This is my third and final year in Malaysia. Heidi has returned home to be closer to family and is now the Elementary Principal in Chelan, Washington. We are calling her Principal Busk, 2.0…a new and improved model over Principal Busk, 1.0 (me).

For both of us, this will be a most trying year. We are not used to being apart and it has proven to be a lot harder than we thought (at least harder than I thought…Heidi knew all along) We have Facetime and SKYPE, messaging and e-mail. I have an International Calling Plan so I can call home without the horrific charges. We have Magic Jack where we can call for free. I will be coming home in October and December and Heidi is set to come here in April…but some long stretches in between. But when we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we think of all the service men and women who are away for much longer stretches and often placed in harms way. In comparison, our separation is a walk in the park.

I debated long and hard whether or not to continue the blog, but have decided to continue on. I love documenting our (my) time here and it is just fun to write….. So….here goes.

VISITOR
The first visitor in year three was Kelly Kurz. Kelly was backpacking through SE Asia before heading home to the USA and then back to Africa. As usual, it was fun to show someone around, but Kelly was pretty independent and a seasoned traveler and didn’t need much guidance. The Kuala Lumpur Grand Prix was in town…cars racing through the streets of Kuala Lumpur..Ear plug noisy they careened through the streets at break-neck speeds with stick-like-glue cornering…amazing driving!!! Fun to watch!!!

EATING LOCAL
Went to eat breakfast at a local Dim Sum spot. Dim Sum is a style of Cantonese cuisine prepared as small bite-sized portions of food. A bunch of us from school went to this out of the way spot….wall to wall with local Chinese Malays all hungering for the famous Dim Sum. The servers come to your table with these huge platters of food…each platter different from the one before. You take your chopsticks and grab what you want. I didn’t know what I was ordering..that was part of the fun. I had some pork, some octopus, some vegetable, and the rest I just ate blind. Some delicious, some hard to swallow. It was an experience!!!

BACK TO HOI AN
I had a three day weekend so I zipped up to Vietnam and the historic town of Hoi An. This is by far my favorite city and Vietnam is my favorite country. Had to pick up some more lanterns and a few odds and ends. Mainly went to just veg on the beach, a chance to get away from Kuala Lumpur. Road a bike out to An Bang Beach…almost empty. The water crystal clear and warm, the sand soft. An Bang is at the southern end of what was known as China Beach during the war. You could close your eyes and picture the beach swarming with GIs relaxing during a short R&R, a chance to escape from the horrors of war.
Got to watch two fishermen. They used this funny little round coracle to let out about a quarter mile of net. The coracle looks like a ball cut in half. The fisherman used only one oar and feathered it one way or the other to move the coracle through the water. The other fisherman stood on shore with the other end of the net. When all the net was let out, the coracle came to shore a little ways up the beach making a huge arch. Then both fishermen started pulling in the net, making the arch smaller and smaller. Once most of the net was pulled in, both fishermen walked in the area where the fish were trapped and caught the fish by hand. The strangest thing. I thought they would have just pulled the net up on shore and then harvested the fish, but no, they caught them by hand. The whole process took about an hour and a half and they pulled out about 40 fish. They told me their family will have fresh fish for awhile.

Assorted pictures of Hoi An

In a couple of weeks I’m heading up to Cameron Highlands…about a four hour drive and home to large tea plantations and strawberry farms. In October I’ll be going “Down Under” to Melbourne, Australia and December I’m heading to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Not quite the same without Heidi, but someone has to do it!!!