Practice, Monkeys, Seafood, Snakes, and Fish Spas.

Hey all!

It's Marianne again and this time, with pictures at the end of this post!
So today, we had our first full team practice with Andrew and the arrival of Andrea, Sandy,Cath, Sonia, Candice and Wendy. Must say.. it makes a huge difference! The weather was hot.. so much so that a fellow German paddler was sick from the heat. Yikes! Our girls are well hydrated though as we went to the supermarket the night before buying cases of water. It looked as if we were stocking up for war! We feel good, the water feels good and the boat feels good. We found out that we are up against 20 other women teams.

That doesn't scare us. We're confident. And we'll be ready for the challenge!

After practice, we adjourned to some of our own activities. We agreed to meet up for dinner at 7.30pm. The first group which consisted of zelia, sandy, catherine, sonia, cris, judy, christine, jaclyn, nui, nandini, and andrea. They toured the whole of Penang, going to sites such as the botanical gardens, Spice Gardens, butterfly farm and the snake temple. I'm sure they'll tell you all about their experience!

My group consisted of me, rachelle, ben, candice, john, ann, jenever, amanda, wendy, manna and dong. We went to the snake temple which was loads of fun! We saw snakes eating mice, played with monkeys and carried lizards as well. Next, we went to a local hawker shop for food and had a blast!

Funny enough, we bumped into Eva, Jermaine and Beth! what a small... island? lol

We went shopping next until around 6.30 and then headed off to meet the girls for dinner. But just before we reached the restaurant, we detoured to a fish spa! A local delight for us! We basically sat in a tub full of fish that ate the dead skin off our feet. It was the weirdest experience for all us, but we did come out with VERY clean feet. So much so, that we have knee high white legs because the fish even cleared our tan.

We finally made it to dinner and it was at a lovely seafood restaurant. Mmm.. local Malaysian seafood is a REAL treat. Here are some of the dishes that we ate.

We're all stuffed now and most of us have headed home.

It's my turn to hit the bed but before I do so... here are more pictures from the previous nights.

PS: Here are a couple of shoutouts:

Rachelle says Hi to her family! Zelia says hi to her hubby and girls! Nandini says hi to her family and so does Cris Kao! Judy says "what what" to her family and John