Night Safari

Last week in Singapore, I convinced a bunch of my teammates to skip out on yet another group dinner and pop over to the night safari instead. This is something that everyone tells you is a "must-do" in Singapore, and they are right. It was very cool. Basically it is a zoo at night, which makes it more mysterious and fascinating. You hop on a 45 minute tram ride, which takes you past all sorts of endangered creatures, like golden jackals, lots of esoteric deer species, and a Malaysian Tapir. Some of the animals were walking around on the tram path, uncaged (think deer, not jackals).

The deal with night safaris, though, is that they are at night. In the dark. With prohibitions on flash photography so the animals are not disturbed. As a result, all of my photos looked like this...



I did manage to take one decent animal picture - of a fish in the tank by the bathroom. Heh.


It was a good time. As one of my friends said the next day: only in Singapore could they get all of those wild animals to stand so obediently under the spotlights.

Speaking of wild animals, be sure not to miss Chris' latest picture of Frankie at the dog beach. Looks like my boys are having a great time without me.

Chicago Babies

Chris has the good fortune of visiting all of our friends (and all of their new babies!) while he is in Chicago. Look at this crazy photo of a man who was formerly petrified of holding a little one. Practice up, darlin'.


And remember the baby doll that I made for Zane this summer? It seems that he is a big hit. So to all of you gender-biased skeptics out there - boys DO like dolls.


Ha!

Celadon

I met up with my dad in Bangkok this past weekend on my way to Singapore. We went to have dinner Saturday night at Celadon, which is in the Sukothai Hotel. Dad was a little bitchy about the whole experience because he really prefers to eat on the street, but he was swayed once we sat down with a tangy little Australian Shiraz.


The food was oh so good. I love Thai pomelo salad, don't you? The restaurant was nice and soothing. All diners eat surrounded by lily ponds and subtle, traditional live music. I thought the music was a recording until we stepped out into the foyer after our meal and saw this lady.


Yummy yummy. Must go back. Even Dad was pleased.

Makin' My Way Home to You, Babe

I am winding my way to Taipei. Last week, I left Beijing and went through Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Bangkok. I am now in Singapore through Friday. Ironically, I just received word that our sea shipment will land at the port in Taiwan on Wednesday, which means that our stuff will arrive before Chris or I get there.

I was very suprised at how beautiful Hangzhou was. I had heard lots of good things, but was always like, yeah.. yeah. But it really was nice. I would even go back. We had a three day training session at the Sofitel Xanadu, which is away from the city. It was an excellent hotel, and probably much cheaper than the one by the West Lake. And it had some fabulous black swans floating nearby that had vibrantly red beaks. They let me get right up close to take photos. No bites, thank goodness.



After dinner in town one night, some of my team members and I went for a stroll down the old (read "touristy") street. We came across this giant Buddha statue, one of those with the hundred babies crawling all over. I stayed away from rubbing the belly - it would certainly be awful to mess up the adoption by getting preganant at this late date. But I did get close enough to see the great and very detailed children statues.



More Hangzhou pictures here.

Mei You

We are all packed up and out of our Beijing place. Chris and Frankie flew off to the US of A last Wednesday, leaving me with an empty house and two suitcases. Beijing's emptyness creeped me out a bit, so I left as soon as I could. It will be two weeks before I actually land in Taipei, though. Work travels will take me to Hangzhou and Singapore first.

It is hard to be without the ones you love most. Luckily, I am here now in Shanghai and hanging out with some of my friends. It is nice to stop back into my old life of dinner parties and glasses of wine, even if only for a few days.

I do have two special friends to keep me company in Shanghai, where I am cat sitting for a friend. Finnegan climbed into one of my bags this morning as soon as I zipped it open. Thomas (not pictured) is sitting on my lap as I type.


Cats are different from dogs, that much is clear. As I was about to leave the apartment this morning, I took one last look around for the kitties, but I could only find one. I spent 30 minutes searching for the second one (mischevious Thomas) in this little three bedroom place, but I never found him. It really freaked me out, and all day I was wondering how in the world I could have lost a cat in a locked apartment in under three hours. When I came back after running errands (thinking: please be there, please be there), he was sitting on the floor watching me open the door. A dog would never have done that, would never have hidden sneakily for 30 minutes as you frantically called out his name. Sheesh.

I do appreciate the company, though. Frankie and Chris are far, far away. It is nice to have someone around to distract me from missing them. Instead of being sad about what I do not have (mei you), I should appreciate the love and company that I do have.

And now I am off to open a can of tuna....

Mangroves

One of the neatest things that we did in Langkawi last week was take a tour of the mangroves with the hotel's naturalist. Mangroves grow where the sea meets the border of the rain forest. There are 23 species of trees in this particular area which have adapted to take in salt water instead of fresh. Many of them have crazy cool root systems, which are homes to all sorts of crabs, mudskippers and other crawly things.


While on the tour, we saw a feeding of kites, which are birds that kind of look like eagles, except their legs and claws have no feathers. The feeding boat dropped a bunch of chicken necks in the water and a tremendous amount of birds came swooping in out of nowhere. Apparently, the government started this kite feeding program a few years ago. There was an ecosystem imbalance at the time and the birds were starving. As a result, they started attacking Malaysian Airlines planes, which did not go so well for the birds. Now that the mangroves have recovered from their earlier trauma, natural food is back for the birds. So the government needs to wean them off of the free chicken necks. It made a good show, though.


This little guy was hiding in the trees as we floated by in our boat. He looked to see if we had food, and then sauntered off when he discovered we had nothing to offer. Apparently monkeys cannot digest bread products (unlike fish), so they can get really sick when tourists feed them. A fed monkey can get kidney ailments and other horrible diseases. Yet people still float by and toss these little guys slices of bread, hoping to see a show. Aren't humans lovely?


More pictures of our Mangrove tour are available here.

Langkawi

China's National Day was October 1, so the whole country spent the last seven days on holiday. As with all Golden Weeks, Chris and I joined other expats in getting the heck out of dodge. This time, we trekked down to Malaysia for a couple of days of scuba diving, bird watching and relaxing by the beach.


We splurged a bit and spent four days at the Four Seasons on Langkawi, which is an island group in northwest Malaysia famous for its beaches, rainforests and mangroves. It was a lovely time. The resort is outstanding (if you ever are in the area). The wildlife on and around the islands was excellent. We saw three sea turtles while diving, loads of red and orange (male) and green and blue (female) crabs, monkeys, lizards galore, birds (babalas, kites, mynahs, sandpipers and others whose names escape me now), mudskippers, stingrays (that liked to be petted - really), and a little red tree frog on the toilet seat at a restaurant.


Now back to reality. Do the movers really come tomorrow?

More pictures are available here and here.