Monday, 25 November 2013
Kuala Lumpur
We arrived in KL via a bus, the 8 of us looked like the biggest tourists in the world with rucksacks far to big for us and facial expressions that clearly showed we had no idea where we were, or where we were going. The only reason we ever made it to our respective accommodations in chinatown was down to the brilliant simplicity of KLs monorail network. Either way, we were al in our diferent hotels by 8. Helena and alex at their hotel (30rm each per night), callum, james and immy at their guesthouse (30rm each per night) and me, dan and dale at the erm.....place, that I had found (9rm each per night). I was actually really happy about our accommodation, although I did fall off the top bunk once.
That nignt we all headed into the chinese market for some food and to find some bargains. Had some really nice chinese noodles with pork (I had been missing it a tad). Our market trip wasn't all that good, we were all a little thrown by the sight of shopkeepers beating up a thief. It just sort of made us move on from each stall pretty quick. Anyway us guys spent the rest of the night playing card games with backpackers at the guesthouse, until we met up with the girls at a reggae bar for some drinks. It was a good night overall.
On the second day we all felt we needed to embrace some traditional malay culture, so we all neaded to The Curve shopping complex and watched thor 2 in the cinema. Sorry culture. That night the girls went out with a friend from school, us lads set out on foot to find the fabled little india. I'm not going to sugar coat it. We were hoplessly lost for 3 hours so we aint McDonald's and went home. Again, sorry culture.
On the third day we all went to MARA HQ in the morning to pjck up our work visa application forms, then we headed off to KLCC where the petronas towers are for some shopping, the whole place was a little more "upmarket" than we could afford but it was nice to talk around for a bit. That night we all met up again at the reggae bar and hung around until they closed.
The next morning, our last day in KL, me, dan and dale set out early to go see the 'batu caves' which was also good, we also took another stab at finding little india, this time we found it and indulged in some rather delicious curries. We wereall supposed to go out that night, but due to a communication breakdown us three boys ended up alone in our room playing uno while everyone else had fun. Oh well.
On the 15th we got up early and had a McDonald's breakfast before all meeting up for a bus ride to the airport. Took around 2 hours. The airport exoerience was pretty generic really. Lots of standing around and waiting for things to happen. One little highlight was when we found a sweet shop that allowed free tasters of the penny-chew sweets. Me and alex must have done atleast three circuits. Was feeling pretty sick by the time we eventually boarded the plane. Still onto cambodia!
English Camp
English Camp
We packed up pretty much all of our belongings, apart from household sortfof things like cockroach killer and smart work clothes, and at about 5am on the 8th of October we boarded the bus for the 19 hours drive to english camp in Perak. We had been informed that we would be vital members of english camp, but other than that we had no real information about what it would involve.
English camp was a four day camp where MRSM schools from all over the country sent their best english speaking students for some activities. Over the course of the weekend groups of students and teachers from a mix of different schools and states took part and competed in a number of games and activities with a variety of rules. However there was one rule that was to be strictly observed at all times, even outside of the classes; strictly no speaking any language but english. And that was where we, the 12 whities, came into the picture. We were the english police. It was our job to enforce the use of the golden language.
We weren't all that strict in our police work, otherwise we wouldnt have been very popular, but we saw a lot of really odd group creations, especially on the last night for the fashion show (photos pending).
I dont want to miss out details from english camp so I'll probably go over it at some point, I just want to keep the blog chronologically updated as I travel and im about 2 weeks behind now. From english camp we travelled to KL
We packed up pretty much all of our belongings, apart from household sortfof things like cockroach killer and smart work clothes, and at about 5am on the 8th of October we boarded the bus for the 19 hours drive to english camp in Perak. We had been informed that we would be vital members of english camp, but other than that we had no real information about what it would involve.
