On Wednesday the 6th of February our flight left at 10 o'clock in the evening from Heathrow airport. My mum and I arrived 3 hours earlier at the airport and met up with Gemma and Rosie and her family.
I was dreading the 12 hour flight, but it was actually quite enjoyable. We all had a little TV in front of us where you could play games with, watch films and series and listen to music. We were also offered loads of food but it freaked me out a little to have a full meal while we were so high up in the air.
So 12 hours later we arrived in Kuala Lumpur, but it was actually 18.00 their time. In the airport we thought the heat wasn't too bad actually but the moment we stepped outside the heat hit us like a truck. I also noticed it smelt like the rain forest section of the zoos, which makes sense as it was raining.
We were driven to the Sutera Hotel in Seremban, a little bit outside of KL. We met up with our rep Noraini and her son Adam and we had our first Malaysian meal with them. We didn't know anything about the food so they ordered for us. I will have to write a separate blog about the food here because there's just so much of it! The main cultures here are Malay, Indian and Chinese, so there's a little bit of everything.
We were prepared for the spiciness of the food, but not for the sweetness of the drinks! They quite literally drown all the freshness with sugar, so one of the first things I learnt to say in Malay was 'kurang manes' (less sugar)
We were prepared for the spiciness of the food, but not for the sweetness of the drinks! They quite literally drown all the freshness with sugar, so one of the first things I learnt to say in Malay was 'kurang manes' (less sugar)
On Friday I woke up at 3 in the morning because of the jet lag and couldn't get to sleep anymore so I felt absolutely exhausted for the rest of the day. Noraini brought us to her office and gave us a small briefing on Malay culture and language. In the afternoon two other women who worked at the office and whose names I have completely forgotton brought us to Terminal 1, a big shopping centre in Seremban. They bought us to the Wee Wee Shop to get a mobile phone and Rosie, Gemma and I purchased our first traditional Malay dress, a baju kurung. It's unbelievable how cheap everything is here! The phone and dress cost 70 ringgits altogether which is only 14 pounds. And you can get a full meal for 5 people for only 15 pounds here.
In the evening we went to have dinner with Noraini, her husband Chris, Adam and two friends of theirs. Again I have no idea what to tell you what I ate that day, but I had a Kit-Kat ice cream as a dessert! So nice. This time the drinks were also served a lot less sweet.
We also saw a lot of gecko's and now Rosie really wants to have one in our house. They eat all the insects and they are better looking than spiders so I'm ok with that.
Saturday the 9th of Feb might have been one of the best days of my life! Gemma, Rosie and I put on our baju kurungs and were ready to go to our first Malaysian wedding! Adam picked us up at about 11 and had to bring us to his grandmother first. Until a couple of months ago he lived in Spain so now he has to learn his way around again in Seremban, which means we got lost quite a lot of times. This actually wasn't too awful as Malaysian radio is actually quite good (his car basically turned into a driving karaoke) and the scenery outside is beautiful to look at.
One and a half hour later and we arrived at the wedding and it was so colourful. We received gifts at the entrance and a lot of people stared at us and gave us compliments on our baju kurungs.
The bride and groom looked beautiful, but very nervous. But wouldn't you be if there were so many people there to see you, and I think they didn't know half of the guests either.
When we asked to get a picture with the bride and groom they put us on their sofa and they stood besides us. Stealing the limelight there for a minute. And we also met a famous Malaysian soap opera actor. When we asked to take a picture with him he asked us 'Do you even know who I am? To which Rosie smoothly replied 'Err, yeah you're that very famous soap opera actor!'
We only had rice to eat, because that was the only vegetarian thing we could get and our appetite wasn't huge as it was incredibly hot outside and I was boiling under my black baju kurung.
We went back to Adams grandmothers house and had an amazing nap. Then we were off to Port Dickson and on the way we saw our first couple of monkeys, which was very exciting.
Port Dickson beach is really beautiful, if only a little bit touristic. It has a beautiful white beach and clear blue water which is very warm. We took the opportunity to go on a banana boat and it was just so much fun! It took some effort to convince Rosie to join us and we decided to call her mum as she definitely is the most 'mature' person of the three, but I think she did enjoy the banana boat a lot!
In the evening we went to see more friends of Noraini's and after that we went to eat at a diner near to our hotel. Everywhere we went that day we got lost every single time and we heard Rihanna's entire back catalogue. Malaysian radio are incredible Rihanna fans.
