Tales of Visitors...Part 3

After the hideously long term we just had (sorry non-teachers) I was more than ready for the next holiday, especially as it bought me my next visitors – the wonderful Claire (best-friend-from-college!) and her boyfriend Lee and, a little later, the one and only Miss Laura Dixon!!

I was very excited about Claire and Lee coming, not only to see their lovely faces but also because one of the reasons they were coming out here now was to come with me to the Malaysian F1!! My first F1 EVER. I only started caring about F1 a couple of years ago and am still a bit of an amateur fan, but that didn’t stop me studying the programme until I could recognize at least the top 10 from qualifiers. It was a great race could’ve been more exciting but considering beautiful Mr Button came in 2nd I would count it as successful! Unfortunately Hamilton didn’t have the same luck, coming in 8th. Really enjoyed the weekend and can’t wait for the next race I get to see!

Then came the arrival of Laura at the hideously early hour of 5:00 a.m!! I managed to get out of bed and get myself to the train station (no, not the airport and yes, that does make me a terrible friend!) to pick her up! Luckily for me, having had a relatively late night the night before, Laura was pretty jet-lagged so a lot of the day was spent napping!

That evening I wisked her off on the night bus to Perhentian Islands (where I visited in September) to meet Claire and Lee, who had left the day before. Perentian = beautiful. I think Laura agreed! Lots of chilling on the beach and I got in 4 dives, the most exciting thing being that I needed 2 less weights than usual thanks to the recent weight loss! A fact I didn’t take into consideration on my first dive, donning the same number of weights as pre-weight loss, jumping into the water and sinking like a stone, desperately trying to equalize and get air into the BCD as I fell!

Luckily for Claire, she got to spend her birthday with us on one of the most beautiful places EVER. They did a Discover Diving course during the day, and we generally practiced lying still on a beach a lot more, then in the evening we had a delicious beach BBQ courtesy of our cute little chalet restaurant, Cocohut (I would recommend this place for food and accommodation!!) followed by an intense game of Who’s In The Bag! It was a lovely, relaxed evening!

Back to KL for a day, where we said a sad goodbye to Claire and Lee, who were going to spend their last week exploring KL and around. Laura and I left for Cambodia the next morning! An early flight, but we got into Phnom Penh at 9:00 a.m, with the whole day ahead of us! We toured the city, taking in the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, Wat Phnom, Central Market and the Killing Fields and S-21, where thousands of Cambodians were killed under the Pol Pot regime in the 70’s. These last two were really horrible but worthwhile experiences, and I learnt an awful lot about the terrible things Cambodia went through. Phonm Penh itself is ok, but pretty crazy! Lots of nice sights and friendly people (who admittedly do have a tendency to point and laugh at westerners, particularly Laura!).

After the relatively harrowing experience of being in Phonm Penh we had a thoroughly enjoyable 6 hour coach ride to Siem Reap (don’t panic, they played Cambodian karaoke videos for the whole journey to keep us entertained), a fantastic town from which you can explore Angkor and the Tonle Sap Lake. I LOVED exploring the temples of Angkor, particularly Ta Phrom, the one used in the Lara Croft movie (with all the trees growing over the temple). I think Laura was a little less captivated, but she made a sterling effort of putting up with my Jenny Tours commentary! We tried to catch both a sunrise and a sunset during our time there, but were thwarted on both counts by clouds! Well, I could bang on for hours about what we saw at the temples but think it best I only talk about them to people who ask, as I know that I could very easily bore the socks off most people!

Whilst at Siem Reap we also experienced a cookery course, meandered through markets and had a few lovely (some might say painful) massages. We also visited a floating village on the Tonle Sap, which we both really enjoyed! They had floating EVERYTHING in this village! It was crazy to see a man punting a little boat full of chocolate, crisps and other snacks for sale along the ‘alleyways’ between the ‘houses’! These people were really proud of their houses and we glimpsed some lovely gardens and even some husbandry, with the odd goose house or pigpen attached by ropes to the houses! There was also a floating school for orphans, which we visited – kids skipping and playing marbles on what was essentially a large floating bit of wood was an unusual sight!