English camp was a four day camp where MRSM schools from all over the country sent their best english speaking students for some activities. Over the course of the weekend groups of students and teachers from a mix of different schools and states took part and competed in a number of games and activities with a variety of rules. However there was one rule that was to be strictly observed at all times, even outside of the classes; strictly no speaking any language but english. And that was where we, the 12 whities, came into the picture. We were the english police. It was our job to enforce the use of the golden language.
We weren't all that strict in our police work, otherwise we wouldnt have been very popular, but we saw a lot of really odd group creations, especially on the last night for the fashion show (photos pending).
I dont want to miss out details from english camp so I'll probably go over it at some point, I just want to keep the blog chronologically updated as I travel and im about 2 weeks behind now. From english camp we travelled to KL
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Paula Langkawi
so we had all been working very hard at our respective schools, teaching the kids and doing activities and eating lots of food, and on the 12h of October we would have a week-long holiday while the Malays celebrated Hari Raya Raja. since we had all been working so hard Me, Dan and Dale decided that we would meet up with Callum and James from Pasir Tumboh, and Helena and Alex from Kuala Krai, and we would all go for a well-earned vacation to Paula Langkawi.
Langkawi is a large group of islands just off the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, now, in order to get to the west coast we had to take a bus. the journey was just under 8 hours so we decided that we would take a night bus, sleep through the trip and arrive at the jetty to langkwi early in the morning feeling refreshed and rested. This wasn't exactly how it played out. firstly there had been a mix up of communication and our group got split on to 2 separate buses; us Besut boys on one bus, the others on the other bus. secondly we found out (at the time when our bus was scheduled to leave) that we were at the wrong bus stop, and were supposed to be 19 miles away on the other side of Kota Bahru. in a mad panic we hailed a taxi and hurried off. luckily the bus company we were traveling with were truly terrible, and were running an hour late, which for us was good news. when the bus set off we encountered problem number 3. when we first got onto the bus from the stuffy heat of a city center, the air con was like a blessing, lovely, cool and refreshing. however 5 minutes later the bus started to feel a little nippy, another 5 minutes later goosebumps started popping up as we started to get really cold. by the end of the first half hour i though my nipples were going to tear through my t-shirt. the worst part of all was that Dale and Dan managed to sleep through this almost instantly, leaving me to sit awake for 8 hours while trying to think of ways to avoid needing the toilet.
But we had arrived, and a quick hour-long ferry later and we were on Langkawi.
I think it would be fair to say that arriving on the island at 6:30am had a bit of an impact on our body clocks. it would also be fair to say that even though it was October and monsoon season had technically stared, the rain was a little bit of a disappointment. As we took a cab from the ferry terminal to our accommodation the heavens emptied onto our heads, which sucks if you're in a leaky Malay taxi. As with the buses, our group of seven was split into us 3 boys, and the other 4, each at different locations, we were at a little joint called the rainbow lodge, who ended up charging us a total of 60rm between us for 3 nights at the end (that's like £12) and the others at a place called the Pantai Tengah Beach Inn, who charged the four of them a total of just over 400rm of 3 nights. I was pretty proud of my bargain hunting abilities, especially as their place was basically the same size as ours.
we then went on a wonder to explore the stuff near to our place while we trekked over to the other house. one rather worrying discovery we made is that the sewrs of Langkawi are inhabited by giant lizards.
Anyway after getting lost and having to get directions from a seemingly lovely lady (who it just so happens was a man dressed as a women who had the worlds deepest voice) we got a taxi to the other place. we waited a rather large storm there for a few hours, just hanging out and chatting, before we headed out to the town to search for some good food and shopping places.
Me, James and Dale hen headed to h beach for a quick dip in the sea. this quickly ended up as me and James getting smashed around by waves as Dale laughed from the shore. we decided to end our beach trip with quick stop for coffee at a swanky looking beachside cafe called 'sugar'. the coffee wasn't that good, and that would have been fin if the woman hadn't then charged us 40rm for the drinks (in pounds that's not even a tenner but considering you can normally get three coffees for about 5rm, it was a bloody rip off.
