May in Malaysia

Sorry for the delay in this posting for May. Apart from Brian's trek to the States, it seemed like a pretty quiet month here for me and the kids.

Early in May, with Patrick's travels to KL to teach the pulmonary block, the PUGSOM family headed up to Penang. Since our first trip to Penang in November centered around Brian's half marathon bridge run, we were happy to drive up to spend another weekend there. Penang is an island located off Malaysia's northwest coast. The drive took under four hours, including crossing a long bridge (the one Brian ran on) from the mainland into Georgetown, Penang's cultural center. The trip was also well timed as Violet's integrated curriculum topic currently is art and Penang's famous street art served as a central topic for several of her lessons. We spent one morning roaming around looking for the street art she'd discussed in class. The kids loved turning the corner and finding a new art piece that they'd seen in photographs in class. Of course they loved the pop up Minion art, too!

We stayed at the China Tiger (http://chinatiger.info/). I highly recommend their studio apartments for families! Under Toby and Zack's leadership, we focused Penang adventures around food. Malaysia has many very wonderful food bloggers and we found their websites valuable when hunting down food stalls and pop-up hawker areas. I was too busy inhaling char kway teow to take many pictures.

The first kilometer was the hardest, mostly because Brian made a silly deal to carry Tyler every other 100 meters!

Climbing Penang Hill was a highlight for all. On Saturday after 2nd breakfast, Patrick, Toby, Zack, Brian, the kids, and I taxied to the start of the hike. We'd read it was 5 km and would take about 2 hours. After about 45 minutes of hot, miserable, straight up hill climbing on an asphalt road (in flip flips with sweat pooling and dripping off my soaked clothing), I admitted to Brian that I was not having any fun. We were at the 1.2 km point of the hike. I said that I wanted to turn back, to which Violet replied, "Mom, this road only goes one way - up!" Brian agreed to finish the hike with Vi as Tyler and I headed down the hill to ride the funicular up and meet the happy hikers up top. This strategy proved to provide Tyler with his #1 Asia highlight: After descending about 100 meters, a guy on a motor scooter stopped and offered us a lift down. Before I could decline, Tyler had hopped on back and in 30 seconds the three of us were racing down the mountain. I admit, it was a heck of a lot better than sweating our way down. The super nice driver was tickled when Tyler wholeheartedly thanked him and said, "This is the best day of my life!" We had a great adventure getting to the funicular, including a run in with a four foot-long monitor lizard. Tyler confirmed that this was, indeed, the best day of his life. Eventually we ended up at the top of Penang Hill. Turns out that Violet and Brian's path leveled out a bit after we left them (most of the accent was in the first 2 kms of the hike) and they made it to the top about 45 minutes after we departed.

funicular

 noun: a railway going up and down a mountain that carries people in cars pulled by a moving cable
            (to the Pittsburgh friends, it's just like the incline)

Before leaving town, we checked out the Made in Penang Interactive Museum. It has these huge murals on the walls... well check out the photos and you'll get the idea.

As for the rest of the month... The kids are almost through half the final school term for the year. With each term comes new after-school classes. These are one of my favorite parts of Garden International School. The after-school programs allow the kids to give a go at all kinds of activities. This term Tyler continued parkour and added gymnastics. Violet's line up is Zumba, scuba diving, and fencing. Awesome! Scuba is, of course, super exciting for us because we're looking forward to family scuba trips sometime in our future. I'm less apt to see us engage in family parkour (although Brian insists he will still be doing the Tough Mudder when the kids are old enough to participate...). Violet also competed in a soccer tournament. Although they ended up only playing three games due to rain (err... monsoon), it was a good learning experience for Vi.

Tyler's class went on a pretty cool field trip to watch the filming of a kids' TV show called High 5. Yeah, I'd never heard of it either. It's Australian and broadcast here. It was a bit trippy with flashy colors and costumes. Serving as the audience, the kids danced to a song -- they'd (kind of) learned the choreography the week before in class. It was a real TVstudio, which was fun to see from behind the scenes. Of course we couldn't take pictures inside the studio, so my only photo was of the monitors during the first set of takes. When they filmed the kids dancing Tyler didn't seem to get much airtime, but in the stage shots, the back of his head looked well groomed. This was my first field trip with either kid... A pretty easy one as the studio crew did all the child managing once we were on-set. They also had an air conditioned tent with a large food buffet for us. I did, of course, have to hear the girls on the bus ride to-and-from sing "Let It Go" -- I don't know -- A THOUSAND times.   :o)

Also in May, we discovered a new favorite breakfast spot in KL at Imbi Market (google map Pasar Baru Bukit Bintang to find it). I adore finding a great spot right here at home! After enjoying a scooter/jog on "Carless KL" morning, we met up at Imbi, a traditional weekend market downtown that serves amazing food. The assam laksa, a sour fish soup, cannot be beat! It's also the best "carrot cake" anywhere. "Carrot cake" is a stir fried tofu dish that is neither carrot nor cake. I'm actually not really sure what is in it (shout out to Baltimore - similar to Lake Trout that is neither from a lake nor trout). We first went to Imbi market in early May while Patrick was in town. We visited again last week and it did not disappoint. There is this drink there I love called cham. It's half overbrewed coffee, half overbrewed tea. Add sweetened condensed milk. Shake. And then pour over ice. Yep - amazing.

 

So happy June everyone! We're heading off to Singapore for a long weekend and then to India next week for Pooja's wedding. I'll try to keep up the blog posts. 

By the way, HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY, Brian!