Closing time

One last thing we had to do before we leave for Xian and Yunnan: sign a bunch of papers and stick them in the mail so that we can close on our house "in absentia" while we are in rural China. Next week, it should be signed, sealed, and delivered. No celebrations until we see the check in our account...

Catching Up, and Falling Behind

Just as I become fully caught up on a month's worth of travel, my access to blogger.com is blocked by the Chinese government. I've posted a lot of days this evening, so please take the time to look back as far as the end of April and then all through May for photos of our journeys so far.

And then hope that I can find new ways to access blogger.com, or expect to see a link to a new website. We leave tomorrow for Yunnan province for 1 week. Expect more stories and photos, hopefully to be posted to this blog. Otherwise, expect the sunset of this blog and a link to our continued story. Apologies for lagging behind, and for the lag that I expect to happen again.

Photojournalism - Borneo, Bako National Park

You're used to the photojournalism style now - who needs my useless verbage, right? Words can't describe the beauty of this place, although photos barely do it justice. In fact, so poorly that I didn't even carry my fancy camera this day. And we only took a few photos - how can a person capture such incredible diversity, such layers in front of your face, such difference, such beauty?

Bako National Park lies on the next peninsula over from our resort, so we took a boat to reach it. This is a picture of our resort. Its the green space to the left of all of those buildings. We slept in treehouses just a few meters from the ocean, but neatly hidden behind a screen of jungle.

The trail:

Bako National Park may be the last place the proboscis monkeys still live in the wild. Standing on a trail listening to monkeys crash through the trees above you is surreal. Catching a glimpse of them practically flying is amazing. Check the top right of the photo below.

Further hiking took us uphill, and eventually to the top of the hill where the environment changed dramatically. No longer climbing through rainforest, we were now walking over sand and scrub.

The hike neared its end as we came to a steep cliff, where the sun-baked land ended and the trail dropped directly down to the beach. The perfect place for a kissing picture.

The picture of paradise

We eventually arrived at this beach, took our lunches out of the cooler in that boat, ate, swam, relaxed and then jumped in the boat to return home.

Photojournalism - Borneo, Mount Santubang

Our climb through the rainforest of Malaysia up Mount Santubang I have referenced in an earlier posting on Malaysia, so I'll simply post the pictures from the trail. The forest was so thick that few pictures turned out, but the sites were so amazing that I had to post the few which were good.

And yes, this is the trail. And yes, it is as vertical as it looks. I think we deserve a solid pat on the back, each of us.

Boutique Lane

The last time we visited Singapore, we stayed near Robertson Quay - an easy walk from the Colonial District, the CBD and the pristine waterfront which make up the center of Singapore's tourist attractions. It served as the perfect location, making travel simple with toddlers. This trip serves a different purpose. The client pays the hoel bill, and so the client houses Dave within easy walking distance of their office. This has served us well this time around, as the Park Royal Hotel on Beach Road is on the edge of Kampong Glam, the Arabian neighborhood, and a simple walk from Little India. The streets and shops of these communities are endlessly fascinating, an every food vendor sells something which smells tempting.




But this afternoon I made a delicious discovery. One block over from Arab Street, with its hookah bars, carpet stores and racks of clothes imported from India - interesting browsing of its own sort - I found Haji Lane, practically a back alley but dotted with trendy little boutiques selling outrageous and unique clothes in a wide variety of pieces. Much preferred to the international glam and cookie cutter trends of Orchard Road, I happily explored each shop. And were I born with an Asian frame, I could have dropped some serious cash here.

Borneo - not for lightweights

I spent the weekend exhausted.

We had no internet access at our rainforest inn, and although we carried Dave's laptop in one of our bags, I found myself too exhausted every evening to bother turning it on. We've taken pictures, which I will post upon my return to Shanghai. But while it still resides in my head, I wanted to post a quick recap of the weekend.

Friday:
Dave and I left home by 7:30am - an astoundingly simple feat, when you needn't drag along any sleepy children. We made it to the airport in plenty of time, sat through a horrible China Eastern flight for 5-6 hours, and then hung out in Singapore's Changi Airport. Now, if one is going to hang out in any airport worldwide, Changi is the one. This place is huge, with gardens and waterfalls, pools, movies, restaurants, internet access, plenty of shopping, and certainly more. A simple place to wile away hour upon hour, we kept ourselves amused until our Air Asia flight left at 8:20pm for Kuching. Upon arrival an hour later in Kuching, we were met at the small airport by a taxi driver with our names on a sign. One dark hour later, we arrived at the Permai Rainforest Resort. We have discovered that our favorite hotels are those of the eco-tourism variety, and this one fit the description perfectly. We slept in a treehouse, with a fan rather than air conditioning, only a few meters away from the beach, beautifully obscured by a few layers of rainforest.

