It's the little things...

I love mangos.  LOVE them.

And my love for cereal has exponentially increased since living in China.

So when I discovered I could buy this:

For the price of a box of cereal in America (which is half of what the cost typically is for cereal in China), I was so pumped!  This cereal is so good with bananas sliced into it.  And it leaves my milk a mango-y orange color at the end, which is fun.

Thank you India for bringing mangos to the rest of the world so we can enjoy them.  Thank you Kellogg's of India for putting the two together.  Thank you Nepali import store for selling them at  a price I can afford.  And thank you God for the special treat and the Nepali store being less than a 5 minute walk away!

A virus, I think?

I think Stacy and I got some sort of virus while we were in Malaysia. I believe the technical name is "tropicalfreezeslurpeeitis."

Symptoms included: temporary discoloration of the tongue, brain freeze,
and strong craving to consume more Tropical Freeze Slurpee...

To-go cups, Asian style

Okay, it's not a cup, it's a bag. A plastic bag. Yep, that's how to-go goes in Asia.

Mmm, iced chai in a bag...

And that's how my girl rolls, too - see that smile?

they say it's your birthday

It's this beautiful lady's birthday today!

If you've ever met her, you know how sweet she is - she probably squeezed you tight a few times and she may have even kissed you on the cheek. 

She never meets a stranger.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AAMEE!

In the shadow of Petronas

Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is also home to the Petronas Twin Towers, which held the record as the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004.

Our camera just couldn't do Petronas a justice

6' vs. 1,100'

Though the record has been broken by 3 or 4 other buildings since then, they remain pretty dang high.

On top of being really tall, the Petronas Towers look truly spectacular at night.

What exactly is a "trishaw"?

Good question. All the literature we saw about Malaysia, especially about the island of Penang, mentions "trishaws," which obviously led me to ask the above question. After we got there, I found out:

The town of Georgetown, on Penang Island, is trishaw heaven

They were, indeed, everywhere, and they were exquisitely decorated. However, we never took one while we were there because: a) it was raining much of the time, and b) haggling over price just isn't our thing, so we mostly walked.

This looks totally normal, right?

We may have missed out on a glorious adventure.

Trishaws are so popular, in fact, that they even appear conspicuously in murals around town. Pretty awesome, I'd say.

Howdy, pardner...

Sometimes one letter can make all the difference in the world. I'm picturing Asian hairdressers with holsters...

Kickapoo

Not sure if you can see real clearly, but what I've got here is a soda called "Kickapoo" that we found in Malaysia. And not too long after trying it, I did, in fact, have to kickapoo...

Welcome to Penang

Stacy and I took the overnight train from Bangkok to Penang, Malaysia. This former British settlement/colony has quite an awesome feel to it. Tomorrow, we're off to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, then back to beautiful southwest China.

On the ferry, heading from the mainland to the island of Penang

Actually, by the time you read this, we'll be boarding the plane back to China. But I'm sure we had a great time in KL.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Spring Festival has begun!!! Time for fireworks and dancing dragons and literally every store being closed for at least 3 days, if not a week.

In case you were wondering (and I'm sure most of you were), this begins the Year of the Snake.

Yeah, it's funny

Just admit that it's funny. Thank you, Malaysia.

Zip-lining

Stacy treated me to quite the experience in the mountains of Thailand - a 2.5 hour zip line extravaganza. There's a lot of details that I've forgotten, something like 6km of zip lines (including one zip line alone that stretched over a half mile!), 18 total zip lines, 33 platforms, 2 abseils (rappels).

High in the trees, midway through an awesome afternoon of zip lining

All this from my wife who is afraid of heights. Allegedly.

Did I mention that she's a baller? Notice, we're in the tops of the trees. Like 120ft. up. No thang for my lady.

It was excelanté.

Friend Surprise

Stacy and I ran into two of our nearest and dearest friends last week. At a Burger King in Bangkok, Thailand. Talk about random!

The story goes like this: the two of us had just finished watching a movie in the theater (one of my favorite things to do in Thailand... or any country, really) and were running down to grab a quick dinner in the 15 minutes we had before the second movie we were going to see at the same theater. Yeah, I said it - two movies back-to-back. Anyway, Eric and his wife Maggie randomly happened to be at the Burger King we randomly chose. It was hyper-exciting.

Eric and I have been great friends since 2006, and I always love spending time with him. We were at his wedding this past summer and it was a beautiful ceremony, matching his beautiful new wife.

Stacy and I are blessed to have such good friends and such random chance encounters!