After more than a week of rest and recuperation, Hubby and I are both back to almost normal, with him just having a little bit of a cough leftover from his cold, so we decided we were fit enough (and more than ready!) to take a ride. We saddled up our fat guys (my brother tends to overfeed a bit) and headed out the back gate along the canal. We headed along our usual route, out to the pagoda in the WMA area behind us. Having cantered so much on other people’s horses during our vacation, we did a bit more cantering today than usual, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Our horses were so happy to be back on the trail, they really enjoyed stretching their legs! Instead of heading straight back, we went along another canal for a ways before crossing back through the neighborhood towards home. The dogs came with us, and they, too, were quite happy to be back on the trail. Just went about 4.4 miles in all, but the weather was perfect, everyone was on perfect behavior, and it was a lovely day! Looking forward to heading back home soon, though, as the temps are starting to get a bit higher than we like, into the 80’s, and next week they’re even calling for 90’s!
Archives for March 2017
Monday, March 27, 2017 – First Ride In Jupiter Since the Big Adventure
Thursday, March 16, 2017 – Flight Home
Since we had an afternoon flight, I set the alarm for much later than usual, and even ended up bumping it later as I considered all the time we had. Hubby didn’t get up until after 9:00, after I had showered, and we finished packing, then called an Uber, which was there in 5 minutes, whisking us away to the airport. We were early, and looked for a place for breakfast, but I had decided I couldn’t leave Hong Kong without getting some Dim Sum (I’d been reading a book where everyone kept eating Dim Sum, and I’d never had it before), and we found a place on the second level that had a wonderful Dim Sum sample basket which we devoured! After that, it didn’t take too long to get through all the departure procedures, but we had more inspections than we’ve ever had before, and even on the ramp down to the plane they had a final inspection, and took everybody’s water away! That was rather disconcerting, as I had filled it up after going through the initial inspection, as always. Never had them take it away at the last minute like that! That ended up being a problem, because we discovered that the only water they had on the flight was mineral water, which had a high sodium content, so Hubby couldn’t really drink it, but he also has to stay well-hydrated, so we ended up getting hot water for tea, about the only option. The good news about the flight, we all had our own entertainment screen, so that kept us busy for a while. The bad news was, we didn’t get an upgrade to business, though we had upgraded to seats with more legroom, so it wasn’t too bad. The meals were fair, but Hubby couldn’t eat everything because of high sodium, again. We both managed to get a few hours of sleep, not enough on a 14 hour flight, but it helped get us through. We arrived in DFW to the worst customs and immigrations debacle we had seen the entire trip. Total confusion, no one knew where to go, agents were trying to herd people but there were no clear indications of where to go. I tried to use the Mobil Passport app I had downloaded, which was supposed to expedite the process, but every time I completed the form and submitted it, it came back with an error, no matter how many ways I tried. We stood in five different lines, including one for agriculture inspection (we had to answer ‘yes’ to a question about being on a farm and around livestock), and the whole process took over TWO HOURS! Worst system of all of the six countries we had entered, I’m sorry to say! We were glad we had a four hour layover by that point! We finally got our backs re-checked and headed on the train to our gate in the A terminal. By now, we were both hungry, especially Hubby because he had to pick through all three meals on the plane and didn’t really eat that much, so I started out getting coffee at a pizza place (BIG mistake, it was AWFUL!), then started looking for someplace that had decent food. Then I discovered La Madeleine’s near gate A25. What a find! It was a cute little French cafe, with pastries and meat pies and fresh fruit and foods! I spoke with the proprietor about Hubby’s strange diet, and she promptly went into the kitchen and whipped him up an omelet with all the things he could eat and none of the things he couldn’t, and even substituted his side of tomatoes (which he can’t have) with an entire cup of fresh berries! Heaven! I selected a lovely chicken friand, and off I went! I wish I had gotten coffee there first, it smelled so much better there! It was so close to boarding at that point, we decided to wait until we got on the plane to eat. At least the last leg of the journey was in upgraded first class, thank goodness. With a quick bourbon before take-off, and another to go along with dinner, we both fell asleep right after we ate. The last thing I remember was New Orleans going by, then the next thing was the announcement to prepare for landing. It didn’t take long to de-plane, collect our luggage, and get picked up by my brother outside baggage claim, though it was now well past midnight, and he was suffering from a terrible cold. All in all, I figured out that today was 37 hours long, 28 of which we had spent in motion. No wonder we were exhausted! Of course, we were too exhausted to sleep, and we wound down for more than an hour before we even attempted to go to bed, at the equivalent time of 1:30 in the afternoon, tomorrow!
