Getting our his and her travel-theme sleeve tattoos in KL!

The Tattoo Parlour Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur

On the last day of August this year, we were back in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia after a month in beautiful Vietnam (you can read about Vietnam in my previous post). We had just a few days to spare in KL before our next adventure – two nights in Macao (the Las Vegas of Asia) and three nights in Hong Kong - before we flew onto South Korea for a ten day visit to see our son and his wife Sujeong, and our grandson Aaron, and the rest of our lovely family in Korea.

In Kuala Lumpur, we checked into one of our favourite hotels outside the city, very close to the place Trav had researched and found to do the tattoos we have been talking about getting this year to celebrate our 34^th wedding anniversary.

We wanted to mark this anniversary by getting his and her half-sleeve travel tattoos in black and grey that would represent our love and our nomadic lifestyle.

I'd rather be getting tattooed!

We wanted a compass and a map as the main theme with individual touches such as our astrology signs of Scorpio and Pisces. We wanted palm trees to represent our love of tropical places and three little birds in flight to represent our three boys flying the nest. I wanted a quill pen to represent my writing and Trav wanted a diver to represent his passion for scuba diving.

These are our final approved designs. Mine on the left. Trav's on the right.

We consulted with the very talented young artists and tattooists at The Tattoo Parlor Malaysia at Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur. It took many hours of consultation and skill and patience for them to fine-tune our ideas and to get the tattoo designs just right for us. During this time, while tattoo artists Bruce and Oren Lee were busy designing, Cheryl the owner of the shop looked after us, bringing us coffee and food. The atmosphere in the shop was really friendly, fab, and fun.

Tattoo artist Bruce Lee positions the design template onto Trav's arm

Tattoo artist Oren positions the design template on my arm

With the design templates in place that tatttoing can begin!

Then the tattooing began and after over eight hours in the shop, including five long hours in the chair and under the needle, Trav and I finally had the tattoos we had wanted so much and which meant so much to us. We were more than thrilled with the results. I do have a few tattoos already but this was Trav’s first tattoo. I'm so proud of him and we both agreed that the pain was worth it!

The outline is being tattooed and I'm in a bit of a sweat!

The amazing results - photographed raw - after five hours under the needle!

Thank you to ace tattooists Bruce and Oren at The Tattoo Parlor Malaysia!

We love our his and her’s travel tattoos and we will wear them with pride.

Now that our tattoos have healed they look even better!

 Do you have a tattoo/s? What do you think of our new tattoos?

In my next post, I’ll be sharing our fantastic trip to Macao and Hong Kong and explaining to you how the trip very nearly didn’t take off!

Love, Janice xx

Fun in the sun – or playing a dangerous game?

Sunshine: It lifts our mood because it boosts serotonin. It provides us with vitamin D. It is essential for absorbing calcium, keeping our bones healthy, and for protecting against serious chronic diseases later in life such as osteoporosis. It gives us more energy and allows for an outdoor lifestyle.

I love to be bathed in sunshine and for the past four years, my husband Trav and I have been following the sun around the world, so that we can live in perpetual sunshine. I love the beach. I love swimming in the sea and the ocean. I love being on a boat. I love running around in shorts and a vest – and even better - a bikini. I love exposing my skin to the sun.

And guess what…. I never use sun screen.

I can hear you gasp. ‘No Sunscreen! Are you crazy?’

I don’t think I’m crazy because I’m careful to limit my time exposed to the sun and then I simply cover up. I tan easily and I never let myself burn - my skin is tanned from long slow exposure to the sun. I always have a hat, a cover up and a sarong.

That said - this year I noticed some strange new moles appear on my body. There were two on my back and two on the top on my leg. I decided that if they changed shape or colour or got much bigger, then I would do something about them - i.e. I would get them checked out. The only thing is, when you are constantly travelling from place to place, it’s difficult to know where to go to get checked out with any medical concerns.

But when I was in the Perhentian Islands at a turtle sanctuary (you can read about this amazing trip HERE) and I met a lovely lady called Sally from Kuala Lumpur while we were out on a boat trip together in our swimsuits, we somehow got chatting about moles. Not the wee rodents that might dig up your garden but the ones that appear on your skin. I showed Sally my new moles, and she suggested that I should get them checked out and that when we both got back to KL she would take me to see a skin specialist.