Saturday:
As we only had 2 full days in the jungles of Borneo, we had to get right to the jungle hiking. After a tasty breakfast, we set out to climb Mount Santobang. Just to be smart, we asked a few questions at the front desk. How long would this hike take? Probably 5 hours or so. We were leaving at 10:30, so this should be well timed. How difficult is this hike - what should we wear? Not too difficult - you should be fine in sandals.

Either our informant was poorly informed, or Dave and I proved to be miserable hikers. We did not heed her advice on the sandal hiking, and rightfully so. This hike delved straight into the jungle, where the path was generally made up of roughly piled boulders or of twisted roots gathered overtop of one another. Often the path could only be followed by holding tight to a rope and scaling a short length of sheer rockface. What we should have deduced ourselves was that a hike to the top of anything titled "Mount" would be a steep one. But we turned around when he path became nearly vertical, the steps more like ladders, and the assent entirely impossible without a handhold. We reached this point about halfway to our destination - and 4 hours into the hike. What we had expected to be 5 hours roundtrip turned into 6.5 hours, having turned around halfway through. We arrived back at our treehouse physically exhausted, and headed straight to the beach. We ate an early dinner and somehow managed to keep ourselves awake until a mildly respectable bedtime, and then crashed.

Sunday:
This day we began better informed, and better led. We signed up for a boat trip to Bako National Park. As our hotel sat on the end of one peninsula, and Bako National Park makes up the neighboring peninsula, a simple motorboat is the quickest route between the two destinations. Our captain dropped us near the park headquarters, promising to meet us at a beach a few kilometers hike away. He kept our lunches in the boat, and headed off. We hiked along Telok Paku in search of proboscis monkeys, found in the wild here in Bako. With or without monkeys, the trail was amazing, displaying the amazing colors and layers of a protected rainforest. My words simply can not describe how amazing we found this place, and I only hope that my photos will do it some justice. Luckily, we did have the chance to watch some of the monkeys as they swung through the trees over our heads. And although I'm not an avid wildlife watcher, standing on a path in the jungle and watching monkeys swing and dive through the tops of the trees is really something worth marveling at. Our second hike was along Telok Pandan Kecil, a walk described so well on the website that I'll simply steal their verbage:

The trek to Telok Pandan Kecil is one of Bako's most popular. It ascends the
forested hills overlooking Telok Assam, reaching a plateau covered in scrub
vegetation, and continues along a sandy path lined with carnivorous pitcher
plants, before reaching a cliff top with stunning views of the secluded bay
below and the famous sea stack just offshore. A 10 minute descent through cliff
vegetation brings you to one of the best beaches in the park.

And although they're right about the descent taking only 10 minutes, this was a steep descent ending with something near repelling by rope along a huge boulder. But the beach was a beautiful place for a picnic. Again, we ended our day exhausted - this time from the sun as much as the physical exertion, as part of this hike had been in the scrub vegetation on top of the plateau. This time we managed our evening better, fitting in time at the Sarawak Cultural Center and at the beach before a long, relaxing dinner.

Monday:
We revisited the Sarawak Culture Village on Monday morning. The rather pricey museum employs local members of Sarawak's indigenous people to organise a daily show, display traditional housing and show Malaysian artwork. I do not do the museum justice in this quick write-up. It is quite an interesting place, giving a wonderful glimpse into the lives of many people in Borneo, even to this day.
After the Cultural Village, we moved onto Kuching. This sleepy town in the capital of Sarawak, and a lovely little city of 500,000. Located on a pretty river with the backdrop of the jungle surrounding, this colonial town made for lovely walks. The city is full of museums, all with free entry. We checked out the textile museum and the ethnographic museum. And I tell you what - if any region needs an ethnographic museum, its Borneo. The tribes, local cultures and history of the area are astounding, and although the museum was not remarkably displayed, I couldn't help but find most of its subjects wildly interesting.

We ended Monday with another Air Asia flight, returning us to Singapore and a good, hot shower. Air Asia certainly earned its bragging rights as the best low-cost carrier in the world. I haven't flown them all, but Air Asia really blew my socks off.

I realize that although I've mentioned a number of places in this post, I've been sadly vague about each of them. Borneo, Malaysia is such a rich landscape and culture that I couldn't possibly write it well in only a few paragraphs. I should have taken the time to write each day as we were there - my mind would have retained all of the details that have not gelled into a general vision of Borneo as beautiful, wild, rugged and amazing. Well worth a trip of 2 days - we could have spent a month here.

Relaxing in Singapore

Time, she does slip quickly past.

Today I relax alone in Singapore, as Dave attends business meetings and the girls entertain Nana and Poppa in Shanghai. But these 2 days of relaxation lie in the middle of a wildly busy 8 weeks.

