Fun in Thailand!

This picture was taken on a lovely rickshaw (or "tuktuk") in Bangkok. Tuktuks might be my favorite part of Bangkok. We arrived on the evening of Saturday the 20th of December. We only stayed two nights and left on a night bus for our island adventure on Koh Tao.



Once on Koh Tao (we arrived Tuesday morning around 9:30 on the Island), we started our scubadiving classes. We had to watch some videos, listen to "lectures", "read" a book and fill out a study guide before taking a theoretical test. We also walked out from the beach with scuba gear on into the shallow water to do some underwater exercises in a safe environment....you know, where if something goes wrong all you have to do is stand up. The scariest exercise was probably taking off my mask (with the breathing regulator still in my mouth) and having to put it back on under water.



Here's a picture of our group of divers. Alain was our instructor. He is the cool guy laying at our feet. He was really an awesome instructor.....also....he's a Belgian! Hurray for Belgium.







We don't have pictures of scubadiving unfortunately. Our underwater camera cannot handle that without a casing....but we did go snorkeling as well. We went to this bay on the other side of the island with a Swedish couple who was in our Scubadiving group: Elizabeth and Andre. If you look closely at the bay you can see a big rock.....thats about where we were snorkeling (actually....that rock is just where you could actually start seeing anything because the water was not very clear).Another part of our adventure seen in this picture is our fun ride in a pick-up taxi along the hilly and completely unpaved roads throughout the island. This was really fun, especially with elizabeth and Andre in the back with us!

Here is some coral/weird and colourful sealife we saw. When you wave your hand close enough to these little colourful animals they would completely suck in. It was pretty cool.

Koh Tao was awesome! Probably the best part of the whole trip!

Next we moved on to a resort in Chumpohn city, which is in Chumpohn province. We basically just chose to stay there because it was on our way back to Bangkok. We stayed three nights to be relaxed. It was nice....ok....could have been better. It was really not that bad.....but there are many reasons why we would not stay there again. Here are some of the positive aspects though:

Our little bungalow was pretty cool. It had a nice view too, but the weather was never nice enough to get a good picture.

We went on an all day snorkeling trip. That was actually pretty cool. Unfortunately it was pretty windy and cloudy so the visibility was not so good and we never got great pictures. We did see some cool fish though. Here we are on the boat that took us, a Thai family and three Swedish women to three different islands.

Here are some of the coolest fish we saw. They were beautiful! Unfortunately this picture does not show nearly how brightly colored they were!

Here's Derrick! (sorry this picture is not clear at all.....it was the water's fault I tell you!)

And here's Miranda!

We were supposed to go on a squid fishing trip one evening.....but the weather was not good enough.....it was too windy. SO, the resort decided to take us on a random sight seeing trip instead. We tried to go to a museum.....but it was closed because it was January 1st.

So....we saw monkeys! Ha, it was actually quite fun because we got to feed them.

We loved reading the English translation of the description of the monkeys. This is only some of it....our favorite part is the first line of the second paragraph.

And we saw some caves and a nice little temple. In the cave we saw a 2,000 year old painting of Buddha. That was pretty cool...unfortunately it was not well preserved and was very difficult to make out.

The man here was our guide for the caves and the small museum there that had nothing to do with the cave, lol. He was hilarious. He spoke like 5 words of english. When he was done "explaining" one thing he moved on to the next spot and would say "you you you, come come come" until we were all standing around him ready to decode his next explanation. Usually he ended up speaking Thai to our guide from the resort (the young woman in the picture on the left) who was driving us around. She would then kind of translate in broken Egnlish with a very strong Thai accent. Fun times.

And after we spent two more nights in Bangkok, we flew back to Japan.

We arrived back on Tuesday January 6th.

We made a stop in the Nagoya airport where we were told to "watch our steps" on the travelator by the voice coming out of the machine. We enjoyed this sign.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

First day in Thailand!

Hello everyone!