Thanks to Sally, I got an appointment with Dr Tan at the private Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur straight away. That really is his name - I didn't make it up.

I’d never been to a private hospital before – and this one looked pretty fancy – they even had valet parking at the entrance. I soon discovered that Dr Tan is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon as well as a skin specialist and, after a short wait in his reception area, I got to meet him. I found he was a friendly, delightful, and impressively qualified professional who had trained in London and Edinburgh. Dr Tan told me that the two moles on my back and one at the top of my leg were nothing at all to be concerned about – just normal moles – and that he could remove them straight away BUT that he was concerned about the other one at the top of my leg which would certainly need a biopsy.

Dr Tan asked me how long I was staying in Kuala Lumpur and I replied ‘just a few days’. But, when he looked me kindly in the eye and suggested that I stuck around for a week until he had the biopsy results, I started to feel a bit worried.

I wish I’d taken a photo of the suspicious mole to show you before it was removed for biopsy but I didn’t – but to describe it – it wasn’t a regular shape like the others as it had raggedy edges and was mottled in colour (light and dark brown) and neither was it raised above the skin like the others – this one was flat and under the skin.

So just a short while after consulting with Dr Tan in his surgery I found myself on his operating table with two nurses in attendance and Dr Tan providing local anaesthetics to each mole (that really stung!) and wielding his laser and then carefully cutting out the suspicious one for biopsy.

During the consultation, I also thought to mention the two unsightly rough brown spots that I had on either side of my face. This was purely a vanity thing - but as I was in the hands of a top plastic surgeon - I asked Dr Tan if he could burn them off too and he was happy to oblige!

Trav and I then extended our stay in KL and waited for the results of the biopsy while I healed.

You are probably thinking that seeing a top surgeon in a private hospital in Kuala Lumpur would cost a fortune – and I was rather afraid that it might.

I was initially hoping that my travel/health insurance policy might cover it. 

Imagine what such a bill would be in Europe or the USA or Canada for instance?

But, as my total bill for all the treatment here in Kuala Lumpur came to less than £400 GBP, I didn’t even have to bother putting it through my insurance. 

How amazing is that?

I do know that in the UK I could have seen a specialist for free under the NHS – but how long would it have taken for me to even get an appointment? And, if I did turn out to have skin cancer, surely a timely initial appointment would make a huge difference to a healthy outcome?

The biopsy results took just five days to land in my inbox and to my great relief, it was good news. The mole was not malignant skin cancer. It was a Seborrheic Keratosis - a type of harmless skin growth that bears a resemblance to skin cancer. I was very fortunate indeed.

So what now? A lesson learned?

Life is for living and I love living in sunshine...

Well, I’m now using sunscreen on my face and wearing a hat even more to shade my face and hopefully stop the brown patches reappearing on my now brown-patch-free face. I’m still happy not to use sunscreen on my body to be honest – my moles were not cancerous melanoma - so I’ll continue to get a bit of sun but to then cover up to prevent getting sunburned as I've always done.

Life is for living and I love living in the sun.

What about you? Do you too love sunbathing? Do you use sunscreen?

Love, Janice xx

Reconnecting with family and friends in the UK

Sadly, in the last week of April 2017, after Trav and I had been living and working in Bucharest Romania for a month, we heard news from family in the UK that Trav’s dad had become gravely ill. It had been less than three months since the death of his mum.

Trav immediately returned to the UK to be with his dad during his last days.

Just a few days later, after his dad had passed away peacefully, Trav returned to Bucharest and together we packed our bags to leave Bucharest and travel back to the UK to be with family and to prepare for the funeral.

First, we flew into Scotland to meet with our son Iain who lives in Glasgow and our son Ben who lives in Edinburgh.

The silver lining in the dark cloud of our bereavement was that for the second time this year, and in a short space of just three months, we would get to spend more time with our sons, with my own mum, and our much-missed family in the UK.

