Touristy Times with Tonya...

India Gate

delhi traffic...
A wandering around Haus Quas

Good Times with Tonya in Nimda*

Bangkok in a blink...Happy one year!

We spent one night in Bangkok, thailand and flew back to India the next day. We took the SkyTrain to meet up with Stephanie and Aaron who were in town. We ate at Outback!! A bloomin' onion and free refills!! amazing!!

This day was also to mark my one year anniversary. So,to commemorate this day I enjoyed a rare but extra delicious DrPepper that i had received in chiang mai....

HAPPY ONE YEAR!!!

Malaysian Madness

Hmmmm, its been awhile...but i don't remember the DFW airport or any other airport for that matter having such a photo worthy spot...We arrived safely in Penang, Malaysia!!! YAY! As we were in the taxi headed to our guest house, Sellers had her map out and asked the all too familiar question..."Where ARE we??" After some discussion, the taxi driver took pity on us, turned around, and in perfect english showed us on the map where we were and where we were going and also the things to do in Penang. English, a driver, AND a tour guide....can it get any better??We were a tad worried when we turned into the neighborhood of where our hostel was located... the words "trailor park" came to our minds....

We stayed at Ali's guest house.... when I looked at the name i guess i wasn't thinking that it was pronounced ah-lee but perhaps "allie" - which i've lived here long enough to know better... The "ah-lee's" guest house was nice and clean - they just failed to mention that a mosque resided next door - 5 am wake up calls come waay too early.... BUT it was only a few meters from the beach so that made it ok.When we arrived it was overcast and rainy. In fact it rained or was overcast most of the trip... So our solution to the bad weather?? lots of sleep and shopping. Our guest house was 2 blocks from a night market where we bought many fun things including paintings - I love this place!!!

Lindsey and i stopped in a shop in search of a sarong for her. We met this nice man who was trying to sell it to us but he wanted waay too much. He wouldn't budge from the price. He kept saying how the color was so nice and the material was the "best quality" and that it even had penang written on it...We kept talking to him and found out he was from Bangladesh and spoke hindi... So Sellers and I busted out our amazing hindi skills and of course he got so excited that a few more minutes of bargaining, he went to ask his boss if he could sell the sarong for the price we wanted and came back with the okay. The whole sarong excursion gave us two lessons: A) hindi will get you far in any south asian country B) when the piece of clothing that has the location of your vacation spot written on it - you should check the location of said writing... A few nights we ventured to the "civilized" part of the island..aka there was an amazing mall with a starbucks/mcdonalds/grocery store/etc. Ohhh yes my friends - that's us!!

we're in a mall AND we're wearing shorts!!!! Rebels... They even had a toys-r-us!!! it was like Christmas!
So then one day, we took this fun little ferry to an island called Langkawi. After battling the curvy roads of the himalayas in a bus, being tossed around inside a boat for three hours was a breeze!!

We grabbed a taxi to our next hostel which had character all on its own. They had an unlimited supply of pirated DVD's for you to borrow and wireless internet... beautiful!

And what guest house wouldn't be complete without a pet monkey???

The owner of the guest house let us know the area and that the beach was in walking distance. All you have to do is basically walk down the street, cut through a hotel and you're on the beach. She also told us that we could use the hotel's pool because they didn't care.... It was still a little drizzly so we went to check it out and took a walk on the beach - of course taking silly pictures.

We decided to rent a car since the weather wasn't trustworthy enough to rent scooters. There was hardly any traffic on the island so we just cruised around listening to old school jams on the radio. It was soo fun.

Our little car was named "bullet". He was not quite fast as a bullet and had some hard times with inclines and hills but we loved it and it loved us.

I did learn how to drive bullet... Learning a standard and driving on the left side of the road is a bit challenging....but FUN!! Bullet took us to new and exciting destinations like the waterfalls...and the cable car!!!
When we came down, Mandi and i couldn't help ourselves but check out the FREE bunny petting farm..it was hilarious! there were bunnies everywhere and one must have been hungry because it wanted to eat one of mandi's toes for lunch! We were a little thrown off that we didn't have to pay like 10 rupees to get in and another 10 to take pictures of the bunnies. we could come and go as we pleased...weird.

We did some more exploring on the island and tried to sneak into the four seasons... we all put on our sunglasses and drove bullet in as if it wouldn't look out of place next to all the mercedes and BMW's parked up in there.... we peaced out pretty quick after some funny looks from the valet guys...

we also found a great beach!! the sun came and went because of all the clouds and the water was cold but it was still nice to lay about and read.
The day we left to go back to penang, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day! And naturally there was a well-known Eagle statue on the harbor.... UNT Eagles- GO MEAN GREEN!

Our last day in Penang was spent sleeping late then having lunch on the beach and reading with our toes in the sand...ahhhh

Retreat Time!

We finally got to thailand and could enjoy much after much traveling from the "black hole" as we call it since it takes forever to get to civilization. We were quite intrigued with the fact that we would be able to fly from a small airport nearby to get to Delhi to go to thailand. It would have taken like an hour!! however, after 2 weeks of impeccable and beautiful weather...a storm blew in the day we were supposed to fly out... so it was cancelled after we checked our bags and had gone through security. We were frisked for nothing! So we then had to quickly find a taxi and travel 6 hours to the City Beautiful, spend the night at the famous shower hotel (they have amazing showers...multiple shower heads and unlimited hotwater without the need of a geyser)and catch the 7am bus to Delhi that got us there in about 5 hours. But we made it no worries with plenty of time to get to the delhi airport. Lindsey, emily and I celebrated being in little America with Asian flare by treating ourselves to manicures or pedicures, followed by a 2 hour thai massage and a trip to the salon for a haircut. It was a beautiful day. The next few days were busy with babysitting then the Retreat began - yay! Reunions are the BEST!!! This picture is for all you CHBC faithful blog watchers! I got to see John Caleb, a fellow Tylerite from the same home fellowship. We had some good times.

we had meetings during the day and ate meat for dinner. One evening we had dinner on a boat that floated up the river..turned around and came back. It was quite enjoyable.

Elephants are Big

Happy New Years!! Thai style!!

Tonya came finally!!!We went out for dinner with a group of friends

Me and Bekkers

Then we headed to Thai pai Gate for the New Years Celebrations! They light lanterns and they float up into the sky. Quite a fun experience.

One of the lanterns landed on the power lines and blew up! One whole side of the street went black!

Yay for fireworks!! Happy 2007!!!