We definitely made the most of our holiday, but these things have to end and we headed back to KL for a couple of day’s rest before – groan – back to school! Luckily for me (and my school) I had the pleasure of Miss Laura Dixon accompanying me for the week!! Laura wanted to come in to see the similarities and differences between our schools. I know that we all really appreciated all her help throughout the week! Thanks Laura! ☺

At the end of the week I was very sad to be saying goodbye to another of my bestest friends, but I didn’t have much time to think about is as my friend Jenny and I were off to Kota Kinabalu (capital of the state of Sabah, on Malaysian Borneo) for the long weekend! Jenny was running her first ever 10K (which she did in 58 minutes – much respect!) and I was going along for the fun of it. We did a day of diving – not the most amazing diving ever but had a lot of fun practicing with Jenny’s underwater camera – and then spent a day in Kinabalu Park (Kinabalu by the way is a big mountain) and the Poring (read BORING) Hot Springs. Was nice enough, we were just excited to see the mountain as we’re planning on climbing it next year!

Phew, then back to school for (thankfully) a 4 day week! Having not really stopped for a while I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend, which I definitely had, but for various reasons (mostly my fantastic and extremely funny friends) it was one of the funniest weekends ever!

Until the next time, adieu!

Tales of Visitors...Part 2

February!

So a quick run-through of some interesting things that happened... I went to a Hindu festival called Thaipusam at a place called the Batu Caves. Basically the Hindu's remember the sacrifices their God made by piercing their skin with hooks, often attached by ropes to heavy idols, which they then pull about. Others carry heavy idols on their shoulders - they're like giant photo-frames with images of the gods in. It's all about recognising the burdens the gods carried for the good of mankind. It was pretty hard to see actually, but an amazing experience.

Then there was Chinese New Year, loads of cool dragon and lion dances going on, and people giving each other mandarin oranges left, right and centre. I got about 50 oranges at school!!

Chinese New Year holidays bought the arrival of one Kenneth A Legg, my next visitor from the UK! I took him to Langkawi too (just too good to miss), but not before a quick trip to Melaka where I introduced him to The Most Amazing Tandoori Chicken Restaurant Ever. He liked it. Funnily enough, when Kenny arrived it rained for 3 days solid...and it NEVER does that here. It's all about relief rain - it gets so humid that it all builds up and has to just rain at about 4 p.m. However, not this time! Lucky Ken. Langkawi was great, lots of sunburn and relaxing, as well as a little bit of sightseeing and a go on the cable car up the mountain. It was labelled something like THE Biggest Cable Car in Malaysia, or THE Steepest Cable Car This Side of Langkawi Island or THE longest Cable Car Track In This Immediate Vicinity or something as un-awe-inspiring, but it was amazing! SOME of us got scared but not I!

Back down this neck of the woods we headed to a nearby Elephant sanctuary (pretty smelly, but cute) then down to a place called Kuala Selangor, which is a little river town famous for it's fireflies. You go on this little boat ride at night time and there are all these little fairy lights in the bushes. I literally thought they were fairy lights, and that someone was having us on, but then they started to move and they actually were fireflies!! It was crazy. It rained by the way.

Think Kenny enjoyed himself - it was great to see him and I was sad to see him go, but once again I had to get back to work for the longest term of my life (sorry to all you non-teachers but to the teachers out there we worked for like 9 weeks solid!!).

March

As there are 5 of us out here with birthdays in the same month and for a break from the world's longest term we decided to go on a girly weekend away to The Genting Highlands, which is like Malaysia's attempt (and I use the word loosely) at Vegas. It was great fun, an entire city which is essentially a giant theme park (and not a very good one) up in the mountains - excellent for the cheeseyness of the whole thing and we all laughed a LOT! It was pretty rainy and even cold up there! Nice to be cold for a change though!

Nearly caught up to the present day!

I am officially rubbish and have been told enough times to get me back into writing this - Here's Tales of Visitors Part 1!

So, December!!!

December was the month I really started to get homesick. Everyone was talking about going home for Christmas and even though my parents were coming out, I was really jealous and desperate to come back (can I just say that that feeling passed after Christmas holidays!!!).

I had about a week off school before the 'rents arrived, so me and a friend from work went to explore Pangkor Island (close to KL off the west coast) - we stayed on the backpacker beach, it was rank. It rained. We left the next day!! We drove instead to Melaka, the old capital of Malaysia. The Chinese took it, the Portugese took it, the Dutch took it, then the English took it! Obviously now Malaysia is independent (31st August 1956 fyi) but there's still loads of evidence of the different colonies who have controlled the port. It's a very interesting place, great food, great shopping!!

The 'rents finally arrived (I cried, and I'd like to mention here that they did not!!). It was very good to see them, but not long before we were arguing like usual! I took them to Langkawi, an Island close to Thai border on West Coast. It's a beautiful island, proper tropical stuff, and I think they enjoyed it! We were there for Christmas day. Chilling on the beach, a bit of swimming, some canoeing, then a curry for xmas dinner!! Next we went on to Penang, an amazing place, really culturally diverse and full of temples, mansions and interesting places to visit! We loved it!<

Back in KL and New Year's Eve party at the Luna Bar, with a view of the towers - an excellent evening - lots and lots of fun! My parents mingled with the friends and had a great time, and as a Christmas present I bought them a night in the same hotel so they could relax there the next day as well.

