Family day in Canmore with friends

For family day we took Lyndon out to Canmore for the day with friends.  He traveled well sleeping most of the ride out. On the way home we had to make an emergency roadside stop for a diaper change and feeding. It was nice to get out of town for the day and enjoy a day in the mountains.

 

Lyndon

It's been over a year since we have made any posts on this blog. The birth of our first son has created the desire to start trying to blog again. Lyndon was born on December 22 2011 at 3:35am. He was just under 8lbs and 21in long. Lyndon came to us earlier than expected. Although we knew in our minds he could come any day we had expected him after Christmas. This has allowed us to enjoy Christmas with our new baby and spend less time preparing for him to come. This has been a nice change after a hectic December trying to get our house ready for the baby. Our baby came when he was ready and hasn't made any complaints about the unfinished laundry room yet.

Were home

We are back in Calgary after a long flight. The weather is good, giving us a chance to adjust. We both woke up in the middle of the night last night and felt like it should be day time but eventually managed to get back to sleep, and we feel good this morning.

Heading Home

After an enjoyable stay with the Hansen-Langes, our trip is just about finished; the only remaining task on our end is to make it to the Hong Kong airport. We have really enjoyed our trip and the chance to step back from our ordinary lives and think about what is important to us while we are not in the middle of day to day life. Even though we have enjoyed not having a strict routine, I think it will be nice to get back into the regular swing of things. However, getting to the point of having things set up again may be a challenge. I'm sure we will manage doing the reverse of all we did when we prepared to leave last year, and we will soon be settled back into life in Calgary.

Lazy in Hong Kong

We have spent the last week loafing around in Hong Kong. We also visited Hong Kong (and Debbi and Dave) at the beginning of our trip in November. Last November we went to see many of the tourist sites. We don't really feel like we need to go see them again, so we have spent a lot of time warming up Dave and Debbi's couch, eating great food, and cuddling Jasper (who is definitely one of the cutest babies in the whole world). Debbi must have decided that things were getting too boring because last week she threw herself down a flight of stairs and sprained a foot, so she could take us on a tour of the Hong Kong emergency room. Debbi is OK, but she can still occasionally be sighted hobbling down the streets of Hong Kong with a very stylish cane.

It is very strange to think that we return to Calgary in only a few days. I face our return with mixed feelings that I did not expect. Of course I am excited to see our friends and family in person instead of only over skype. I look forward to coffee dates and long chats to catch up with everyone. My biggest regret about our ten month long trip is how much I have missed at home. So much has happened in all of your lives and I wish that I could have been there. I have been surprised how terrifying it feels to come back home. So many things will change all at once. We both need to find jobs, we need to figure out what part of the city we want to live in then sell our condo and move there, we need to find a new church to become a part of. These choices are intimidating. Our decisions will likely be longer lasting than was our decision to travel. But the very scariest thing of all about going home is the weather. We will be leaving a year of lovely hot weather to return to the beginning of the long, cold, Canadian winter. I'm not sure why we planned things that way.

Back in Hong Kong

Blogging has become more difficult lately. Perhaps we are trying to not spend the last of our time in internet shops or maybe there is less to report. Anyway, we have arrived back in Hong Kong. It is nice to be back in a familar place with people we know and where transport is easy to figure out. It is much less intimidating to figure out the transit second time around. We are looking forward to spending our week here before heading back to Canada.

Delicious

We have not blogged in a while because we were busy lazing around in the sun on Tioman Island. We spent nearly two weeks on the island because we did not want to be trying to travel during the Hari Raya celebrations at the end of Ramadan. Hari Raya is a big deal here. It is as big as Christmas at home. Many people travel to spend the holiday with their families. It was ironic because so many businesses were closed on the island on the tenth and eleventh of September that, while the Muslim locals were eating goodies to celebrate the end of their fast, the tourists were on an accidental fast if they were not lucky enough to find an open convenience store where they could buy some cookies for lunch. We fared alright because we asked around about what would be open when and we stocked up on snacks beforehand.

There is not a lot to do on Tioman Island except sleep in late, read books on the deck by our room or under a shady tree by the beach, and swim or snorkel in the beautifully warm ocean with the bright coloured fish and coral. A few days ago we hiked through the rainforest to the other side of the island so we could relax on that beach instead. On our walk back two days later we saw giant monitor lizards (these ugly critters are all over the island), a bunch of cute little monkeys, two long narrow snakes with bright green bellies, and around 4.5 million mosquitoes.

Yesterday we crossed the Malaysian peninsula and now we are in Melaka. We did not have a good first impression. Our bus ran very late so we did not get into town until around midnight. When we got to the hotel where we had reserved a room, we found the door locked and no one answering the doorbell or telephone. We were in a strange town after midnight and we had to find a new place to stay. Luckily everything turned out OK, and we are staying at a place just down the street from where we originally planed to stay.

Today after sleeping in very late we decided to head over to Chinatown to have a look around. We had a lot of fun. There were lots of things to see and yummy things to eat. We browsed around some really nice shops. Finally we were tired and hungry, so we looked in our guidebook and saw that there was a restaurant nearby called Capitol Satay. When we got there we found a cue that went out the door and down the street. We thought it must be good if this many locals were waiting to get in and we decided we would get into the line and see how fast in was moving. It was not moving very fast. The friendly family behind us in line assured us that it was really good food and we should not leave Melaka without trying the satay, so we stuck it out.

Wow! It was worth the wait. We were directed to a buffet set up where we chose skewers of raw chicken, seafood, vegetables, tofu, and deep fried bread. When we got back to our table they brought cubed bread and cucumbers and placed a giant pot of satay sauce on a burner embedded in the center of the table. Satay fondue. I don't know what genius first thought this one up, but I think I love them. It was one of the most delicious meals of my life. Seriously. I think this rates right up there with European chocolate on my list of things I like to eat.