First of all, many thanks to our friends, “Uncle” Tim and “Aunt” Nancy, who let us stay at their timeshare in Mai Khao, near Phuket. The time share was more like a real apartment which included a fully stocked kitchen — in fact it was larger than our apartment in Santa Monica! The Marriott Phuket Beach Club was a beautiful large resort and there are many activities one can do if the pool doesn’t suit your fancy.
Unfortunately, it rained most of the week we were there – we finally felt the brunt of rainy season. As a result, we ended up staying on the resort and in our room most of the time; therefore, not much to report – sorry, folks! Here’s what we did do though – went grocery shopping at a local Tesco (like a Walmart), which took forever because many of the packaged products had no English. We COOKED! It was such a treat to have access to a kitchen so we made spicy glass noodle salad with pork (our own version of the dish we learned at Layana based on ingredients we had). We took an intro to Thai massage class, had a few good meals at the resort and… we did laundry in our very own washer and dryer unit located IN our room. (You should have seen how happy Lisa was to do laundry — ah the simple things in life).
Overall, we still had a great time catching up on sleep, reading, and just getting some down time. For more pics, check out the slideshow below.
The diving on the western coast of Thailand is supposed to be the best the country has to offer. But, in rainy season, the more remote destinations (Hin Daeng, Hin Muang, Similan Islands) are closed due to unpredictable/nasty weather and low demand. But, we were able to get a taste of what the area has to offer by diving Koh Haa which means five islands in Thai. It’s actually 6 boulders/small islands in some shallow water with some nice corals and animal life.
Here’s a different species of barracuda, smaller than the barcode barracuda we’d seen in Sipadan, Malaysia.
Soft coral below – you almost just want to pop each bubble. No… we didn’t sneak a little pop in.
I’d say find the fish, but this one’s obvious. It’s not a flounder though, it’s a sole – yes, the kind you find in the supermarket. Now you know what one looks like and that it’s a bottom feeder, for what it’s worth.
Here are some nudibranches (sea slugs) which some dive guides get really psyched about because they can be quite colorful and are sometimes hard to spot. They don’t really float our boat, but here are a couple where the photo actually came out.
We’ve been fortunate enough to see several turtles in Malaysia and now Thailand. You have to remember that these guys can be rare and you’re lucky to see one on a dive. There’s a reason there are so many turtle conservation organizations out there.
All-in-all, we liked Koh Haa. The visibility was far superior to dives in Malaysia and our dive guide (David from Pimalai Divers) said the visibility was bad. So, it goes to show that the high season is probably phenomenal. We’ll have to come back.
… did things like attending cooking class, fruit carving class, and 1:1 personal training with Ken. Yes, Ken, a fitting name for a fitness instructor, no? Now THIS is an inspiring story…
Ken’s from Bangalore, India, where he had worked in the IT division of an investment bank. Well, he had had enough of the shitty corporate life working night shifts, so he started looking on the internet for yoga instructor jobs abroad, and lo and behold, he landed his gig at the Layana after a couple of phone interviews. What a lucky guy. AND, guess what? He had never left India before. Wow. And you could tell he was both scared and super psyched. We think he’s going to do just fine. Anyway, Ken was a great trainer and we wished we could have had him help us work off our Argentina fat.
In other news, we also signed up for a cooking class. We served up some chicken in red curry, spicy seafood salad with glass noodles, and tom yum goong (spicy prawn soup).
Daaaang, look at those knife skills!!!
Yes, we made that:
Proud chefs with our mentor, Nimit:
Then, I tried my hand at fruit carving, which brought me back down to earth. It was hard – you have to be really good with an exacto knife and have a good sense of 3D geometry. Or risk butchering the fruit or worse, your own fingers! Here’s my instructor, Tui, making a carrot flower.
Can you guess which rose is mine and which one’s Tui’s below? They were carved out of pumpkin rind!
Yeah that was hard <sarcasm>, the one on the left is mine. And it vaguely resembles a rose only because Tui went over it with some corrective cuts. And even then, she could barely salvage it.
