Steak and Berries all of the meat. none of the fat.

As of this moment, we are in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. We have been in Malaysia for a few days now but I cannot move on to tales of Malaysia until I have made some very important points about Southern Thailand (we plan to visit Northern Thailand at the end of this trip). I thought it might be fun to give you day-to-day Thailand in a nutshell. Maybe larger than a nutshell… Maybe a mangosteen shell… Have you ever had one of those? They’re delicious. So…

We journeyed around Thailand by means of bus, plane, train, taxi, ferry, motorbike, minivan and tuk-tuk (a sort of open-air mini-taxi with a passenger bench somehow hooked on to a three-wheel motorbike operated by a very bold Thai man; I never saw a woman driving one). All of these transportion methods work although the prices and efficiency of each vary depending on where you are and where you are going. Usually you have to use a clever combination of two or three. We paid for each of these small journeys with Baht, the currency used in Thailand. Of course, these bills are worlds prettier than our monochrome American bills but sometimes I wonder if that doesn’t make them seem a little less real… We escaped that notion upon realizing things in Thailand, Southern Thailand at least, cost a bit more than we had anticipated. We get about 33 Baht to the dollar. And we had to watch our Bahts.  Once we got to wherever we were headed, we’d settle into the cheapest room we could find, often (and always ideally), a raised bungalow made of wood, straw and/or bamboo. The accomodations tend to be minimal (aside from the giant beds) and fit with a humbling bathroom setup – a small room with a sink on one wall aside a toilet beneath a showerhead that dispenses very cold water (no big deal in this weather). One flushes the aforementioned toilet by pouring a bowl (or a few, depending) full of water into it which was acquired from the bucket/bowl/faucet setup that always accompanies one of these toilets. You get used to this process… If we got really lucky, these bungalows would have a lovely little front deck upon which we could rest our travelers’ bums in the evening and listen to the fascinating sounds of Thailand at night. These sounds include, but are quite certainly not limited to, the melodies from an exciting and vast array of bugs, birds, reptiles, small mammals, big mammals (people) and weather. The weather generally kept us good and sweaty throughout the better portion of the day but often broke into short, but very serious, bouts of rain in the evening, sometimes in the daytime, as we were visiting at the end of the rainy season. Sometimes a nice breeze or short-lived cloud cover gave us some relief from the blazing sun when the rain was not there but usually we just had to embrace the hot, tropical weather and our resulting sweaty, stinky bodies. Which was fine, we’ve got some nice tans going… Now and then we’d be startled by some of the more intimadating thunder and lightning I’ve heard in my life, which is both exciting and slightly frightening. While Mother Nature Thailand was communicating in this way, we were attempting to communicate in the most limited Thai and a strange but effective sign language we developed. Thai is a very interesting language. I can’t say too much about it as it is written in beautiful characters that I cannot read and spoken in high-pitched sounds that I cannot understand but I can say that we were able to communicate with relative ease because so many people knew enough English to help us or were able to decipher our signs right away. It is a unique experience, though, to be in that situation. But we learned hello and thank you and used those two phrases as much as possible and they were always well-received. We also learned to greet people the Thai way, which is not achieved with a wave but a subtle head bow and a smile. If you really want to go for it, you can wai to someone by folding your hands somewhere between your forehead and your heart, depending on who it is, and giving that same little bow. There’s rather particular social rules attached to that though so I usually just stuck to the bow-smile method. But Gavin was pretty into the wai. Ask him to show you sometime if you get the opportunity. When we weren’t attempting (struggling) to communicate, we passed our time doing all kinds of good stuff – exploring, hiking, reading, swimming, and, most notably, eating. The food in Thailand was all kinds of exciting. We’ve eaten and enjoyed a fair amount of Thai food at home so we were delighted when every meal was the as-good-as-it-gets version of the Thai food we already knew. And a whole bunch of new stuff we loved. But in my opinion, the best Thai food in Thailand comes from a cart with sweet chili sauce on the side. Which is everything from Pad Thai to spring rolls to pork on a stick. It’s also the cheapest so that worked out well. I couldn’t help but measure how much I liked a town by the availability of delicious ’street food.’ It was just that good.

Since I last wrote, we made a visa-run across and back across the Malaysian border, spent some time in Krabi province, enjoyed the festival of Loy Krathong in a spectacular place called Hat Ton Sai and did some good, hearty lounging on the island of Koh Lanta. And then, like I mentioned, we made the journey to Malaysia. Southern Thailand was great and although I’I loved those beautiful beaches and that sweet chili sauce, I must say the green, rolling hills and the fantastic cuisine of Malaysia (a dreamy mixture of Malay, Indian and Chinese) is a welcome change. I enjoyed the white sand and noodles as much as you’d imagine, but I’m also enjoying wearing my sweater and every meal here leaves me satisfied and with a smile on my face. Speaking of Malaysian food, I think I’ll go get some masala roti now. Or maybe some capati with curry. And maybe another cup of tea…

Much more on Malaysia soon. My afternoon snack is calling me now.