The Awesome Adventures of Hannah and Emma

Alas, this is it. I am currently in Kuta Bali waiting ever so patiently (read - NOT patiently) for my flight to Seoul, then NYC, then (28 hours later) Toronto. It seems like mere days ago that I was sitting back in the Tdot shaking with anticipation to get this trip underway - and now we are finished the Asian leg of our adventure. Where did the time go? But I'm getting ahead of myself, all the sentimental touchy-feel-y stuff can wait for another entry. For now I shall fill you in on our escapades over the last couple weeks.

The last post ended in Singapore as we waited to get on a night bus to Cherating, Malaysia. There is no way to fully recount what a hugely epic fail that place was. First off, the night bus dumped us at the side of the highway (about a 15min walk from Cherating - which doesn't seem like alot until you strap on the weight of a small child in the form of a backpack) at 3:30 AM. We were tired, groggy and none too please to have to not only find the town, but also try to find a hostel that would be open and willing to take us in. Luckily we found a hotel on the way towards town that had a 24 hour reception. At first appearance (and judging by the price) we were pretty excited to be staying at a "nice hotel" and figured we deserved a bit of luxury after our ordeal... that was until we saw the room. There was mold everywhere and I don't even want to think about how the place would have lit up if we had a CSI-style black light with us. We checked out a mere 7 hours later and hauled our backpacks through the 34 degree Malaysian heat to Cherating proper to find ourselves a place to get settled. Now, MAYBE we came at the wrong time of year and MAYBE the monsoon season really wipes out the tourism or MAYBE there was a boom 5 years ago (the time when our Rough Guides was published... bad call) that has subsequently died out; but Cherating is a ghost town, and for the record it didn't rain once. The town reminded us of those small eerily sketchy towns (generally in places like Tennesse or Texas) where bad horror filmed are set. I would not have been surprised to see a tumbleweed roll on by. There was not a single other non-Malaysian person there. I genuinely feared that we had stumbled into some bizzare black market body part selling operation and that we would wake up in the morning with organs missing... if we woke up. The last person to stay at our guesthouse was a 43 year old guy from Japan... in SEPTEMBER. Clearly our first move was to get tickets for the next bus out of there, and the girl who worked at the travel agency was genuinely shocked to see us.

After the failure of Cherating we spent the next 5 days in Kuala Lumpur. It gave us a chance to put our "tourist hats" back on and we did lots of sightseeing-type activites. KL is a really interesting city with a great multicultural vibe. Some of the sights were a let down (i.e. the two most famous - the Batu Caves and the Patronas Towers) but we still had fun and got to indulge in some cheap cinema trips; the best of which was Ninja Assassin which, despite it's horrible plot/writing/dialogue/acting was the most entertaining film we saw (TOLD YOU SO :P)

Then it was off to Indonesia where the last week flew by at a lightning quick pace. We went to the Gili Islands to "par-tee"... but really just ended up chilling out and melting in the ridiculous heat. If I ever worry about finding a manfriend I just need to come to Indonesia. Without trying to sound vain, Indonesian guys REALLY have a thing for me? It's embarrassing. I literally have a harem following me around everywhere I go. As we waited for a bus to the ferry in Lombok a group of 5-6 guys literally FLOCKED around me and the group tripled when I started to hand out Canadian pins that I had in my bag. Then we were off to Kuta Bali where we stayed at the nicest bed and breakfast (after arriving at the hotel we had booked online at 7:30pm, being disgusted and leaving to find new digs) and spend our last days hanging out and avoiding Australians (VERY difficult to do). After Hannah left for the UK (miss you little buddy!) I have been trying to keep myself occupied and even splurged on a surf lesson (and managed to stand up a few times too!). and now am waiting to go to the airport and head back to snowy Canada and some long-awaited Tim Horton's!!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!