Anouk's Malaysian project: juni 2013

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: