Nightmare Before Christmas: A Borneo Horror Story

I haven't blogged in so long, but I finally have another blog-worthy Borneo tale to tell.  Read at your own risk!

About 1.5 hours from us, deep in the Borneo jungle, is a hidden waterfall.  Many people enjoy trekking to this secluded spot, but it is well-known that blood-thirsty leeches lurk along the pathway.  These terrestrial leeches can sense you coming, and will drop from trees, reach out from foliage as you walk past, or crawl up from the ground to latch on for a taste of your blood.  There's not a whole lot you can do to avoid them except hope and pray they don't choose you as their victim.

Yesterday we set out on this Teraja Waterfall trek with 3 other families, 20 of us in total.  The youngest was 6 years old (Lacy), and the oldest was a Grandma who was visiting from Brazil (I didn't ask her age, but she was keeping up with the young ones just fine.)   We were on high leech alert, but after a little over an hour of hiking which involved traversing streams, climbing up and down rocks, ducking under enormous fallen trees, and clinging to the inside of narrow, muddy ledges, we made it to the waterfall with only one leech scare.  The kids spotted one on a boy's leg, but he was able to brush it off before it latched on and started sucking.  The children's screams, however, would have led you to believe it ate his whole leg.  Silly kids!

Once at the waterfall, we enjoyed a swim in the cold, clear, leech-free water.  Surrounded by the buzzing sounds of the rainforest, with fish nibbling on our feet, we were living the Borneo dream.  When we felt sufficiently revived, we began the return trek.  About 30 minutes later,  the Borneo dream turned into a nightmare.  All was fine and well until I felt a sting on my stomach.  I lifted my shirt to see a small leech just a few inches to the right of my bellybutton.  Agh!   I'd been told that leeches don't hurt, so had fully expected to see an ant or some other stinging insect, but no, it was a dreaded leech!   I called ahead to my friend Cathy to tell her, and she turned around to see.  

I'm not sure who screamed first, but soon enough, both of us were shrieking loudly enough to put the kids' earlier shouts to shame.  I tried to remove the leech, but the little sucker (pun intended) was too quick.  Cathy and I watched in horror as the leech lurched directly into my bellybutton!  Our terrified screams brought everyone running.  I was jumping around, still howling, on the verge of tears as I felt the stinging deep inside my bellybutton.  Frantically, I grabbed the salt shaker out of my backpack.  Leeches hate salt, and are supposed to let go when doused in it.  I manically began pouring salt into my bellybutton, and believed the leech had fallen out when I could see a red spot where it looked like it had been sucking.  Cathy, however, was convinced the leech was still burrowing in there, as she had clearly witnessed it go deep inside.   Ugh!!  Disgusting!  I was sufficiently freaked out, yelling about the horror of it all, so Keith took over pouring salt in, as Cathy tried to open my bellybutton enough to see.  Unfortunately, due to a hernia repair many years ago, my bellybutton is lined in tough scar tissue, making it nearly impossible to stretch open!  Why me?!?  I felt like I was undergoing surgery without anesthesia, as Cathy got all serious and said, "Yep, Keith, look."  Keith called out to our friend, "Marcos!  Tweezers!"  More salt, more pulling and tugging on my bellybutton, as I arched my back and gazed up at the towering trees through tears, screaming and undoubtedly terrifying the children. Keith again said, "Tweezers!  Stat!"  Ok, he didn't say "stat", but he should have.  Marcos continued to fumble around in his bag for the tweezers, but the leech had finally had enough of the salt, and Cathy was able to pull it out and flick it far away from us, of course letting out a blood-curdling scream as she did so.  We hugged, I cried, we screamed some more, and then my poor bellybutton started dripping with blood.  The anticoagulant injected by the leech continued to work for a few hours.  Seriously, so repulsive.  I couldn't squirt enough Neosporin cream into my bellybutton when we got back to the car.  I honestly feel like my Borneo experience is complete now.  I can't even imagine what would have happened if we'd encountered a snake instead.

If you live in Brunei, and have considered doing this hike, please don't let my story put you off.  You may just want to cover your bellybutton with duct tape though!   Merry Christmas, y'all!

