Monday 5th August 2013
This morning the
wind was howling so strong it sounded like pouring rain it didn’t help that the
sliding door in the lounge had been left fully open and that wind was swirling
everywhere through our apartment. I got to the gym and did some running and
smashed out a workout feeling a bit more alive than I did last week. It was the
first day with my new classes on the register I was supposed to have eight students
in my level one class but I had just three. On the flip side my level two class
is absolutely huge with about 24 names on the register. After school I stayed
and did all my prep for the following day rather than carting it all home with
me, I was organised and so by 4.30pm I was out of there and soon in the pool
swimming lengths
Tuesday 6th August 2013
This morning I
once again woke to the wind howling and the sliding door open this time I left
it so whoever left it open would realise when they woke up. I had a new student
I my level one class but it’s still small and quiet when I’m teaching them I
wish for my level twos and when I have them I wish for the quiet of level one!
After school I headed to the gym with Ayla as I was paying for her membership
as her part of the rickshaw deposit (since I can’t transfer any money anywhere
as I don’t have a bloody card reader with me!) once that was done Lane and I
headed to the camping shop to get me a new head torch as mine broke somewhere
on the Indian roads also got myself a new spork…life is complete. At home I ate
and did some writing and then about 9pm I headed out to the night market to get
some sweet camo pants for hiking this weekend.
Wednesday 7th August 2013
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
LISA! Thankfully this week is a short week! Today was the last day of Ramadan
so Hari Raya (Eid) starts tomorrow. After school we went and had a long dinner
full of delightful food and then went to the supermarket to get food for
camping. Back at home we chilled out for the evening trying not to think about
getting up at 3am tomorrow morning!
Thursday 8th August 2013
We woke up at
3am this morning to hit the road by 4am we all squished into the car and
settled in for the long drive to the jungle in Perak we arrived much earlier
than we thought we would and set about looking at boats and Kayaks to head into
the wild. Eventually we decided on Kayaks and on the company we wanted to go
with. Joe the Kayak man packed us up and set us off with a hand drawn map which
proved to be hugely inaccurate along with his claim that the perfect spot was
just 30-45mins away after we had been kayaking in the full blown heat for over
an hour across the lake we stopped a couple of fisherman who told us the
waterfall we were looking for was actually another two hours away. We paddled
about looking for a place to park up but the banks of the lake were extremely
steep and the jungle above was secondary jungle thick and dark even in the
daylight. As we were sitting out on the lake we could hear elephants not too
far away in the jungle and then we heard a roar and are fairly certain it was a
tiger. We found a floating pontoon and a campsite so parked up and headed to
the campsite which was completely empty. We unpacked the kayaks and pulled them
onto the pontoons just in the nick of time before the heavens opened up and it
started to pour with rain. We hooked up our hammocks under a shelter and made
some noodles and tuna for dinner. Then we sat about chatting about all the
naughty things we got up to as kids. We were all chilling in our hammocks when FM
asked how to get in hers she jumped to get in and the knot slipped and she fell
destroying her arse. I was glad to have my thermal hiking pants and my down
jacket as overnight the temperature dropped and the sky was ink black. I fell
asleep listening to the noises of the jungle and feeling completely at peace as
the rain fell down around us.
Friday 9th August 2013
We woke up while
it was still dark and all tried to guess the time. It was almost 7am and we had
slept for a long time. The plan was to paddle back to the kayak shop return our
kayaks and go to another jungle where it’s not so thick and we could do some
hiking. By the time the kayaks were packed and we were on the water the sun had
risen but the clouds were heavy with rain, thankfully it held out until we were
back were we wanted to be a few hours later. Kayaking back was much harder as
our kayak was hugely unbalanced and tilted massively to the left. Lane trailed
way behind so by the time he caught up we were on dry land and unpacked. We got
in the car and drove hoping to stop for food as we were so hungry but as its
Raya all the shops were closed so we had to wait over two hours before we hit
the highway, and even then there was only Nasi Lemak or chicken... at this
stage we realised we weren’t going to have enough time to get to the other r
jungle. As there isn’t a road straight there we had to go into KL and then back
out again. So we got back home about 4pm I went straight to the pool and then
we went to Tropicana and got food and went to the cinema. At the candy bar I
asked for chocolate m&ms but the
dude told me there was only peanut ones so I took a kit Kat, I went to stand
with Ayla and low and behold she had chocolate m&ms I was raging and threw
a tantrum the guy kept saying that he didn’t have any chocolate ones in his drawer
I demanded a refund but they wouldn’t give me one they said it was impossible
eventually after calling them all fucking twats I got my m&ms afterwards we
laughed so much about how extreme my reaction was but clearly I really wanted
some m&ms. We then enjoyed the film with my belly full of chocolate.