We then headed back to James' for the night.
Now, for the sake of maintaining the image that this is a year of voluntary work in another country and not just a year long holiday (it isn't a year long holiday, seriously) I won't go into the details of what we did in the evenings on Langkawi. Suffice to say that that there is no alcohol available at our projects, but there was alcohol on Langkawi and we were all above the legal drinking age. The end.
Day Two
The second day on Langkawi was a lot less eventful and much easier to sum up.
we spent a good portion of the day at the beach, the weather wasn't that good, but when you're going swimming getting wet is kinda the point so it didn't matter.
After that me, Dale and James went for a wonder around a market and found some rally cool women's pantaloons, but we're very modern young men and a little bit of crossdressing is no crime so we bought some and had a "pantaloon party". we also went to a budget spa and had a foot fish treatment thingy, which tickled like mad.
the rest of day 2 essentially involved going out for food and then going out for the evening. At one point I met a lovely guy from Libya called Raul. he was very drunk bu we had a few conversations about stuff like religion and football. (since arriving in Malaysia I have learnt that people always want to talk about football, I got tired of explaining I don't rally watch football so now I just lie and say I support Arsenal)
Day Three
on the third day our group split up Me, Dan, Helena and Alex all decided to go on a snorkeling trip, while Callum, Dale and James hired some mopeds and explored the main island a little.
Snorkeling was great. I would love it if i was able to post a load of pictures that look like scenes from finding nemo, but the camera quality for the snorkeling trip was not good at all. suffice to say that it was a great time and I saw loads of cool stuff. The only downside was the ferryman's decision to play a "best of Pitbull" CD for the entire boat trip. That sucked.
After the snorkeling we went back to our hotels, had a brief horizontal life-pause (nap sounds too childish for me), and then went out for the night.
Day Four
On the fourth day the 7 of us all went out on a boat trip up the river through loads of mangrove forests and caves. It was actually really cool, the monkeys here were much more sociable than the ones around our school, we also got a pretty good look at some eagles feeding and went to a stingray farm. Did you know you could farm stingrays? I didn't, it was pretty cool.
About half way through the river tour the rain, which had been pretty mild all day started to gradually get heavier and heavier until we out on a boat in the middle of a lake in a storm so bad that we would have been dryer if we didn't have a boat. As adventurous young people we didn't particularly mind this, however we were sharing our boat with a Portuguese family who's 7- 10 year old child looked miserable beyond words so we decided to head back. To be fair we only missed out on a small waterfall and beach.
We got back around 6, recovered from the cold, had brief power naps, ate some food, and then headed out for the last night on Langkawi.
Fifth day
On the last day on the island we all got up pretty early and checked out of our accommodation and paid up, by English standards it was quite cheap for 4 nights. We then went out on a final day trip of "Island Hopping" this basically involved a small boat taking us between 3 different islands over he course of about 4 hours. we went to a lake on an island, went to see some eagles feeding, and finally stopped at a nice little beach for a lovely swim. all in all i was a greatt time day and a nice way to end our trip to Langkawi.
we go a ferry back to Kuala Perlis around 6, and caught our nightbus back home at 8:30. we got home at about 3am, and spent the next 2 days lazing around and recovering from nightbus-lag.
I'll try to keep my blog a little more updated, but its exam season at Kota Putra at the moment, so it's all work and no play, not much of an exciting read. We're going traveling soon, I'll have lots of stories then.
