Today was our last day in Thailand as we fly out tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM en route to Vancouver, BC. To end things with a bang, we had a late breakfast at the fruit buffet in Bangkok's Bayoke Sky hotel. It is the city's tallest building at 83 stories although the buffet is only located on the 18th floor. For 250 baht ( just under $9.00 CDN )we gorged ourselves on all the fresh tropical fruit we could stuff into our bellies in 90 minutes. When they set this ...

Well, here we are, on our way to Bangkok after hanging out on Koh Samui for 3 weeks, mentally preparing ourselves for our return to the Great White North. When we were here three years ago we were blown away by how inexpensive everything was; lodging, food and beverages. Of course, that was in comparison to just having spent a week in Hong Kong followed by a week in Bangkok. Samui is a tourist island. Period. The beaches are lined with resorts, bars, restaurant...

On our last day in Penang we wandered the streets and took in the "must see" sights. There are about 50 or so murals spread throughout George Town, many of which incorporate an inanimate object to make the art 3 dimensional. The album has photos of the ones we came across.

We left our hotel yesterday with the intention of hiking up Penang Hill, a vertical climb of 712 meters. We bused to the base of the hill and futilely looked around for the hiking trail. When we asked where we could start our hike, we were told the trail was on the other side of the mountain and we'd have to take 2 more buses to get there. Well, we'd had just about enough of Penang's buses by that point, so we elected to take the tram up to the peak and hike back...

Yesterday we took the Penang Ferry over to the mainland to do a little exploring in Butterworth. Actually, the entire trip was predicated on Brenda's desire to travel across the 13.5 km long Penang bridge that joins Penang Island to mainland Malaysia. When we arrived at the dock, a ferry was just pulling away from the moorings so we had to wait 20 minutes for the next ride over the water. Oddly, the trip to the mainland is free, but if you ferry back it costs 1....