Gappers on tour!

From the 7th of July onwards, the MRSM students had two weeks of exams, followed by a 2 week holiday. There wasn't much point in us hanging around the school when there are no lessons, so all the 8 month volunteers took the opportunity to travel. We used our own money for this and Ollie, Declan and James had the next two weeks completely planned out. We spent four days in Cambodia, and then 10 in Vietnam. Because the boys are huge Top Gear fans, they decided to follow the same route the men did in the Top Gear Vietnam special. Then we said goodbye to Declan who was off to Australia, and the rest of us flew to  Sabah. 
To get the 2 weeks before the holiday off, we promised the principal we'd come to girl guide camp at the end of the holiday, so we had to leave 5 days earlier than all of the other volunteers.
So here is what we did in our month:

Gemma, Rosie and I took a bus from Kota Bahru to Kuala Lumpur and then had a long and expensive taxi ride from the bus stop to the airport. We arrived at 12 o'clock at night and our flight wasn't until 6 so we had to sleep on the floor for a while. Not being able to sleep on public transport or on airport floors I was very happy to finally board onto the plane and slept from the moment we left until we arrived at the beautiful airport in Siem Reap. It was honestly the prettiest airport I've ever seen. There were 3 traditional Cambodian houses next to each other surrounded by big green trees and colourful flowers.
We sorted out our visa's and quickly found a cheap but pleasant hotel and slept until the middle of the afternoon. Then we explored the town a little and got lured into several markets selling lots of things we want but don't need.
In the evening we met up with the rest of the volunteers who had a later flight and made plans for the next couple of days.
All the Cambodians were all so nice, it made me a little suspicious, we were all just waiting for something to happen. And it did on our walk back home to the hostel.
I usually hang my rucksack off one shoulder so when a motorbike slowed down behind me it didn't dawn on me what would happen next. One of the boys on the bike tried to grab my bag, but I was somehow able to grab it back which left the crook hanging awkwardly off the back which was actually quite hilarious. That's karma for you. It all happened really quickly and I was a little bit in shock after it happened but I'm also so impressed with myself.

The next day we got picked up very early by a tuk-tuk driver to take us to the temples of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. It was very busy in the morning, because everyone came to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. But as the day went on and all the people went to different temples at a different time, the crowds thinned out and made it all a lot more enjoyable. It was ridiculously hot though. By the end of the day all our T-shirts were soaking and I managed to sweat the dye of my skirt onto my white T-shirt. 

The next day we were off to Phnom Penh, which was even hotter. It's not near a coastline and it's a huge city so the heat is almost unbearable. 
The activities we did here weren't very much fun, but they were very interesting and educational. We visited the Killing Fields, where Pot Pol had thousands of people murdered and learnt all about the history of the Khmer Rouge and the atrocities they had committed. It was quite a harrowing experience, especially as they have 9000 skulls of the dead in a memorial in the centre of the museum.
The next stop was Tuok Sleng Genocidal Museum, also known as S21. This was a former school that was converted into a prison where people were tortured, forced to sign false confessions and ultimately killed. It was awful. They had pictures of every single person who had been detained there. The ages ranged from 5 to over 30. It was all terribly sad and we couldn't really get ourselves to do anything jolly in the evening, but we were all very glad we went to these places and got to know more about it.

Overall Cambodia was a historically interesting and very hot country. I was surprised by how smiley all of the people were, even though they had gone through such awful things that didn't even happen very long ago.


From Phnom Penh we moved to Vietnam! First stop was Ho Chi Min (formally known as Saigon) which was huge! We spent less than 8 hours in the city, but managed to visit the Chu Ci Tunnels, the tunnels the Vietcong lived in during the war. These tiny tunnels make up a network of 120 km outside of the city. 
The tour we got was interesting, but the guide constantly made inappropriate jokes and was just very annoying.

We night bused it from here to Nha Trang where we spent 3 relaxing days. Beaches, a water park on an island called Vinpearl, lots of ice cream and the famous Why Not bar. I really enjoyed it here. 
Because Russia helped Vietnam during the war they give them free visa's to visit the country, so it was crawling with Russians! We had some very funny chats with a very stereotypical Russian couple. 