Too Many Goodbyes: The Sad Side of Expat Life

There are so many great benefits of becoming an Expat... once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunities, exposure to a new culture and people from all over the world, crazy expat parties, "camp life",  having an amah (maid), to name just a few of the desirable perks.  But there is a sad side to expat life that I didn't really consider when we made the decision to become expats.  There are too many goodbyes.

I knew that it would be hard to leave our home country, and that it would be sad to say goodbye to life as we knew it.  When we decided to upheave our family of 6 from Houston, and move clear across to the other side of the world, we had to say a lot of goodbyes.  Goodbye to our families, to our friends, to our kids' friends, to their schools, to our church, to our house, to good Mexican restaurants (sniff, sniff), to life as we knew it in Houston, TX.  We were leaving everything familiar behind, and going to a country I hadn't even heard of until just a few months before we moved.  A Muslim country.  A country with a completely different culture, different foods, different people.  I was going to miss our wonderful friends and family.  I was leaving them for a place where I didn't know a single person, outside of my nuclear family.  It was going to be a sad time, all those goodbyes.  I naively thought that would be the hardest part.

I remember driving in the car with my brother-in-law just a few days before the big move, and he told me that as hard as saying goodbye was on me, it was going to be harder on him and on those we left behind.  He said that everything ahead of us was going to be a new adventure, but those we left behind would just continue life as usual, but without us and missing us.  I wasn't so sure at the time because I was feeling pretty sad, but now I know that he was 100% right.  It is so much easier to be the one who leaves than the one who is left behind.

Being left behind, and having to say goodbye on a nearly constant basis, is the sad side of expat life.  With contracts typically lasting only 4 years, it's a non-stop rotating door of people in and out of the host country.  You make friends, only to have them leave.  There is no such thing as stability, really, when you're an expat.  You hit it off with someone, and then find out that they are leaving in just a year.  Over the past few years we have made some great friends in Brunei, but have had to say goodbye to so many of them.  One of the saddest things as a parent is having to watch your children say goodbye to their friends, year after year, and trying to comfort them when they cry even though you feel like crying too.  Sometimes you just cry with them.  Every time it gets a little harder.

We are now in the end of our 4th year, and people who arrived at the same time as we did are starting to leave.  It's too soon.  It's too hard.  It's too sad.  I don't know why I didn't think of this when we became expats.  I only thought of leaving our old life, but not of having to say goodbye to people in our "new life".  This weekend we will host a farewell game night for some of our best friends.  Our game night group has already been cut in half as people have left.  Things change, I know this, but here they change so rapidly.  I can't keep up.  My heart can't keep up.  It's so difficult, I don't know if I'm cut out for this after all.  And it prevents me from forming new friendships, knowing that in the near future I will have to tell them goodbye as well.

Too many goodbyes.  And it's not just here.  Every summer we go home, we have to say goodbye all over again, and that is hard too, like ripping a scab off a wound.  Every time someone comes to visit us, we have to say goodbye all over again when they leave.  Most recently it was my brother-in-law, the same one who said it's easier to be the one who leaves than the one left behind.  I felt it, more than ever, when he left us this time after his visit.  It really does get harder as time goes on, rather than easier, at least for me.   I know there's that saying, "Don't be sad it's over, be glad that it happened", but I think you can be both.  You should be happy, of course, for all the wonderful times spent with your expat friends before they move on, or the times spent with family and old friends when you get together for visits, but you can also be sad when it's over, because it IS sad!  At least I am giving myself permission to be sad.  The truth is, I hate saying goodbye.  Thankfully we have e-mail and social media to stay in touch once we've said goodbye, but that doesn't take the pain out of it.  A pain that I didn't expect, and that I feel anew with everyone who leaves.  I can only imagine how sad it will be when it comes our turn to say goodbye to life in Brunei, and I'm not ready!  As one of my friends recently said, maybe it's better to stick with "see you later."  Goodbye is too hard.

From Boracay to Burma

In the past 2 months, we've visited 2 very different destinations:  the island of Boracay (Bor-AH-kai), one of 7,000 in the Philippines, and the country of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma.)