But, the other things we carved were a bit easier and made for a nice display. There were leaves made out of carrots, curled spring onions, red pepper flowers, carrot flowers, tomato skin roses.
We didn’t just do fun stuff. We had to do laundry, too… in the bathtub. Yes, Layana was perfect in just about every way. If our room had a kitchen and laundry machine, we’d probably just move in and you’d be coming out to visit us in Thailand. Just kidding. Here’s Lisa doing a big load – we were down to our last outfits!
Now for a random note: I think this is the first praying mantis I’ve seen live. It was hanging out on the table cloth getting ready to climb up to the table. A waiter picked it up by its neck to show other people, but eventually got nicked by those sharp front legs. Yowza.
… back to what we did. On another day, we took a taxi in to Saladan town to see what’s up.
Well, not much unfortunately. It was a ghost town because of low season. BUT, I did get the BEST HAIRCUT I’ve ever gotten for $3. I know, I know – how hard can it be, shaving one’s head? Well, trust me, one can miss hairs and not trim the edges well.
The other thing was, it was HOT. So hot, you have to adapt… like this dog. Sleeping on a cold stone bench in the shade. Smart dog. But he doesn’t look very comfortable…
The best thing to do in the heat was get out of it. So after 1.5 hours, including lunch, we high-tailed it back to the hotel to jump in the pool.
Alas, it had to come to an end…
We were sad to leave the Layana. The staff had started to remember how we liked our mixed drinks and what food we liked at what spiciness level. Yes, we were pampered. And we will be back again. You should go too. Seriously.
It’s Ramadan now and the Muslim Malays are fasting during the day, so things have slowed down. So, we decide to take our chances in southern Thailand during the rainy season when it can rain for days, but hotel rates are over 50% off!
We were excited to hit the beach, but first we had to get there. And this, my friends, turned out to be the most disastrous travel experience we’ve had yet during our journey. Don’t worry, we were safe, it was just annoying and hectic at the time.
From Penang, we chose to take a public minivan to Koh Lanta because it seemed the cheapest. The trip was meant to go down like this: we take a 4-5 hour bus ride to a mid-way point in Thailand (in a city called Hat Yai) at which point we would transfer to another minivan that would take us another 3-4 hours to Krabi and would then drop us off at the Ferry to Koh Lanta. So not a quick journey, but cheaper than flying. We also called our hotel in Koh Lanta and they verified the last ferry to the island was 10pm. We were leaving Penang at 8am and so would get there in the afternoon. Easy peasy. Not!
During our layover in Hat Yai, we got picked up and dropped off at different offices. But we were given the ticket for the ferry so we thought all was progressing smoothly. Things took an odd turn on our second bus leg. We were forced to sit through a bunch of random pickups and dropoffs of supplies on the way to Krabi. Yes, like a UPS/Super Shuttle hybrid.
Here’s where it got shady. Instead of dropping us off at the ferry, the driver took us to a travel agency in Krabi town (which we learned was 2 hours away from Koh Lanta). When we show our ferry ticket to the agent, he says he has no idea who we are, what agency sold the ticket, and that there’s no way to get to Lanta because the ferry is closed. Wait, WHAT?!?
That’s when we knew something was shady. By now, it’s 7PM, 11 hours after we started. We’re tired, hungry and not happy. Lisa and I (well, mostly Lisa) start dealing out some verbal pain. How could they not know where we came from? How could there be no way to get to Koh Lanta because the ferries are closed. The agent told us we would have to buy a hotel room – which he could give us a great deal on – and then he would take us in the morning. At this point, Lisa started yelling “KOH LANTAAAAAAA”. (Ask her to tell you the story – at least she was able to laugh about it a few hours – and a glass of wine – later.). We called the hotel and found out that there indeed was a ferry to Koh Lanta – two, in fact. But, here’s the thing, THEY’RE CAR FERRIES. The passenger ferries were closed in the low season after all, but you could still ride a car to Koh Lanta via ferry.