Back to work for me - the 'rents headed off to Singapore and Melaka on their way back. Think we were all relieved with the break! But then, when it came time for them to leave, and I was sick on their last evening which they ended up spending stuck in my apartment with a take away, listening to me sniffling and sneezing, I REALLY didn't want them to go!!

However I quickly got back into the swing of things with school - a mammoth term ahead!!

Ooops, it's been a while! Here's November in a Nutshell

Hi Y’all! Sorry it’s been absolutely aaaages since I added anything to the blog. Will attempt to bring you all back up to date with what’s been going on here.

November

In Nov I went on a little trip to Sumatra. A guy from work who is VERY good at organizing holidays sorted it all! So a bunch of us from work set out (11 of us altogether) straight from school – we had some sort of a holiday – and landed in Medan, where we stayed for one night in a lovely hotel. The rest of Medan is NOT nice. The next morning we were driven to a place called Bukit Lawang, a small village on a river next to an orangutan sanctuary. The place was amazing and so picturesque! We went for a jungle trek, taking in the flora and fauna, seeing orangutans SERIOUSLY close up and ending it all with a ‘tube’ (basically giant rubber rings all tied together) back down the river to our accommodation.



The next day saw us heading to Lake Toba, this huge lake formed in the crater of a volcano, with an island the size of Singapore in the centre! It was a long and arduous journey but we got there in time to get the ferry to our new lodgings and relaxed for the evening. We arranged a boat trip to a beautiful waterfall for the following day, with a visit to a local village (with gorgeous kiddies) and their tiered farming fields – very nice! There is sooooo much more I could say about this amazing trip but it would take forever. Look at the photos instead. I had such a fantastic time and can’t wait to explore the rest of Indonesia!


Other events in Nov:

The Taylor’s Annual Ball!! Well, our school is part of an education group and November saw the time for their annual ball, with an ‘Around the World’ theme. Some of us teachers had already learned a Banghra Dance for our Deepavali assembly, and I thought it would be a fun idea to perform it at the Ball, in front of 2000 odd people!! I didn’t really expect any of the other teachers to be up for it but, they called my bluff and we found ourselves opening the show!! If I find out how I will put the video up here. We were terrified but it was a fantastic experience and definitely got our school noticed as being a fun-loving, close-knit team – I loved it!


I found myself given the exciting and not-at-all-stressful job of coordinating the Christmas Assembly and celebrations at school as well (I know it's still Nov but preps start early as we break up on 9th Dec!!). Luckily for me, the PTA are extremely active and they basically did all the work, and I just told everyone what was happening and stressed a lot, particularly on the day! It was a success (although did run over by 15 minutes, making everyone late at the end of the day!!). I enjoyed working with the PTA and, something I never thought I’d like, working with some of the kids from Secondary! They were fantastic and so helpful! With our school being so small still, Secondary and Primary often do things like celebration assemblies together. It can work well but makes pitching the tone of assemblies relatively difficult, with 3 year olds and 15 year olds all together!


Will write a ‘December’ entry VERY soon I promise!

Bangkok, bad weather, changed plans and a hunt for sunshine!

So we had half term recently, and a few girls and I decided to go to Bangkok for 3 nights and some islands near Phuket for 3 nights. We booked it (80 quid for all flights!!) all then checked the weather reports and discovered it was still monsoon season in the Andaman Coast, which is where Kho Phi Phi, our ideal destination, is. Eek! We thought we’d go for it anyway.

Bangkok apparently is like Marmite – you either love it or you hate it. I loved it! Luckily we went with someone who used to live there so she was able to show us the best places to stay, eat, go out etc and we ended up in a really cute guesthouse in a cool area known as Sukhumvit. We basically ate lots of good food, had thai massages, looked at amazing temples and shopped (or attempted to shop in my case). The Grand Palace is out of this world…seriously one of the most amazing places I’ve visited – we spent 4 hours (in the flipping hot sun) just wandering around it and saying “Amazing…” a lot. The shopping…well there’s this huge weekend market with over 6000 stalls. Perfect for shopaholics! I lasted about 10 minutes then found a café to sit down in for 45 minutes.

