Outdoor Adventure

I lead both Tia and Sara's Brownie troops and both groups had fun earning their "outdoor adventure" patch last week. I really was at a loss trying to think of how the girls could get out on an adventure hike in this "concrete jungle". Jakarta has no parks and there are not even sidewalks on most streets.

As it turns out, "no plan" often leads to the funnest adventures.

On Monday Sara's 2nd grade troop went for an adventure hike through the jungle (rice padi their school classes had planted) and pretended they were all being chased by tigers, snakes, etc. They ended up meeting with the boyscouts to create artwork of their own jungle.

On Wed. Tia's 3rd grade troop met at my house. Just as we began preparing for a short walk around the neighborhood, it STARTED RAINING. (REALLY HARD). Somehow my co-leader and I found umbrellas for each of the 13 scouts and off we went. There was plenty of complaining in the beginning but by the time we'd wading through our 2nd ankle deep "river" flowing down the flooded streets, most girls were laughing, splashing each-other, and "singing in the rain". Of course they were all completely soaked when we returned so they all just jumped, fully-clothed into our pool.

I guess this warm rain IS a benefit to living near the equator. :-) Love ya, Paula

Easter

Happy Easter Everyone! We've had a nice Easter day here and hope you all are enjoying yours.

Sara was our family member extra excited for Easter this year. She made her own recipe of cookies and left one plus a carrot for the Easter Bunny last night, and

woke us all at 6AM this morning.

In no time she and her sister had found all the eggs and goodies hidden by the Easter Bunny. Tia even convinced our kitty, Loui to help.

After Easter brunch at one of our favorite restaruants, Din Tai Fung, we watched the 3D Dragon movie. It was cute.

I'd read the Easter passage from Sara's children's bible several times the past week and was pleased to hear Tia eplain to Grandma the reason for Easter. "The day Jesus came back to life". It's fun to hear them explain their beliefs in their own words. The other fun book we read today was The Velveteen Rabbit. Such a sweet story.

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter and a nice weekend!Love ya, paula

April Fool's Day

Happy April Fool's Day Everyone! Tia and Sara tried to drink their juice with breakfast but they couldn't suck it up through the straw cause it was jello. Gotta love giggles first thing in the morning. Then when they opened their little boxes of rasins at lunch, they were filled with chocolate chips. :-)

Sara's been playing with the whoopie cushion all evening and the next morning with Daddy. :-)

Phuket, Thailand

Hi family,I expect you're all preparing for Easter and many of you are off on Spring Break. Happy Easter!! Tia and Sara's school's vacation was last week and we went to Phuket, Thailand. Burasari Resort was on Patong beach (the busiest place on the island) and every time we traveled the 170 steps from the lobby to the beach, we were surrounded by new sights and experiences. Most of our wanderings were in search of the best Pad Thai cooked at one of the small street stalls. The food vendors transport their wok, serving dishes, numerous ingredients, on small kitchen attached to their bicycle.

I think the girls' favorite time was running and cartwheeling in the soft sand in the evenings after dinner. We watched several lanterns being lit and floating into the night. Vendors offered ones for us to purchase and launch ourselves but Tia's keen observation was "what a waste of money Dad! they just float away."

Sara's goal for the trip was to go snorkeling and we accomplished it on a cruise to the Phi Phi Islands. Maya beach is the most beautiful beach you'd ever see- if you could just figure a way to get rid of all those jillions of tourists and cruise boats. :-) We ended up snorkeled with LOTS of brightly colored fish but the coral was still pretty devestated from the tsunami. Tia decided her goal for the trip was to try parasailing. "Oh no" was Mom and Dad's initial response but on the last day both Tia and Sara took a turn. One fellow climbed into the parachute lines for every trip to help guide it. They went pretty HIGH but each girl was thrilled and landed safely in the soft sand.

