Haha

Still alive, but just no passion for writing a blog :D
Right now we are in Laos and we have been here the last 4 weeks - without computer, telephone or anything to connect you to the outside world. And it was great. Maybe there will come other times were we will enjoy sitting in front of a computer typing our blog posts. But this is not yet to come...

See you later

All the things you can do in Singapore

Singapore, ohh Singapore. We had a very pleasant stay for threee days. Compared to the other countries down here it is clean, not so noisy, the traffic flows nicely, etc. Furthermore we had a nice host enabling us to stay in a nice apartement with pool and further conviniences.

But somehow a strange feeling is part of our Singapore experience. At least me, a bit paranoid though, always had the movie Gattaca and Orwell`s 1984 in mind. But I might overreact.

Here you can see some pictures of Singapore:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104141215714266639329/Singapore?authkey=Gv1sRgCNW_jq-MtvWP9AE

But the best of all was a message given through the speakers in public transportation facilities: "If you see any suspicous looking person or item, please report it to our stuff... "

The king of the fruits

Before I came here I did not know that here in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapur they have one fruit that they conider the king of the fruits. What could one expect of being the king? Lovely smell, delicious taste and a nice after taste that makes you wish to get mote of it - with the price of being an expensive fruit. Well, out of the last 4 points just one is true. Maybe some facts help you to figure out which one it is. In Singapur it is illegal to take Durian into public transportation. The guys selling Durian have a plastic glove (needless to mention that it is not due to hygenic reasons). If there are durians around it is likely that you smell them before you can see them. That should be enough to give you some idea. The point is that it is stinking like hell (locals love the smell) and the taste does not differ much (neither the after taste). But it would be ok if you eat it and then you are done with it. But it bothers you for the rest of the day. All the time you feel  the smell and the taste trying to escape the same way it made its route into the stomach. Fortunately the next morning after sleeping I felt free again. Looking back it might be true as being the king of the fruits - maybe just a king no one likes to remember.

The incident of the missing coconut

While staying on Langkawi in a small fishing village one day we came across a house where they put a lot of coconuts during daytime. Realizing that, we looked at each other, and silently agreed to come back in the night to get our share of it before they will sell them to us the next day for a tourist price. Around midnight, fully covered in darkness and mosquito spray, we made our way to the coconuts. Choosing a coconut had to be fast in order not to draw any attention on us of any occasional by passing villagers. Once in possession of the desired object we fled to a calmer place to take care of it. On the way to that place we found a broken floor tile. That was the missing item to get us started opening the coconut. After 15 minutes of pure force, the actual coconut was free. Not even a bit brown as I expected it to be. After this first step we went to bed looking forward to our coconut breakfast the next morning. With the next daylight we got up to continue our task. With some scissors it was possible to get some wholes in the nut. Full of hope we inserted our straw to get the coconut juice. Long story short - the juice was a bit alcoholic and the coconut "meat" was very hard and dry. Neither the taste nor the consistency was what we expected. Disappointed we went to have breakfast elsewhere...

... a few days later in Thailand we actually bought a coconut - it wasn`t exciting, but tasty. The juice was sweet and the flesh like jelly. This added a new aspect to our robbery. We realized that we stole an old coconut which we would have got probably for free - if we would have asked. Nevertheless we were happy as no one saw us stealing the coconut. Thus no one from teh village knows how stupid we are :)

Carrots are better than potatoe chips

During our stay in Kuala Lumpur we visited the Batu Caves - an old temple. To reach the temple that is carved in a mountain one has to climb 200 something steps. And along these steps food inspection is conducted to assure visitors are not bringing all kind of unholy food up to the holy place. This fact was not well known to a little chubby 10 years old girl. To enable her self to climb up the stairs she had a bag of potato chips as energy supply. When the inspectors saw this they immediately approached her and tried to get the potato chips. The girl tried everything to protect what was hers. But the pure fear of loosing it all made her forget to take care of both of her hands. So the inspector just had to take the few chips she had in one hand and waiting until that made her to neglect what was in her other hand. The end of the story - the monkey was sitting on the stairs, not irritated at all by the passing by visitors, and eating potato chips as if that would be the most natural thing a monkey does on Saturday afternoon. For me the best part of the story was to see all the laughing faces of the adults standing around the little girl (shamefully including me).

First stop: Malaysia

The first country on our list can be crossed out. Yesterday we left Malaysia after 3 weeks of traveling around. We started from Kuala Lumpur, went south to Melaka and Singapore and then north again to Kuantan, Ipoh and Langkawi. What was most important to us, were the people we met on the way. A bit then half of the trip we used couchsurfing to find people willing to host us. The other time was used to relax from the overwhelming hospitality shown to us. The problem with the hospitality is that while these people help you with everything, invite you to food all day long and in the meantime drive you around and take you to their friends in order you get the most out of it, you always have in mind that it is very unlikely that the same thing could happen to them where we come from. Who would take strangers in their house for a couple of days and treat them as if they are special? That made it hard to accept the hospitality.

In case any of you reads this - Emily & Max, Sandy & Family, Abhishek - thank you again. It was a pleasure to meet you and get taught a lesson in welcoming people :)

The Mission…

On the 13th of December 2011 we are flying with our one-way tickets from Paris directly to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia. After 12h40min of flight we are hopefully excited enough to forget about being tired and the jet lag and start to explore a whole new world. From here we want to travel South East Asia with our backpacks. So far this should include Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. At this point there is actually not much more to say. Since we don't think that much planning would contribute to the overall fun, we just didn't plan too much and go with the "Adventure is the result of poor planning" wisdom.