July 6, 2010

Puteri Harbour Marina

Johor, Malaysia

Hi All,

  We’re back on DoraMac and Randal is happy as a clam.  He has his own bed, TV remote, a guaranteed hot shower and ice cold Tiger Beer.  I still feel the pull of the Himalayas which surprises me being such an ocean person.  But the open space was as immense as an ocean and the geology was just amazing. (Wish I had paid more attention when I had the chance to learn it freshman year at UMass.)  And Tibet and Nepal truly were more exotic than most places I’ve been.  The weather was perfect, too, even when we were really, really cold at Everest. (It was just for a short time and again it was the altitude that was more problematic.)   If I were 20 years younger I’d want to go back and do some real trekking.  But this probably our only trip ever to Tibet and Nepal.  I’ll just have to find some desert in lower altitudes…like the Middle East where hopefully we will be next year at this time.

  I want to share the web site of our Tibet tour buddies, Frenchman David Agnolon and Swede Ronnie Lindberg.  They have both taken 6 month sabbaticals from their work as aeronautical engineers in The Netherlands to visit all 7 continents.  They have wonderful photos and interesting stories to share.  http://www.project-7.se/ is their website. 

Our trip ended on the 4th when we flew Silk Air from Kathmandu to Singapore where we rested overnight.  On the 5th Randal collected boat supplies he had ordered at the beginning of our trip and I made a too short visit to Kinukushya book store. Mid-afternoon we took the Causeway bus from Singapore back to Malaysia.  Once on the boat we left all of our stuff where it dropped and I spent all afternoon napping and slept soundly all night too!  Today it’s loads of laundry and taking the photos from our travel computer and saving them to my big computer.  Tonight we’ll go to the Tuesday night market and start stocking up on fruit and veggies again.  While we were away cruising friends Bill and Judy Rouse (of Houston, Texas) on the sailboat BeBe kept an eye on DoraMac.  That was very reassuring!  What isn’t reassuring are the number of Red Sox players on the Disabled List!  Good Grief!

So that’s it.

Ru

Doramac

David, Ronnie, Ru and Randal at the Sera Monastery

  The evening after we visited the Monastery Randal and I were eating dinner at our favorite Lhasa noodle place across from our hotel when Tanya, a woman we’d met on the Monastery tour walked in.  We invited her to join us and she asked “where our sons were!”  We told her that they were only ours for the Tibet tour.  Tanya, an Australian,  taught school around the world and was on vacation from her teaching job in Vietnam.  It is definitely amazing the folks one meets.