Well Friday we were still teaching classes in Mito, Japan and yesterday we took a bus to the Narita airport to start our Thailand adventures. I know many of you were probably watching the news a few weeks ago when all the pfotesters were blocking the airport and making it impossible to fly in or out of the airport. We just wanted to reassure you that our flight and arrival went very smoothly and safely and we are at our guesthouse enjoying a relaxing beginning to our holiday.

Sorry this is short but there isnt much to report yet. We went to a really big market this morning and are just using the rest of today to relax. Maybe we will be able to post pictures while were here but if not we will try to as soon as we get back to Japan.

God bless you!

Merry Christmas!

Making Mochi

Mochi is a Mystery.

Mysterious Mochi.

The Mystery of Mochi lies not in how it is made or what ingredients can be found in it, or even how it is eaten.

The mystery is simply WHY.

Mochi is one of the weirdest foods, and it's not even the dried fins of a fish, or fish flakes to garnish a meal, or fish eggs, or even bird talons, which are all weird Japanese food items we have seen in stores and restaurants.

Mochi is rice. Its very simple.

There is a special type of rice, called Mochi rice. The grains are smaller than regular rice. That's the only difference I can see. There must be more to it, because this rice you do not eat the same way as we eat any other rice.

Yes, the beginning starts and looks the same. Rinse the rice (mochi rice) in water...probably a billion times....before boiling it over a stove or fire or whatever you use. But, soon after boiling, you realize there is more to it...

Step 1: Make sure you use Mochi Rice.


Step 2: Rinse the rice with water as often as you can and prepare for boiling.

Step 2a: Wrap in some sort of towel for boiling (I believe to make handling after the boiling easier).Step 3: Boil. (I am really not sure for how long....it probably depends on whether you have the luxury of having the next step or not.
Step 4: Use the towel to easily transfer boiling hot mochi rice into an electric mochi maker. (I am pretty sure they did not have these in the earlier days and just had to boil the mochi for a longer period of time and go straight from bowling to pounding.....pounding probably lasted longer without the machine....in fact, the pounding might not be necessary at all with these machines).

Step 5: Whether we needed pounding or not...we got to do it! My students just loved this part!

Step 5a: My Kyoto Sensei (vice principle) helped get the mochi out of the mochi machines and into the mochi pounding pit!

It's pretty sticky, but just use water to unstick.

Rice and water; that's all this is.

Step 5b: Then you can start pounding! So....pick up your wooden hammer and pound and pound.....

....and pound....

......and pound.....

.....and keep pounding until everyone gets a turn!

Watch some old Japanese men pounding the mochi like it was their childhood pastime:

Step 6: Dress the mochi to your liking with whatever food or sauce you want to eat it it with.

These lovely ladies made mochi balls and rolled them in soy sauce: Sjoyu Mochi.

And these marvelous women made Mochi balls and rolled them in sweet soybean powder to create Kinako Mochi.

All finished!!!
Step 7: Eat and Enjoy this mushy sticky rice.

Really it's not bad....it just has the weirdest texture and it doesn't have much of a flavor. Any flavor you try to mix with it, doesn't seem to mix, it just sticks to the outside. BUT it provides for easy dishes, because it sticks to itself so much it doesn't really stick to your bowl!

So, who's up for a bit of MOCHI???

Parachutes and Wolverines

Monkey bars parachuting through the summer’s sun setting sky
Starts fires full of cold flames blowing through willows hair, brings her to open her great lidless eyes
And sends her running through the forest, through flurries of leaves
Jumping over hills and valleys and trees and things
Then exhausted she falls through rainbow corals reefs of snow
Wraps herself in dragon clouds of cotton candy to help soften her blows
Then exhaustion bids her sleep through the frost, and ice ridden streams
Wakes to find the morning and the embrace of sun’s warm beams
Live oh willow, and sing songs of sorrows that will surely die
Sing of monkey bars, cotton candy, and warm summer skies.