Happy Chinese New year! Sunday Feb 10th was the first day of the year of the black snake. Adam picked us up at noon and this time we got even more lost than the day before, even though we just had to go to the same place. He took a wrong turning and ended up on the highway towards KL. A trip that should've been 20 minutes ended up being 2 hours. We decided to start a U-turn count, so every time he had to take one he had to give us RM 1. By the end of the day he was up to 9. Lots of singalong songs later we arrived at his grandmothers house and drove from there onwards to one of the Chinese openhouses.
The first family had lots and lots of food and they kept on offering delicious cakes and biscuits and I was so stuffed afterwards. They had the cutest little daughter, I've completely forgotten her name as I do with most people here, but she loved playing with the fireworks and we joined her when she was making little wax artworks from candles. It all sounds very dangerous, but there was always someone on the lookout.
It's a Chinese tradition to give all unwedded people 10 ringgits in a beautiful red envelope on New Years day. We were quite pleasantly surprised to receive one as well!
Reluctantly we left for the other open house , but because we got lost AGAIN we arrived late to the party. They offered us the leftovers, but it was only meat and jelly and I don't like either. The woman who lived in this house was the head director of a sort of girl power magazine for Malay women. It was of course a lot more formal than how I described it, but it was very interesting! I haven't written down the name, which I'm very sad about.
Also in this house we received RM10 each, so we went to Tesco (yes there's a Tesco in Seremban) and we spent it on razors, lipbalm and biscuits.
Monday we went to Kuala Lumpur to meet up with the 12 month volunteers in Malaysia. After a rather uneventful trainride we were picked up by Nick and he brought us to the youth hostel they were staying at in the centre of KL.
The traffic here is absolutely MAD. The best thing you can do is to close your eyes when crossing the road and hope for the best or run and scream and avoid hope the cars bend their way around you.
When arriving in the hostel we were introduced to Ellie, Hannah, Josh, Helena and Rianne (whose from the Netherlands) and we headed off to Chinatown. There we bought a thankyou gift for Adam, as an apology we bullied him constantly about his sense of direction and we got pushed around by a bunch of tourists.
After that we took the monorail to Batu Caves. This is a hindu temple in in a very large cave, but in order to enter it you have to walk up 300 steps. Not much fun when it's 35 degrees and when you're surrounded by hungry monkeys. One of them violently snatched away plastic bags with food in it of children which left them crying hysterically. Monkeys are fun to look at, but only from a distance!
We arrived at the top of the stairs in a sweaty heap and admired the whole thing.
When we came back down again Gemma and I decided to get some henna done on our hands. It took only 10 minutes to make and my hand had never looked so pretty.
Our hands had to dry so we let Rosie rumble through our bags and that kind of stuff. My hand remained untouched but a pigeon brushed its wing past Gemma's hand which smudged a tiny part of her henna. What are the odds of that happening?!
We went back to the youth hostel and just hung around there for the rest of the day. We played card games with on the rooftop of the building and looked out onto the Twin Towers.
On the way back Gemma and I skipped through the tube station and mum did a bit of pole dancing in the ladies carriage of the monorail.
Tuesday we were left to our own devices, so Gemma and I decided to go back to Terminal one to do some shopping. Not much happened really, besides finding an amazing material shop and getting a reduction from a taxi chauffeur because he felt bad for us for going to Kelantan. Oh dear.
Wednesday we went to help Noraini in the flower shop. I would have loved to do the flower arranging, but she wanted us to dethorn the roses.
After being pricked by many thorns Noraini released us from our chores and gave us some free time to walk around the shopping centre. There wasn't much to see because it was new, but we found a cafe where they gave us a sugar percentage chart when we were ordering our drinks which I will now use everywhere.
In the evening Gemma and I couldn't resist going into an Indian clothes shop to buy some traditional clothing. I found a salwar kameez pretty quickly, but Gemma struggled with finding one that fit over her calves, as she is quite muscular. After many tries of taking out the seems and refits she decided to look for a saree, but that ended up to be too expensive. Right when we were about to give up she found a salwar kameez with very wide trousers and they fit! We were all cheering, but as she tried on the top part she got stuck in that. I think every woman can imagine this being a complete nightmare, but Rosie and I were quite literally crying of laughter. Fortunately one of the shopkeepers came to save her and untook the seems around the waist. And she even gave all of us a free pashmina!