Then, the agent changed his tune and tried to sell us a taxi $120 one-way. We called the hotel again, and he then dropped his price to $70. WTF? (Insert profane name calling here). By now, it was dark, 8PM, and the ferry was going to close soon. So we took him up on the offer, but he wouldn’t give us the receipt, and only gave us a card written in Thai with a phone number. SHADY.
In the end, we got to our hotel in Koh Lanta 14 hours later – 5 hours after what we were told, and $70 extra to get to where we were going. But, in the whole scheme of things, snafus like this happen all of the time and we were glad we made it with pretty minor issues and that – most importantly – we were safe. We also were reminder of several valuable lessons (1) Do your homework! in this case, the hotel gave us incorrect / incomplete info. Especially when dealing with non-native English speakers, ask the question different ways and multiple times. Repeat the answer that the clerk gives you. Talk to muliple clerks. (2) Always have important numbers on you – like the # of the travel agencies, hotels, etc.) and (3) don’t believe what you are told by shady agents :). Ok enough lessons …
Now back to happy, positive storytelling – look guys and girls, a beach!
Our hotel, Layana Resort and Spa, has almost exclusively 5 star ratings on Tripadvisor (250+ top ratings). We had not seen anything like that in our months of traveling, so we had to give it a try. And the nightly rate was heavily discounted on Agoda.com. Win!
It turned out to be one of the best (if not the best) hotel experiences we’ve ever had, and worth the debacle we endured to get there.
During our stay, it only rained a couple of days, and we were OK with that because it was nice to stay in, read, and listen to the pouring rain.
After rainstorms, a lot of debris would wash up on shore, and here’s where started to see why the hotel was so good. The whole staff from the kitchen and waiters to the owner himself (pictured below on the left) were on the beach cleaning up. Now that’s pride of ownership!
The pool experience was great. There were call buttons on every umbrella that buzzed the waitstaff so they’d come over and take your order. They brought you complimentary water, cold lemongrass scented towels, and fresh fruits on skewers. There’s even wifi poolside (which Lisa used to do her consulting work).
And, you’d finish the day with 50% off happy hour drinks in the pool watching the sunset over Koh Phi Phi island.
That’s it for now. Next we’ll show and tell about a few things we did while we were at Layana, including cooking class, fruit carving, visiting the town, and scuba diving.
One of our goals is to learn how to cook the cuisine of each country that we visit. So … when we see you next, we’ll be able to put together an authentic meal for you. Bonus, right?!
We headed over to the Tropical Spice Garden in Teluk Bahang, west of Georgetown, for a cooking class with Nazlina Hussin, a self-made chef and savvy internet marketer (we found her on TripAdvisor and she has made several websites around food in Penang).
First, we got a tour of the grounds where they grow their own spices and vegetables. So you get to see things like a ginger plant (below), whereas you usually only see the root part of it.
Or citronella (natural mosquito repellant), which is a grass similar to lemongrass, whereas you usually see it as a candle or oil. Don’t eat citronella though!
After our tour, we got to work cooking. The menu consisted of chicken rendang (essentially a chicken curry) and char kway teow, a typical stir-fried noodle dish in Penang. A lot time was spent prepping – mashing/rolling peppers, garlic, and other things with a giant stone roller to make a chili paste (see below where Lisa is smashing a combination of chilis, garlic and ginger – yummm).
For the chicken rendang, we started by scraping out coconut flesh. We did this by using a medieval looking device where Lisa sits on it, and then pushes the coconut shell against what looks like a spur.
The result is that the flesh falls onto the plate.
Then, you toast the coconut flesh until it’s brown. But make sure you don’t burn it like I did. They had to throw away my batch and start fresh. Hah. Here’s me before burning the coconut to a black crisp.
After about an hour of prepping our ingredients, we finally got to cook. Below is the rendang simmering.
Below we wok-fry the char kway teow which is served with chilis and lime.
View the slideshow below for the full set of photos, or click through to see it on Flickr.
Seriously our journey is not about food (no really it’s not!). It just happens that everywhere we go in Asia, there is amazing food to be eaten. We certainly don’t mind, as long as our waistlines don’t get any bigger!
