What's that I smell?

Since arriving in Asia, we've been introduced to a lot of new and interesting smells: the pungent durian fruit, exotic new spices and....Billy's laundry?

The saga began at Lake Chini: After our jungle hike, we returned to the guesthouse, showered and headed off to the bus. During our first bus ride, we both smelled something a little "funky" wafting around the bus. We checked our shoes and started eyeing our fellow passengers, trying to identify the stinky culprit.

When we switched buses in the town of Kuantan, we both independently noticed that the smell had "followed" us. Billy turned to Julia saying, "Did you smell that foul odor on the first bus?" We immediately started sniffing our surroundings, and it didn't take us long to realize that the curious smelling item was Billy's' shirt.

Quickly, before the second bus took off, Billy rushed down to the luggage compartment and reemerged with a "clean" shirt. After settling into his seat with the new shirt, we caught wind of the familiar smell. We pondered this for a bit, then realized that Billy had failed to completely dry his laundry the night before. He had then packed the semi-damp clothing into his bag that morning, where they proceeded to cook all day in the smoldering heat, thus causing the "special" odor. Bingo.

We (Billy) learned an important lesson about doing laundry in the tropics. Clearly, Billy has never had the benefit of traveling with Anna, who views packing damp laundry as a highly punishable offense.

-Billy and Julia