Derrick

Derrick's "Complicated"

So… how’s Japan? It’s complicated, really complicated, and it’s complicated on more than one level, so you know it’s extra complicated. First of all they have many different numbering systems, for example lets say I want two hot dogs, two packets of catsup, two cans of pop, two straws, two paper plates, and two chopsticks; there are probably six different ways to say the word “two” in that sentence… someone prease help me. I guess we do the same thing in English… well sort of… ok not really.

Second of all, the alphabet… English has only one set of 26 characters, Dutch is the same, French is also the same, Greek has 24, and Spanish has 29. Japanese on the other hand has three different alphabets; two sets have 46 characters each, and the third has… well no one seems to know an exact number, somewhere around five thousand characters, so I guess you could say that it’s complicated.

Thirdly, there’s the paperwork, lots and lots of paperwork which is never in English and usually includes all three alphabets. Sometimes it even feels like I have to do paperwork just to use the restroom or to sit down at my desk.

Fourthly, everything here is complicated.

Through all of what I’ve said thus far I’m not saying that the last six months here in Japan have been a big mistake, far from it. The last six months have really been a blessing from God, one that I would not be willing to trade. The people here are so kind, hospitable, hard-working, funny, and complicated. I really do love it here. I guess I should say that we love it here even if it is really complicated.

~Written by Derrick Thomas Logwood~

What happened to Derrick's hand?

This is the question that has been asked and will now, after much waiting, be answered.


The story of the hand starts on our paradise island Langkawi. This was our first destination in Malaysia. It was so wonderful it felt like we were on our real honeymoon (since we didn't have enough money or time to have the honeymoon we wanted when we got married). The day after we arrived was awesome....and the worst day of the trip. The first 3/4ths of the day was our awesome snorkeling trip. Seriously, if you ever have the chance to do this....do it.....

After we got back, we went walking down the street from our hotel. On our walk, we decided to rent scooters/motorcycles for 24 hours so we could ride around the island the next day.

They were very cheap and we enjoyed having slightly bigger and more powerfull engines (150 cc instead of 50cc) than we are used to, without needing a motorcycle license.

So, after renting them, we took off on a practice run before we headed back to our hotel for dinner. About 10-20 minutes into our ride, we turned off onto this side road that went along field. It was quite an empty road with no traffic. Luck had it that we were on this road at the perfect time to see a beautiful sunset over the field to our right. Unfortunately, Derrick and I both had different reactions to the beauty of the sunset.

I turned my head slightly to take a look at the beautiful sunset, debating in my head whether it was worth stopping for.

As soon as I turned my head back... (really it went much faster than you reading this, but it was slow enough for something bad to happen....)...I noticed that Derrick had stopped right in front of me and I had no time to break before I hit him.

We were going quite fast, because I hit him hard enough to where even he flew over the front of his scooter and landed on the ground in front of it. I landed on the ground in between the scooters and the impact was so hard that the scooters fell to the ground with about 5 meters of space between the two.



For as fast as we were going and as hard as the impact must have been, we are two lucky birds. God had is hand on us AND a couple of guardian angels or something, because we got away with just minor scrapes. My knee and shoulder were scraped up and all down my arm was slightly scratched up, but nothing serious. Both of my hands landed on the road, so my palms were pretty scratched up, but it was only as deep as one layer of skin. Derrick actually got the worst of it because his palm was scratched up worse than mine....but again, nothing too serious. Just annoying because its the palm of the hand....an area of the body much used, very prone to dirtiness and difficult to put bandaids on. So we had to use some serious wrappings for our hands.



I carried a medical kit to Malaysia and that is what we used to fix ourselves up at the hotel before going to dinner. The next few days were quite painful...and the days after that were just annoying as we waited for our wounds to heal before we could fully enjoy the trip. But we made the most of it and did not let this ruin our awesome trip!



Just for the record....we are extra careful on our scooters in Japan now....and very greatful that they are only 50 cc and not huge 150cc!



For those of you who read through this whole story, I will now add the picture of the moneky stealing my waterbottle that I tried to post last time, but couldnt because the internet and/or laptop starting messing up:

Malaysia!!

