January we moved, said to goodbye to friends and family and moved literally across the world. Not an easy thing to do. It was a little rough in the beginning, more so for me as I had stopped working and moved away from everything over to nothing as it had seemed. It was lonely in the beginning, but that went away after a month or so, luckily, and I was able to start enjoying myself. We moved into our place, a high rise condo, onto the 37th floor with an amazing view of the city.
February, we took a little trip to Pangkor Island. Our first vacation after arriving. We went for Chinese New Year, a huge celebration over here, Eric got two days off work! Pangkor Island is a short drive away, and we are planning on going back soon for a little weekend getaway. It's so much fun, and a nice relaxing, beautiful spot. We can't wait to go back! We also attended our first ball, fancy! ;) It was the American Ball, and we had a blast! It's always fun to get all dressed up :)
April, we headed to Penang, Malaysia. A little island off the west coast of Malaysia. Another beach vacation :) We had a great time, and even ran into some friends of ours from KL (originally from Houston too) there, crazy, small world! We sat on the beach, went into town, enjoyed the culture, the temples, and a train car ride to the top of a hill with an incredible view of the island.
May brought us Mitch! Our good friend Mitch from Houston came to visit us. Woohoo, we LOVE visitors! Our very first visitor too, we figured he would be as much as he loves to travel! We showed him around KL a bit, I went with him to Singapore for a couple days while Eric worked. Singapore was fun, we got to go in the pool on top of Marina Bay Sands because our friends Dave and Leah happened to be staying there while we were there, small world again! We checked out the Singapore Night Safari and worked our way around a bit to see the sights. After we got back to KL we left the next day, with Eric this time, for Bangkok. We got to see some amazing temples, the palace, cruised the river, went out on patpong street, and checked out the huge market there. All fun stuff, good times!
June, we decided to take it a little easy. Went for a little hike to see a waterfall, hung out with friends, and our one little 'trip' was to Genting Highlands on a whim. It was Cynthia's birthday and we were trying to figure out what to do, so we hired a cab to drive us the hour or so up the hills to Genting Highlands, where the weather is actually cool and awesome, to gamble at the casino for a few hours and drive us back home. Awesome.
July we had our white water rafting adventure with Dave and Leah, and what an adventure it was. Holy crap. A little scary as we flipped our raft pretty much right out of the gate, a little rocky at times after that, but a lot of fun and something I will never forget. Eric had a work trip to Singapore and I tagged along to go see some of our other friends that live there from Houston. We also took a little weekend away to Melaka with Dave and Leah. We stayed at a nice resort for the night, went into town, saw the sights, went out and explored at night with dinner and bars, saw what looked like a pimp my ride Malaysia in a parking lot there (turns out Pimp My Ride Malaysia is now a real thing and airs on MTV starting this Jan, lol). And the end of July brought us the arrival of my Aunt Brenda and Uncle Steve, YAY!!! More visitors!!
My aunt and uncle were here mostly in August, they came at the very end of July. We had a great time with them. I showed them around the sites, and all the fun stuff, had them try new things in the way of food and we were very proud of them. They were great, especially since the farthest they had traveled was the Caribbean previously and even that was 10 years ago! Hats off to y'all for coming all this way and enjoying yourself! We took them to Phuket, Thailand. We couldn't let them come all this way and not see some amazing beaches! Phuket was awesome. We did a zip lining adventure through the jungle, way cool, and my aunt's idea, and we did an all day boat trek to different islands and a floating village. We had a blast there, and Eric and I want to go back to see what else Phuket has to offer.
September had us getting ready for our three week trip back to Houston. But first, a stop in Dubai! We spent 3 amazing nights in Dubai. Dubai is a cool city, hot, but cool. The beach resort we stayed at was beautiful, the water so blue and completely clear. The Burj Khalifa, amazing, a stunning piece of architecture, the desert, beautiful. We loved Dubai. Oh, and the food, delicious! Can't wait to go back here too!
October was Houston. We got to see family and friends and eat all the food we had been missing for 9 months! We also went to Orlando to see Eric's mom, and I went to Chicago to see some friends while Eric played in his old courses member guest tournament with all his golfing buddies. Our trip home was fun and exhausting, it was so nice to see everyone, but it was also nice to get back home to KL and sleep in our bed. That was long time to be sleeping all over the place. It was a great trip home though.
November was our trip to Cambodia. Cambodia was amazing. The temples there are out of this world beautiful. So old and fragile and marvelous to have stood the test of time as many are about 1000 years old. The people are so friendly and everything was so cheap there. We had so much fun seeing the sights and celebrating my birthday there, but we haven't even scratched the surface of seeing everything, maybe another time ;)
December was Christmas in Krabi, Thailand (as you may have just recently read). Krabi was a blast, and we were so fortunate to be able to spend Christmas with friends since we couldn't spend it with family. We all just hung out at the villa we rented for 5 days and played games, laid out, walked on the beach and just relaxed. It was so nice.
I think the best thing about the past year was the friends that we made. They are all amazing and we would not have survived without them! <3
Well, that's our year in a nutshell and we are definitely looking forward to the new adventures and places that 2013 is going to take us (we start off with a trip to Bali at the end of February!!). We can't wait!