byeee
Langkawi is a large group of islands just off the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, now, in order to get to the west coast we had to take a bus. the journey was just under 8 hours so we decided that we would take a night bus, sleep through the trip and arrive at the jetty to langkwi early in the morning feeling refreshed and rested. This wasn't exactly how it played out. firstly there had been a mix up of communication and our group got split on to 2 separate buses; us Besut boys on one bus, the others on the other bus. secondly we found out (at the time when our bus was scheduled to leave) that we were at the wrong bus stop, and were supposed to be 19 miles away on the other side of Kota Bahru. in a mad panic we hailed a taxi and hurried off. luckily the bus company we were traveling with were truly terrible, and were running an hour late, which for us was good news. when the bus set off we encountered problem number 3. when we first got onto the bus from the stuffy heat of a city center, the air con was like a blessing, lovely, cool and refreshing. however 5 minutes later the bus started to feel a little nippy, another 5 minutes later goosebumps started popping up as we started to get really cold. by the end of the first half hour i though my nipples were going to tear through my t-shirt. the worst part of all was that Dale and Dan managed to sleep through this almost instantly, leaving me to sit awake for 8 hours while trying to think of ways to avoid needing the toilet.
But we had arrived, and a quick hour-long ferry later and we were on Langkawi.
I think it would be fair to say that arriving on the island at 6:30am had a bit of an impact on our body clocks. it would also be fair to say that even though it was October and monsoon season had technically stared, the rain was a little bit of a disappointment. As we took a cab from the ferry terminal to our accommodation the heavens emptied onto our heads, which sucks if you're in a leaky Malay taxi. As with the buses, our group of seven was split into us 3 boys, and the other 4, each at different locations, we were at a little joint called the rainbow lodge, who ended up charging us a total of 60rm between us for 3 nights at the end (that's like £12) and the others at a place called the Pantai Tengah Beach Inn, who charged the four of them a total of just over 400rm of 3 nights. I was pretty proud of my bargain hunting abilities, especially as their place was basically the same size as ours.
we then went on a wonder to explore the stuff near to our place while we trekked over to the other house. one rather worrying discovery we made is that the sewrs of Langkawi are inhabited by giant lizards.
Anyway after getting lost and having to get directions from a seemingly lovely lady (who it just so happens was a man dressed as a women who had the worlds deepest voice) we got a taxi to the other place. we waited a rather large storm there for a few hours, just hanging out and chatting, before we headed out to the town to search for some good food and shopping places.
Me, James and Dale hen headed to h beach for a quick dip in the sea. this quickly ended up as me and James getting smashed around by waves as Dale laughed from the shore. we decided to end our beach trip with quick stop for coffee at a swanky looking beachside cafe called 'sugar'. the coffee wasn't that good, and that would have been fin if the woman hadn't then charged us 40rm for the drinks (in pounds that's not even a tenner but considering you can normally get three coffees for about 5rm, it was a bloody rip off.
 |
| First time I've ever been bruised by the sea |
We then headed back to James' for the night.
Now, for the sake of maintaining the image that this is a year of voluntary work in another country and not just a year long holiday (it isn't a year long holiday, seriously) I won't go into the details of what we did in the evenings on Langkawi. Suffice to say that that there is no alcohol available at our projects, but there was alcohol on Langkawi and we were all above the legal drinking age. The end.
Day Two
The second day on Langkawi was a lot less eventful and much easier to sum up.
we spent a good portion of the day at the beach, the weather wasn't that good, but when you're going swimming getting wet is kinda the point so it didn't matter.
After that me, Dale and James went for a wonder around a market and found some rally cool women's pantaloons, but we're very modern young men and a little bit of crossdressing is no crime so we bought some and had a "pantaloon party". we also went to a budget spa and had a foot fish treatment thingy, which tickled like mad.
 |
| They were more interested in eating my leg hairs then the skin on my feet |
 |
| The pantaloon party: looks worse than it was |
Day Three
on the third day our group split up Me, Dan, Helena and Alex all decided to go on a snorkeling trip, while Callum, Dale and James hired some mopeds and explored the main island a little.
Snorkeling was great. I would love it if i was able to post a load of pictures that look like scenes from finding nemo, but the camera quality for the snorkeling trip was not good at all. suffice to say that it was a great time and I saw loads of cool stuff. The only downside was the ferryman's decision to play a "best of Pitbull" CD for the entire boat trip. That sucked.
 |
| The boat ride to the Reef, drowning out the Pittbull |
 |
| Think that is Alex, hard to tell |
 |
| That could be anyone, I dunno |
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| A rare and hideous species of ginger jellyfish appears to have surfaced |
 |
| On a side note, check out how much more ginger Malaysia has turned me |
After the snorkeling we went back to our hotels, had a brief horizontal life-pause (nap sounds too childish for me), and then went out for the night.
