Malaka's Local Brew

Kickapoo Joy Juice - no caffeine, Halal approved, incomprehensible cartoon, but surprisingly refreshing.

Try one at your friendly local Melaka swimming pool cafeteria today.

More photos (not of the same Kickapoo theme) are here on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/MelakaOct09

A Few Words From Flatuch

For those of you who have not met Flatuch, he is our pet dog. His hometown is Warsaw, Poland, where he lived happily with my good friends Kris and Mag for many years. One time when I was visiting Kris and Mag, Flatuch asked if he could come travelling with me. (I admit that we may have had this conversation after a few too many vodkas).

The upshot was that Flatuch became my travel buddy. And so he has seen the old town of London, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Greek Islands, the lights of Hong Kong and Singapore and the beautiful beaches of Malaysia. He lived with Reecey in Bangkok, where he loved her stories of the elephants in the streets. In short, he is a very well-travelled toy dog.

He is also a bit of a poser.  To wit:

White Water Rafting

"If the raft capsizes, of 11 people, maybe one or two will be trapped under the raft. No worry. You will have air. Just sing a little song. But you must then get out from under the raft. You cannot stay there all day - or you will end up in the South China Sea." He mimes getting out from under the raft. "You go like this. Be like Spiderman."

We are standing on railroad tracks in the early afternoon heat, huddled around a yellow raft, armed with deep red lifejackets, blue helmets and yellow paddles.

"Now to hold the paddle. Like this. Top hand always on top of the handle. Otherwise, your handle can hit your friends. In the eye. In the nose. In the teeth. We have no good dentists in Sabah." He flashes a white smile. His two eye teeth have been knocked back.

Amin in our rafting guide. His nickname is "Black". In the high season, he spends every day on the river - and it shows - in his deep Sabah tan and his knowledge of the rapids. "All the rapids have different names," he says, "The Washing Machine, Scooby Doo, La Bamba, Headhunter…"

"Why is it called Headhunter?" Reecey asks. I can see in her face she has conjured up images of whitewater rushing over razor-edged rocks. Amin recalls an historical story of a band of native Sabah headhunters that took on the rapids… and lost.

Our crew may not have looked the part for rugged whitewater rafting - with the beanpole accountant from Melbourne, the slight Japanese girl and her white-gloved mother and the terrified Chinese girl who could not swim - but there is nothing like a raft being tossed down a set of rapids to build a team. But never judge a book by its cover. The first set of rapids saw our starboard paddlers swiftly dunked and then tossed up off their paddling positions. If it wasn't for our "seatbelts" - the crew that sat in the middle of the raft clinging onto the life jackets of the paddlers to their left and right - the accountant and I would have been in the creek. The heroines were the tiny Japanese girl and her white-gloved mother.

Reecey experienced life as a "flying fish", perched on the bow of the raft while the rest of us crowded the back third. The weight at the rear caused the "fish" at the front to fly up and down as the whitewater waves lured us to a crest and then plunged us into the next trough.

The excitement of the rapids was interspersed with times when we would float serenely down the Padas River, its silty brown water carving its way between the lush green of the tropical jungle that rose steeply on either side. In the smaller rapids, Amin encouraged us to "do body-rafting".

Reecey and I jumped into the Padas and buoyed by our lifejackets, rolled onto our backs and drifted down the river.

Another raft crossed our path every now and then. Amin would invariably shout "Fire in the hole!" this command seemed to mean either splashing the other raft with our paddles or, if proximity allowed, attempting to capcise the boat by lifting their ropes or crossing the ship's rail in an attempt to seize their boat. However, their guide was an experienced captain and thwarted our attacks. To my mind, that left one option: we must take out their captain.

With the rafts alongside each other, I passed my paddle to Reecey and in two steps, leapt onto their boat and tackled their captain. "Kill him!" Amir cheered cheekily. "Get him!" I never was a great tackler and ended up tackling not much more than the air where he had been a second before, flying horizontally over their boat into the river. I managed to get a hold of his arm on the way through, but it was too difficult to drag him into the river with me. After a short struggle, my grinning heroine arrived. Reecey crept up behind their guide and after tickling him in the ribs, lifted him over the side of their raft high enough for me to pull him in. The battle over, there was nothing left for us to do but smile, lie back and let the Padas River wash us downstream.

Beauty & The Beast/ Reecey & The Ranga

Hey spunky!

Hey Reecey!

How are you enjoying Borneo?

I love it here! Today it's beautiful and sunny. We have snorkelled with colourful tropical fish at the nearby marine park, enjoyed ice-cold Tiger beers on the Waterfront and even visited some of your cousins! 

Did you meet my Cousin Gaya?          



                                    

Sure did. At the Shangri La Rasa Ria resort. He was pretty cute - swinging from his ropes and into the trees, enjoying some fresh fruit and even a massage from his human minder.

Not as cute as you though Fletchie! You can see the pictures of your extended family here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/BorneoOct09?feat=directlink

They sure look like they're having fun!

Did you enjoy the Shangri La Rasa Ria resort Reecey?

I sure did. It was incredible - I had a wonderful birthday there - with flowers and a spa treatment and then a Happy Birthday serenade over dinner. The staff there were wonderful. Next time we are going to go horse-riding on the beach and sail on a hoby cat.

Next time hey?        
                                       

Yes, we loved it so much that we will be back next October for our wedding!

As for this time though, we have plans to have dinner tonight as the sun sets over the water, a full day's whitewater rafting tomorrow (I am being extremely brave and signing up for the grade II to grade IV rapids even though I haven't passed grade I yet) and then on Saturday, we have a more leisurely cruise along with the river to watch the proboscis monkeys (their noses are a bit rude!) and fireflies. 

