Kuantan, Malaysia

It is a very rare occurrence that we get to "travel with" Jeremy.  When we lived in San Diego, the girls and I visited him in the middle of New Mexico...the fun part was that we knew another wife with her two kids also going.  Jeremy would not let me come out to Kuwait...Iraq I understand, but Kuwait, by myself, come on!  So, since school was out for summer break and Jeremy was scheduled to be in Kuantan, Malaysia for 2-1/2 weeks, we packed the bags in the car and drove out to join him in his hotel room.

It took me six hours to get from Singapore to Kuantan...driving up the center of the country.  You could quite possibly do it in five...I'll spare you the bathroom/preschooler details (cough-cough).  Kuantan is rich in cultural history.  It is home to the oldest rainforest in the world.  It is on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia.  It has a sweeping view of the the South China Sea.

Here's our hotel and our room view:

There are monkey's everywhere we go, in every country.  We found this sticker on the balcony door amusing:

We enjoyed lunch at the hotel:

We spent most of our time in the pools:

We see this in a lot of Malaysian malls.  They have all kinds of powered toy vehicles for the kids.  You pay a 2-5 Malaysian ringget for 5 minutes of play:

We saw Disney's "Monsters University" the day after it came out.  The kids were BEGGING!  One thing I love about Malaysia?  Some costs can be extraordinarily cheap.  Two adult and six children's tickets ran, at the conversion rate, about US $14.  Yes, all six of us.  That's a polar opposite from Singapore (and D.C.)!

The hotel beach, Teluk Cempedak, on the warm South China Sea:

We were truly lucky.  The day before we left (that day being Monday, June 17) "the haze" came in.  Indonesia will annually burn part of their jungle to create more land for farming.  Technically in their country, this is illegal, but not generally enforced.  Indonesia is also the only ASEAN country (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) who has not signed the "no-burn agreement" put into effect years ago.  Normally it creates a little bit of an annoying, burnt-smellling haze for  a short time.  This particular year it was different.  We learned all about PSI's (Pollutant Standard Index). To give one a sense of what became a crisis in the region, 1-50 is good.  Singapore is always in this range.  Up to 100 is moderate.  100-150 is unhealthy for sensitive groups and up to 200 for all.  Up to 300 is very unhealthy.  Above 300 is hazardous.  While we were in Kuantan, Singapore was getting pummeled with numbers above 400.  (On an extra note, the following days after we returned home, cities north of Kuala Lumpur were reaching into the mid-700s.)  The distance from Sumatra, Indonesia to Singapore is 285 miles.

We were in the clear (pun intended) in Kuantan during the week Tuesday through Sunday...until about midnight Saturday.  I woke up and could smell the burning stench coming in through the air conditioning.  Unbeknownst to us, the wind had shifted northeasternly to bring it to us, but at the same time cleared Singapore for our arrival.  Here's a picture of the front page of one of the regional newspapers and another out of our hotel room (the very same shot as Tuesday) Sunday morning:

We were glad to have spent a majority of our trip without the haze.  Work had been cancelled in Singapore and masks had been handed out.  We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Kuantan.  Jeremy's trip was cut a few days short and he made the drive home with us.  Which was the longest wait at the Malaysian border that I think we've known anyone to ever have.

The Hyatt Regency is one of the better hotels to stay in.  Even though it is a beach-y city, there are only about 3-4 good ones to stay in.  However, the tile all around all of the pools is extremely slick!  We enjoyed McDonald's and Burger King just at the intersection shared with the hotel.  We ate Pizza Hut at one of the malls.  There are some very good local restaurants to try:  Sherwood (for German), Crocodile Rock (for Italian, but not pizza), and Shanigan's (for Indian).  This ended up being a rare beach and pool only trip.  However, there are fishing villages, river cruises, nighttime firefly cruises, waterfalls, and tin mining caves to enjoy.  Trekking through the jungle is a possibility.  All the information I could find was for a more serious hiker with a lot of time (think an actual expedition).