Valentine's day was probably the worst day yet. I was wearing my salwar kameez and when we were getting ready to leave for Kuala Lumpur my trousers ripped horribly when I tried to pick up my luggage.
After an uncomfortable trip later we arrived at the Quality Hotel, which luckily lived up to its name.
It was pouring with rain outside so we didn't do much for a couple of hours, but we got bored and decided to look for a post office. I know Malaysians are all about not 'losing face', but if they don't know where the post office is, they could just tell us. We had to ask 8 people until we eventually found it and because of the hour of running up and down in the heat and rain my espadrilles turned my feet bright pink. A good reminder to never wear them in the rain.
We cheered up a little by finding a beautiful wedding dress shop, but we quickly decided to go back to the hotel and stay there until our dinner with Marwati.
Marwati is responsible for all the MARA volunteers and I don't quite know how to describe her. Maybe a little bit crazy? She's all over the place, loves to say 'swag' and tends to not finish her sentences. Her daughter was very charming though, again I've forgotton her name but the English translation was Gentle. She took us to the Twin Towers in the city centre which just get prettier and prettier the darker it gets, and on the tube we taught Gentle how to dance the Macarena, Ketschup Song and Gangnam Style.
The day ended quite nicely, but I was very happy to be in bed with my mint sented sheets.
Friday we went to the MARA office and had a meeting with some of the teachers who will be working at our school. A lot of them tried to secretly take pictures of us , but I don't understand how they wouldn't think we'd not notice an enormous tablet peeping out of the table.
We met a lot of people whose name I've completely forgotten again and at noon we got into the minibus and left for our 12-hour trip to Tumpat. Our holiday was over!
Many toiletbreaks, snackbreaks, praybreaks and a vomitbreak (poor Gemma) later we arrived at our new home which was filled with cockroaches, spides and centipedes. Fun.
I will blog about my first week in Tumpat next time, but I am absolutely loving it!
In other news:
- A lot of people, mainly children, point at us and call out 'mat salleh', which literally means white person. We've been assured this doesn't have any negative connotations.
- The most worrying thing I've seen so far is people carrying their baby's on their laps when driving a motorcycle. And every taxichauffeur we've driven with has stopped us from wearing our seatblets or there just aren't any seatbelts. Malaysian traffic is just wild in general.
- Women have a special ladies carriage in trains
If anyone would like to contact me:
You can email me on : anoukbakker2@gmail.com
And my post address is:
Anouk Bakker
Maktab Rendah Sains Mara Tumpat
16200 Tumpat, Kelantan,
Malaysia
It's a Chinese tradition to give all unwedded people 10 ringgits in a beautiful red envelope on New Years day. We were quite pleasantly surprised to receive one as well!
Reluctantly we left for the other open house , but because we got lost AGAIN we arrived late to the party. They offered us the leftovers, but it was only meat and jelly and I don't like either. The woman who lived in this house was the head director of a sort of girl power magazine for Malay women. It was of course a lot more formal than how I described it, but it was very interesting! I haven't written down the name, which I'm very sad about.
Also in this house we received RM10 each, so we went to Tesco (yes there's a Tesco in Seremban) and we spent it on razors, lipbalm and biscuits.
Monday we went to Kuala Lumpur to meet up with the 12 month volunteers in Malaysia. After a rather uneventful trainride we were picked up by Nick and he brought us to the youth hostel they were staying at in the centre of KL.
The traffic here is absolutely MAD. The best thing you can do is to close your eyes when crossing the road and hope for the best or run and scream and avoid hope the cars bend their way around you.
When arriving in the hostel we were introduced to Ellie, Hannah, Josh, Helena and Rianne (whose from the Netherlands) and we headed off to Chinatown. There we bought a thankyou gift for Adam, as an apology we bullied him constantly about his sense of direction and we got pushed around by a bunch of tourists.
After that we took the monorail to Batu Caves. This is a hindu temple in in a very large cave, but in order to enter it you have to walk up 300 steps. Not much fun when it's 35 degrees and when you're surrounded by hungry monkeys. One of them violently snatched away plastic bags with food in it of children which left them crying hysterically. Monkeys are fun to look at, but only from a distance!
We arrived at the top of the stairs in a sweaty heap and admired the whole thing.
