These few medical supplies are far too familiar of a sight for me while traveling through Asian countries. Tonight - they appeared once again in my possession.
Today was great - we went to a very famous house of a rich mob/drug lord/player/famous man who's name I can neither pronounce nor remember! It was cool and interesting to hear of the old traditions. Here are some alphorns of that part of the day:
After that we had s bit of free time, which we used to lounge by the pool, enjoy the heat and relax. It was lovely! Pat and I also found a laundry mat and dropped off a kilo of basically undergarments for $12 Rupiah which is about $5 NZ. We go back tomorrow to collect it thank heavens as we are running a little low in that department. We stopped on our way back for some roast pork belly on rice and enjoyed a local drink/meal of ginkgo and lotus berries, red beans and longan mixed with ice the juices. It was interestingly enjoyable until Pat started to eat the red beans in which I couldn't get kidney beans out of my mind and could no longer stomach even the thought of the drink/meal. I made Pat eat the rest of it so I didn't insult the lovely lady.
In the evening we went to the jetty which is really cool and quite a sight to see. As the story goes - when the Chinese settled in Panang they settled along the coast so it was easy to fish and transport back to the main land. They set up houses on stilts and a long jetty out to the ocean. These are still standing today and look and smell more like the slums rather than a history sight.
The tide was out when we were walking on the jetty and it was so muddy and smelly. It was basically the dumping sight for compost for the houses around. We took some pictures and had some laughs and of course reminded everyone to not fall into the mud or drop anything - this of course fell on deaf ears with me. Here I was so confidently swimming my feet waiting for the others when off shoots one of my beloved jandles. I looked at Pat who look at me with the same dumbfounded "that just happened?!" look on our faces. Yes - I managed to loose my shoe 7 feet face down in potentially hazardous Malaysian mud. I contemplated leaving it but knee walking anywhere in Malaysia with one shoe would be much worse then touching that mud my shoe was stuck in. (I was lying to myself by the way). Before I knew it though, in an act of pure love (and knowing I would pout if I didn't get my shoe back), Pat was climbing down holding on to the barnacle encrusted posts to delicately stand on fallen piece of jetty to dig my shoe out of the mud and safety back up to me. As he was managing to monkey his way back up the obvious happened - his shoe cameoff and landed in the very place he was not going back to. After the cuts and the scraps that he received on his trip up and down, he was much more reasonable and decided in an instant he didn't need his shoe and he could get by without one for the evening. After his heroics of saving my shoe there was one obvious thing to do - walk away. As tempting as it was I couldn't let him walk with one shoe as I know how I would never hear the end of it - he lost his retrieving mine. So, I looked around and found the other side of the jetty had more slats slightly like a ladder and the shoe wasn't so far from the bottom board. I told him and his family in my most confident voice - I got this. I climbed down and managed to wriggle my fat toe around the top of the handle pulling it to safety. A few laughs, a few more learned lessons and 15 minutes of a famy vacation we will all remember! This is a picture of us reunited with our jandles and the muddy hell they were stuck in.
There were also these fish/lizard hybrids cruising around - remind you of mitten lake adventures anyone?!
We got back in the evening and went straight to the pharmacy where we got the medical supies I should carry with me always. Pat is all patched up now and sleeping it off probably in a dream haze of lavender and Zam-Buk.
No comments:
Post a Comment