The Balloon Festival!!! 🎈🍦

by Child 2

While we were in Penang this weekend (see Child 1 and Buster's articles this week), we went to a huge air balloon festival. There were bouncy houses, lemonade, fireworks, and more!!! To learn about this life-changing-funnest-ever event, read on!!

Me, posing for a picture in front of the balloons.

Well, we were having a day full of exploring Penang, and so we decided maybe we should come check out this Balloon festival. And boy, am I glad we did! I think first I'll tell you about the hot air balloons.

First, a little bit about the history of the hot air balloon:

In 1783 a scientist named Pilatre De Rozier launched the first hot air balloon. No people rode in it, only a duck, a sheep, and a rooster, but the balloon stayed in the air for roughly fifteen minutes before falling. After a long 216 years of work, in 1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones succeeded in an around the world flight. They flew for about 20 days. Find more about the history of hot air balloons here.

Next, a little bit about how the hot air balloon works:

As you may know, hot air rises. If you put a burner under a hot air balloon, the air inside the balloon will rise and push the balloon up with it. You could think of it like an air bubble in water, rising to the surface, but with hot air balloons, there is no surface. If you keep the burner going, the hot air balloon will climb higher and higher into the sky. However, if you stop the burner, the air will become cold and the balloon will slowly fall. Find more about how a hot air balloon works here.

There were a lot of hot air balloons in the sky that day. Some were just colored, others were in bizarre shapes- a house, a clown, an octopus... Here are some pictures:

Balloons. Big.

More big balloons.

    I'm not sure how many balloons there were, but there were a lot!!!

Next, I'll tell you something about the food we got there.

All around the borders of the field, there were a bunch of big tents and trucks selling food and beverages. Mom and I got hot cups of buttery corn, potato sticks, and iced lemonades. Child 1, Buster, and Dad got meat sticks and salad and iced lemonades.

FOOD 😋

Next I'll tell you about the balloon houses and toys.

There were a bunch of balloon houses there, which I'm afraid I can't tell you much about because we didn't go on them, but I can tell you about the balloon toys.

Most of them were in water. The first one was a beachball that you get zipped into and pushed out on water.

Human beachballs

The second was a sort of tube, with openings on either side to get out of and you could run forward and roll forwards on the water. The third one, the one Buster, Dad, and I went into, was a big ball with small holes on each side to get out of it. This one was on land, and if you ran in the ball it would roll the ball forwards, sort of like a hamster ball!

Human hamsters

Next, and lastly, I'll tell you about the amazing nighttime experience.

What I haven't told you so far is that there's a huge dance floor in the middle of the field with colored disco searchlights going crazy from it, which helped liven the night up.

It all started when Buster, Dad, and I were walking back from the port-a-potties on the edge of the field. Suddenly, the ground shook with a BOOM and the sky lit up from fireworks.

Craziness

Light sprayed across the sky, and the music from the dance floor blared. Fire shot up from the ground from the burners of the balloons to the music and it was awesome.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article! The experience certainly was fun for us. To find more about the hot air balloon festival, click here.

-Ice Cream Rain

Habitat at Penang Hill

by Child 1

From February 8th to 11th, we went to Penang for Chinese New Year. Penang is an island in Malaysia with a lot of ethnic Chinese people living there. Among the many things we did, we went to Penang Hill, which is a high hill in Penang overlooking Georgetown. We took a funicular railway up the hill. It was much cooler up there than on the ground.

One of the things we did on Penang Hill was the Habitat at Penang Hill. We took a walk through the tropical rainforest (on a path). Here are some of the things we saw:

Part of the walk was a big bridge high above the ground below. The view was amazing, and you could see trees towering from the ground for miles.

The next part was the Treetop Walk, a big round walk high above the ground that was supposed to make you feel like you were walking on the treetops. Up there, the view was even more amazing and you could see all of Georgetown. Next to the Treetop walk you could see an old building, and a placard said that it had been built in the 1800s as a sanatorium by the British for the British who were suffering from tropical diseases and couldn't afford the long, expensive journey home. It later became a popular honeymoon destination around the 1920s, and then became unused during the World Wars. After that it became a boarding school, and around the '70s it was abandoned.

We watched the sunset, and then lanterns were handed out and we were given a tour back. There were two tours, one in Chinese and one in English. There was one other family who went on the English tour with us. Along the way back, the tour guide pointed out geckoes and other animals. She even pointed out two tarantula nests, little holes covered in spider webs. In one of them, we could see tarantula legs sticking out for a second before it crawled back in.

That was our exciting trip to Habitat on Penang Hill. We had lots of fun, and we hope you had fun reading this!

High Tea on Penang Hill

by Buster

I took these pictures myself and it was a very good view - just sayin' !!!  

This is me and Daddy at high tea!  We are overlooking Georgetown and we are on Penang Hill!

This is me, Mommy, Child 1, and Child 2 on a lookout over Georgetown on Penang Hill! The view was very, very, very good.  We took a funicular train to the top of Penang Hill !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 This is me eating one of the best scones in the world! :)

This is the high tea house.  It had a really pretty pond with a lot of lily pads and lilies and birdhouses.

This is me and mommy eating more scones that are very tasty.  This was a very good place to start walking along a very, very, very, very, very long path!

This is the pond!

And that is the end of my high tea article!

Learning Rubber Tapping on a Permaculture Orchard in Sepang

by Holly

I saw a listing in AirBnB Experiences which looked pretty neat and was not far from us: learn how to tap rubber trees, walk around a small tropical orchard, and eat local food with the hosts. The listed times were either right in the middle of the day or at night and too late for us. We've found our sweet spot for doing things outdoors in Malaysia to be about 4-8pm; not so hot and bright as in the middle of the day. So I arranged with Khairul (the listing host) to hold a session starting at 5pm.



