Andrej and Karen Brummer

The adventures of the Brummers

Monthly Archives: August 2010

Chiang Mai

View our location map in Chiang Mai

Our time in Chiang Mai has been really laid back and awesome so far.  One of the highlights has actually been (yes, most of you will think we’re crazy) going for our early morning runs – it has been such a fantastic way to start the day; running around a cobbled subdivision in the quiet back streets, breathing in the sweet smells from at least 10 different kinds of beautifully fragrant flowers around the streets, and watching the clear sky over mountains develop into mist and then clouds as the day begins to heat up and water evaporates off the forest and the 3-4 different kinds of flying squirrels jump/fly from tree to tree or powerline to powerline.  A really invigorating start to each morning!

We have mainly been visiting lots of temples, wandering around the streets, and eating good food – lets just clear one thing up – in light of our last post, we feel the need to say:  If you want good food during your Asian adventure, forget Penang, come to Chiang Mai!!!  We have been feasting on such awesome, healthy food that is just so much better than the fried selection on offer in Penang.  There is an awesome night market right across the road from where we are staying and there are so many different kinds of delicious salads and yummy curries that we are in heaven.  We spent a day up in the foothills of the himalayas at Doi Suthep temple, we unfortunately managed to choose the worst Songthaew driver in history and after 16kms of windy road (no straight bits, only endless corners), and diesel fumes being sucked into the converted-semi-enclosed-ute-tray we were both feeling so intensely car-sick that we had to sit in the forest for about half an hour and eat some rice to settle our stomachs.  Once we’d recovered though, we had a really pleasant time up  mountain and in the temple – we got blessed by the monks and rang all the bells each with a different tone.  The main stupa was actually covered in scaffolding, but that didn’t really detract from the overall experience as there were plenty of other things to see and a really good view over Chiang Mai and the surrounding area.  We also spent a day at Ban Tawai village and succumbed to temptation and bought a canvas painting.  (Which hopefully arrives in NZ in once piece as we have to send it to Karen’s parents as it’s too big to cart around with us.)

We have also been extremely lucky that the bungalow that we rented for the month is awesome – it can be a bit of a gamble booking online, even after reading reviews, so we are stoked that this place is like a super modern little apartment right beside a large quiet park, with fast internet, perfect for our month long stay in Chiang Mai.  Our photos of our adventures and mainly temples are here.

Food, glorious food!

It would be hard to come to Malaysia, and especially Penang without writing about food.  In fact, part of the reason we came here was because of the food.  On our first couple of days we gorged ourselves on food that was quite simply, sublime.  The following few days we were slighly more restrained… and were getting to the point where all the sugar, salt and oil was a bit much!  The one disappointing thing has been the lack of healthy food – something which we have been quite surprised about considering Penang’s international reputation for all things delicious.  It was only once we got to KL that there were Indian foods that were healthy and some sushi.  We have tried the best laksa ever, many good noodle dishes, and many, many, many sweets and desserts.  We plan to do LOTS of excercise in Thailand!!!  So, how much food can two people eat in a week?  To see the weird and wonderful stuff we have eaten, see our photos here.  Disclaimer:  This will only be interesting to our foodie friends – you know who you are!

Kuala Lumpur

View our location map in Kuala Lumpur

We have really enjoyed our time in Malaysia, it is a really interesting blend of modern vs old, east meets west, organised and crazy Asian madness.  There are road rules (something we had almost forgotten existed after Indonesia), traffic lights, fast internet, ancient temples, crumbling buildings, people fasting for Ramadan, and people eating themselves silly.  The multi-cultural society has been fascinating to watch and be a part of.  Kuala Lumpur itself hasn’t really inspired us – we didn’t really expect it to though and that’s why we’re only here for a day (unavoidable due to train and flight times).  Petronas Towers are really impressive – more so than we thought they’d be, and the public transport is abysmal.  We did manage to pick an awesome little hotel though and overall KL wasn’t a bad place to spend a day.  Although we haven’t seen much of Malaysia (yet), it seems to be a really good balance of mod-cons, and slow-paced chilling out.  We’re definitely looking forward to next time we’re here and exploring a bit more.

Penang

View our location map in Penang

We left Indonesia on the morning of the first day of Ramadan – which was completely fluke – and which turned out to be a really interesting experience.  We left Bukit Lawang at around 5.30am and the streets most of the way to Medan (about 2.5 hours away) were lined with partying muslims letting off fireworks to celebrate the beginning of their fasting period.  Once at the airport we decided to console ourselves about leaving Indo with massages before getting on the plane.

We spent the first afternoon in Penang pretty much just chilling on the beach opposite our guesthouse, then the next day in Georgetown.  We saw all the usual sights – the British Colonial buildings, waterfront and Little India (where we spent most of our time).  We decided to spend the next morning at Kek Lok Si Temple, and ended up loving it so much that we spent almost the entire day there, wandering the extensive temple grounds and climbing the stairs of the Pagoda of ten thousand buddhas.  Kek Lok Si was definitely the highlight of our time in Penang.  In the following couple of days we went to Batu Ferringhi (the main touristy beach) and hung out on our beach, went to the floating mosque and basically just chilled.  We felt a little underwhelmed at both Georgetown and Batu Ferringhi, and are glad that we opted to stay on the beach between the two, near an awesome hawker centre.  Tonight we’re getting the overnight train to KL which we’re both really looking forward to, so will report back soon!  Our photos are here.

Bukit Lawang

During the past 11 days so much awesome stuff has happened that it’s hard to know where to begin.  We were presented with the amazing opportunity to go trekking into the wild jungle one hour from Bukit Lawang in a jungle called Bukit Kencur – a jungle that people only venture into a few times a year.  We saw so many cool things, and just being in the jungle was a highlight in itself.  We went to Bukit Kencur with Andrea, a scientist from the UK who now lives in Bukit Lawang and educates people about the forests and Orang Utans – we were extremely lucky to be given this chance so jumped at it and had an awesome time.

We have waded through rivers, climbed rocks, seen wild and semi-wild adult and baby Orang Utans, (even got wee-d on by one Orang Utan!), seen a family of White-Handed Gibbons, some Pig-Tailed Macaques, (5 wild primate species in total), at least 200 different insects and 50 different butterflies.  We have been into caves, walked many trails, rafted down the river, eaten so much awesome food and made some unforgettable friends.  Bukit Lawang is so far the hardest place we have had to leave – the jungle cast it’s spell on us after the first week or so and we could spend days just sitting staring at the trees, river and animals.

We came to Bukit Lawang to see Orang-Utans and we got so much more than we bargained for.  Every day we would see and hear new things, watch the hundreds of dragonflys hover and swifts fly over the river, and be visited by monkeys on our balcony off our little hut in the jungle.  Once a Pig-Tailed Macaque even stole Dre’s shorts after raiding our rubbish bin, and put them on his head – then carried them up to the top of the tree before dropping them not too far from our hut so Dre could go and rescue them!

Ultimately we have far, far too many photos to share on this site, and have tried really hard to narrow them down.  Here are just a few highlights.  Indonesia has caught us a bit by surprise – we had expected to have a good time, but we hadn’t realised just how utterly awesome it would be – to the point where we are quite sad to be leaving tomorrow.  (Although also excited to be going to Malaysia.)  One thing is for sure:  every day that passes, we are falling more in love with Asia.