When we came back down again Gemma and I decided to get some henna done on our hands. It took only 10 minutes to make and my hand had never looked so pretty.
Our hands had to dry so we let Rosie rumble through our bags and that kind of stuff. My hand remained untouched but a pigeon brushed its wing past Gemma's hand which smudged a tiny part of her henna. What are the odds of that happening?!
We went back to the youth hostel and just hung around there for the rest of the day. We played card games with on the rooftop of the building and looked out onto the Twin Towers.
On the way back Gemma and I skipped through the tube station and mum did a bit of pole dancing in the ladies carriage of the monorail.
Tuesday we were left to our own devices, so Gemma and I decided to go back to Terminal one to do some shopping. Not much happened really, besides finding an amazing material shop and getting a reduction from a taxi chauffeur because he felt bad for us for going to Kelantan. Oh dear.
Wednesday we went to help Noraini in the flower shop. I would have loved to do the flower arranging, but she wanted us to dethorn the roses.
After being pricked by many thorns Noraini released us from our chores and gave us some free time to walk around the shopping centre. There wasn't much to see because it was new, but we found a cafe where they gave us a sugar percentage chart when we were ordering our drinks which I will now use everywhere.
In the evening Gemma and I couldn't resist going into an Indian clothes shop to buy some traditional clothing. I found a salwar kameez pretty quickly, but Gemma struggled with finding one that fit over her calves, as she is quite muscular. After many tries of taking out the seems and refits she decided to look for a saree, but that ended up to be too expensive. Right when we were about to give up she found a salwar kameez with very wide trousers and they fit! We were all cheering, but as she tried on the top part she got stuck in that. I think every woman can imagine this being a complete nightmare, but Rosie and I were quite literally crying of laughter. Fortunately one of the shopkeepers came to save her and untook the seems around the waist. And she even gave all of us a free pashmina!
Valentine's day was probably the worst day yet. I was wearing my salwar kameez and when we were getting ready to leave for Kuala Lumpur my trousers ripped horribly when I tried to pick up my luggage.
After an uncomfortable trip later we arrived at the Quality Hotel, which luckily lived up to its name.
It was pouring with rain outside so we didn't do much for a couple of hours, but we got bored and decided to look for a post office. I know Malaysians are all about not 'losing face', but if they don't know where the post office is, they could just tell us. We had to ask 8 people until we eventually found it and because of the hour of running up and down in the heat and rain my espadrilles turned my feet bright pink. A good reminder to never wear them in the rain.
We cheered up a little by finding a beautiful wedding dress shop, but we quickly decided to go back to the hotel and stay there until our dinner with Marwati.
Marwati is responsible for all the MARA volunteers and I don't quite know how to describe her. Maybe a little bit crazy? She's all over the place, loves to say 'swag' and tends to not finish her sentences. Her daughter was very charming though, again I've forgotton her name but the English translation was Gentle. She took us to the Twin Towers in the city centre which just get prettier and prettier the darker it gets, and on the tube we taught Gentle how to dance the Macarena, Ketschup Song and Gangnam Style.
The day ended quite nicely, but I was very happy to be in bed with my mint sented sheets.
Friday we went to the MARA office and had a meeting with some of the teachers who will be working at our school. A lot of them tried to secretly take pictures of us , but I don't understand how they wouldn't think we'd not notice an enormous tablet peeping out of the table.
We met a lot of people whose name I've completely forgotten again and at noon we got into the minibus and left for our 12-hour trip to Tumpat. Our holiday was over!
Many toiletbreaks, snackbreaks, praybreaks and a vomitbreak (poor Gemma) later we arrived at our new home which was filled with cockroaches, spides and centipedes. Fun.
I will blog about my first week in Tumpat next time, but I am absolutely loving it!
In other news:
- A lot of people, mainly children, point at us and call out 'mat salleh', which literally means white person. We've been assured this doesn't have any negative connotations.
- The most worrying thing I've seen so far is people carrying their baby's on their laps when driving a motorcycle. And every taxichauffeur we've driven with has stopped us from wearing our seatblets or there just aren't any seatbelts. Malaysian traffic is just wild in general.
- Women have a special ladies carriage in trains
If anyone would like to contact me:
You can email me on : anoukbakker2@gmail.com
And my post address is:
Anouk Bakker
Maktab Rendah Sains Mara Tumpat
16200 Tumpat, Kelantan,
Malaysia
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