Sometimes a trip just comes together nicely, everyone has a wonderful time, and if you died in a plane crash on the way home it would almost be ok because you know you would die happy.  That's how I felt about our Boracay trip the week before Christmas.  Sure, not everything about it was perfect... we had to overnight in Manila on the way, it's a pain to get to Boracay despite it being so close, I got the worst crick in my neck while there, but overall, it was a winner of a trip.

The sand was the whitest, finest sand I've ever seen.  The sea was the clearest, most turquoise green,  postcard-worthy water in which to swim and snorkel.  The people were friendly, the service was great, the food and wine were delicious.  It rained a lot, but that just cooled it off enough for the kids to play hours of soccer & catch with the locals, to hone their sand castle building skills, to take walks down the beach, and for Keith to get in on some sand volleyball games with locals.  The place we stayed, Two Seasons Resort, was a small boutique hotel which the kids could easily navigate on their own, going back and forth between the room, pool, and beach, while Keith and I relaxed (what??) with our books under beach umbrellas.  It was a real vacation in the sense that we got to recharge and rest up, while also experiencing some local culture and sights.

The flight from Manila to Caticlan

The boat from Caticlan to Boracay

The van ride from the jetty to the resort (notice the jumble of power lines)

We finally arrived!

The Philippines is largely Catholic, and this statue of Mary was just down from our hotel.

Soccer with some local children

Cloudy, but beautiful

Sand carvings like this were all up and down the beach

Sunny Lacy

Jeffrey (a local guide) taught Natalie how to do the sand carvings

She worked very hard on various carvings all week!

The GORGEOUS ocean, which was the perfect cool temperature

With Natalie's finished sand carving

We walked down the beach to this little Mexican restaurant nearly every day for lunch.  Yummy & cheap!

We had a couple of days with beautiful sunsets

With some of our local friends
 (Keith was on the other side of the island this particular day, windsurfing!)

The sand carvings are getting more ornate as the week goes on! 

Keith & Natalie both did stand-up paddle boarding

Jeffrey took us on a snorkeling excursion

It was like our own personal aquarium full of exotic and beautiful fish

This was on another part of the island, with very different sand & waves

Keith turned 40!

We celebrated his birthday with a fire dance performance & dinner

One of the performers really took to Landon

Had to move the birthday dinner inside due to heavy rain after the fire show

Crammed into a "trike", like a motorcycle sidecar.  We keep adding to our list of modes of transportation!

The Hobbitt House at "D Mall", with dwarf waiters.  Interesting.
(That's Harton in the picture, not one of the waiters.  They were shorter than him.)

Keith captured this shot of Lacy and me which I love!

Keith teamed up with an Australian who now lives in Boracay, and they took on the locals for a few games.

Built-in playmates were an added perk!

So, there are trips like that.  Ah, Boracay.  Where you don't really want to leave, and you start to think that maybe you'll go back there even though you still have a long list of other places you want to visit.

And then there are trips like the one we returned from at 3:00am this morning.  A trip where you cling to your seat and pray you don't die during the extremely bumpy plane ride home because that CAN'T be your last trip.  You can NOT end on that note.  Where things just don't quite go how you had hoped.  And that's putting it mildly.  Myanmar.  Oh Myanmar, I had such high expectations.  

To start with, we had been given the name of a widely recommended travel agent there, and several people here told me he planned the best trip they've ever taken.  So I contacted him with a basic outline of what I wanted, and left him to work his magic.  I trusted he was planning the trip of a lifetime for us, and I didn't do much research on it myself since he had come so highly recommended.  People told me that Myanmar is like nowhere else, it's a favorite destination in all of Southeast Asia since it's just recently opened up to tourism, and we would have a magical time there.  So maybe my expectations were too high.  Maybe that's it.  

Or maybe it's the fact that we literally spent more time in transit than we did exploring the country itself, and I subsisted on Dramamine (in a perpetual half-asleep drugged state) due to my motion sickness.  Our itinerary included a night in Yangon (via Bangkok from Brunei), 2 nights at Inle Lake, 2 nights in Mandalay, and 3 nights in Bagan.  On paper it looked busy, but doable.  Although I ignored my previous note to self to stay in one place (in this post), it was similar to our Vietnam itinerary, which we managed and enjoyed.  Plus, as our time in Southeast Asia draws to a close, we find ourselves wanting to see more and more while we can, so I was ok with the whirlwind itinerary.  