Penang is known to most as an island (it’s also a state) in northwest Malaysia near the border with Thailand. The main – and most historical – city is Georgetown. Penang is also the high-tech capital of Malaysia with companies like Dell and Intel doing manufacturing there. It even boasts free public wifi in town, although we could never get it to work. Good attempt though, and a big plus for us lovers of free wifi. It’s also one of two states in Malaysia with a majority ethnic Chinese population, the other being Melaka.
You Tiao (translated "oil stick") - a Chinese churro
Penang is probably better known for its delicious food; if you consider yourself a foodie, you must make a pilgrimage to Penang. Penangites are extremely passionate about their food – there are countless blogs and websites dedicated to trying, reviewing, and photographing every restaurant on Penang Island. You can search for the BEST of whatever it is you want to eat, be it curry mee (noodles), or nyonya food. And some people will swear that the ONLY place to get curry mee is at this food cart on that street at the corner of X and Y streets. Yes, that specific.
So Penang – in a nutshell – is on an ocean, has high tech, has great food, and is a city for foodies… hmmmmm, sounds a bit like San Francisco! Minus the wine.
After spending an afternoon walking around Georgetown (and enduring intense heat and humidity), we spent most of our time in Penang eating. Imagine that!
Here’s a guy outside of Hameediyah (on Campbell Street in Georgetown) making fresh murtabak.
This woman seems to be an icon on Chulia Street, serving up her wonton noodles. There was a long line for her noodles. Look at the heat pumping out of that stove!
For dessert, there was a guy making mini-pancakes with sweet corn or bananas. It’s basically a roti from Pakistan.
Of course, in between meals, we had to walk off all the calories, so we wandered in to neat art/antique stores – like this one where the guy handcarves his statues from wood. Here’s one of the famous Monkey Prince – starting price? $500 USD.
Here’s an Indian temple in Little India:
OK back to food. There are many food courts and food hawker areas in Penang. This one is called Red Garden Food Paradise – full of locals and tourists just about every night, with 20-30 booths of food.
Here’s Hokkien Mee, much like the curry mee we’ve had, and oh so good. Only $1.50 USD.
We were told to try the Assam Pedas, or fish head curry. Yes, with real fishhead in your curry. It was good, but probably hyped a bit much.
And as if your excellent meal wasn’t enough to entertain you, the Red Garden Food Paradise puts on a live show every night, with a guy on his keyboard belting out American oldies. Bizarre, but you can’t help but smile. Notice the sign, “no guest singer” and check out his HAT! YES! Awesome.
On another day, we decided to wander the backstreets on a whim, and we came upon what shall be dubbed the “pork district.” Several pork slaughterhouses on both sides of a quiet street – not what you would expect, and something you never see in the States.
Finally, Penang is known for its Baba Nyonya culture. If you’ll recall in an earlier post about Melaka, it’s a fusion of Chinese and Malay cuisine which makes for interesting dishes that you probably won’t have anywhere else.
Here’s fried basil leaves. Pretty neat in concept, but I think much of the basil flavor was lost.
Next up, “Ju Hu Cha” or stir-fried shredded senkuang (radish), carrots, dried cuttlefish and mushrooms, topped with fresh sambal belacan (smashed hot chiles with prawn paste) in a lettuce wrap. Not bad, not bad.
Another must-try apparently – Curry Kapitan – or curry chicken Nyonya style. Pretty heavy, but good…
So, overall, we love Penang and if we have the opportunity, we will return to sample more food and other restaurants. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. Before we leave Penang, we’ll do a cooking class to learn a few typical Penang dishes which we’ll write about shortly.
Tioman Island is a large picturesque, mountainous island off of the southeastern coast of peninsular Malaysia. It’s known for its diving and super laid back lifestyle. There’s only a 2 mile road, and most of the kampungs (villages) are only accessible via boat. To reach Tioman, we took a 5 hour bus from Melaka to the port village of Mersing and then took a 2 hour ferry to our “resort”.
Tioman Island is also where my cousin Javi owns a dive shop. Bali Hai divers is attached to a small “resort” called Panuba Inn. Panuba is for divers and is very – shall we say – basic. The chalets are ‘clean enough’ and different types of critters have made themselves at home in the chalets. That said, you cannot beat the view!
