The sounds of booming Muslim homages multiple times a day, limitless supplies of Roti Cani, and the homeless traveler lifestyle was going to have to come to end some day. As the closing days of Malaysia quickly approached I was ready to leave to a land of dry clothing, non-odorous shoes, and where I could have more stuff then what fit into my tiny REI backpack. A valuable lesson I have learned for my friends and myself is take more then two days worth of clothing with you when you are going somewhere for two weeks.


1 Night and 3 Day stay special. The second night you have to fend for yourself. Sound to me like a family vacation just set up to fail.

The Anything Beverage taste like anything you want "Any Taste For Any Thirst" is their slogan. This to me seems like someone screwed something up and this is how they covered it up. I would do the same thing.

Welcome to the Snake Temple of Malaysia

Yes, they are real and really venomous. The worker continued to tell Pat to not touch them. I think he would have grabbed one if she had not dissuaded him. I mean it is only a viper.

It would be cool to have them if you had their fangs removed and you enjoyed the warm loving companionship of snakes.

Guess which one is the Monkey.


Slimy Tree Frog, He was actually fun to hold since he stuck to you and felt like a snot.

Here we have the Slim Frog, a Preying Mantis, and Monkey who really wants the PM.

I can not imagine what that poor lizard has to put up with from tourist.


Either the turtle took up smoking or the facilities are just not cleaned up as much as I am looking for.


You some times when you are walking down the street you can just smell grease and you know there is something good just around the corner? Well that is how this was. This doughnut type creation is only flavored by the wonderful oil that it is fried in. wow was there a lot of it, I think it lubed up my insides for the rest of the trip.


Patrick Gentry claims this to be the best fried rice in Asia. If you would like to dispute this with him please let me know and I will get you in touch. I have to say it was the best fried rice I have ever had but I will now have to try the rest of the rice in Asia to see if Pat really knows what he is talking about. I'll tell you that little dab of red on the plate is the hottest sauce I have ever had. I used about a quarter of it to spice the entire plate. I think Shannon used all of hers, yeah she can handle the heat.

I am only posting the picture of the 7up revive so in case you ever come across it you skip it and go to the next option. If you like a mildly sweetened citrus then this might be up your alley. For me though I prefer to with some of the green or the yellow. This day just happened to be a green day.
My taste buds determined this green concoction to be some sort of honeydew melon and perhaps a thickening powder. Tasty non the less and talk about refreshing on a hot and humid day. I mean how can you go wrong with a beverage that cost about 25 cents and is served in a plastic bag.

Patrick the great guy he is wanted to show ma'am sir and myself around his old school. Then he wanted to show us the lake of lizards. Since there was about 500 inches of rain the day before a little mud had collected along the sidewalk. Do not ask why we never turned back when we saw the mud because I do not know. Perhaps it was because some one else had forged their way through and there were foot steps already in it but we will never really know.


The final stretch of the mud.


There may have been a chemical spill in the ditch here but I am sure it will clear up in a couple of days. That is never a good sign when the liquid flowing through water ways is bright red.


This was the nicest bus I have ever been on while it being the luckiest bus ticket I have ever got. There are around 200 buses that go Penang to Kuala Lumpar every day but this was one of those days that was sold out. We asked around 50 ticket agents before finding one that only had luxury bus tickets. I think the money was well worth the comfort provided by this puppy.



I knew this was going to be one of the last times for a long time that I could get some Roti Cani. I went ahead and ordered two of them with the curry dahl sauce. mmmmmmm. It is so hard to describe how delicious and mouth watering this stuff is. If you like spice there is no better then this. Of course I had to have a traditional drink call a lemow ice. It is like sweetned lime water.
Then I went ahead and got more. This time with the Really spicy curry. oh yeah thats the stuff.

These shoes got wet during the down pour a couple of days earlier and would not even begin to dry. You can imagine the scent that was coming from them. I weighed my options here. I was headed to the airport and going to have to transport these to the Philippines or I was going to have to part with them. I have had them for a couple of years and I feel I got my monies worth from them. I figured there was no saving them with out a substancial effort on my part and I am not at a point in my life where I need to be saving worn out shoes so I deposited them in the nearest waste basket I could find. I am still very happy with the decion I made to get rid of them since the smell was so damn foul.

Stinky Shoes

If you were ever considering going to Malaysia or any foreign country for that matter pay particularly close attention to what airport you come into. This does not sound like any of much importance until you are running a ten minutes late and you only have 1 minute to spare. This scenario has bit me in my ass so many times you think I would take my own advice already.

Patrick and I were running extremely late for our plane and as you can imagine the taxi driver took us to the wrong airport. This was not totally his fault but still the wrong airport. unknown to us the ticketing counter for our flight closed at 12:30 a.m. and our flight left at 1:30 a.m. I mean really what good American shows up to their flight and hour before it leaves in a foreign country? The usual for us was about 5 minutes before the flights left and some how we always got on the flights. This one was different since the ticket counter closed at 12:30 we got there about 12:55 and could not get our tickets. Which meant that we could got get our plane back to the Philippines. The only place I wanted to go was any where in the Philippines because that meant that I was going to catch my flight home but there was no way I was making that flight. I decided to stay at the airport and buy another flight home through Air Asia since Cebu Pacific sucks and only flies to the Philippines every other day. Since it was so early I had to wait until later in the morning to buy a ticket and catch a flight. I figured it was bed time and what better place then a nice freezing ass cold hard air port right? Right, so lets go to sleep for three hours. Hard to get sleep in the bright lights and constant people stirring around.

Opened a can of Good Boy!

For some reason them have to walk through the cab of the plane spraying something. The flight attendents let you know that it is okay to cover your mouth if you want. THANKS, for letting me know cause I am not going to do that when you spraying some unknown substances through out the plane.


So after staying the night on the airport and thinking that I was going to Manila when I landed at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport you can imagine my surprise. While I was still inside and it had not all hit me yet I discused transportation with a imigration officer and she looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned that I would be takening a taxi to Makati. Then when I asked someone how much a taxi was to Makati and they told me 4000 pesos which is around 100 USD the next thing out of my mouth was where the hell am I? Then a nice bus lady explained that I could get to Pasay which is by Makati in two hours by bus for only 350 pesos. I went with option two as you know.

My bus ride back to Makati started here.

Over the past week and a half I had been having trouble with my left ear. It started as a little pain then provoked me to promptly get to a doctor when I finally made it back to Manila. After a quick 3 second examination by the doctor he gave me antibiotics and pain killers.


Tramadol Pain killers. Yes, please.

Antibiotics were needed.

It had been a great adventure through out my weeks in Asia. Sitting on the plane at the Ninoy Aquino International airport I was thinking how ready I was to get back to the United States. I was beat down, broken, ear infected, and did not have a clean piece of clothing to my name. After enough pain killers and fantasies of tumble dried clothing I attempted to get a bit of shut eye on my day long journey to get home.



Until the next adventure.

Nick