Flight times seemed good and domestic flights would be short and easy.   Or so I thought.  Unfortunately, I didn't take into account that every single domestic flight within Myanmar would be severely delayed, and would have layovers rather than be direct!  Entire days were wasted while we waited in tiny, cramped airports, or on the runway for connecting passengers.  And once we landed, countless hours were spent in a van driving from the airports to our hotels which were surprisingly really far away.  And once we got to our hotels, more time was wasted trying to sort out our accommodations, as apparently they simply can not comprehend a family with more than 2 children.  At one hotel they at least offered a choice... 2 rooms with 1 bed each, or 1 room with 2 twin beds.  Did they even see us standing in front of them?  Could they not count?  We literally had to draw a diagram of how many beds we needed.  Never mind the fact that this was all supposed to be booked ahead of time by the highly recommended agent, so I'm not quite sure where the breakdown in communication occurred. 

In an apparent effort to save us the hassle of yet another flight(s), our agent booked us on the river ferry to take us from Mandalay to Bagan.  We were up at 5:30am to check in for the 7am ferry, crashed into shore about an hour into the trip due to a faulty rudder, waited awhile for the repair, and finally arrived in Bagan around 10pm.  That's 13 hours on a boat.  I had to take 2 doses of Dramamine that day.  For once, thankfully the hotel wasn't an hour's drive away, but our driver took us to THE WRONG HOTEL.  I knew it was the wrong hotel, because this was the one hotel I had actually requested, so when the driver pulled up I was like, "you have got to be kidding me."  He didn't speak English at all, so he didn't get it.  Luckily, we discovered that the correct hotel was just around the corner, so we loaded back up into the van for the short trip.  Add onto all of this craziness one kid with a fever, 2 kids with colds, Keith with a sinus infection, me with a migraine (from the noise and pollution in Mandalay) and my ever-present back pain, and we were a pretty miserable lot.  We felt like cattle being herded from plane to van to plane to car to boat to van to plane.  It was exhausting.

It's one thing when you are traveling cheaply and you think, "well, you get what you pay for!"  You know better than to set your expectations high.  But that's the other problem with this trip.  It was oddly expensive!  And we were constantly having to pay more.  Entrance fees for Inle Lake, $50 per person.  Entrance fees for Bagan, $20 per person.  These were unexpected fees that added up quickly, and it just felt like we were handing out money left and right, and not getting much in return.  But, before I sound completely negative about the entire experience, let me say that there WERE a couple of really good days in there.

Inle Lake was beautiful and really cold (I also wasn't prepared for the cold, but we had a few warm layers that carried us through.)  We enjoyed the tour around the lake with our guide Yin Yin, to the various handicraft workshops where we got to see them making silver jewelry, mulberry paper umbrellas, lotus and silk weaving, a Burmese cat sanctuary, and of course some pagodas and temples.  

Our other favorite was Bagan, with its nearly 3,000 ancient temples and pagodas.  Our guide in Bagan, Thaw Thaw (Taw Taw), gave us a lot of information about Buddhism and the history and culture of Myanmar.  She was wonderful, and we thoroughly enjoyed our tour day with her.  Our last day in Bagan was free, so we took a horse cart and bicycles around to explore more on our own.  

My advice for others who want to visit Myanmar... 2 nights at Inle Lake is plenty, 4 nights in Bagan would be good, and skip the rest.  Since you will probably fly in/out of Yangon, maybe schedule some time to see the Shwedagon pagoda, but it's kind of far from the airport.  Hot air ballooning over Bagan is popular, but extremely expensive, and with the haze while we were there, I'm not sure how good visibility would have been.  But if you save money & time by skipping Mandalay and all the travel in between, it may be worth doing the ballon over Bagan, which we did not do.  

So, it's safe to say this wasn't our best trip.  Even though Myanmar is not that far from Brunei, it felt like we were returning from the US yesterday.  We had 4 flights, with layovers in between, making for an 18-hour trip!  I can't even remember why I booked our flights through Bangkok, it probably had something to do with flight times and cost, but it made for way too long of a journey.  The kids are such troopers though, they did really well, all things considered!  

