Whirlwind through Malaysia

So only a week has past, but we're another country and four stops later which might make for a lengthy blog post, but we'll do our best to keep it short. Our first stop was the island of Langkawi. This is the duty-free beach haven of Malaysia, a long cry from our last island stop...about as far as it could possibly be actually. The Lonely Planted touted beaches so bright that you would need shades and they weren't kidding. Accompanying that was every ounce of tourist economy you could manage so we didn't stick around long. The guesthouse we stayed at was adorable though, and run by a Japanese women who had lived all over the world. When she found out we had just gotten married, she made every person who passed by wish us well in their native language. She handed out beer at the same time so quickly we amassed a table of people from all over the world and spent the night in great conversations, only interrupted by her playing the wedding march to keep everyone in the spirit.

The next stop was Pulau Penang, another one of those legendary places that you hear about, but would never imagine going to. It was much much more of a city than we imagined, however that turned out to be for the best, since it made for more places to eat. The cuisine in Penang is where the legend comes from and the food we got to eat certainly lived up to it. Yeah, we did some other stuff too, including hiking through a national park to monkey beach and dropping in to an icy theater to watch "Bolt" and the new James Bond movie... both of which we put on the recommended list for anyone who hasn't seen them yet.

After that we cruised up to the Cameron Highlands in the interior of Malaysia and spent a couple of days shivering. It's amazing how much the temperature can change over a five hour bus ride (the pitch of the road should have given it away). We didn't stick around too long as the weather was pretty wet, but we did take the time to tour a local tea plantation and have a pot of strawberry tea on the veranda.

The last stop in this post is another Malaysian island: Pangkor. It is much different - again - from any of the islands we've seen thus far. The biggest thing here is that there are very very few caucasian tourists. Apparently Pangkor is the Malaysian tourist getaway, and as we decided to come here during a school holiday, we got to meet that fact head on. It's been wonderful though, with some island side snorkeling and a decent collection of Malay food stalls to keep us fed. Ooh... a good story about that actually. In Malaysia they have two deserts that we have never come across before and will certainly be doing our best to bring home with us (in some way, shape or form): Cendol (pronounced chin-dool) and ABC (hopefully you can figure that one out). Both of them are basically like a big snow cone covered in anything syrupy you can imagine - in all combinations. We've had them both covered in molasses, sweetened condensed milk, cherry flavoring, gummy bears, peanuts, pinto beans, black beans and the piece-de-resistance green jelly-wormy-noodles. If it sounds intense, it is, but it's also perfect on a super hot day. We'll eat another one tonight and post a picture.

Much love, don't freeze!
TeamWander

P.S. We heard a rumor that NC State is in a bowl game!!! Party time at Mama Wander's house....