We all caught up with our tan which meant it was time to move on to beautiful Hoi An. It's a very sweet old French town on a lazy river and it's very well known for it's cheap tailoring. As cheap though it is, I wasn't planning on getting anything tailored because I wanted to save some money, but when I was walking through the market a woman literally dragged me into her shop and sat me down to look through the books. After flicking through 3 books and some encouragement of the girls I finally decided to get a dress made anyway. It didn't take me long to pick a material and I was to pick up my dress by the end of the day.
In the meantime Hatty, Gemma and I hired some bikes, which made me a very happy Dutch girl. They were proper city bikes with cute little baskets at the front and they were easy to ride. 
I went to pick up my dress and it was stunning! It needed to have some adjustments made on the top though so the tailor roughly pulled the dress over my head and disappeared on her motorbike. I was so confused at what was going on, but 5 minutes later she returned and the dress fitted perfectly. I'm so proud of it!
We had a lovely dinner along the waterfront that was lit up by some beautiful lanterns and the next morning I had the best breakfast of my life. A nutella crepe (a big luxury here) which was decorated with colourful chocolate sprinkles and a I had my first Vietnamese coffee that has changed my life. Coffee will never taste the same to me again.

Another day, another city and we were off to Hue! The bus drive was absolutely stunning! I couldn't keep my eyes off of the scenery for the whole trip. Vietnam is so narrow that the mountain slopes practically end on the beach and we also drove through some traditional villages which was very nice to see.
We were too stingy to pay 5 dollars to go into the citadel so we walked around the brick wall. Apart from that we didn't do very much. The train took us from here to our next destination: Vietnam's capital, Hanoi.

But this also only was a short stop, because we were going off on a 3-day cruise around one of the natural wonders of the world, Ha Long Bay. This was the highlight of the whole trip for me! It is so hard to describe what it is like being there, but it's absolutely incredible! I can tell you about the milky green sea surrounding over 900 islands of varying shapes covered in greenery. I can describe the beautiful sunset as the sun drifted down past the islands causing the sky to go orange and bathe everything in a warm glow. But I can't explain the feeling of being there. Hopefully you can imagine what it was like a little bit when seeing the pictures.

We went kayaking twice. The first time was amazing. We paddled through the floating village, went through narrow little tunnels and it gave such an amazingly powerful feeling when we paddled into this beautiful lagoon where eagles flew right over us.
The second day Amy, Hatty, Rosie and I went kayaking again, but Rosie felt seasick almost as soon as we started, but for some reason we still decided to kayak around the island. We all got into a bit of a panic when we thought we didn't know the way back to the beach we were supposed to be on anymore and the water got a lot more choppy which resulted with Rosie turning paler by the minute. Luckily we did find our way back in the end!
We stayed in a lovely resort on Monkey Island and the name of the island didn't let us down. We trekked from our resort to the other side of the island where it was crawling with monkeys. There was one drinking coke which was very entertaining and then one naughty little monkey stole a beer from a guy, had a sip and then decided he didn't like it and threw it back at him. Outstanding stuff. I also fed a little monkey a nut, but the mother wasn't pleased with this and chased me away.

Our last night in Vietnam was spent in Hanoi. We had to catch our flight early the next day so we didn't do very much, but we got the opportunity to meet up with one of the 8 month volunteers, Charlie, who works in Thailand and we'll probably go traveling with him in the week before we leave.

From here it was goodbye to Declan who was off to Australia and the rest of us flew back to KL to catch our flight to Sabah, Amy and Hatty's home. When we flew into Sabah my jaw hit the floor. It was amazing to see all of the green hills and in the centre of that Mount Kinabalu. 
In Kota Kinabalu we met up with all of the other volunteers. Our first couple of days were very relaxing. We went to a couple of islands and went to the cinema 3 times (maybe or maybe not to come back for the amazing caramel popcorn) and had a couple of great nights out in the night club Bed (yes, that's its name).
I went off to Ranau on my own and enjoyed the amazingly scenic views during the bus ride through the hills. 

We also went to the Harvest Festival which involved a lot of traditional dances and music, which we obviously joined in on. Being in a big group of white people we attracted quite a lot of attention. Hannah (she works in a primary school just outside of KL) and I gathered a big audience when we sang karaoke. So much fun when everyone sang along to 'I just called to say I love you' with us. We also tried our hardest to do our best sumazau moves, but all the Malays kept on swaying us around the dancefloor and again here there was a huge audience taking pictures and videos of us dancing.

The next day Gemma was off to Tokyo and the rest of the group were ready to get the bus to Sandakan! Here we went on an amazing Jungle Safari, another big highlight for me. This involved going on a boat down the Kinabatangan river and staying in an open wooden hut on sticks with 4 mattresses on the floor with very much needed mosquito nets. All right in the middle of the jungle. At night you could see bats flying around and underneath it and the next morning I caught a monkey hiding from another monkey behind one of the poles. We were on a boat for about half an hour and we caught sight of a wild orang-utan mother and her baby!!!! We were all so excited and I felt so privileged to be able to see this!
We went on a night boat trip too and saw some very colourful birds and some wild jungle cats that looked like pugs. On our morning boat trip we got a good look at the Proposcis monkeys. This may not be the most attractive animal in the world, but it is highly entertaining watching them jump from tree to tree and hearing the funny noises they make. Writing this down now makes me think that this was actually my favourite part of

the whole month. Which was why I was terribly sad when Rosie and I had to leave for Girl Guide Camp. 