Well, first of all, I am sorry it took me a whole month to give you an update on our awesome Malaysia trip. I really have no excuse, so I wont use up space trying to give you one.

We flew into Kuala Lumpur (aka KL) with Kristin and our friend Mark Tock picked us up at the trainstation and took us to our hotel. We had fun hanging out with Mark and some of his friends, like one of his best friends named Bom. Lol, Bom was awesome!

The next day we left Kristin in KL with Mark and Bom as we set out on our own adventure up to the North. We got in a bus to go to Kuala Perlis where we planned to take the ferry to the island Langkawi. We already had hotel reservations so we pretty much had to get there that night if we didnt want to to waste one-nights worth of money. When we were about an hour from Kuala Perlis, the busdriver stopped for a few minutes....one of many random stops where someone was randomly dropped off. We asked how long it would be to Kuala Perlis and told him we needed to catch a ferry. He said, you wont be able to cath a ferry from there tonight, so you should get off here and take a taxi to Kuala Kedah. So thats what we did.....and we eventually made it to our island paradise.

The next day was probably the best day of our whole trip!! We went snorkeling! This was so fun! I have never been a big water person and Derrick for some reason feels like he belongs to the ocean. Sometimes he seems to feel like he should have been born a fish or something....or maybe at least a surfer, lol. We left early morning, took a 40 minute bus ride to the ferry and a 1, 1/2 hour ferry trip to the marine park island.....so it took up the whole day, but we got to snorkel for at least 3 or 4 hours! It was so cool to be able to see awesome fish in their own habitat and to take pctures of them with our new underwater camera! I think the highlight of the day was finding NEMO! Yes! We have our own picture of Nemo and his anenome home!

Feeding the fish:

Me swimming with the fish:

Scooters we rented to tour the island before heading on to the next:

AFter the island Langkawi, we went to the island Penang (aka Pinang). The ferry ride was long and sea-sicky, but up on the deck we felt better and got nice and wet. On Penand we trecked across a national park from one side of the island to the other. There we found a forgotten beach to take a rest before we trecked back. I think we drank 10 bottles of water that day, lol!

Beautiful view of boats docked on the shore of Penang:

The view from our youth hostel on Penang (the beach is just past that car in the middle of the picture....):

After Penang we went back to KL to spend time with Kristin, Mark and Bom. We also met Joanna and Joy and had fun hanging out with the whole group. We saw the Petronas towers, but didnt go up them. These are the towers that are featured in the movie "Entrapment" with Sean Connery and Katherine Zeta-Jones. We got a cool picture of our small group with the towers at night:

We went to Singapore with Kristin and Mark. Singapore is fun because it is extremely clean (you get majorly fined for littering) and everyone spoke english but hardly anyone was what you would consider an English speaking westerner. It soooo multicultural! Lovely! Course, Singapore is quite expensive, so don't go there unless you are willing to spend some money. OH, also, Singapore is the country where it is illegal to chew gum, period. And it has the best underground subway system in the world....that I know of!

Standing in front of our Chinese styled harbour cruise boat:

We took a short break on Tortuise Island during the harbour cruise and found this lovely house:
We hoped to find giant turles on Tortoise Island....this is what we found: (But we had fun feeding them and Mark enjoyed pushing Derrick in the turtle water....just kidding)

After Singapore we had a few more days in KL. We tried to go to the Batu Caves, which is a Cave with Hindu temples all in it......not worth it. The best part is the 272 steps you go up and all the monkeys. Other than that its a touristy cave with a small gift shop inside and some hindu temples. There are big spot lights everywhere and metal bar gates of some sort that look like the gates you see in an amusement park to keep people in a line or out of a certain area....pretty ugly. The cave has been robbed of its nature.

But, the monkeys were fun and I got a funny picture of a monkey trying to steal my waterbottle!

All in all, Malaysia was awesome! We were not ready to return to Japan, and to work, but that's life eh.

Oh, BTW, in case you havent heard....I'm on facebook now. Isn't that weird! I think it is, lol.