Several days we just relaxed on the beach, played in the sand and swam in the warm sea. Beach food from the vendors was good but for one meal Quyen walked the girls across the street for BurgerKing. They were still barefoot in their swimsuits! - What a life. :-)Phuket is a very international vacation destination so we recreated with people of many nationalities. Tia and Sara learned how to say banana in Australian "nana" and thank you in Thai "cap cuhn cah" (cap cuhn cap" if you're a boy). They also kept us posted on what direction to avert our eyes to avoid seeing the topless European sunbathing ladies. Most were 50plus years old. Quyen observed that the super-model topless sunbathers must've been at another beach.

The highlight of our trip was sea canoeing through the limestone caves and Hongs (lagoons). What interesting landscape! I've created a separate blog entry for the "Hong by Starlight" tour.

Now we're home and the kitty is happy to have her girls back to provide limitless attention.

Love ya, Paula

Phuket "Hong by Starlight"

Hi Grandaddy (and the rest of our family),We are in Phuket right now and on the last day of a wonderful vacation. Yesterday we went on a tour called the "Hong by Starlight".

We traveled on a 20-person ferry-type boat into Phang Nga Bay and went "sea caving", paddling inflatable sea canoes through beautiful limestone caves to explore numerous Hongs (limestone lagoons). The caves were filled with with mystery- sparkling stagtites, small bats attached above, and some portions so pitch-dark Tia and Sara giggling reached for their flashlights.

The Hongs held further sights, high limestone walls decorated with jungle-like trees and vines, small long-tail mackau monkey families near the shore, and mangrove trees rising from the muddy bottom on their tangled roots. Sara had fun spotting the next cave to explore. Depending on the tide-level, some were impassable and some we could barely squeeze through.

When back at the boat we had freetime for swimming and paddling, but we had to lookout for the jellyfish! Tia's big grin was fun to watch when she was paddling the canoe.

To recreate the traditional Buddhist offering to the sea, we decorated our own Loi Kratong with banana leaves, flowers, candles, and incense sticks. After a wonderful seafood dinner at sunset we re-boarded our inflatable canoes. The tide had risen so some so we had to lay flat in the bottom of our crafts to maneuver through the dark caves into a Hong. After we launched the candle-lit Kratongs, the sight of them floating on the dark peaceful sea was simply beautiful. I asked Sara how she remembered it- "Peaceful Sea" were he words.

What a fantastic experience!

Indonesia Week

Happy St. Patty's Day everyone! Girls me me coming out of the shower this morn. singing "you don't have any green on!" (I was just a towel) and pinched me. Sneaky little buggers.

This is a busy week. Gir's school is celebrating "Indonesia Week" so assemblies/festivals, special vendors, and cultural displays every day this week. Monday Tia's class taught us parent how to play gamelan music and Sara's class performed a special dance about rice harvesting for the whole school.. Tuesday was a holiday to honor Hindu New Year "Nyepi" and Quyen arrived home from his fishing trip to Alor.

Today's St. Patrick's Day so I got pinched (see comment above), and Satuday is the start of Spring break. Through it all, they get to dress-up every day of Indonesia week. Monday they wore traditional Indo clothes of kabaya and batik print skirt and today wore their sarongs for Bali day. Busy but fun.

Love you all! Paula

P.S. Mental note: buy some green towels for next year! :-)

Sambolo 2010

Feb. 14th was both Valentine's Dan AND Imlek, Chinese New Year, and we celebrated the long weekend at our favorite place in Java, Sambolo!

We shared a bungalow with our good friends, Valentina and Kornelius, and their two sons.

Tia, Sara, Justin, and Luka were out the back door and onto the beach the minute we arrived. Our bungalow, #29, was situated right in front of "the best waves" so many hours were spent boogie-boarding. Of course and we all enjoyed swimming in the warm sea.

The boys ventured to the neighboring seaside town, Labuan, to buy some fresh seafood. They are both wonderful cooks and almost every meal we were spoiled with fresh calamari, BBQ fish, and prawns big enough to be small lobsters. Yum!