After quite a harrowing way back to Tumpat we were ready to get back into the swing of life! The camp was a bit of a letdown as they had forgotten that we were coming and didn't have anything for us to do (grr). But we made the best of it and spent a lot of time with the teachers, forging good relationships and socializing to help our Malay! It was also great to see the traditional Malay dancing competition. As most of you know, I love some good synchronized dancing in pretty and colourful outfits. Asians also have the most graceful hand movements in the world. I've desperately been asking my students to teach me how to make the right movements, but with my cracking bones it just isn't the same.

So this was the end of our month of traveling! And what a month it has been! I've had an amazing time and I can't wait for our last trip to Thailand, but it is also great to be back 'home' and not having to move to a different place every other day. 
It does make me sad to think that I only have 5 more weeks left in the school, but I'm also terribly excited to get back home! Not long now!

I hope you're all enjoying the first days of Summer!
Lots of love xoxo


I didn't manage to buy a camera before traveling so credits to Rosie, Nick, Gemma, Hatty and Hugo for letting me steal their pictures. A lot of them are still missing because Hatty's camera got stolen half way our journey and Gemma and Ollie are taking a long time with uploading them all to Facebook. But I hope you enjoy these!

Cambodia:

Siem Reap

Tuk-tuk

Angkor Wat

Vietnam:

Boarding the ship on Monkey Island

The entrance to the citadel. We were too stingy to pay 5 dollars for it so we just decided to walk round it

A view from the trip from Hoi An to Hue

A cave in Ha Long bay

Our huts on Monkey Island

Amy, Rosie, me and Hatty

Hatty and me in our tailored dresses

Sabah:

In the Orang-utan Sanctuary in Sandakan

The wild one we saw!!!

Everyone staring

Hornbills selfie on Kinabatangan River

Manukan Island near KK

We still haven't managed to get a picture of all the 24 vols, this is as close as we've got

Do the sumazau like you just don't care

Kinabatangan jungle

Mega waterfights, urban travels and crazy teachers

Hello all! I'm leaving tomorrow for a month of traveling so I thought it'd be best to right another blog about the past two weeks.

The weekend of the 26th-27th of April we were supposed to go to the Language Week in Kuantan, but this was cancelled right at the last minute so we just decided we'd stay in Tumpat and have a relaxing weekend. We really needed it after an exhausting week. So me, Gemma and Rosie headed to Kota Bharu for some retail therapy. We hadn't found a place to have breakfast yet and when we saw that there was a market on for the first time at the Thai buddhist temple we thought it would be a good chance to try something new. Only it wasn't just a market, it was a water festival to celebrate the Thai new year! We chatted to an American buddhist who'd lived in Thailand for 15 years, but always enjoyed celebrating the new year in this temple. The water fight was supposed to start at about 2, but when the children saw us purchase our water guns we immediately were the head targets. Of course we expected this as we were the only white people there, but my god we were surrounded by at least 20 children at a time. Their water guns were bigger than our little pathetic ones and we got plenty of water buckets thrown over us. It was amazing though, I had such a good time. Just when we thought it couldn't get any more exciting than it already was a fire engine arrived and I got hold of the fire hose at some point. The Thais also covered us in creams and colourings and baby powder as a way of blessing us. It all got washed off very quickly of course but we smelled so nice by the end of it.
We decided to leave before all of the excitement died down and nothing special happened anymore that day apart from us watching Les Miserables at our house and sobbing like babys.