Blue skies over Glasgow

Our son Iain and his lovely girlfriend Alice

During our few days in Scotland, I also took the opportunity to attend a Romantic Novelist’s Association lunch in Edinburgh. It had been several years since I’d met up with my friends in the RNA Scottish Chapter. When I saw on our group Facebook page that a lunch meeting was being arranged for the morning I arrived back, I jumped at the chance to go along. I took the train from Glasgow and it was wonderful to see blues skies over Edinburgh and all my Scottish writer friends again face to face.

Edinburgh Castle in the sunshine

Blue skies over Princes Street Edinburgh

With Rosemary Gemmell in Edinburgh

With Eileen Ramsay - chair of the Romantic Novelist's Association 

It was wonderful to catch up with my Scottish writer friends in Edinburgh

Also, while we were in Edinburgh, we got together with our son Ben and his lovely girlfriend Hayley and all her family.

Trav and I with Hayley and Ben at the bowling club

Hayley is a ladies champion bowls player and there was a match being played that day at the local bowling club. It was a fun day and a welcome chance to spend quality time with Ben and Hayley especially when in just a few day’s time – the day after his grandad’s funeral – they were looking forward to their three-week holiday in Orlando Florida.

Hayley in action

Hayley's mum Andrea and Graham

Fun at the bowling club with Ben and Hayley and her family

Trav and I travelled down to England by train and were once again so grateful to our best friend Dina, who had generously offered to share her home with us again while we were in the UK.

Hanging out with my best friend Dina

In the days before the funeral, we managed to have some fun times with Dina in our old home town of Widnes and we also got to spend a great day out in Liverpool - exploring all the tourist sites like the Albert Dock and the Caven Club.

The day of the funeral was an emotional one for all the Horton family. For Trav and his brothers, Rob and Stuart, to lose both parent’s in such a short time was heart-breaking. As it was for all eight grandchildren to lose their grandparents. Their legacy of course will live on in them all and also in their one great-grandchild, Aaron, who lives in South Korea and whom they sadly had never met.

A short time after the funeral, on a solemn grey and rainy day in May, Jimmy and Dot’s ashes were buried together in the same Runcorn cemetery where their parent’s had been laid to rest. A small and intimate service was held with just their three son’s and wives present. Trav, being the eldest of the brothers, said a few words over his parent’s grave while we all held hands and said our last goodbyes.

For mid-May, initially from Bucharest, I had booked flights to London in order to attend the Romantic Novelist’s Association Summer Party. This writer’s networking event is a great opportunity for writers to get together with publishers and agents and other writing professionals. As I had been out of the country off and on for almost four years, I also saw this event as a great opportunity, not only for me to meet up with my writer friends, but to put my finger back on the pulse of the writing industry and to see what had changed over the past few years.

I had hastily re-organised my travel arrangements and I was very excited to be accompanied to the event and staying with my lovely writer friend Linn B Halton, who lives outside London. Linn and I hadn’t seen each other face to face (if you don’t count Skype) since the Festival of Romance several years before so you can imagine how much we had to talk about!

Ready for the RNA Summer Party -with my lovely friend Linn B Halton

Linn and I travelled to London together by train, had a fabulous lunch in an Italian restaurant in Piccadilly, and then caught up with other Romantic Novelist’s for pre-party drinks. It was so great to see everyone again. Below are a few photos with my lovely writer chums!

With Linn having lunch in London

Pre-party cocktails with lovely writer friends

With Mandy Baggot

With Talli Roland who also writes as Leah Mercer

With lovely Liz Harris

Soon, Trav and I felt ready to move on again. As we don’t have a home of our own in the UK anymore and, as we still have wanderlust to travel, we were keen to take up our nomadic adventures again and there is nothing like losing people to remind us of the fragility of life and how quickly time passes.

Our flight from London to KL via Singapore

Trav and I want to travel the world together while we can, while we still have our health, and before we get too old to do so. Of course, we love and miss our family and friends, but we appreciate they have busy lives too and being close geographically to them is no guarantee we would see them often as we'd like anyway. So I'm so grateful to the times in which we live; when we can keep in touch with our loved ones whenever we like on the internet and, thanks to affordable air travel, no place and no one in the world is much more than 12 hours away from us.

A farewell meal with my family before leaving for SE Asia

So we left the UK to fly back to Asia. We took a flight back to Kuala Lumpur and, while in a taxi to our hotel in KL, we had some wonderful news from Orlando Florida, where our son Ben was on holiday with his girlfriend Hayley. He had proposed and Hayley had became his fiancée.

