PENANG

Sister Kathy in front of our rooms at the Golden Sands Resort

A snake charmer entertains the kids.

Our friend Peggy and her two kids happened to be there at the same time, which made it extra fun.

Taking a banana ride.

Choosing our dinner.

Lobster Fest!

SHOPPING: A TOUGH JOB, BUT ...

Dearest Friends,

After the way our shopping trip to Jakarta ended, I'm pretty sure I said "Never again!", yet somehow Peggy managed to get me back on a plane just a month or two later.  This time we headed to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with our friends Jodi and AnnMarie.  We'd been told that KL was much the way Singapore had been about 20 years ago, before they started tearing down all the good stuff and replacing it with skyscrapers, and that everything there was much cheaper than in Singapore.  I can only assume that I must have felt the need to purchase more Christmas and birthday gifts for all my friends and family members, before we headed to the states on home leave.

The big draw here was the Royal Selangor Pewter factory.  John had gifted me with a beautiful tea set from there for Christmas, which he had purchased in Singapore, but we'd been told you could get much better prices by going straight to the factory (no, the added expense of plane flights and hotel rooms does not count).  Judging by the number of Selangor bags surrounding us, I guess we found that to be true.

As with so much these days, my memories of that trip are rather hazy.  I remember two minor tiffs during the trip. One was when we went to a Cold Storage shop (a mini-mart) a few blocks from our hotel one evening, after having dined at a fun Texas-style restaurant that served chicken-fried steak and such.  One lady who, granted, had a good bit more to carry than the rest, wanted to take a taxi back, but got out-voted by those who preferred to walk off their dinner.  After a block or so of grumbled mutterings such as "this is b.s...this is total b.s.", I think we relieved her of some of her bags.  The other was the next night, when two of the ladies wanted to go back to that very same Texan restaurant for dinner again, but the rest of us wanted to try some of the local fare.  We had an amicable parting of the ways on that one.

One thing we could all agree upon (well, except maybe for AM) was that this taxi ride, where the driver took an uncommon shine to her, and couldn't seem to keep his hands off of her, causing her friends in the back seat to laugh so hard they probably left a few wet spots on the seat, was one of the highlights of the trip...

second only to stumbling upon a Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor!  Oh yeah, and one more thing.  I think we all agreed that these shopping trips with the girls, no matter how brief...well, it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it!

LETTERS HOME: DISNEY WORLD!!!

20th February, 1992

Dear George and Theda,

Greetings from beautiful Lhok Seumawe!  I'm so sorry that we were late in making George's birthday call.  John was just sick about it.  The kids sure did enjoy the Valentine cards you sent.  As for those catalogs, I would love it if you sent the Spiegel and the Hearth Song (if they're not too big), but the rest can wait.  We're still trying to get things straightened out for home leave and our first trip to Disney World.  I don't know who's more excited, the kids or the parents!  We thought we would have to fly from Singapore to Tokyo to Dallas to Orlando, but the travel agent found a direct flight from Tokyo to Orlando, which will put us in around 9:00 p.m. Saturday the 30th.  We will leave there on June 6 and go to Dallas (provided this fits in with Mike and Prisi's plans -- we still haven't checked dates with them).  John will stay for just a few days, then drive our car on out to Odessa to see you guys, and the kids and I will probably fly out the next Sunday evening, the 14th.  We should be there about two weeks.

There are several doctors we need to see while there, and I would really appreciate it if you could line up a few appointments for us.  I guess the kids both need to see their pedodontist in Midland (Walter Taylor) and John and I need to see our dentist, Vincent Bash.  Also, I would like to get a mammogram, since I've never had one.  Wherever you get yours would be fine.  I will probably need to go see a dermatologist as well.  I was doing fine in nice, dry west Texas, but something about Indonesia has set me off.  Imagine, getting zits again at almost 40! (Note from the future: turns out it wasn't really zits, but some kind of creepy infection!)

I guess all of us will drive back to Dallas around Friday, June 26th.  John has to leave for Indonesia on July 1st, but the kids and I will stay in Dallas for that whole month.  Hopefully Alexis will be able to go to Girl Scout camp during that time, and we can get Austin signed up for something too.  Mom's checking to see what the Science Place and Children's Museum have to offer.  I may even send him back to Midland if Karen and Linda sign their boys up for baseball camp or something.  On July 31st the kids and I hope to meet you two down in Houston for the Lane family reunion.  Then, if you wouldn't mind, I thought I would let the kids fly back to Odessa with you, but that I would try to stay in Houston two or three days longer, so I could try and meet up with Paula and Charlene.  I will go on to Odessa Tuesday or Wednesday, the kids and I will fly back to Dallas on the 7th, then we head back to Indonesia August 12th.  Whew!  All this is very tentative though -- who knows what will actually happen!

