Day 2 - Traveling to Malaysia & Indonesia - 9/11

My flight from Seoul to Phnom Penh was pretty uneventful, and I landed late on Friday night their time. It was great to see Kara, and we took a cab back to her house (which was the first time in a cab for me!). It was after midnight before we got to bed, and I was exhausted from not sleeping for over 24 hours, so I fell asleep right away – but was woken up around 2:30 or 3 listening to dogs fighting and with the time change I couldn’t get back to sleep. We had to get up at 4:30 anyway, though, to fly to Indonesia to spend time with Sunny, the foreign exchange student that lived with us from 1996-1997. We had hoped to see Yudiana, another foreign exchange student that same year from Indonesia, but she was in Singapore and we couldn’t get to both places in the short amount of time that we had.

As we were eating breakfast, I saw a HUGE cockroach – at least 3 inches long (I wish I had a picture)! Then we took a tuk-tuk (a cart that it hitched to the back of a moto - which is a small motorcycle) back to the airport, which was another first for me. We flew Air Asia, which is known for cheap flights and now I know why – they don’t give you ANYTHING for free. We finally figured out that they would at least give you hot water, so that’s what we asked for and just waited for it to cool down a little. It is amazing how good plain, hot water tastes when you are thirsty.

Our layover was in Malaysia, and since we had several hours we took a bus into Kuala Lumpur to see their twin towers. We had to take a subway (another first for me), but it was only 33 cents! The city was PACKED with people because it was a Muslim holiday, plus it was ironic that we were at the other twin towers on 9/11, but they were neat to see.

Do you recognize these from Mission Impossible 3?!?

The good area in front of the towers was closed due to the holiday, so we didn't get as good of pictures as we would have liked, but this backside wasn't too bad!

I had my first experience with a “squatty potty” (which should be self-explanatory) and care to never have to have that experience again. Then we headed back to the airport and caught our next flight to Indonesia.

We spent the night with Sunny and her family – her husband Eddie and son Michael, and I had my first ride in a car where the steering wheel was on the other side. My favorite part was hearing Michael say “goodnight Auntie” in this cute little British accent. I wasn’t as excited about realizing there was no toilet paper in the bathroom, just a sprayer to clean yourself off (another first) – but good thing for my travel toilet paper that I had with me for the rest of my time there! The fun of going into other cultures...they probably think similar thoughts about us Americans!

Day 3 (Sunday - 9/12) coming soon!