Painting and such!

We helped Bik paint Pan's new appartment. Wow, look at Nolan's Stache.



The stairs up to Pan's room we were painting, crazy...I think the structure was completely made of bamboo.

This is Joe...really cool Fijian guy that we met, he lived with us for a little bit. He is involved with YWAM in India.

The Adventures of...Mustache Malaysia!

To start out the trip, we carved out mustaches and created the Mustache Malaysia theme, you will see in the pictures...

We spent about 4 days in Malaysia for our visa run...it was pretty relaxing.  We ate a good amount of Malaysian as well as Indian food.  There are many 2nd and 3rd generation Indians whose ancestors migrated to Penang.  We had some amazing Naan bread at one restaurant, it was a fresh as is can get, he made it right in front of us, pulled it out of the brick oven and we ate it within seconds...wow.  We hiked in the National Forest, went to Monkey beach, swam in the ocean and hiked to the light house (a sad end, read on for explanation).

We spent some time in a Buddhist cafe, it was peaceful indeed.  We visited Fort Cornwallis (that was pretty neat), saw some cool buildings (including the Queen's Watch Tower and St. George's Church) and visited a museum among other things.

Overall, it was a relaxing trip, soar at times, but fun.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Malaysia (Penang) | Malaysia, Malaysia

These are random pictures in Malaysia.

So, this bathroom didn't have toilet paper, not even a bidet...as you can see, all it had was a tube and a water handle...major bummer. I will let you use your imagination from here...but, let me tell you, it was a challenge.

These were everywhere, we may have taken one of these taxi's, but most of the time, we walked faster than they rode.

Lebuh Chulia, the street we stayed on.

Malaysia (Penang) | National Forest/Ocean

We decided to hike through the National Forest in the North-West part of the island. It was pretty cool, we hiked for about 45 minutes to Monkey beach, went swimming in the ocean and it was amazing. The ocean was everything I imagined a tropical island to be like...there was a easy breeze, the waves were calm, the water was warm (so warm) and the sand was warm! Ahhh, so nice.

So...we decided to hike farther to the light house...everyone told us it would be a great hike, great view...how weird. My guess is that few people have made it all the way to the light house. It was an incredibly grueling hike, major incline and once we got to the top, we found out that the light house was all fenced off, we couldn't get in and there was no view do to all the vegetation! What a bummer. Not to mention, we were completely soaked in sweat, that is how grueling the hike was...then we had to hike about 1 hour and 20 minutes all the way back completely soaked in sweat.

At the beginning

A neat looking bridge early in the hike.

Monkey Beach!

After swimming.

Malaysia (Penang) | Holy Monkey!

So these monkeys were hilarious. After we had our coffee/tea (which I had cardamum coffee, it was really good), one monkey took my mug and tried to drink out of it, when he realized that there wasn't anything left, he tried to eat/bite the mug...when that didn't work, he simultaneously threw the mug off a cliff and jumped into the tree, ha ha...oh well.

Apparently, he was waiting patiently for me to be done so he could take my mug.

He was eating a packet of sugar.

Wow, what a face.

Malaysia (Penang) | Spice Garden Detail

Our time in the spice garden was pretty cool...you could tell that they put a lot of work into the garden with the layout and choosing fruits, plants, flowers, and spices from all over the world.  I posted quite a few pictures, but have many more...even more in my mind that were not taken (my camera battery almost dead).  It was well worth the $4.50 to get in, very interesting.

Malaysia (Penang) | Spice Garden

This is from the spice shop. Cinnamon.

More spices.

It turns out that black pepper used to be a pretty hot commodity. It was worth it's weight in Gold back in the day...some people would even pay their rent with black peper (or rather the landlord would ask for black pepper in return for rent).

Dried Chili's

Malaysia (Penang) | Spice Garden Continued

This was a crazy looking Fan Palm, apparently it is pretty rare, the leaves were massive.

This was another crazy plant (I also believe this is from the palm family), the leaves spiraled as they went out and it had about a 30 foot span from one side to the other. I couldn't get far enough back to do it justice with a picture...too bad.

Crazy-looking flower plant.

Malaysia (Penang) | Spice Garden Continued

Waterfall allong the way.

Crazy looking flower thing.


This was a neat looking plant/flower.

Malaysia (Penang) | Food

Indian food, so good!

This is a Malaysian hamburger...it was so amazing, I had 3...or maybe 4! I got what they called: Beef double egg! What they would do is fry two eggs on a skillet then wrap them around the meat patty, they would throw this on some lettiuce, then throw sauted onions and sweet chili sauce on top with shreded cubcumber (I believe).

Malaysia (Penang) | Food Continued

I actually don't know what this is...some kind of rice ball with chili paste or something on the top...just thought it looked interesting.

These looked like doughnuts of some sort, didn't try them.

This was Indian food that we got for 5.3 ringit and the chai was awesome, that was 1 ringit (totalling about $2.30)

A close-up of the Indean food, fried rice with chicken, an egg pie thing and a couple of different curry sauces...mmmmmmm.

Malaysia (Penang) | Watch tower, cafe

This is the Queen's Watchtower.

A closer look.

We found this cafe that served espresso...we later realized that is was some kind of Buddhist cafe.

A Buddhist Temple.

Malaysia (Penang) | Fort Cornwallis

This is Fort Cornwallis on the north east part of Penang, one island of Malaysia.



Cannons, I would not want to be in the way of this when it fired.

This is a little rusted.