Also, since Panuba is a bay – the waves don’t crash like they do on the beaches – instead there is a contant whooshing of small waves that is really intoxicating. I haven’t sleep so well in a long, long time! Listen in the video below.
When I mentioned to my cousin that I wanted to get my advanced certification he said not to worry – he’d hook me up. And boy did he! I was able to complete my advanced certification and Tony and I got certified on enriched air (or Nitrox)!!
Here I am doing my course on navigation with a compass underwater:
Tony and I got to know the dive masters well in the short time that we were there. Maybe that’s because we made a beer run with them – AFTER our diving of course 😉 – and treated them to a case.
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And sharing some beers with my instructor Barry.
Diving Tioman
We did 8 dives over the course of 4 days. Our favorite dive was a cavernous coral area that offered lots of pass throughs and small caves. Unfortunately visibility was low overall, but we saw some amazing coral and got to swim around 3 different wrecks.
Some of the coral at Tulai – the best coral garden we saw in Tioman:
Giant Clam:
Turtle (my favorite):
A Thai fishing boat wreck, 90 feet below the water’s surface:
There were tons of reef fish (sergeant majors) hanging out around the jetty, so we happened to find some bread and cause a feeding frenzy:
Unfortunately, Tioman and many other dive destinations are suffering from warm water (29C+ or ~85F+) which causes coral to bleach. Bleaching happens when coral expels the algae living inside of it and it becomes white. This is presumably due to global warming, but the jury is still out on whether it’s that, or simply cyclical temperature changes in the environment.
Check out more photos from our dives on the Flickr slideshow:
After a few days in Melaka we made the quick bus ride up to Kuala Lumpur to meet with my cousin Javi and his wife and their 5 year old daughter Julia. They own 2 dive shops – one on Tioman Island and one in KL (where they call home).
KL is like other big cities… lots of noise, traffic (arrgh the traffic is worse than L.A.!), big buildings and good food (but not nearly as good as in Melaka). To be honest, we didn’t really see much of the city. I was recovering from a throat infection that turned into a nasty head cold and it rained most of the 2 days we were there. So, not much to report, but we saw the Petronas Towers from a distance and spent some time in the Pavilion mall food court which had 30-something vendors and offered AWESOME food.
We were lucky, however, to meet up with Tony’s friends, Jennifer and Steve, from the days when he worked in Houston. We met up for dinner at a pretty cool spot in the KL suburbs called Tamarind Springs.
And that’s about all we did in KL. Very light on photos so we’ll end with this one – beware of the snatch thief:
Next, we head to Tioman Island on the east coast for diving and beach time.
At Lisa’s uncle and aunt’s place in Melaka, we found her cousin Javi’s 1969 Mini Cooper still in driveable condition. It’s only one of four Minis of its kind in Malaysia. I couldn’t resist taking a few pics of this beauty…
Laksa - noodles in curry soup, a local specialty and favorite
Total Miles Traveled: 31,733
Believe it or not, I have relatives in Malaysia, from the Cuban side of my family – go figure! My tio Felix and tia Eme (apparently, Tony’s long lost Cuban-Chinese aunt… not really, but more on this later) have lived in southeast Asia for over 20 years, and spent the last 10 years in Melaka, a city 2 hours northwest of Singapore. When Tony and I decided that we were going to travel to Malaysia, we immediately looked them up. It had been 10 years since I had last seen them! Here’s a picture of them below.
Melaka is a magical city. It’s downtown area is a world heritage site and, as such, it has retained it’s colonial charm. Melaka is one of three major cities of trade from back in the day – Penang and Singapore being the other two, -and therefore has an interesting and wonderful mix of cultures – Malay, Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. The cultures intermingle and one can walk down the street and see mosques, Chinese Buddhist temples, Indian temples and churches.
