon was quite busy. First, let me tell you about when I was 13. I really liked this tv show, Tour of Duty. Its an American tv show about a platoon of US soldiers in the Vietnam war. It was what first made me want to go to Vietnam one day, the scenery was beautiful (little did I know it was filmed in Hawaii), made me want to fly (joined air cadets shortly after), made me soberingly impressed with the north Vietnamese use of tunnels during the war, and made me think the M60 machine gun was pretty awesome (not as a tool to kill, just cool on its own). So, we went to the Chu Chi tunnels near Saigon (search on google for more info). We got to crawl through a portion of tunnel, which was cool, but overall I was disappointed because it didn't fully show the full extent or complexity of the tunnels. What was super cool though is they have a shooting range where you can shoot some of the guns that were used in the war like the M16, AK47, and drumroll, the M60. So Mark and I got 5 rounds each to shoot the machine gun. It was pretty awesome. Now as most of you know I'm a "pick flowers not fights" kind of girl and in real life I don't like guns, so please don't judge me when you see the photo of me looking like a gun crazed maniac (in reality I was just super awed and excited).

Later that day we got a Thai massage. They used their hands, elbows, forearms, and feet! They would get up on the table for better angles and would move your joints and muscles. As a manual practitioner there were some things I found cool that you wouldn't be able to get away with in Canada, and some things I would never do to my own patients. We also got a facial care treatment that was really nice (something I'd like like to do once or twice a year from now on).

I apologize that this one is going to be so long, there is just so much to share.

Some things we learned about Saigon: the population is over 8 million, and 3.5 millions scooters! One of the biggest reasons why so many people drive scooters and not cars is because of the tax put on cars. We liked the city, a mix of east meets west. We headed out to Malaysia the next day. Uneventful. Malaysia: barely any scooters! Drive on the left side of the road. Malaysia is a lot more multicultural compared to Vietnam and Laos. It's state religion is Islam. I was woken up by the adhan today.

Kuala Lumpur, Chinatown: dirty and not so nice. We were glad to leave the next day. Our bus to the Cameron Highlands was absolutely beautiful: mountainous, rainforesty, and windy. Even more windy than the Laos mountains. Yesterday we took a trail that climbed Mount Brinchang. Beautiful and good exercise. The rainforest here is in the subclass of montane or cloud forests - it was very cloudy. We just relaxed for the rest of the day and read our books.

Today we went to a tea plantation! So beautiful! We explored the plantation for a bit then checked

out the tea factory and went to the cafe that overlooks the plantations to try out their teas. We had 3 different kinds and it was by far the best tea I've had this trip. Unfortunately in general, the tea in south east Asia has not been great, not great quality and also more often then not the milk they put in is carnation milk. So today I got my fill of good tea! The plantation (Sungai Palas) itself is huge and I think it said they harvest what equals to over 800 000 cups of tea a day.

We are now sitting in Starbucks enjoying an almost but not quite as good cup of tea. Tomorrow we head out to Taman Negara, a national park for a few days then on to Singapore on the 12th. Frustratingly the only way we were able to get a place to stay on our next leg was to join a tour. Malaysia is the only place where we apparently needed to book hostels in advance. But, despite the change in plans we are quite excited for the trip and will send our next update in Singapore.



We hope everyone is doing well. We'll see you in just over a week!

Judith and Mark