Relaxing on the Sambolo beach is fantastic but sometimes frustrating. As with any beach in Indonesia, Sambolo has it's own group of vendors selling colorful sarongs, ceramic pottery, and "massages". Their persistance may be admirable but we found ourselves getting annoyed with repeating our "Tida mau" mantra to explain that we still didn't want to buy the item they'd presended not 5 minutes earlier. One interesting vendor is an old weathered man who sells live octopus he catches with his long bamboo fishing pole. We bought two and the kids played with their pets for several days.

Kicking back around the bonfire in the evening was a treat we've missed from living in Alaska. The kids were extra pleased with the fireworks. Thank you Valentina and Kornelius for providing the sparklers!

Our friends, Steve and Lila and their two kids arrived in a neighboring bungalow so we ALL enjoyed visiting around the bonfire and playing in the sea.

Great friends, great food, great sand, surf, and sun. What a wonderful weekend!

Kollekan Pottery with GS

Tia's Brownie troop took a fieldtrip to the local pottery studio last week. Kollekan is a cute little pottery that I've taken Girlscout troops to for three years now and it's a wonderful outing. The girls all get to make their own creation out of clay and paint it with colored slip before we leave. The works are fired in a kiln and we get to pick up the finished pieces in a few weeks. They love it!Tia's troop of 14 girls were the maximum capacity of the work table so Sara's troop will have to wait another month.

Luckily Sara got to participate anyway- her Mom drove. :-)
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Sara's troop went to Kollekan on March 8th and also had a wonderful time.

Borneo Christmas 2009

We spent our holidays on the island of Borneo this year.

We flew to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on Christmas Eve. Of course Santa found us again. ;-) Whether we've been at our cabin in Alaska, Washington State visiting family, or the Asian cities of Bangkok Thailand, Bali Indonesia, or Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Santa always tracks us down. His reindeer sure are persistent.

One day we took the short boat ride from K.K. to the island of Manutic and spent the day snorkeling and playing on the beach. Tia and Quyen saw a BIG "Nemo" fish and Paula watched an entire group of rainbow colored parrot fish feeding on coral. Sadly Sara couldn't snorkel due to ear problems on the plane but she still had fun catching baby jelly fish and getting buried in the sand by Daddy.

We all enjoyed wandering the waterfront streets of K.K. and all the fresh produce and seafood available. Delicious mangoes from the fruit market every morning. Quyen even spotted a large tuna in the seafood market and bought a big chunk. MMMmmm... that ocean fresh sashimi in our hotel room was probably one of the tasties meal of the trip!

From K.K. we flew over to Sandakan on the NE coast of Borneo for the next part of our adventure. After a long jeep ride and a short boat trip up the Kinabangan River, we arrived at a Jungle Camp!

For 3 days we toured along the river through the jungle spotting a wide variety of critters. Sara never spotted her rare Kingfisher she was looking for but was rewarded with several more common varieties and half a dozen other interesting bird like the hornbill. More than one crocodile watched us from the water edge and slid away before cameras could catch him. Monkeys ranged from the large male orangutan Tia spotted, proboscis monkeys who are famous for their over sized noses, and families of curious long tail macaque busy eating fruit. Back at camp we saw a strange cat like creature called a Malay Civet, watched a giant monitor lizard chase the wild pigs away from the kitchen leftovers, and even sighted an endangered Storm's Stork.

What a thrill to see all these animals in the wild. We spent New Year's Eve at a place who's location truly lived up to it's name, Forest Edge Resort. So peaceful! and conveniently within walking distance of the Sepilok OrangUtan Rehabilitation Center. The center provides supplemental food for animals readjusting to life in the wild. Most monkeys at the center have been relocated from recently logged forests and rescued from homes where they were illegally kept as pets.

One sobering realization of our jungle visit was that the true jungle habitat is disappearing fast and many of the indigenous animal species are becoming endangered or even extinct. Our jeep drive to the river was through plantation after plantation of palm trees for harvesting palm oil. The orang utan population who only exist in Boreo and Sumatra are down to only 50,000 from the original 300,000plus.

I am truly glad we took this opportunity to see the jungle as it is NOW.I've attached a couple pictures. Hope you enjoy them.Love ya, Paula