The newly engaged Ben and Hayley in Orlando Florida

We were thrilled and so excited to see their proposal on video and to see how happy they are together. Our driver must have wondered what was going on when he heard me squealing and tearful on the back seat of his taxi!

After a good night’s sleep in KL, the next morning, we headed straight for the Perhentian Islands off the east coast of peninsula Malaysia. We flew with Air Asia from KLIA2 to Kuta Bharu - a 45 min flight and then took a bus and a boat over the Perhentian Besar (the larger of these islands). It’s a place that has been on our radar for a couple of years now but we have never been in Malaysia during these island’s short season - between May and September – after which all boats stop going there and all accommodations close down.

What is special about the Perhentian Islands you may ask?

Well, for one they are incredibly beautiful - the beaches are white sand beaches and said to be some of the best in the world - and the diving and snorkelling too is said to be amazing. But there is one other very special reason that we headed out to the Perhentians at this time and that is to do with my current Work In Progress. I needed to go to these islands for research purposes.

In my next book, I have a heroine who is establishing a turtle conservation sanctuary on an island– and so for a week I was going to be staying at a turtle conservation center to learn all about sea turtles and turtle hatcheries and baby turtles while Trav went diving.

If I was really lucky, I hoped that on Perhentian Island I would get to see baby turtles hatching and then help to release them to the sea. If I was really really lucky I would get to see a nesting turtle returning to the beach that she had been born on at least thirty years before, to lay her eggs under the light on the moon, before making her way back into the sea.

Please do join me here on the blog next time to find out more about the beautiful Perhentian Islands and to find out exactly how very lucky I was!

Love, Janice xx

Horton-Kang family time in South Korea!

We are back in South Korea and it’s been a little over a year since we were last here visiting our son James, our daughter-in-law Sujeong, our grandson Aaron who is now two years old, and the rest of our Korean family.

Sitting in the springtime sunshine with Aaron outside Daegu library in South Korea

We originally booked this much anticipated trip as a visa run from Thailand - taking advantage of an Air Asia sale earlier in the year - but since then we’d had a big change of plan and now, after our week in South Korea, we were heading back to Europe instead of Thailand.

(You can read about this big change of plan by clicking HERE).

Our son James teaches English in South Korea and he and his family live in a big city called Daegu. Since our last visit they have moved into a new and bigger apartment, so instead of us having to stay in a hotel, this time we could stay in their home. It was wonderful to be able to help with Aaron, who is now two years old, especially at bath time before bed and in the mornings when he was full of energy and wanted to play. His favourite toys are his musical instruments and his play kitchen. He also has a great fondness for his small toy buses in the same way that James used to love his Thomas the Tank Engine toys many years ago.

Our grandson Aaron is now two years old

The weather was mostly dry and sunny for our visit and we had lots of opportunities to take walks out and about in the city and in the park – especially lovely at this time of year when it is cherry blossom season.

We also took several trips to Daegu traditional market – one of my favourite things to do - as the market is very close to the apartment and it is so interesting and colourful and has so many types of fruit and vegetables, fish and meat and yummy spicy kimchi and my very favourite dumplings.

Another highlight of the week was spending time with and having meals out to celebrate being with our Korean family again. Sujeong’s parents and her brother and sister - the Kang family - are so lovely and welcoming and hospitable and it was so great to see them all again.

The week went by so quickly and soon it was time for Trav and I to say an emotional farewell and take the KTX fast train back to the airport. The distance between Daegu and Seoul is about the same distance between Manchester and London in the UK and the train journey takes around two and a half hours.

Our flight back to Malaysia on the 5th April (our son Iain's birthday - who we were thinking of all day too) would take seven-hours. Arriving late in Kuala Lumpur, we would stay overnight in KL before taking a direct fourteen-hour flight to London early the next morning. Then after a night at London Heathrow, we had a three-hour flight to our destination of Bucharest Romania.

A total in the air/flying time of twenty-four hours with two quick stops!

Next time I’ll be chatting about our fabulous time in Bucharest Romania!

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Love, Janice xx