One of the most highly touted is the Baba-Nyonya (Peranakan) culture, which is a fusion of Chinese and Malay cultures created when Chinese men came down to work in Melaka and married Malay locals. These Chinese are also known as “Straits Chinese,” because they immigrated to the British Straits settlements in Malaysia in the 15th and 16th centuries. The ethnic Chinese in Melaka speak Mandarin and a variant of the Hokkien dialect very similar to Taiwanese, so Tony could understand a lot of what was said. It was a fun and nice surprise (and quite helpful!). As a result, my aunt Eme has become knowledgable about some aspects of Chinese culture and has even picked up a few words. One of her favorite phrases to Tony was “you never knew you had a Cuban-Chinese aunt did you?”
So what happens when you have so many cultures mixing in the same place? It is a perfect storm of culinary excellence. And we did not hesitate to revel in it. Here’s a look at some of the local food.
THE (repeat THE) best Tandoori chicken and garlic/garlic+cheese/garlic+onion naan we’ve both ever had. You know how Tandoori chicken often tastes dry? Well, this was cooked in a clay oven in front of you and so juicy when it comes out.
By the way, this restaurant, Pak Putra, is a Pakistani-run place in a little strip mall. The “dining room” is the parking lot. It was full of people around 8pm when we ate, and still full at 11pm when we came back to fetch our car… on a TUESDAY night!
Another very popular dish is Hainanese chicken rice. Yes, you guessed it, it’s from the island of Hainan off the south coast of China, west of Hong Kong. It’s basically steamed or roasted (better), chopped up, and served over coconut infused rice with hot sauce, soy sauce, and chicken broth on the side.
When we asked, do people cook in Melaka? Many locals said no (including my aunt and uncle). It’s because the food is so good and SOOOOO cheap in the restaurants and food courts like the one below. You’ll find 20-something different food stalls which each makes something different, all for the price of $1.50 or less per dish!
Char Kway Teow – stir-fried noodles with flat, broad noodles – a bit like ho fun. Very typical dish.
Chang fun (translated “long flour”) – very similar to the dim sum dish.
You’ve seen these before – chicken satay.
Another local specialty – fried oysters with eggs and sweet/hot sauce on the side.
Feeling full yet? Not Tony! On another night, we went with my aunt and uncle’s local friend Falynn (she’s pictured with Tony below and we called her the ‘social director’) and tried another local specialty – satay chelup. You basically load up on skewers of food you want to eat e.g. lots of fish/shrimp/meat balls, sausages, cockles, other meats, veggies, etc. and then you cook it all in boiling pot of peanut satay sauce. AWESOME.
Don’t forget to dip the sliced bread in the satay sauce and wash it down with some freshly made watermelon juice (You can see how happy I am to start eating!)
So how do you pay the bill? The waitress comes over and counts the number of sticks you ate – yellow ones are more expensive than orange ones). Brilliant.
On the weekends, the city puts on a night market. Super crowded, loaded with trinkets, and better yet, great food.
We stopped for some dessert called cendol (pronounced “chen-doll”) which is shaved ice, brown sugar syrup (called gula melaka), coconut milk, red bean, and some other good sweet stuff. Perfect for a hot, humid night.
Here’s another dish we stumbled upon. It was one of those things you walked by and couldn’t stop looking/smelling simultaneously and when you snapped out of your trance, you forked over 6 ringgit (US$2) for a big container of the kuih lobak. It doesn’t look very pretty so a pic doesn’t do it justice, but it will blow you away.
OK, now you must be full. So here are some images around the city. There are many buddhist temples around the city:
The historic district of Melaka sells lots of arts and antiques. More beautiful by night, but just as interesting during the day.
Tri-shaws or trickshaws (or tricked-out rickshaws) are waiting nearby to take you around town. You can’t see it here, but some of them have boomboxes that pump out club music as you ride around town. Classy.
Here’s some cool tile work in an old historic hotel called Hotel Puri on Heeren Street.
The entrance to another temple. A great addition to our collection of door pictures.
You’re looking across multiple storefronts along a street.
Finally, Melaka has done a great job of lighting up the town, literally. Each building is highlighted with lights so you can see them all at night. It’s quite a sight to see and a bit reminiscent of Disneyland. They even have a monorail!
Have a look at all the photos in the slideshow below:
