Mon, 31 Jul 2000 15:00:18 GMT Hello! Clearly the Coffeys are a bit tardy in keeping you all up to date on our adventures. This update may read a bit more like a travel guide since we have forgotten some of those funny tidbits of day to day life. Since last writing, we have passed through 3 counties: Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey. Each has been a very different experience, and we'll try to share a bit of that now. Malaysia: We spent about a week on Batu Ferengi beach on the island of Penang, followed by a week in the Chinatown section of Kalua Lumpur (KL). Based on our limited exposure on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, we found it to be a more ordered and western culture than Thailand. English was more widely spoken, and the food was not quite so foreign to our western tongue. It is also 10-20% more expensive than Thailand. KL is working towards being "world best" in several areas: tallest buildings (Petronas twin towers), biggest wave machine and longest suspension bridge, one of the largest outdoor childrens' play areas (2.5 acres of play structures), 5th tallest communications tower (beating Seattle's space needle by a wide margin). We visited a resort island, and stayed in Chinatown in the largest city and did little other travel so we don't feel we got a good overall view of what Malaysia is like. The longer we stay in a place, the more we realize there is so much more to learn about it. One thing that seems difficult is to meet so many wonderful people and to know that we probably won't see the vast majority of them again; however, the experience of meeting such a diverse group of people is really an incredible learning experience. Singapore: We stayed for only 4 days. Singapore is a very unusual place, a small island nation that is unique in the world. While our experience here was very limited, it is clear that Singapore, more than any other SE Asian city (except Hong Kong), has embraced capitalism and westernism. Any travellers fron North America would find it very familiar and comfortable in many ways. We saw it as a blend of everything that Asia has to offer (food, religions, people) delivered in a western way (clean, orderly). There is a LOT of orderliness, from the public transport to clean streets to incredible shopping. There is a joke that Singapore is a "fine" place, if you do anything against any of the many rules there is a large fine. Chewing gum is illegal, drug possession can bring death penalty, no using cell phones while driving. EVERY vehicle in the country has a box on the dash that charges the appropriate fee for entering certain parking areas and streets (large "fine" for not having one). We found the preponderance of rules a bit big brotherish, but once you get over that it is a very comfortable place. Turkey: 10 days in Istanbul, 6 days in Bursa (actually the thermal resort village of Chekirge), then 5 days in the Aegean resort town of Ayvalik. We found Turkey to be a very interesting mixture of western and eastern culture. Mosques and Islamic religion dominate, yet a bit of westernism permeates the country as it struggles with attempts to join Europe. It is an inexpensive and fascinating place to travel. We agreed it is a place we would love to see again, spending much more time exploring its vast history and enjoying the natural wonders it offers. We found Turkey to be much larger than we anticipated and it would take a lot of time to cover. The people are open, friendly and very curious about western travellers. They are so nice to children and Jessica and Nathan revelled in the attention and enjoyed the many gifts that people were always giving them. It is an overwhelmingly male dominated society which follows the Islamic ways. The restaurants in the evening would be filled with men and very few women. Even though Muslims don't theoretically drink, there seemed to be enough Raki (much like strong Ouzo or Pernod) to go around. On 25 July we took a 2 hour ferry ride from Ayvalik Turkey to the island of Lesvos in Greece, beginning the next stage of our adventures. The children are holding out well. They both continue to grow in many ways. Nathan has (hopefully) passed through a very trying and frustrating period where he was learning to exert his will on everyone. Ky's parents (Kyle and Evelyn) joined us in Istanbul and have been travelling with us since. They will leave us in a few short days and we will all miss them greatly. We are rather loose on our western Europe plans, yet remain keen on travelling and exploring further. This travel bug is hard to get rid of! Since we are arriving late in western Europe, we may change our plans somewhat to focus on southern Europe to seek warmer climates. Travel to Ireland, Finland, and Lithuania may possibly be delayed to a later date. Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal all seem like interesting and likely places we'll visit after Greece. While travelling we had one very unfortunate message come to us. Our much loved cat, Ralph, had to be put to sleep due to acute liver failure. The kids handled it quite well although they were very saddened. Take care and please keep the personal messages coming, we love hearing from you all! Love, The Coffeys.