Already, we have seen the arrival and departure of Grammy and Grandpa. Their itinerary included revisits to Beijing, the Great Wall and Yangshuo, plus plenty of visits to the playground in Shanghai. We have also seen the arrival of Nana and Poppa, Dave's and my journey to Borneo in Malaysia, and our arrival in Singapore for a few days. These few langorous days end for me as we land in Shanghai on Thursday afternoon, diving headlong into the craziness that is the end of the spring term.

It surprises me that so much of life follows a semester schedule, but it seems that none of us easily escape the school year cycle. So much current business stems from the ending of the spring semester and the beginning of the summer. The Wonder Center will close in a few weeks, likely forever. Close friends will leave for the summer, and other close friends will leave Shanghai for good. A term of Music Together will end, and my first term as a teacher will begin. My role in leadership of the Women's Ministry has begun, and Bible Study has stepped into its summer hibernation. But most interestingly, together with Nana and Poppa we will travel as a family to Yunnan province, and then enjoy 1 more week in Shanghai before splitting again.

With only minimal internet and computer access, I found today wildly relaxing. Dave's meetings didn't start until 10 this morning, and so we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast together before I headed to the gym and swimming pool. With nothing planned for the day, a morning spent at the gym and swimming pool felt beautifully luxurious and by the time I felt prepared to leave the hotel and begin my day in proper, I was well rested and full of energy. I lunched alone, shopped along Orchard Road, and made it back in time to join Dave for dinner in Little India. As I've spent most of my budget, tomorrow will include more time at the pool and less time at the shops. But as its my last day of relaxation for days, weeks, probably months, I have no fears of boredom.

An Expatriate Parent

... is an individual who finds it worth 30 minutes of her time to clean the sticky chocolate off of the green Easter grass.

Biking

It was really a redux of the trip one year prior. We would travel to Beijing with the grandparents, and next journey with them to Yangshuo. My parents loved the trip last May, and we knew that we would all enjoy the trip this year. Both destinations were child-friendly, and interesting to everyone involved. Either Dave or I had missed most destinations in Beijing which we were eager to revisit, and we both loved Yangshuo so much that we were happy for an excuse to return.

We made a few wonderful adjustments to our itinerary - notably staying at the Lee Garden Serviced Apartments in Beijing, within walking distance of the Forbidden City, which saved us loads of time and trouble. And also taking better advantage of the grandparents. Dave and I went for a hike with his Dad one day, a lovely hike where we could barely discern the path sometimes and felt lost in the middle of nowhere. And Dave and I escaped on bikes the second day. Because we wanted to push hard, we didn't bring the fancy camera. But the scenery was so lovely that any camera could capture the place beautifully.

We set off among the placid rice patties, followed small roads through tiny villages, waved at smiling locals and bumped over gravel and dirt roads. The hills stayed along the edge of the scenery and kept our ride absolutely jawdropping.

3

After a bit, we seemed to have reached the edge of the rice paddies and the beginning of the hills. And these were serious hills, where the road comprised of seemingly endless switchbacks. Dirt and gravel uphill are not either of our areas of expertise. We were soon exhausted.




Still, we plowed on. What else could we do? We'd followed one road in, and that was the only road which would take us anywhere else. Our map had no apparent scale, and we had no idea how far from the hotel we were. But we sensed that these uphills were only taking us further from our destination. Still, the scenes laid out on the bottom of the hills were so lovely that we could hardly complain. That is, when we weren't struggling to climb a hill.

We had left the hotel around 3:00 in the afternoon. The sun began to fall around 6:00, and it was entirely dark by 8:00. We had no idea where we were, and the absence of electricity within site made the darkness easier to follow but the gravel road much bumpier.

We eventually hit a dead end. Our entirely dark path had grown smaller and smaller, passed angry dogs and families eating dinner. We had the chance to watch village life in its rawest form, people cooking over open flames inside their simple frame homes. Homes which compared more to barns in my experience, we could see people sitting on simple stools and stoking fires. Once the road ended, we stopped the first people we could find and asked for help. This person knew of the hotel, and for only 20RMB (about USD 3) offered to guide us back. We gladly followed him a mere 20 minute ride back to the hotel, arriving over 7 hours and over 60 kilometers after we had departed.

Growing Rice

A simple walk along a dirt road near Yangshuo, in southern China. We smiled at the ladies planting rice. Everyone smiles. They offer Dave a rake, and he surprises them all by stepping right into the muck and helping out.

Photojournalism - Yangshuo

Having visited Yangshuo a year ago, I haven't got much more to say on the subject. But this time around, I had a new camera in hand and the company of some wonderful photography mentors. A few of our best shots.

S-- in a schoolyard we walked through, near a local village.

The Photographer Father

Dramatic Karst Hills

Breaking bread together on the roof of Luna Restaurant