we woke up this morning at 5am again to our five-times-a-day-too-much call to prayer. right in our ears. thanks muslim friend. hey alex, you ready to go hiking before the sun comes up?
not quite.
we woke up officially around eight o'clock, checked out of our expensive hostel, into our inexpensive hostel, and went to breakfast. we had kope, of course, and too much food. from there, we crossed the river to begin hiking. not too soon into the hike, we met up with ben and julie, two recent graduates who are teaching english for a year just outside of beijing. happy to meet up with fresh faces, we hiked the canopy walk with them.
for those of you who don't know what a canopy walk is, it's where they build a bridge or bridges from one treetop to another. it is generally a board or boards with a net on the side so you don't fall and die because you're lord-knows-how-many-feet-in-the-air, as-tall-as-the-trees high.
please dont let me drop my camera.
this particular walk was the longest in the world, with six bridges. it made for a beautiful view, but to our luck, we saw next to no wildlife on our hiking adventure.
except the snake i almost stepped on in the trees. and the pheasant.
when we got back to the resort area after the hike, we were up close and very-- perhaps too-- personal with this bird. it was obviously confused, considering it did nothing but make a purring sound and literally run in circles around us. we were so fascinated and thought maybe it was trying to befriend us, until it pecked ben.
..
after that hike, we had a light lunch and went to a watering hole where everyone dipped in for a swim except me. anyone who knows me well enough would have known that i didn't get in before i mentioned it. and you all now know, without me telling you, that no, the water was not clear.
obviously.
..
though we did do two hikes, they were very short, much shorter than we had expected. however, some of the hikes on the trip would have been six hours out and back, and we didn't want to exhaust ourselves or get lost either. at first i thought maybe we had wasted our day, but we somehow managed to pass the time. we met back up with ben and julie for an indian dinner, then sat around and chatted our american chat.
you learn to appreciate familiarity once its gone.
..
after a ridiculous amount of contemplation as how how we were going to get from point a to b, or point taman negara to point ko samui, we decided to take a tourist bus up to penang in the western side of malaysia. this was very different from our original plan, but considering the route we had mapped out in our heads didn't exist, we had to opt for something a bit more... real.
so why did we opt for this new plan? well, considering malaysia is islamic and thailand is buddhist, there is a good deal of political unrest in many parts of the border towns on both sides. the idea is to spend as little time there as possible, because though westerners have little thret except to be robbed by raging motorcyclists as they drive past, they can be bystanders in the way of the unrest. we spent more money than we wanted to, but we're much safer this way.
so, rundown of what happened today and what will happen tomorrow: we parted the beautiful rainforest a bit before nine am.
arrived in penang a bit after seven.
we'll leave penang at five am tomorrow morning.
and we'll arrive in ko samui around three in the afternoon.
good lord. three and a half hours to virginia? that's officially cake.
..
so pretty.
Y rae. racho. d.
