Family Time, Bangkok and Hong Kong (flexible scheduling)

THEY MADE IT!










Paul is having a wonderful time








Tracy's working hard here also.





Hi all - 5 weeks down (almost 6). I'm getting lazy with this. Also between work and visitors, I don't have time for this like I did for so long. (remember you can click on pictures for bigger versions).

Visitors - Tracy and Paul showed up on Sunday. It has been very busy. I've still been working, pretty fulltime, and Tracy has been trying to work 1/2 time. She's had trouble getting her hours in. Between their touristy time, and trying to plan our upcoming weekend, she has been very busy. Instead of organized tours like I took my first couple of days here, they've been more hoof-ing it around town, taxi's, trains and doing it on their own. They have their train pass, and we've all got cell phones that work here, so it works out pretty well.





Tracy and Paul have apparently fallen in love with the Petronas Twin Towers complex. Besides the towers and the Sky-Bridge connecting them (Tracy and Paul went up there on Wednesday), there is the science centers (PetroSains and Speed) (Petroleum/Geology science and Formula 1 science), and a huge shopping mall, with lots of local food options. Paul found an arcade he likes. Tracy went to the Science centers.


Last night we all went on a tour. 1st up was a park with people-friendly monkeys. You buy little bags of peanuts and when you pour some in your hand there are swarms of these small monkeys that come running. The monkeys climb right up on you, jump from walls to your shoulders, slap each other away, take the bag if you'd let them, and gently eat right from your hand. Really cool. We went thru a couple of bags of nuts and really enjoyed it.









Seafood restaurant by the river (with Karoke next door)








Tracy eating seafood? Yep.






Next up was a seafood spread at a riverside restaurant. More food than we could possibly eat. Fried rice (of course), mixed veggies, squid, crab, sweet and sour fish, prawns. All very nice, then a cloudy sunset over the water (less spectacular than it could have been). All this was made even better by the overly loud karoke bar next door.

Lastly we went to the Firefly Resort for a quiet tranquil boat trip up a small river with gazillions of fireflies in the riverside bushes. Not exciting, but very nice.

Tracy on Tour - Tracy went on a City Tour today. Small van, with a few folks, driver with headset and speakers. I did this my 1st weekend here and really enjoyed it. I hope she did too.

This coming weekend is going to be very interesting. Paul is going to Hong Kong to visit Grace. (He should be in the air right now). Grace was Mackensie's roommate last fall at Saint Louis University. She visited our house a couple of times. She and Paul hit it off real well and Paul asked if we could go there, instead of the Bangkok trip we had planned. Tracy had the insightful idea to send him to Hong Kong and have her and I go ahead and do Bangkok as planned. Quite a plan, huh? We are, of course, somewhat concerned about sending him off like this, but he's a young man who can manage just fine. He's going to have to. Paul's going Friday thru Monday, Tracy and I are going Saturday thru Tuesday. I'll tell you next week how it all went.

Wish us all luck and we'll talk with you soon.






Chinatown strolling minstrel (bad performance of American songs)







Just a cool pot I saw at a kitchen store












I saw MI3 twice this week, once on Saturday at the local IMAX, and then on Sunday with Tracy and Paul.










Remember the good old day? Click on this and I think you'll agree it's just kinda funny.







Arrival on Sunday






Had to take my new passport (remember the stolen wallet?) to immigration to get it registered, so I can leave the country when I want to (tomorrow, to Bangkok). After the crowd died down some I took this photol.








Tracy's favorite place here.









Just thought I'd share.









The monkeys were pretty awesome!










She actually liked it!