Last week we got an extra long weekend because of the elections. We had been advised to not get involved with it too much and as it got pretty heated up here in Kelantan and our school was being used as a polling station we decided to go to Singapore. We booked our tickets for the night train from Tumpat and I was not looking forward to it at all. Students told me it would be very uncomfortable, there'd be no airconditioning and it'd be really bumpy. All lies! It was amazing, the beds were ridiculously comfortable, might have even been the best bed I've slept in here so far. Although anyone who is 5 cm taller than me wouldn't have been able to snuggle in as comfortably. The journey was supposed to be 14 hours and  we all slept like a log. We did end up arriving 4 hours later than we were supposed to arrive, but we were so amazed by this train it wasn't too bad.
We were only planning on staying there for two days and then going to Taman Negara, the national rainforest, to meet up with the other volunteers. But all the trains back to Malaysia were fully booked until the 7th of May, unless we got the slow train the next morning. It took us a while to decide what we wanted to do. Gemma and I thought it was pointless to stay in Singapore for less than 12 hours, but Rosie really wanted to go to Taman Negara so we split our ways.
Singapore is amazing! Very shiny and clean, though we lived in constant fear of getting fined. For those who don't know, they fine you for everything here; eating/drinking on public transport (this was a hard one to remember), eating/drinking when walking on the pavement, littering and you could even get fined if they found out you hadn't flushed your toilet. And the fines are at least 500 dollars, so you do not want that to happen.
I was quite surprised at how little Europeans there were, but there was an great mixture of all the Asian nationalities.
Gemma and I spent our first night there in Chinatown and settled ourselves in the Beary Good Hostel, it was beary good indeed. Nice staff, comfortable beds (second most comfortable I've slept in)and great breakfast (toast! margarine! marmite! unsugared coffee!).
The next day we went to the zoo. We spent a lot of time staring at the otters which are so funny, monkeys just climbed around freely in the trees above us and I spent far too much money to sit on an elephant and the picture they took of us was 30 dollars which is absolutely ridiculous. I couldn't spot any panda bears which I'm very sad about.
We went to Little India and had to stop ourselves from buying everything there, we went to Marina Bay which has the most incredible view over all the skyscrapers and I sang Stronger by Britney Spears in a karaoke bar with a bunch of drunk Koreans.
I felt like we had to justify our behaviour in every restaurant we went into, the others must've thought we were acting so strange when we were almost salivating over all the European foods we've been missing. We went to a tapas bar where I had my first glass of wine in 3 months, the next night we had pizza and the last night we went into a Swiss restaurant and I had tomato soup and olive bread. Mmmm.
As much as we loved Singapore we were very happy to get back home. We hadn't booked any buses or trains so we had to improvise, but it all went surprisingly smooth. We arrived on Monday morning completely shattered so the moment I came into the house I ran for my bed and didn't wake up until late in the evening when Rosie arrived. She had been covered in bruises, scratches, leech and mosquito bites after a two day trek in the jungle but she said it was totally worth it and that she feels very accomplished.

Fortunately there hadn't been any riots because of the elections. The government party won comfortably, despite this being the first year in which there was doubt about them winning. The largest opposition party, PAS - that still leads the state I'm living in - have been growing in recent years and this year was the first time they had any chance of winning. But in the end they didn't.

I feel like I should tell a little bit about my students and not make it seem like I'm only out and about and not doing any teaching. I've said this lots of time to friends and family; there are lots of things to love here, but the students will always be my favourite. They're just so funny and still really enthusiastic about seeing us and being taught by us. Back home I would never ever dare to teach any students older than 15, but here they're very respectful in class. When I'm wearing my baju kurung I'm Miss Anouk for them but if I'm just wearing my normal clothes they all know they can just come and have a gossip with me.
Being here has also been a real ego booster. Some of the girls have been calling me Princess Anouk which is just the best thing ever and we both get told we're beautiful almost every single day. Then again when we're tired they call out that we have big bags under our eyes or when we have spots they ask us what's wrong with our skin. So subtle.

The teachers are also lovely. Totally nuts, but lovely. Madame Has is a little bit like our mother. When we have problems or things we need to have sorted out, we go to her. She always looks terribly busy but she says she always gladly helps us out. Then there's the chemistry teacher Suryana who sits next to us in the staff room. She absolutely crazy, I don't need my cup of coffee anymore after I've spoken to her in the morning. She's started calling out HEEY SEXY LADY whenever I walk into the staff room, which is a bit awkward when students hear this, but she's a good laugh. There's the history teacher who invites some of the boys over to his house at the weekends to play video games and then lets them clean his house. Rosie and I think this is hilarious. And I have told about Hajar before, who has become a really good friend.
All in all, everyone's so lovely here and it's hard to be sad when you're surrounded by people who are so jolly and fun.

This has been written in a bit of a hurry, so I'm sorry if there are any mistakes and I know I've missed out some things I have to share with you all, but I have to pack now. Friday we're flying to Cambodia, from there we're traveling down to Vietnam and on the 25th we're staying in Sabah for 10 days. I'm very very excited!

Lots of love to you all xxx.

Here are some pictures of the water fight and the students. My camera has been added to the list of things I've broken in mysterious ways so I have to wait until Gemma gives me the pictures of Singapore until I can show you all