Speaking of rude, shouldn't you have pants on Fletchie?

Whoops! Sorry Reecey.


I'll make sure I buy some for next October.

Sparkle Sparkle

Due to popular demand, Reecey & Fletchie's Humble Wanderings and Accidental Adventures (RAFHWAAA) are proud to present a picture of Reecey's bling. I mean ring.

The Shangri La Rasa Ria

The Shangri La Rasa Ria welcomes you with a Red-Faces style gonging, lilting xylophone tunes and a glass of iced peach tea. Its check-in process is a sit-down-in-the-lobby's-cane-lounges type affair. Hours later, after you have swum in the pool, walked across its private white sandy beach, played petanque and table tennis and enjoyed one-too-many cocktails, it kisses you goodnight. (Reecey has fallen asleep with her reading light on, novel fallen to the floor).

Our pictures are below and there are some better ones here: http://www.shangri-la.com/en/property/kotakinabalu/rasariaresort. The heavens permitting, the gazebos below will transform into our bar and beach dance-floor, flanking the wedding reception tables and buffet, which will look out to the setting sun over the water.  Reecey is pleased that she will be able to choose (among other things) her flowers. I am pleased that we can get (literally) barrels of Tiger beer.

It's beautiful. Fancy joining us here in a year's time?

***

Borneo pictures

Our photos of Borneo are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann

Yes we are wearing matching white sunhats. We know it's not in fashion. Yet.

Kota Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu is buckets of fun.

We spent Saturday coming to terms with the fact that we were in Asia. This made sense because it was humid outside and air-conditioningly chilled inside. But Kota Kinabalu (or KK as it is called here) has a real country town feel to it. The streets are wide. The driving is remarkably un-chaotic. The occasional hawker selling Rolex watches and Armani leather belts is good natured (along with everyone else). Markets are filled to the brim with knock-offs. No surprise that the zip on my new "DIFSEL" laptop bag did not last the afternoon.

Reecey made some friends at the indoor soccer ground on the pier.

“Did you just play soccer?”
“Yeah.”

“Did you win?”

“Yes!”

“What was the score?”

“21 - 20.”

“Wow! So close!”

Were there any goalkeepers in this game? My guess is that the boys would play 20 minute halves, so that would be a goal-a-minute. Defence must be on this week's agenda at training surely, Coach Damo?

I was enjoying a beer or two on the Waterfront while Reecey enjoyed a massage. Young Jude introduced himself with an A4 piece of paper with maths homework and two handwritten words. “Excuse me, can you help me with this?” he asked. His English was confident and he looked university-aged, but his mannerisms gave away his youth. He told me he was 14. He was reading the English version of one of the Twilight books. The words he was asking about were “arbitrarily” and “overtly”. I discovered that “arbitrarily” is not a word that is that easy to explain to someone with English as a second language. I also discovered that year 10 maths is not something that you can just pick up 15 years later. So we talked about Shakira and Green Day instead.

Culinary mishaps in Kota Kinabalu

We should have known better.

The sign on the entrance read "Eat all you can. Leave nothing on your plate". One could be forgiven for thinking that this was nothing more than a well-meaning but grammatically-challenged Malaysian Hot Pot BBQ restaurant encouraging its patrons to indulge at the buffet. That would only be possible before reading the warning: "3 RM for every 100g of cooked food left on your plate".

The waiter poured two tall plastic cups of cold jasmine tea. It was drinkable when we suspended our taste buds by not breathing while we were drinking. The Hot Pot consisted of an old electric fry pan with a silver bowl full of water perched in the middle. "Self service. OK?" our waiter said. "OK" we nodded. It turned out that it was not OK. An hour later, we had been spat on by an angry frypan, scalded ourselves with steaming water, eaten raw corn and concocted a soup that simultaneously managed to be too spicy and utterly tasteless. And during all this time, the threat of uneaten cooked food loomed over us. We wondered whether we would get charged for the undrunken broth as well.

The restaurant wasn't all bad. It was family-friendly. "Children under four foot eat for half price. Children under three foot eat for free." Maybe we could palm off our inedible soup to someone's kids if they were immune from the penalty rates. It was so draconian, we thought. Surely even attempting to eat our inedible dinner was punishment enough. In the end, we took a deep breath, calculated that the extent of our penalty would be 9 RM (A$3) - assuming the broth was included in the measuring - and paid the bill. The waitress never charged us the extra 9 RM.

We walked into a waft of donuts. That would fill a hole, we agreed. The sign at the donut shop said "Self-service". But the only way you could serve yourself would be to hurdle the counter and the perspex display case and push the plump pimple-faced Malaysian girl out of the way. And she looked like she took her job seriously. There were too many varieties to choose from, but a quick decision was required because the girl was recommending a pink-glazed one. I chose "Chococino". So did Reecey. While the girl rang up our purchases, a sign on the counter informed us to "Please choose your donut carefully as no exchange or refund will be given." We had never thought an exchange or refund of donut could be necessary, but that was until we tried "Chococino". The icing was cooking chocolate with the consistency of a runny egg. Somewhere hidden in the middle of the donut was a chunk of coffee in whipped cream. We now know why donuts should have holes in the middle. It's so that you can eat a whole one without wanting to gag.

Wandering home, we concluded that our evening's culinary experience was all very confusing. Even the storekeepers seem confused. One proudly proclaimed: "Home recipes. Serve no pork". It may have even been the name of the restaurant. It's neighbour had no such ethical qualms: "Fresh grilled pork. Be tantilised."