Now, for some visuals.  When I look at the pictures, it actually does look like a great trip, but now you know what happened behind the scenes.

Days 1-2: YANGON

(The ONLY thing we saw here was the Shwedagon Pagoda, since we arrived late at night, and had a morning flight out the very next day, and our hotel was an hour away from the airport.)

Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon

Pagodas are built to house relics of the Buddha, such as teeth and hair.  We learned that the Buddha in question is the 4th Buddha, who lived 2500 years ago.  Buddhists are waiting for a 5th and final Buddha to come to earth, and believe it will be another 2500 years.   You can not go inside a pagoda like you can go inside a temple where they have Buddha images (statues.)

These children are protected from the sun with the local tree bark/water sunscreen

It was sunny at Shwedagon Pagoda

Pictures tell the life story of the Buddha

Days 3-4: INLE LAKE

(We had to take 2 flights from Yangon to get here, then an hour long van ride to the jetty, then another hour long boat ride to the Golden Island Cottages, arriving just before dinner.)

The boat ride to the hotel

Golden Island Cottages, I think I'm going to love you (and I do)

A beautiful sunset over the lake

Brrr... We're not used to cold weather, and we (Mommy) didn't really pack accordingly!

In a rare stroke of genius, they gave us 2 cottages.  The 1st and 3rd were ours.

Such a unique way to row the boats on Inle Lake

A stop at a local handicraft market

Ladies making umbrellas out of mulberry paper (which we also saw being made)

Long-neck ladies weaving silk.
These ladies are not native to the area, but are there for the tourists!

We went in this temple where the boys put gold leaf on a Buddha for the fun of it, but ladies were prohibited.  Hmph.

Natalie's favorite stop on our full-day lake tour with our guide Yin Yin was the Burmese Cat Sanctuary

Day 5: MANDALAY

(Should have skipped this busy, noisy, smelly city.  Again, took all day to get here on flights from Inle, and we arrived just before dinner.  We had a tour the next day, but only Keith, Landon, and Lacy lasted past noon.  I went back to the hotel with Harton & Natalie since we were all not feeling well.)

We visited a monastery near Mandalay that houses 1500 monks.  We got to see them process down the road to collect donations, and we got to see where volunteers cook giant vats of food for all 1500 with leftovers.



Day 6: MANDALAY to BAGAN RIVER TRIP
(This was the 13 hour journey on the Shwe Keinnery river ferry.  Should have skipped this along with the whole Mandalay portion of the trip.  The one good thing that came out of this day was that we all rested up, played lots of card games, and Harton's fever finally went away.)

One of the nicer views from the long day on the ferry

Why are we headed straight for the riverbank??  

AGGHH!  We're going to crash!

  At least we were all safe.

(I don't know what's going on with the fonts on here... sorry!)

We took turns playing many games of Nertz, Gin Rummy, Go Fish, and Uno.

At least we had a fun family game day to pass the time onboard!

Days 7-8: BAGAN

(The highlight of the trip, thank goodness I requested to end here, and requested the Bagan Hotel Riverview.  We arrived late at night, had a wonderful, informative tour with Thaw Thaw the next day, and a free day on our last day in Myanmar.)

Thaw Thaw showed us how to make the bark sunscreen, so we wore it that day, and needed it!

The "Most Wonderful" Pagoda in Bagan, according to Thaw Thaw

The amazing view from atop the panoramic pagoda, my "high"light of our trip, especially since I nearly had a panic attack climbing the steep stairs to the top, I was proud to make it up there!

Buddha statues inside the Ananda Temple

Watching the sunset on top of another temple

Natalie and Thaw Thaw became friends and look like sisters!

On our free day, I rode in a horse cart with Harton, Landon, and Lacy while Keith & Natalie cycled.

Bagan Hotel Riverview at sunset on our last evening

From Boracay to Burma to... BALI!  The next trip is already in the works, and Keith's brother Kyle will be meeting up with us again, so it's sure to be a fun one!  Stay tuned.

But before that blog post, there will be a special post from a guest author coming up soon.  Trust me, you won't want to miss it!  And by you, I mean family.  Because I'd be surprised if anyone else lasted to the end of this post!  Thanks for reading!