So after our lush 4 days we boarded a plane to Phuket with the intention of getting a ferry to Kho Phi Phi asap so as not to spend long in Phuket. I’d heard it was pretty hideous and can confirm that it is a complete dive. It’s like the Benidorm of SE Asia! I don’t think I’ll be going back any time soon! We ended up having to spend a night there as missed all ferries. However as it turned out we arrived in the middle of a very bad storm! Further investigation revealed that the whole of Southern Thailand was enjoying this lovely storm; we weighed up the pro’s and con’s of spending 3 days on a tropical island in the pouring rain and gale force winds and promptly changed our flights back home.

And so found ourselves back in KL searching the internet for rain-free beaches within easy reach. It seemed that every good beach/dive site was covered in thick, black cloud! But within 6 hours we were on a night bus headed for Mersing on East coast of Malaysia, where we then took a ferry to Tioman Island. And guess what?? Sunshine! Hurrah! The next 3 days consisted of sunbathing, eating, snorkeling, diving and card games. Happy days! Tioman isn’t quite as beautiful as Perhentian, but it’s much cheaper and the diving was slightly better. I did a brilliant dive around all these boulders and there was one bit where we swam into a cave bit at the bottom then swam to the top of it to get out…it was JUST like Ariel’s trinkets cave in The Little Mermaid! I had a singsong to myself.

Have a look at the photos on Flickr (link above).

In other news…my class are finally beginning to ‘get’ me and are talking a lot more, which I’m thrilled about! They’re really cute and I’m enjoying the class a lot more now! We’re trying to get Wake and Shake going in school and I’ve found myself leading whole school dancing 3 times a week (inspired by you Miss Dixon!)! We’ve got a Deepavali (Hindu Festival of Lights) celebration day coming up and the staff (well, the cool members of staff) are learning a Bangra dance for the celebration assembly – it’s SOOOO cool! We’re also getting our own Punjabi costumes made for us and we’re going to get some of the parents to henna our hands – SO excited!!

Outside of school everything also good…lots of attempting to keep fit. I’ve joined a gym and have even been to it a few times (they phone you if you haven’t been for a while!). We’ve found some cool dance classes to go to. Eating out a lot as I’m lazy and I don’t have lovely housemates to cook for me, but I tell myself it’s ok as eating out is very cheap, and food from the supermarket isn’t! Getting bitten a lot by mosquitoes no matter how much repellant I use! Flat is finally tidied and sorted ready for visitors so get out here! Going shopping today to ‘Megamall’ – think Cribbs x 10. Wish me luck!

Coming up…a trip to Sumatra to go on a jungle trek and up a volcano or something – I don’t think I’ve read the itinerary properly but sure it will be fun (sweaty, but fun!).

Take care y’all!

Jen

Perhentian Islands

Just got back from a few days in the beautiful Perhentian Islands, two islands off the north-east coast of Malaysia. There are photo's on my Flickr account which you can access following the link above. It is an amazing place, and made me remember why I decided to come to Malaysia. Don't get me wrong, I love living in KL, but sometimes in big cities it feels like you could be in any city in the world, and it was brilliant to get out and see a bit more of Malaysia. I went with a friend from work, and there was another family from work staying there at the same time. Me and my friend Amy decided not to fly; it's a short journey and you have to do your bit to help the environment! It would also involve a 1 hour taxi ride at the other end. Instead, we took the night bus, which took about 8 hours and dropped us right outside the jetty in Kuala Besut, the nearest port to the islands. From there we took a 'ferry' (not the kind you would imagine, more a boat taxi) to the small island, Perhentian Kecil (literally 'small perhentian'). We stayed in a place called Impiani on Petani Beach. The journey back was worse, it took 11 hours and meant I was 1 1/2 hours late for a party that I had already paid for! But it was worth it.

We spent a lot of time on the beach snorkelling, sunbathing (for about 30 seconds then moved to the shade) and generally relaxing. The snorkelling is amazing; some say you will see more snorkelling than diving because the visibility gets worse deeper down. The whole island has a 'no fins' rule when snorkelling as they are trying to protect the coral reefs. If you didn't know, corals take years and years to grow and can be destroyed instantly by people clumsily bashing into them. Also the rising sea temperature is bleaching and killing more corals, so it's more important than ever to take care of them. The islands are trying to be very conscientious about conservation issues. There are turtle sanctuary's all over the place and you can even volunteer to help out, which I may do for a week soon. Turtles and their eggs are hunted by the Chinese for use in their medicines and most turtle species are endangered as a result, which is awful because they are amazing, graceful creatures.