Saturday 10th August 2013
We had planned
on hitting up the water park today but the weather forecast predicted
thunderstorms so we sacked off that idea and went to the Batu caves instead. We
spent the morning out by the pool having a swim and sunning it up until the
skies clouded over. About 11am we made a move it took us 45mins to get a taxi
to the LRT station which was a huge pain in the arse but once we were on the
train we got into central pretty fast from there we hopped aboard the Kommuter
train for the low low price of 1RM! It takes about 30mins to get out to the
Batu caves. When we got there we headed to the Hanuman temple first and took
part in the Aarti and got ourselves a wee blessing there were loads of monkeys
around so I was glad not to have any food or water for the cheeky devils to
steal. There was another temple which we had a wander around but it wasn’t
really clear who it was for and there wasn’t a lot going on so we decided to
head into the caves themselves. The limestone forming of the caves is said to
be about 400 million years old! There has been a Hindu temple to Lord Murugan
inside the caves from way back in the late 1800s. The walk up to the caves is
up 272 steep concrete stairs but it’s a fairly easy walk. (apart from dodging
the already mentioned devil monkeys) inside the cave there are loads of shrines
and another temple we headed inside and received another blessing before
walking about and taking in the cave. There were monkeys everywhere stealing
from people and jumping at them I avoided their creepy little hands as much as
I could it seemed they took a liking to my camera and I had nowhere to hide it.
After stopping for a quick chat with a Ganesh who was inside a weird mesh box
we headed back down, excited by the prospect of some delicious Indian food. But
unfortunately it was a bit of a fail. We got the train back to KL chatting with
two American girls who are both living in Korea. Once there we swung by little
India for a spot of threading before heading to Bukit Bintang and more specifically
Plaza Lowyat which is an electronics mall. I was looking for a tablet and
snapped myself up a good deal managing to bargain the dude into giving me a
cover, a 32g SD card, a USB adapter, a SD card adapter and a screen protector
for about 50RM and discounting the tablet itself! Boom I’m good. After that we
were somewhat starving so headed to the food court I had fried rice as it
seemed to be the only veg option on the menu but was surprisingly really tasty.
From there we walked to another mall this one’s called Timesquare and inside
there is the “Malaysia’s book of records biggest indoor rollercoaster” (Please
note I think it’s the only one in Malaysia…Just saying) there’s a whole theme
park in there and we figured since we had nothing else to do we would rock out
our Saturday night there. We stayed on the rollercoaster going around and
around it was actually a lot faster than I thought it would be which was fun.
There were about five or six other “grown up” rides and we went on a few before
riding the children’s farmyard train around in circles after developing motion
sickness on some ride that threw us all over the show. We got off the farmyard
train feeling like we hadn’t eaten in years so we did what any normal girl
would do… go have second dinner. It was upsetting as although edible was hugely
overpriced and we had the joy of a girl at the table next to us vomming
everywhere… really makes you want to eat pizza. Once we were mostly stuffed we
hit up seven 11 for chocolate and then got the train home.
Sunday 11th August 2013
Today was a lazy
day I got up and went for a swim and read my book and did some yoga while my
tablet charged up once that was done I spent ages setting it up and then
skyping people. In the afternoon we went for an early dinner at our favourite
Veg place at Tropicana mall, and then jumped in a taxi to Nicola place where we
had a catch up and then watched a “scary” movie. By the time we got home my
lazy day had left me shattered and I retired to bed.
Monday 12th August 2013
What a day! I
went to the gym, went to work, went to the supermarket, went for a swim, wrote
some postcards, had some dinner, read my book, and went to sleep.
Tuesday 13th August 2013
Today I had an
argument with a student about what the Taj Mahal is. He said it’s a mosque
because it looks like a mosque (hey lady boys look like chicks but that don’t
mean they aint got a wiener…) I kicked him out after he cussed me out in Arabic
and told me to shut up because I’m just a little girl (ummm…mate I’m about four
years older than you…but since he is the size of a house maybe he meant
literally little…) after school I sat by the pool and had a long swim before having some dinner about 8.30pm we
headed out to meet up with the girls for ladies night at Waikiki. Ladies night
here is awesome its free drinks all night! Although being a school night we
didn’t take full advantage of this offer. There was a dude who was the
splitting image of Akon, Ayla asked him if he was famous but he must get it a
lot as we just gave her a death stare. (I don’t think it helped that when we
left she went over and said “byeeeeee Akon” we left about midnight riding in
the boot of the car.
Wednesday 14th August 2013
Today I started
the day with a reading comprehension worksheet bout the Taj Mahal just to
clarify that the Taj Mahal is not a mosque! I took the passage from the
Britannia children’s encyclopaedia and then took out the words I thought would
be too difficult for them but they still struggled. After school was the usual,
swim followed by sitting by the pool. Then food, then yoga, then bed.
