Sam & Pete Hit the road

The Homestay

So we just spent 2 days on an island that APPARENTLY doesnt exisit. It was a homestay with locals on an island in the middle of the lake that is near Kuala Kangsar if you look on a map. But you wont find our island. Its not there. Its all a little bit nutts. Apparently when they filled the lake in (with water) that the island (which we stayed on) is in – they miscalculated and didnt flood it enough – hence the creation of the island that doesnt exisit on any map. pretty cool. Homestay was excellent. We ate and drank and hiked and chilled and all that. OH meanwhile the jungles are completely infested with leechs – and they are so gross. But i didnt get leeched… but i did have to flick them off my shoes alot. But i was so brave. After the first one I stopped whimmpering “Petey Petey Save Me Save Me” and just started flicking off the bastards myelf.
Here is an icky leech:

And here is what it and its many many icky friends did to our friend Winnie:

We hiked up through jungle to a waterfall thingy and then people had a swim and i flicked leeches off my shoes. Its one thing to flick – i wasnt gunna swim with them!!! But Pete did of course.

There were no tracks in the rainforesty jungle and we were being led by a local – who, in his flipflops (thongs) was moving about 3 times as fast as we were in proper hiking boots. He lost us a few times and apparently malaysians dont know about “Kooeee’s” cause that made no difference. But he always came back and found us. I fell in the river like 4 times… so now my sneakers are muddy feral dirty wet and smelly. But so are everyone elses cause pretty much they all fell in…. except pete.

The island was beautiful – not traditional beachy beautiful – just peaceful lakey beautiful and neither of us was ready to leave this morning. Our hosts Aziz and Asiah were soooo lovely.

But we had  to go  so we chucked our packs back onto the speed boat and a boat, mini bus, another mini bus, a big bus, a ferry and a taxi ride later we were in Penang. That was an EASY travel day

We havent had a chance to explore Penang – just got here a couple of hours ago – but the internet is pretty cheap so chances are we will post again soon.

Petey and i have both picked up English accents and have started using Norweign sentence structure with Asian grammer (members on our tour mixed with market place haggling) …. OOOHHH yeah. Teaching English this year is going to be FUN….. <– please note the “dot dot dot”

Hope all is well in Oz land. Post again soon.

 – Sam