Travelling with Chris and Sarah

While Chris and Sarah were with us we took a couple of trips together. The first one was a four hour drive down to Kuala Lumpur on December 31.....the goals being to visit Ikea (for me!) and to go see the Twin Towers (for everyone else). Unfortunately, KL is a nightmare city to drive in and we got hopelessly lost, ultimately hiring a Domino's Pizza delivery guy to lead us to Ikea. It turned out we were on the absolute other side of the city.

The following picture is of the beginning of our trip....our faces weren't so happy later on in the day! Friends met up with us and led us back to their home for an overnight stay, and if they hadn't have met us I'm pretty sure we would have just turned around and come right back to Penang. All in all....not the best day ever for the Thornes. On the bright side, though, with that kind of start, it can only get better for the rest of 2010!

We thought we were early enough to get tickets to go up the towers when we arrived an hour before opening. Apparently that wasn't enough - the lineup had begun at 6 am - so we missed out on going up to the Observation Deck and had to be satisfied with seeing it from the ground.

One of Rachel's favorite foods here in Penang is cendol (chen-dull) which is a mixture of shaved ice, coconut milk, sugar cane syrup and green noodles. She was determined to have a cendol night to share the experience with Chris and Sarah...but unforunately, she is STILL the only Thorne who likes it!

Our second trip together was our Christmas gift to the kids - a few days in Bangkok. Here they are waiting for baggage to arrive at the Bangkok airport. We picked it up and headed to the Alliance Guest Home - a great place for International Workers to stay - good price and good location.

One of the days we took a tour and started at the Floating Market - what an experience. I'm accustomed to the local markets where I shop here in Penang, but this one was incredible...vendors floating up and down the canals with their wares for sale in their boats.

This is the floating butcher - bad camera work, but in his boat are raw chickens and cutting boards, ready for your order!



Tourists can also ride down the canals in boats (extra $$ of course) and shop from the boat vendors as well as the stalls set up right along the water.

Our next stop was for an elephant ride. While we thought we had made sure this would be included, as we drove in our van with our tour group we discovered that it wasn't arranged. With patience and good negotiating skills, Bob was able to convince them to make this stop for us...and all the other people just had to wait around for us to have our elephant rides! This experience was one of Sarah's favorite things of the trip.



On another day we took a longboat tour through the canals in the city of Bangkok. What an interesting trip we had.

These are homes - right along the river - with laundry hanging out to dry...and a satellite dish on the roof!

During our boat tour we were promised a visit to a 'floating market' - well, this lady, who came up next to us from out of the bushes, was the market!! She had a bunch of touristy knick knacks that we weren't interested in, but we bought our driver a coke and a beer instead!

Millions of fish live in this river - Josh was told on his first trip to Bangkok with his band that people release these fish into the river on their birthdays for good luck, so the river is absolutely packed with them. We stopped along a dock and were given loaves of bread to throw into the water. It was unbelieveable! The water was boiling with fish jumping and swimming over top of one another. We were amazed.



After a long (and pointless) walk looking for a market that proved to be closed we rode in tuk-tuks back to the train station. They were cramped and noisy and we breathed in the exhaust of Bangkok...but now we can say we've done it!

It was a great trip - we're thankful!

Karin