Seafood and Fireflies

Here's the Asian side of Quanxing coming out... (His boys in St Louis call him Q) Take a picture, take a picture! At this point, we had decided we'd have dueling blog posts about the event... I think I'm going to win. Why? Because I've incorporated his post into mine, my pictures are bigger, brighter and more colorful AND I've actually linked to other posts... Score one for Washington.

I didn't really get the opportunity to take pictures of the fireflies, because we were riding in this dinky little sampan that I swear was gonna flip over if I sneezed so I didn't want to risk my camera falling into the water, but I managed to take a couple pictures of the town and the restaurant.

What a girl, the boat was completely stable and I even had my camera with me. The coolest part of the boat ride (you know, besides the awesome Christmas lights) was that our gondolier was getting text messages all the time. I love how technology has brought people together. The other cool thing was the youth's understanding of ecology and how important the fireflies were. He voiced his frustrations with people catching the fireflies in jars - only to have them die by the end of the night. Without the fireflies, he would be out of a job - as well as the many hundreds who are supported by the touristy activity.

Here's a little ecology lesson... Fireflies are a indicator species in their eco-system. They are the canary in the coal mine, if you will. When they start dying, it means somethings wrong with the environment. Other such species include frogs (because they are more susceptible to changes through their semi-permeable skins) and butterflies. Alright, I'll stop there before you guys think I'm too dorky. (Probably too late)

This is a picture of the restaurant we had dinner at (complete with token white girl presenting the restaurant.) They had some great crab (no, not chili crab or black pepper), I think it was some weird sweet and sour sauce. We also had scallops, fried squid, oh oh and the prawns were fantastic too.

I think the best part was the deep fried bread, I mean... Why don't we have that in the states? I also loved how when we were done, Yuen-lee (one of the girls in our party of four) polished EVERYTHING else off. The crab, the bread, the scallops, everything. Girl was my hero.

I took this picture right after dinner. I think its the purdiest one since I've come to Malaysia. The river itself is kinda murky and polluted. Wouldn't want to go swimming down there, but having dinner right on top of the water was really cool.

I would have to concur with my mid-west host, it was an awesome sunset and he took an awesome photo (good job with the boat!). The water is usually silted Quanxing, not because of direct dumping pollution (although it is a factor) but because of deforestation. The good brown earth is falling into the water since it's not held by tree roots, causing the river to look so murky.

This is right outside the restaurant as well. I know this place looks kinda like a weird third world country, but its really similar to lets say, a border town in Texas. That's all I have for right now, hopefully I'll be able to make a couple of other interesting trips around Malaysia in the near future.

I love that boarder towns in Texas is like a Malaysian Kampung. Muhahahahha. Anyway, that's it for now. I'd love to thank Q for letting me use his post in mine, hopefully we'll have more tag-team adventures to report to you fine folks. But until then, that's all, y'all!