I went with Peggy Reeh on a lightening quick trip to Jakarta this week.  Basically, we only had one day there, so we started out at 8:00 a.m. and didn't get to eat dinner until 10:00 p.m.  Fun, but tiring!  Found lots of good Christmas and birthday presents to bring home for everyone in the States.  John doesn't want to go anywhere over spring break.  He can't stand to use up any vacation days that could be used on Home Leave, and I don't blame him!  Next month I'm supposed to go with 3 other ladies to spend 3 or 4 days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  I don't know much about it, but they say it's kind of like Singapore 10 or 20 years ago, before they tore everything down to build high-rises, and much cheaper.

I finally got my nerve up and made a trip out to the golf course.  Much to my surprise, I actually had a pretty good time.  Of course, I had no idea what I was doing, and the girl who was trying to show me how wasn't much better.  If we could just find a really good teacher, who knows?  I might finally learn to like a sport (don't faint!).  I'm sure I hit less than 100, though we didn't keep score.  Of course, we only played four holes.  You'd love the naked little boys that dive for your balls when they land in water, then sell them back to you!

Tomorrow night one of the girls here is having eight couples for dinner and Bunco.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Did I tell you about meeting Julie Underriner, the one having the party?  I was just chatting with her one day, and discovered that her sister lives in Midland, and is good friends with my old boss Barb!  We used to cater stuff for her all the time, but I never had a clue she had a sister in Indonesia.  It really is a small world, isn't it?

Next weekend the 3rd through 8th graders get to fly to Medan for an exchange weekend with the International School there.  Alexis is so excited about getting to go off by herself with all the big kids!  It should be a great adventure for her.  They are even taking them out to visit some kind of Orangutan Preserve.  They held auditions for the spring play this week.  This one is just for the older kids.  They're doing Pinnochio, but we are almost hoping that Alexis doesn't get much of a part.  She has enough trouble keeping up with all the homework they pile on her as it is, without having to memorize a million lines as well!

Not much else to tell.  I was certainly startled to see the town of Bogata, Texas in the headlines  today, for having six cases of AIDS in their itty bitty high school.  That's where my uncle's ranch is, and where all my cousins went to high school.  Good thing they've already graduated!  Well, take care, and write soon.

PENANG

Dearest Friends,

That trip to Penang, which I mentioned in my letter, ended up being one of the most memorable family vacations of our lives.  First and foremost was the resort itself.  I think it was called Golden Sands, and it was one of those lushly exotic oceanfront resorts that you see in travel brochures -- the kind with an open air lobby and lagoon-like swimming pools surrounded by palm trees and lounge chairs.  All you had to do was raise a little flag and a waiter would appear at your elbow with the icy beverage or snack of your choosing.  The only downside was in getting there, as the road from the airport to the resort followed the shoreline, with all its twists and turns.  Never a good thing for me, but man-oh-man, was it ever worth it!

We had traveled there alone, only to find several other families we knew already there, one of which had seven or eight children, so our kids had plenty of playmates to keep them company at the pool, as they wore themselves to a frazzle climbing up the awesome rockslide into the pool, over and over and over again.  That left us free to lounge, read, and visit with the other parents, just keeping a watchful eye out.  The resort also had a kid's club, based in its own little house next to the hotel, and our kids actually asked us to take them there, after hearing glowing reports from the other kids about the fun activities they had scheduled for each day.

When they eventually grew weary of that and the pool, we hired a car and driver to take us to do some shopping, tour a batik factory and a butterfly farm, and to go to Lexi's favorite (NOT!), the arboretum-like place where you could walk through the jungle and buy little bags of peanuts to feed the monkeys.  If only someone had warned the poor kid that you have to make sure the alpha male gets fed first.  Otherwise he's liable to launch himself at you when you least expect it, scaring you half to death, and he'll grab the whole dang bag right out of your hands!  Twenty years later, she's still not too crazy about monkeys, but I bet she'd go back to that resort in a heartbeat!