Wednesday, March 15, 2017 – Hop On Bus, Breakfast at McD’s, Dinner on Floating Restaurant
Sunday, March 12, 2017 – Rest, Ride and Recovery Day
Well, just as I suspected, the food we had for dinner was obviously laden with salt or some sort of sodium, because Hubby was so out of breath he got dizzy and almost fell over when he got out of bed this morning. We had plans to go riding this morning, but there was no way he was in a fit state to go! I went ahead without him, as he was stuck in bed anyway. It was just a short ride on the beach, but I’ve always found beach riding a bit boring at best, anyway, so it didn’t need to be any longer. It wasn’t terribly enjoyable, partly because the horses just looked way too skinny to me (though there was a cute colt following us around, evidently I was riding his mother, which made it interesting when he decided he wanted breakfast, I had a few tense moments as she tried to kick him away), and partly because the sunburn I received yesterday was REALLY painful this morning, and riding on it killed me all the way. We only went up the beach about a mile, then back again. We had a few short trots (ouch, ouch, ouch!) And then I finally managed to get my horse, Moscow, into a canter, which was a very nice slow lope, but still a bit ouch-y for me on my sunburn, before arriving back at the resort. I took a walk along the beach later in the day, intrigued by some weird swirls in the sand, and discovered they were tiny sand crabs, digging holes, bringing up little round balls of sand that they then arranged like landscaping and sidewalks around their little abodes. Considering it would only last until the next tide came in, it seemed like a lot of pointless work to me! But nature has it’s own rhythm, not for me to question! Fascinating to watch, though, and I did for a while, before heading back to our room. The rest of the day we spent mostly in bed, with Hubby slowly recovering and me continuing to slather on lotion. In the afternoon he was finally well enough to eat something, so I managed to persuade the kitchen to make me a couple of egg sandwiches (which they did using hard-boiled eggs), and NO seasoning, at last! Afterward we went back to resting on the bed, until Danuk and her bookkeeper-friend came around and wanted me to join them on the porch, asking about how Hubby was doing. Of course, I explained, and we ended up chatting for a while, until it was time to go to dinner, so I sent them along and managed to get Hubby up and going, and went to dinner. Tonight, they made him some steamed fish, steamed carrots (cut length-wise), and white rice. Not much, but it satisfied him for the moment. It was a much earlier night tonight, in bed by 9:00, we have an early start tomorrow. We originally were only going to stay two nights here, because we had planned on staying in Kuala Lipis overnight, but decided an extra day here would be more relaxing, and the drive to Kuala Lumpur was only about 7 hours anyway, which is no big deal. So off to bed we went, with another early morning planned!
Thursday, Mar. 9, 2017 – Day of Relaxation in Penang
After a delightfully large and scrumptious breakfast buffet, we spent the day relaxing on loungers in the yard, chatting with some Australian guys, and generally just hanging out. We didn’t need lunch, we started cocktail hour at 4:00, walked next door through the fish market to the “The Ship” restaurant for dinner, lured in by their sign that they had the “Best Steaks in Town.” I had a steak, though when I asked for medium rare the waiter suggested medium, and showed me a picture in the menu of what I would consider a rare steak and said “This is how our chef does medium rare.” So I ordered medium, which of course came out well-done, no pink at all. In retrospect, though, it was probably better, because I was a bit dubious of some of the quality of the other food. The corn on the cob was overcooked, the broccoli barely al dente, so it wasn’t a very satisfying meal, even though it looked more Western, which is what we wanted. Hubby ordered a seafood platter, and even though it was described as “grilled”, 80% of it was deep fried, so it was kind of a bust from that perspective. We walked back to the hotel on the street side, where the road was lined with tents and covered stalls with all kinds of tourist-y souvenir type stuff, where I bought my brother another T-shirt, Hard Rock Cafe-Penang. Not long out of bed, a very nice and relaxing day!