I did some scuba diving whilst there, at a place called Universal Divers on the large island, Perhentian Besar. They were fantastic, really friendly and helpful. I did 6 dives over 2 of the days we were there. I was worried about my breathing as in the past I have been known to use up my oxygen really fast, but I got a lot better here. The water is very calm and easy to dive in, there is rarely a current so you don't use much energy once down there, you just float about. Maintaining your balance is easy, which is good because again, you don't wanna bump into any corals (or worse, scorpionfish, stonefish or triggerfish which can get a bit cross if you get too close!). I saw some amazing things, the highlights being a green and a hawksbill turtle, but more than that I just loved being underwater again! Our dives were really long (longest 59 minutes) and it was absolutely fantastic. If you haven't tried scuba diving yet, you HAVE to have a go! It's amazing just swimming around in a completely different world full of the most colourful and graceful creatures.

The best thing about this place is it is literally jungle and beach. Nothing else. No roads, no cars, no giant buildings. There is one tiny fishing village and everything else is dive centres or accommodation. You can only get around by taxi boat, no one ever wears shoes; it's pointless as you are always getting in and out the water. It's just fantastic and whenever anyone comes to visit me I'm taking them there! Have a look at the photo's, enjoy and thanks for reading! Back to work tomorrow so better go and do some prep! xxxx

New school and stuff

First week at school!!! The kids, or ‘learners’ as we are encouraged to call them, are lovely, very very cute and extremely quiet but luckily I do have some crazy characters so I won’t get bored! I have 21 now, the biggest class in the school (how is that fair?!) but I’m not complaining (much – I would have preferred a number which had more factors but there you go). They are very polite and call me Miss Jenny, which gets me every time as I try to work out whom they are addressing.

It’s so funny as we’re really cold in our classroom because of the lush air conditioning, but step outside for even a second (the building has open corridors, so no roofs and sometimes only 3 walls) and you get a nice sweat on – luckily staffroom etc are quite close to my room so I avoid the beetroot look most of the time. I don’t actually know how the kids run around at playtime – but they do somehow! Most of them support Man U, Liverpool or Barcelona – the really well known teams basically; no local teams for them to support so we’ll let them off. They love a kick-around on the boggy (and I mean boggy) school field.

Most of the children are Malaysian (and there are Malay Malaysians (mostly Muslim), Indian Malaysians (Hindu) or Chinese Malaysians (Christian or Buddhist)) or some Korean, and there are a few Americans, English, Australian etc. It’s great, the majority speak fantastic English (unfortunately in American accents), as well as Bahasa Malay, Mandarin, Korean and/or loads of others. Many of them have lived in different countries for long periods of time as they come from families of diplomats or businessmen.

First lunchtime duty was interesting – half an hour out in the sun with no shade = a very sweaty Miss Jenny. For that reason I will dread Wednesday’s forever more! Everyone is expected to lead an after school club and I opted for photography (as it's indoors mostly) but then the head of PE asked me to lead Secondary Netball...! I agreed, but only if my Photography club proves too unpopular to run as they are supposed to be on the same day. As you can imagine I am canvassing for support for my photography club so as to save myself from more outdoor exposure! Hopefully I will get a lot of kids and escape!

Anyway school was great this week, but it will take a lot of getting used to as the kids are different - they don't seem to get my (ahem) humour. As you all know, I was hilarious in Bristol, but it seems I'm not funny in Malaysia...booo! There is literally one kid who laughs at everything I say, whilst everyone else just stares at me as if I'm mad!

The staff are lush and great fun - we went to a champagne brunch at the weekend, a first (but definitely not a last) for me. We do a lot of socialising, got water-skiing on Putrajaya lake coming up and also a possible staff trip to Borneo to stay in the Jungle with the Orang-Utans. Also made some friends from the bigger international school in KL who live in the same Condo as me. They're all lovely and we have enjoyed a good few meals out etc (eating out is extremely cheap)!

Loads of time off school here - today is Malaysia Day, then next week is a 4 day one and I have the whole of the following week off for Hari Raya (end of Ramadam and the most important festival in the Muslim Calendar). Me and my Garden (the name of the other school) friends all planned a holiday for Hari Raya hols - booked it and everything - then when discussing our impending trip we realised that our school had arranged for their holidays to be in different weeks so I couldn't go - they're off next week!! Hideous. You'd have thought we would maybe check these things but apparrently not. So I'm probably planning a diving trip on my lonesome for Hari Raya but I'm not too fussed about that - desperate to see a bit of Malaysia!

Anyway better go, I get the feeling I'm rambling.

Hopefully will get internet access at home soon and will also get pics of my apartment up here.

Thanks for all your lovely messages!

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