Day Four
On the fourth day the 7 of us all went out on a boat trip up the river through loads of mangrove forests and caves. It was actually really cool, the monkeys here were much more sociable than the ones around our school, we also got a pretty good look at some eagles feeding and went to a stingray farm. Did you know you could farm stingrays? I didn't, it was pretty cool.
About half way through the river tour the rain, which had been pretty mild all day started to gradually get heavier and heavier until we out on a boat in the middle of a lake in a storm so bad that we would have been dryer if we didn't have a boat. As adventurous young people we didn't particularly mind this, however we were sharing our boat with a Portuguese family who's 7- 10 year old child looked miserable beyond words so we decided to head back. To be fair we only missed out on a small waterfall and beach.
We got back around 6, recovered from the cold, had brief power naps, ate some food, and then headed out for the last night on Langkawi.
 |
| Monkey Madness |
 |
| More Monkey Madness |
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| Gang Hang at the lake-side |
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| H-Dawg and A-Dizzle told me to take dramatic looking photos of them....posers |
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| Moody Monkey Madness |
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| I'd like to tell you that this was a rained monkey, who sits on this board and narrates the information to tourists. I can't though. He was angry and mean and stole a lady's bag of nuts |
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| Alfred. Meet me at the batcave! |
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| me and dale discovered that our faces are not windproof |
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| stingray farm, which produces......I dunno, stingray milk? |
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| pretty things |
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| still sort of pretty things |
Fifth day
On the last day on the island we all got up pretty early and checked out of our accommodation and paid up, by English standards it was quite cheap for 4 nights. We then went out on a final day trip of "Island Hopping" this basically involved a small boat taking us between 3 different islands over he course of about 4 hours. we went to a lake on an island, went to see some eagles feeding, and finally stopped at a nice little beach for a lovely swim. all in all i was a greatt time day and a nice way to end our trip to Langkawi.
we go a ferry back to Kuala Perlis around 6, and caught our nightbus back home at 8:30. we got home at about 3am, and spent the next 2 days lazing around and recovering from nightbus-lag.
 |
| You can't really see it, I'm crap at photography. That's the closest to a dramatic sunset over Langkawi as I have. Sorry |
byeee
Saturday, 28 September 2013
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this blog are those of Tom Fletcher, and are not the views of Project Trust
Monday, 23 September 2013
some pictures
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| Chinatown in Malaca |
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| some strong man from Malaca |
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| the joys of our current shower system, it takes about twenty minutes to prepare a warm shower |
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| a cat with massive gentleman vegetables that always comes and lays like this whenever we visit the cafe, he's a serial flasher |
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| a cockroach cannibalizing another cockroach |
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| Kota Bahru basar at closing time |
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| traditional Malay store |
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| a bundle store, pick a t-shirt from the pile for the equivalent of 60p i got six :) |
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| a spot of light malaysian rain |
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| sleepy Dale on the bus |
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| sleepy kitty |
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| playful kitty |
Sunday, 22 September 2013
one month in
Month one
So I have officially been in Malaysia now for just over one
month, and it has been a crazy month. Full work days stared on the first of
September, I really have to get used to getting up at 6 for work on a Sunday,
at the moment my body is in denial and just tries to go back to sleep. I have
been working with my first batch of classes all month, at the moment there are
some big important exams on so half the school’s students spend their time
buried in a book, but I have been teaching forms 1 and 4 so far, I’ll start on
the other forms in January.