The day we went was Thaipusam, a holiday for Malaysians of Indian descent to celebrate Murugan. We had heard it was insanely crowded in KL and near Batu Caves, so we opted to do something different. I went to work (attendance was light) but left a bit early to meet with my family and get to PUDGi, the small plantation down towards the airport and not far from Cyberjaya.

We arrived at the place about 5pm and met with the hosts Khairul and Nani. We sat out on their porch and drank some tea and ate a sweet snack. Their current volunteer, Amanda, also joined us. She is one of the only American people I have run into here, and it was fun to talk to her about her experience in Malaysia. The nutty things to the left of the tea are rubber tree seeds.

They even butchered some very fresh Durian for us.

The kids were pretty astounded at the olefactory impact of durian in close quarters!

I'm not the biggest fan of durian, but there must be something to is since people in this part of the word call it the King of Fruits and sincerely treasure it. It certainly has a lot going on; when I eat it I feel like there is a vast symphony of powerful molecules filling my mouth and sinuses. It is a bit much for me though, so I only ate two pieces. Becky had quite a few and Child 1 tried some. I did appreciate the opportunity to try this fruit ultra fresh.

Next, we ventured out into the rubber grove with Nani.

We wore permethrin treated clothes and sprayed down with insect repellant, so the bugs were not a problem. There was also a very heavy but brief rain just before we arrived, which our hosts speculated had suppressed the mosquitos a bit.

This grove is extremely small by modern standards, but they do produce commercial rubber. The sap is collected after tapping in small buckets hung on the tree. The rubber coagulates into a cake about the size of an orange in the bucket. They sell these cakes to a local processing plant.

Seeds of rubber trees come in a three seed pod. These were abundant on the ground throughout the grove.

We caught up with a rubber expert they had engaged to give us our lesson. He was sharpening our tools using some specialized waterstones.

The tools seemed to be made from not especially hard steel. I'd guess tool steel edges might chip badly when cutting rough tree bark with various inclusions. But with lower carbon, you have to sharpen more frequently.

The tins in the picture hold burning mosquito coils. We tied them to our belts or wore them around our necks while out in the trees.

The tapping tools were set up to cut on the pull stroke and were about 40cm long. The cutting edge resembled a radiused grooving tool.

Rubber trees in Malaysia are tapped every two days. Tapping consists of cutting fresh cambium off the tree, whereupon raw latex flows out in surprising abundance.

Eventually the sap coagulates and stops flowing out of the cut area. But if you cut it down 1-2 mm, it will flow again. It is amazing the trees don't die from this treatment, but apparently they can produce for 20-30 years before they need to be replaced. The existing cuts were all set up to not girdle the tree, obviously.

The cuts on the bark are configured as a spiral ramp. This allows easy collection of the sap, since it flows down the spiral, and also makes it easy to renew the flow by cutting a slice off the side of the spiral nearer the ground. So most tapping consists of renewing the open cut to allow another flush of sap to come out and get collected.

Normally tapping happens at 4am. Nani says the sap flows best then. The sap itself looks like cream, and if you rub it between your fingers and let it dry out you can roll up little bits of rubber.

Rubber trees are not native to SE Asia. They were brought to Malaya from Brazil by the British. For a long time rubber was the biggest export of Malaysia, but this has been supplanted by palm oil. Oil is a crop that doesn't take as much labor to produce and generates more cash per hectare of cultivated land. Oil palms require a lot of inputs, but since world agriculture now runs on Haber-Bosch process ammonia from fossil fuels, fixed nitrogen is cheap. Rubber production has migrated to lower cost countries like Thailand and Indonesia. Malaysia is now third in rubber production, behind those two countries.

After having fun in the rubber grove for a while, we went on a walk around the property with Nani and the rubber tapper.

The land consists of three adjacent plots (for three sons) purchased by Khairul's parents in the 70s. Khairul grew up in a village not far away, but had never come to these plots until the 2000s. At the time they were bought, there was no road access at all, just a trail that could be navigated on foot or bike. Now there is a busy road close by, with a smaller side road running right past the property. They have put up a few buildings, including a Cabin in the Woods which you can rent on AirBnB.

In addition to the rubber groves, they have a small oil palm planting, to which they lease out the harvest rights. Kahirul's father worked managing palm oil plantations, and spent some time working on the plantation that used to cover the land we are living on now in Cyberjaya.

I think this small pond behind Child 1 is probably for drainage.

They have a small garden and a number of fruit trees including rambutan, mangosteen, durian, and a few others. Mangosteen is in season and we got to eat a couple right off the tree!

I'm really loving mangosteen and rambutan in Malaysia - never had them before coming here but they are excellent. The other week at work they had a few crates at the cafeteria and were selling them 2 for a ringgit. I bought about 60 over a couple days and we ate them same day.

We also ate some young leaves from an asam keping tree (Garcinia atroviridis). These were pretty tasty - almost lemony tart and crunchy. Reminded me of Sorrel, but crunchier. These trees make a fruit used in cooking, but the tree was not fruiting when we visited.

There were some cool ~50cm tall termite mounds in the woods as well, but my hands were full of mangosteen juice so I didn't want to dig out my phone to take a picture.

Near the porch they had a variety of starfruit tree which made little fruits used in cooking.

Finally we came back to the house and enjoyed some Malay food from local restaurants. They were not allowed to cook on premises for AirBnB guests because they don't have a commercial kitchen, but they heated up some dishes from nearby restaurants over a rubber tree wood fire stove.

It was neat to be able to sample these dishes picked out by our hosts, and to sit and talk to them as the sun set.

For dessert we had these dollops of sweetened and slightly fermented rice wrapped in leaves.