Kapitan Keling Mosque

I went to the Kapitan Keling Mosque yesterday and spent quite a long time there. After getting a nice tour of the mosque I sat with my guide in his air conditioned office along with two of his friends, one visiting from Egypt and the other from Mexico. The three of them explained many aspects of Islam to me. It was interesting to hear about Islam from the perspective of Muslims in Asia (in this case, Tamil) but also to know that, at least within the Sunni Muslim Community, as represented by these particular men, there seemed to be complete agreement and unity regarding the religion and how to practice it.

I’ve studied about Islam in the past and it was nice to see that some of the things they talked about were familiar to me, for example, the five pillars of Islam. In discussing these I was particularly moved when they talked about the need to give to charity. They said that they have no need for personal wealth and that their primary concern is having no want for “food and drink for themselves, their families and their neighbor”. Instead of throwing out food or an older piece of clothing it is the duty of a Muslim to give it to a poor person to “help them and to lift them up to your level of living.”
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Hainan Association and Temple

Today was my first day in Penang, Malaysia. I actually started my visit to Malaysia over the weekend but I’ll have to write more about that exciting weekend in another post.

I woke up much later than I usually do in Asia because the guesthouse I’m staying in has no windows. It turns out that windows in guesthouses in the center of Georgetown, in Penang, are somewhat of a rarity. I’m staying at the Banana guesthouse and besides the windows situation it’s very clean and conveniently located in the middle of the backpacker strip, complete with a travel agency, cafe and free WIFI.

For breakfast I picked up a steamed bun with vegetables in the middle. I’m not sure what they call them here but they’re called bun bao in Vietnam. I was still hungry but I didn’t want to delay my walk around Georgetown since the day was already hot and was rapidly getting even hotter. I walked down a small street called Love Lane which leads into Chinatown and I passed several other guesthouses and homes. My first stop was to the Hainan Cultural Center where I was the only soul to be found. Even the person tending the desk at the entrance was off on a break somewhere. It’s always nice when you can wander into a place, snap some photos and hear the sound of silence around you.
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After a temporary glitch resulting in 404 Page Not Found errors, we’re back up and running now.

In the right column we’ve added new links under a section called “Destinations” to jump to posts by country.

New photos from Pai, Thailand are on the way!

We are experiencing technical difficulties and are working now to resolve these with our host provider.

Patong Beach took the No. 4 spot and Koh Pi Pi Islands landed the No. 7 place in a recent Travel Channel survey of the World’s Sexiest Beaches!

The “sexiness” of the beach destinations was evaluated based on a combination of how sexy the local population is thought to be, the sexiness of the tourists crowd and the overall sexy nature of the nightlife or party scene. Most of the beaches were top quality in terms of standard beach criteria as well: sun, sand, water, etc.

We have not yet been to either of these beaches but Koh Phi Phi has been on our list for some time now.

Pam Bok Waterfall Near Pai

We’ve uploaded new photo albums from our first two days here in Pai in the North of Thailand. Check out photos of our motorbike travels:

Pai, Thailand – Day 1
Pai, Thailand – Day 2

We’ve been in Pai since Sunday afternoon when we arrived by bus from Chiang Mai. The name of the town is pronounced with a hard “B” sound, as in, “Bye Bye”, not, “American Pie”. The weather is quite different up here in the mountains of Northern Thailand and we wake up to the chilly morning air protected by a couple of blankets and a mosquito net in our cabin. The cabin is the ideal setting for a little morning stretch and exercise, complete with a straw mat and a beautiful view of the gardens.

We decided to skip the included “American Breakfast” as it’s called and cross the street for something a bit more interesting and healthy. We first dropped off our dirty laundry, also across the tiny street, where they wash your clothes for 20 Baht (50 cents) and it’s ready by 6PM the same day. The breakfast cafe was small and charming with statues, flowers and little offerings of food in dishes which the passing dogs seemed to enjoy very much. Tamar had a fruit, yogurt and muesli cup and I enjoyed a mushroom crepe and some very strong and good coffee.
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Restaurants along the Mae Ping River in Chiang Mai

We’ve just uploaded 4 new photo albums of Chiang Mai by Day, Chiang Mai by Night, our one day cooking class and the beautiful 3 Sis Gusthouse where we stayed for 3 nights.

For those of you who joined us on our trip last year you may remember that we used to have a page devoted to our videos. We temporarily took it down due to technical difficulties with the WordPress plugin we were using to connect to YouTube.

The page has now been relaunched and you can access it by clicking the “Video” tab at the top of every page or by clicking here.

We have added a few videos from this year’s trip and are in the process of editing, uploading and linking more videos to the blog. We’ll continue to announce the addition of any new video in our blog posts.

Some of you may have noticed that we had a technical problem with the video we shot at Koh Mak Seafood and included in our post, Koh Mak Seafood: A Taste of the Island and Its History. The problem was due to YouTube not processing the video we uploaded and the video appeared to be unavailable.

We’ve re-uploaded the video which includes a feline friend who helped us to pick out a crab for lunch and eat it too!