Follow us on our journey of volunteering and self discovery somewhere between the chilly mountain wall of the Himalayas and the steamy jungles of the Terrai.
Stick with us and discover snow peaks and Sherpas, monasteries and monks, ashrams and prophets, temples, tigers, rhinos, deer, monkeys, elephants, leopards, sloth bears, wild boar, yaks and yetis, magic and mystery.
As part of our journey I have insisted on a blanket ban of multinational food outlets, i.e Mc Donalds, Hungry Jacks (Burger King) etc…
My reasoning is that in order for us to understand the culture of the country we must try to communicate in the local language and eat the local foods.
So, due to Ramadan each evening after 7pm we join the crowds in the street of our local neighbourhood and enjoy the local cuisines. We have discovered an absolute plethora of delicious, albeit spicy foods. Surprisingly the boys have made this transition relatively pain free. Or so I thought.
There are many lessons a mother must teach her children to prepare for life. At 4am this morning one of my sons learned one of these lessons. Never force flatulence in Asia!
As part of our journey for the day, our taxi driver took us past Pudu Prison. He began a barrage of prayers and blessings, and rambled on about seeing ghosts with no heads. The poor man was visibly quite upset, telling us he could see the ghosts. The boys thought it was awesome, despite their inability to have any visuals themselves.
Pudu prison was built by the British colonial government. It is adorned with what was once the longest mural in the world. According to our very nervous, ghost whispering taxi driver, 6000 people have been hung there. [sic]
Many were subjected to caning. This is a form of punishment that is still imposed today. Men and women can still receive a sentence of caning combined with prison time.
Schoolboys still receive caning with a light rattan for being disobedient!
When we arrived in Malaysia, we had a very bad trolley. It kept laying down and all our luggage kept falling off. I suggested we get rid of the trolley and pull our suitcases. Mum thought that was a very good idea.
Today we are going to Chinatown to look at the Chinese version of iPads and WinPads. Mum says we can't buy anything until we are on our way home. The taxi driver said there is a 50/50 chance of getting a good one. Dad says we should wait and see when we get back to Australia. But we heard they are only about $98 here. Taiga and I want to have a look at them.
Mum has been telling us about altitude sickness for when we get to Nepal. Which means your brain swells up so much that it bursts a little bit and you can die.
So we did an experiment with a packet of chips on the plane. I had Twisties and Cody had Cheetos. The packets expanded so much that the Twistie 'brain' actually split and died. The Cheetos expanded, but deflated again when we landed. It was way cool!
It is Ramadan here, so the Muslims can't eat during the day, but can eat after 7pm, so there were lots of food stalls in the streets last night. We had some delicious foods. Mum has taught us some Bhasa Malay, so we can use some of the language now.
We saw a pedestrian get run down by a motor bike. He lived but we think he would be very sore today.
Some granny's threw cake at us. Mum said they were offerings for a god or gods, but I think they were really throwing them at us.
The flight was a very long 8 hours, 10 minutes and 37 seconds. The reason I know this is because there were no movies and no music on the flight. It was just us: two nine year old boys and an ever increasingly doubtful mum. What was I thinking?!
At the planning stage of this trip Steve and I decided that the boys were not to have electronics of any means. The only things we would bring with us were Taiga's computer and a camera to record our adventure. Very bravely I had asked Steve to erase all games and movies.
So you can imagine my horror when I realised there were no movies on the flight. The boys didn't see a problem, after all we had Taiga's computer. It should have movies and games. It was then that I broke the news to them. No Nintendos, no games, no movies. But hey, we all have a sick bag we can colour in. So we did.
Cody studied the emergency evacuation plan, to the point that he asked questions because he felt that the plane we were on didn't match the diagram in the seat pocket in front of him. In all my flying I have never seen anyone ask questions during the air hostesses' demonstration. By the look on their faces I don't think they had either.
We were served a meal almost immediately after take off. The boys had little burgers and some goodies. To their disgust and the hostesses' dismay they had been served a Kit Kat.
For those of you who don't know the boys have been boycotting Nestle products since they discovered Nestle had been buying palm oil through illegal deforestation in Indonesia.
We all survived the flight, to arrive to 31 degree temperature in Malaysia. This is the first leg of our journey. I'm not sure of the humidity, but it's high. One son proclaimed that we are doomed! And the other announced that we should never have left Australia!
With those words ringing in my ears we begin our adventure. x Lisa ( Slightly frazzled mum)
