The food was unbelievable. Especially in Kuala Lumpur. After Japan for 8 months with no break, it was nice to be surrounded by food loaded with spices. Don't get me wrong, Japanese food is great and I could eat Tuna Sashimi probably every day, but there are some things it just doesn't have. You can get a pretty good idea of what those are by looking at a spice rack... any spice rack. In KL, where people from all over Asia seem to gather, there was Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Lebanese/ Arabic, Indian, KFC and Kenny Rogers' Roasters (Thought those had died...) and, of course, Malay.
On the island, the food was more Malay, which borrows heavily from its neighbors. I ate a lot of Tom Yam, Fish, foods heavy in Garlic and Turmeric. And the best part, most meals cost less than 5 dollars.
We also saw tons and tons of animals. There was the Bird Sanctuary, the Bhatu Caves' monkeys, sea turtles and sharks while snorkeling, and more monkeys on our island as well as the insanely large monitor lizards.
You may be wondering where the photos of all this stuff are. Well, that's the one story I do have. A monkey broke my camera. At the Bhatu Caves, there were lots of adorable little monkeys. My friend wanted a picture of one of them looking at/ near the camera. So to catch their attention, I shook and opened -- just a wink -- the shiny pink plastic bag handed to me with my newly bought t-shirt inside. It worked. They craned their necks to peak inside. We took photos.
As we were walking away, however, I felt a tug at the bag at my side. I looked down quickly and saw one of the monkeys trying to wrestle it from my hand. I yanked up and he ran away screaming, but the problem was far from solved. The same thing would happen another 3 times before I finally used our gift of pattern recognition and tucked it tightly under my arm. Camera also secure on my wrist with its strap, we continued walking up the stairs (in pictures) towards the Hindu shrine in the caves.
As we reached the final flight of stairs, we paused to take in a couple monkeys that were putting on a real show for the visitors. Then, I felt the tug again at my t shirt. I look down, and one of the small monkeys had actually climbed up onto my shorts and shirt and was using his one free hand to try to grab my tshirt. I swung myself around to shake him off and swung my other hand at him. He lept off me and ran away screaming again, but it was too late. I stopped my hand but my camera, on its handy dandy wrist strap swung smack into a rock.
I went to turn it on and the screen read, "Lens Error."
Bummer.
So, if anyone has advice on a good point and shoot camera... let me know.