Thursday 15th August 2013
Today I felt so
knackered all day, and really hungry all day so I mooched about school and ate
lots. Then after school I swam and then ate lots did some yoga, ate lots and
then slept.
Friday 16th August 2013
Today I was so
happy it was Friday I went to the gym in the morning and got to school in time
for the early start at 8.30am. The first
class went ok it was just grammar grammar grammar! In writing like usual all
the students argued about actually doing any work but eventually got on with it
the last class of the day I did homophones because homophones is a funny word
the whole class got so into the activity that 12.30pm rolled around (on Fridays
all the Muslim boys leave at 12.30pm for Friday prayers which is my entire
class except for three students) and they were still going at it then even more
surprisingly a few of them actually stayed for the rest of the class! After
classes finish at 1.15pm we have to stick around until 2pm so I did all my
lesson prep for Monday and then Ayla and I went and had a long lunch.
Afterwards I sat by the pool for an hour or so then when I had digested my food
a bit went for a swim. We went and had dinner about 8pm and then Ayla went off
to meet her mate in central and I got an ice-cream and went home to sleep. The
dude at the ice-cream shop not only knew my order he thanked me for my
continued support… maybe I won’t go there for a while…
Saturday 17th August 2013
After coming in
at about 5am Ayla was hanging but the thought of the water park was enough to
rouse her from bed and get us going around 11am we headed out to Sunway Lagoon
praying we wouldn’t see any students. When we arrived we were so excited we
didn’t know where to start we put our stuff in a locker only to go back 2mins
later and put sun cream on. Ayla stopped for a hotdog and then we walked
through the “shower” it’s basically a carwash for people to rinse off any
cooties before hitting the flumes. As always we soon attracted a clinger a chronic
liar named Slava from the Ukraine… or was he no sooner had he told us one story
then it changed to another so I started to take everything he said as bollocks.
Our first attempt to ditch him failed miserably we lined up for a flume and oh
what a shame it was a two person ride and he had no one to ride with… he found
a small Malaysian boy to ride with.
There were two paths to choose from one had another line the other we
could go straight to the front naturally we chose the no wait option, the flume
looked a bit tame it was a straight line down with a few bumps along the way
ending by shooting up and then backwards if that makes any sense. We asked the dud at the top to make us go
really fast and that he did we flew down screaming like little girls and
laughing the whole way. Great start to the day we got back in line hoping we
had detached the clingon but nope there he was we told him we were going up
again he told us he would wait…cringe… we waited in line and then raced up and
got in our floaty eagerly anticipating the ride gave us the shits that the kids
in front of us fell out, got stuck and had to be rescued by the lifeguard (note
to all my lifeguard friends that would be the funniest way to rescue someone
just dive down a waterslide!) at last it was our turn this one was mostly in
the dark so we didn’t know which way we were going to turn again we had asked
the guy to make us go really fast so we were flinging left and right at great
speed before soaring out into the daylight and across the pool at the bottom.
We thought surely he must have given up but nope there he was. We said we were
going to put Aylas shorts away (no denims on the slides) and hoped he would be
back upon our return thankfully he was but that wasn’t the end of it. Next flume
was the big one the Vuvuzela claims to be the world’s biggest waterslide it
starts 30m up is 152m long and has a 22m funnel needless to say it was rather
epic our first go down was with three dudes Ayla and I ended up going backwards
which was freaky when we got to the drop but so much fun, we came off it and
headed onto your classic “slide on a mat on your belly and race your mates
slide” suddenly there was our clingon joining the queue and wanting us to wait
for him at the bottom… Ayla had a shit start and I left her in the dust as I
barrelled face first into a ton of water. Since we were right there we went
back on the big flume. While we were in line way up on the stair I spotted a
student thankfully it was only one all day we worked like ninjas to avoid him.
this time it was a little slower as there were only four of us in the floaty we
decided to hit up the waterplex next which is a 5D water ride it’s basically a
3D movie and the seats move and water splashes from all directions it was
pretty sweet but so cold in there that we left with the shivers. It was time
for food so we headed to subway luckily we had grabbed our shades as we kept
seeing the student and we needed to be incognito we took our food and ate on a
bench way from him. Then to give our food time to digest we hit up the wildlife
park it was actually pretty amazing with a few animals I haven’t seen and loads
that I had only seen once or twice. My favourite was the pygmy hedgehog which
was completely white it was so sweet and they had one out that we could pet.
