Taitai knits

Elephant sanctuary

This past week end we drove with another family from North America, to the Elephant Sanctuary about an hour and a half from KL. It was a Malaysian experience. Apparently the website and the guidebooks forget to mention that to interact with the elephants you actually have to make a reservation. It was just as well we didn't have one - it was a million degree, crowded somewhat and the elephants were a sad site.

Note the text at the very bottom of the sticker

Avery and friend

The poor elephant on the end reminded me a lot of the polar bears the NC Zoo rescued from a circus - they had such mental problems and swayed back and forth all day that there were signs at the Zoo explaining what was up with the rescued polar bears. Apparently they 'use' most of these elephants to rescue other elephants that are out in the wilds of Malaysia or Southern Thailand - they often get into palm farms and cause havoc, so the Elephant Sanctuary goes out with a couple of trained elephants and gets them to help get them on a truck. The movie showed a few touching scenes of the trained elephants stroking and clearly comforting the 'wild' elephants. I guess they do good work, but it is sort of hard to tell...plus their website has a huge rant on how bad North Americans are and how a certain North American country feels they are the worlds policeman....hmm, I wonder who they could mean?!

Discovery Channel : I love the world

Crafting starts young

I have complained loudly and often that I am bored here in Malaysia. Bored or not, the young ones need entertainment on a regular basis and since we live in the tropics it often rains right at optimum pool time. So I break out the crafty.

I found a link on the crafty crow website, by my former swap pal, Cassie, for this - puff paint. It was super easy and even fun. I love the crafts that we already own everything for - no runs to Michael's here.

The joys of bidding - not

The time has come to start thinking about where we will move next summer. I hate this part - not that I am a big fan of living in KL, but figuring out the best place to go is a real headache. One day you find out all the wonderful things about one place and the next you find out the job is really not open as the guy in it is going to Iraq. I am tired of talking about places, my friends are tired of hearing about places. I am over it and it has hardly begun. Blah!

And here is a uniquely Malaysian mall experience. The mall rides - these nasty motorized animals - which the kids always beg to ride and in Kuantan we finally broke down and let the two little ones have a go.

Thwarted again

This week end we thought we would again play tourist at home and tried to go to the skywalk on the Petronas Twin Towers. It did not work out. On Saturday afternoon we checked the website and went over - only to find out that they give out the free tickets for hours in advance and the minute we arrived they 'sold out' for the whole day....it was only 1 pm and they close down at 7. Anyway - today we went early just to pick up the tickets, then at 3:30 we hop in the car to go - since it is pouring down rain - only to find that the HUGE parking garage is closed because it is full. So sadly we had to turn around and come home. It seems a little crazy that the parking garage can be full - until a couple years ago the Petronas Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in the world....guess they didn't plan for many visitors????

mini vacation

Last weekend we packed up the kids and drove for about 3 hours to Kuantan, Malaysia. It may be our last Malaysian vacation. The beach was ok but our kids did not like it because it was crawling with live hermit crabs. Zillions of them. We did find a giant jellyfish our last day there - so that was a hit.

And the lady to the right is wearing a burqkini - which sadly they did not sell in the gift shop, because....

Here are two ladies (and one man sitting on the side) fully clothes and shoed in the pool. Blah! In the deep pool there were even some guys wearing belts with their swimming (?) pants.

A somewhat traditional house in Kuantan

And the banana stand

My blogging superhero

So the new AFSA magazine is online and my good blogland friend, Dina, got a nice mention. Dina takes beautiful photos and posts a lot more regularly than I do. She also has a lovely daily photo site, which everyone should go look at - lovely photos of Niger.