From my journal 8/3/11

Time to play catch up again. We've had a lot of down time recently, which has been filled with equal amounts of sleeping and shopping. I did document all interesting adventures in my journal and that's what I'll write about here for you to enjoy...


8/3/11

Today was our first full day in Thailand.  We took a bus to a teak wood carving shop and saw the neatest things being made out of coconuts! Lamps, purses, cooking utensils, you name it, they made it.

After we stopped there we went to the largest floating market in Thailand, to get there we had to take long boats over alligator infested waters!

These boats were going at least 35-40+ mph! Each boat had 6 students in it and had to be balanced just right, if one person moved you felt the whole boat shift.


After we shopped for a little bit we went to a buffet for lunch then went to an elephant show.

These elephants may be the worlds most talented animals ever.  They raced, played soccer, danced, attempted head stands and even tried to talk!


It was the coolest thing I have ever seen.
Plus -- I got to ride an elephant. Life goal COMPLETE!
So happy.
I wanted to dance and scream and cry with joy.

Malaysia!

Today was a whirlwind of a day!
We all met up at 8:30am to go on a bus tour through Malaysia.
We first went to a Buddhist temple called Thean Hou. It was absolutely stunning, between the colors, and architecture.



There was a Zodiac garden, with statues of each symbol! There was also a turtle garden! I've never seen so many turtles in one place in my entire life!

Next we went to the Agong's (Malaysian King) palace.  It was guarded by a gate so there aren't any great pictures, but the palace has 26 rooms! It was originally built in the 1920's for a very wealth! man that had 8 wives and 26 children.


After the palace we went to a war memorial called Tugu Negara.  It had a couple monuments recognizing the soldiers that died during WWII.



 It was very humbling.  And quite pretty.
Next we went to a Hindu temple called the Batu Caves. This temple was literally built into the caves.
There is a 140ft statue of Murugan which is a Hindu deity.  This is the largest statue of Murugan in the world!
Next to him is the staircase into the cave -- 272 steps to the top!


On the staircase were wild monkeys.  They'd get within an inch of all the people climbing the steps. I even touched one! It was the wildest thing I've ever seen in my life.
Inside the temple there were stalactites everywhere, and the chanting from the temples made this place seem almost majestic.

After the temple we went to a Batik shop -- Batik is unique to this area, it is a method of dying cloth by using wax to form outlines of shapes.  It was very beautiful.
After that we went to a pewter factory and saw how pewter is formed into many different things!
Our last stop was to try different fruits! We tried Durian which I was looking forward to -- it tasted like onions and had the consistency of cream cheese that you left on the counter for 5 hours. I'm in no rush to try it again.  I did find a fruit here I like though, it's called Mangosteen. It tasted much like an orange.
So today was entirely too long but I loved every minute of it. It will most definitely be one of the biggest highlights of this trip!

I have so many more photos to add, but I don't have the internet connect to support that. Hopefully this gives you all a glimpse of what I saw!

7/28/11

This was our last day in Australia.

We visited the Aquarium! It was so neat!

This is a lego King Titan!

A seahorse :)

Me and a Lego mermaid.





We saw all sorts of aquatic life -- go figure.
Sadly, most of it was hard to photograph.
After the aquarium we went to the market and bought a few souvenirs and packed up to head to Malaysia.

From my journal 7/27/2011

Today we went to the Wildlife Conservatory.  It houses several native Australian animals!  Kangaroos, Dingos and Kuala Bears were all in my top favorite.


Me cuddling the kuala <3

The kangaroo moved and scared the poo out of me!!!!
After the Conservatory we went to the Blue Mountains.

This is a picture of the 3 sisters.  Legend has it that forever ago there were two warring villages in this area, the magician of one of the villages had 3 beautiful daughters.  He was afraid that they would be hurt in this war so he turned them to stone to protect them until the war was over. Sadly he died in the war, leaving all three of his daughters as stone.

We walked the trails in the Blue Mountains for about an hour or so. It was so pretty.
We stopped at the Sydney Opera House on the way back to the hotel.

From my journal 7/26/11

So we left at 8am to go to the Hudson Valley in Australia to go to a couple wineries for wine tastings.
It was about a 2 hour drive through the beautiful Australian country side. We even got a view of the Blue Mountains from the drive.

This is at the Tempus Two winery.


We also went to The Cellar winery


The view was much better then the wine!!!

I found a few wines that I could stomach, but I ended up pouring most of them out.
We went to a pub called The Wollombi Pub and watched the sun set behind the Blue Mountains. This could quite possibly be the most majestic thing I've ever seen.

Land Down Under

From my journal on 7/25/2011





We finally arrived in Australia. After a 6 hour flight from Singapore to Australia I am ready to settle down for a few days in one country!
Singapore's airport has been the best one yet. Everything was absolutely spotless, plus there was a butterfly garden inside the airport with HUNDREDS of butterflies!


There was also free wifi, charging stations and lots of computers to use! It was SO nice!!!
All of these wonderful amenities were a stark contrast to what the Sydney airport offered... Which was basically nothing besides free lung cancer from all the cigarette smoke.
Our plane was 1 hour early (imagine that!) So we had a bit of time to kill while we waited for our bus drive to get there.
We loaded all our luggage into the van and drove about 30 minutes or so to our hotel. Our hotel was located in Sydney's China Town. Our rooms weren't quite ready when we arrived so we stored our luggage in a closet-like room and went out touring around our hotel.
After we toured a bit, we went back to the hotel to get our rooms but Sonya and I's room was not ready yet so we threw our stuff in a friends room and went to Manly Beach.
Before we got on the ferry we ran into an aborigine! Starr played along and got her picture taken with him!

We took a ferry across the Pacific Ocean, the view was breath taking.



The Pacific Ocean -- just beautiful!

Sonya and I got some awesome ice cream, and walked along the boardwalk.

Oh how I love ice cream....

Boysenberry and Vanilla! Yum!

While we were on the boardwalk it started raining really hard. Sonya and I took shelter and watched the rain fall. After a few minutes a rainbow gleamed through the clouds.

After we got back to the hotel, we were exhausted and ended up falling asleep by 8pm!