There were also hairless rats that were cute in a disgusting sort of way. There
were loads of birds and even jaguars. Next we climbed the many escalators up to
the suspension bridge that spans the park we walked across taking in the awesome
view and watching people zoom down the zip line. On the other side we tried our
hand at a spot of archery before heading back to the flumes we managed to get
one more ride on each of the slides. While we were in line for our last go on
the Vuvuzela we let our guard drop and we were spotted we both cringed at the
cry “teacher teacher” but there was no hiding we pushed ahead to join them in
line we didn’t have to wait for long but did have to endure being soaked by the
hose by both the lifeguard and the unruly student! We climbed into the floaty
me and Ayla taking up a tiny corny and three rather large boys filling the
remaining space. Turns out the heavier you are the faster you go and man did we
go we flew down the flume faster than I’ve ever been on a water ride at one
point it looked as though we were going to tip from the weight but one of the
guys threw his weight across balancing us out and biting my knee in the
process. It was such an epic race down. At the bottom we wangled our way onto
the “slide on a mat on your belly and race your mates slide” slide and had one
last run of the day we came off on a massive high not wanting the water park to
close. We headed to the shower and joined the hundreds of people who were also
bathing in the inadequate changing facilities. Once dressed we found a taxi and
headed home we dropped off our stuff and got changed into our cinema clothes
then walked down to Tropicana and had dinner at our local and watched Despicable
me 2 at the candy bar Ayla got some m&ms we thought it was all g until the
dude pointedly asked Chocolate or peanut we collapsed laughing and I apologised
for my outburst last week.. By the time it was finished we were knacked after a
day in the sun and dragged ourselves home to bed
Sunday 18th August 2013
We were up
before the sun this morning getting dressed and fed and excited for a trek to
Chilling waterfall. By 7.15am or so we were out the door and trying to call a
taxi much to our dislike almost every time we have ordered a taxi we have
failed and end up flagging one down and so this was what we did we flagged down
a taxi outside our condo that was dropping off some partygoers from the night
before who looked like they were hanging out of their arses. We jumped in and
headed for Nicolas house the whole time being educated on the flaws of the
Malaysian education system by Chris a 50 odd year old Thai man who had lived
his entire life in KL and grown up in a time where school was taught in the Queen’s
English. (His English was amazing he used bigger words in one sentence than I would
use in a week…) he did go the longest way possible but it was a nice chat. We got
to Nicolas just before 8m Eme was already there and so we piled into the car it
wasn’t long before Nicola and Rachel arrived (Rachel looking fresh faced after
sleeping in) we drove for just over an hour to ‘Santurai Ikan Sungai Chilling’
otherwise known as something fish sanctuary (I’m not sure what the English name
was) we walked up to the start of the trail and paid the whopping 1RM entrance
fee and put a deposit down for our food (to ensure we didn’t litter the trail
or the waterfall) the hike up took about an hour it was an easy walk except for
a few climbs here and there. We had to cross the river six times and each time
we had to wade across luckily we only had jandals on so we just took them off
and waded out across the slippery stones more than a few times we had some near
falls but everyone managed to stay upright the closest we came to floating away
was when Nicola lost her jandal but Eme managed to fish it out quick smart. The
waterfall was beautiful when we got there it was just us and one family with
their pet sugar glider. We sat and ate our tuna sandwiches and doughnuts whilst
being watched by a pair of opportunistic monkeys they never got an opportunity
though we kept our food out of their stealy little paws. By the time the food
was gone the place was packed. We stripped off and braced the icy waters, Eme
even dared to climb up and jump in. it wasn’t long before we were sat about
basking in the sun like lizards and listening to a crazy lady accuse the family
of stealing wildlife (um lady it’s a sugar glider they aren’t even a Malaysian species
and do you really think if they had just picked it out of the bush it would be
calmly sitting on her head…?) We sat
about for around an hour before heading back down the walk back seemed quicker
though I doubt it actually was. Back at the bottom of the trail we took a few
last pictures and got our rubbish deposit back in exchange for our rubbish
(which was thrown into an overflowing skip out by the car park) on the drive
back most of us dozed off whilst intermittently singing oldies from the radio. Back
in KL we were dropped off at home we had a quick shower and then we were off
out again we stopped by the supermarket for beverages and chocolate and then
hit the taxi stand to get to Nicolas for Lees surprise birthday BBQ. We helped
carry some things down and then set about blowing up balloons and tying them
onto the trees as decorations unfortunately the weather closed in and it
started to rain we all moved to the shelter while Khalid cooked the BBQ under
cover of a giant umbrella. When Khai arrived with Lee he seemed surprised that
his whole family and everyone was there to celebrate with him. The food was
amazing and the cake was heavenly. Ayla Rachel and I hovered around it until it
was safe for seconds. It wasn’t long before the booze came out and soon
everyone was lounging about drinking (thankfully the rain had stopped by this
point) Ayla and I left about 9ish we were tuckered out after a long weekend out
and about. By the time we got home and sorted ourselves out for school in the
morning we were ready for sleep.
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