Teaching came as a bit of a struggle for the first two weeks
as I found out that we weren’t teaching any actual syllabus, rather we would
have to spend the next year thinking up ingenious ways to encourage our classes
to “get active with English”. At first this seemed terrifying and a little
disappointing, but now I’ve got into the swing of it and I now realise that I
have the freedom to try whatever I can think of to get these kids speaking.
Work time, from 7-4:30 Sunday-Thursday, is normally a pretty
similar day, with lessons or exam marking to do one way or another. In the down
time after work tends to vary slightly more. Our school backs almost directly
onto a pretty awesome beach, so I spend about one afternoon per week just
chilling in the sea, I’ve seen a variety of wildlife ranging from a jellyfish
which I’m told could kill me, to a meter long barracuda (not gunna lie, I saw
the barracuda and I ran like a girl for the shore, I’ve seen the opening to
finding nemo, those things are mean!). At the moment monsoon season is coming
in about a month so there is quite a lot of storms and rain, so beach trips are
becoming less frequent.
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| my camera isn't really capturing it but the sea is actually a really nice color |
On non-beach days we like to try and explore the local area
as much as possible, by this point I have developed a list of preferred food
and drink places, so there is always somewhere to get some food. The scenery
around the school is pretty badass. I’ve got a awesome jogging route that takes
me along a great beach and then up a mountain trail, so hopefully I’m going to
be able to stave off becoming fat from all this food. No promises though.
We’ve ended up getting involved in quite a few sports, Sundays
and Mondays are tennis days, Tuesdays we play ‘Futsal’ with all the staff at
MRSM Besut, and Wednesday we play with the staff from our school. The skill
level for causal players out here is ridiculous, and I’m far too slow to keep
up, so I end up as keeper most of the time which I’m pretty good at so it’s
cool.
On Wednesday me and dale went for a bike ride out to the
supermarket to see if they had some coffee so I could start handling the
mornings a little better. We saw that they were selling a wedding cake for a clearance
price of RM4, which is the equivalent of 80p, so we bought a wedding cake and
went to town on that bad boy at the side of the highway like some really posh
tramps.
Last weekend our fellow vols from Pasir Tumboh came down for
a visit, we didn’t really do anything particularly special, just showed them
around the area and all the hotspots. They stayed around for 2 days and then headed
back incredibly jealous of our beach location.
Last Saturday the three of us got into a spontaneous mood
and caught a bus to Kota Baharu for the day, which basically resulted in us
being lost for a long time, we ended up in a fish market where there were rats
the size of cats running about. We got some traditional Malay food from McDonalds
and I bought 4 bottles of cough medicine to treat the truly awful cold I’ve managed
to contract (that’s right, a cold in a country where the coldest temperature so
far has been 32°C) we thn caught a rust-bucket of a bus back. We got into Kuala
Besut at about 7pm it was at about that point that a torrential storm broke out
just as Fahmy told us he would be unable to give us a lift. So we decided to
run the 12km back to the school through the rain wearing sandals (got some
serious blisters from that). We got back at about 9, drenched through and miserable.
The one good thing about the rain here is that it’s like 20 degrees, so you don’t
really get cold, but It didn’t really go all that well with the cold/cough I already
had.
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| soggy dale |
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| damp dan |
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| wet me |
There has been a slight development in our home lives in the
last few days, a tiny little kitten, of unimaginably cute propitious, has just
decided that she is going to start living with us. She wondered in on a Saturday,
and since then has just stayed, normally in my pants draw. We’re loving the company
and have opted to name her Millie. She really just plays, sleeps and poops (but
only of dan’s stuff J)
we sent dale cycling to the ‘super-mas’ to pick up some kibble and now we all
but own her. She is incredibly clean and healthy so we’re confident she isn’t
carrying anything. So yeah…..free pet!
I’ll try to keep this blog a weekly thing so I keep people’s
interest, but I can’t guarantee I’ll do something interesting every week. I'll do a picture post tomorrow for a more visual aid, the Internet her really doesn't play nicely, I think we're still on dial up.
Ciao for now
xx
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