Kuala Lumpur

Eight hours on a charter bus brought us to the bustling capital of Malaysia. After checking into a bed and breakfast in Bukit Bintang, the Golden Triangle district, we only had time to see the incredible Petronas Towers, the tallest twin buildings in the world with 88 stories at over 450 meters, and then devoured an amazing Indian food buffet before crashing hard.

We only got four hours sleep the night before since it was our last visit with my girlfriends in Hat Yai, meet with my boss, plus pack. Not getting much sleep on the bus either we desperately needed to catch up, so snoozed until early afternoon. We then hopped on the monorail to the 100-hectare Tun Abdul Razak Heritage Park on the other side of town, first visiting the National Monument on a hilltop overlooking the Parliament House and serene lake gardens.

Within the park is the largest covered aviary in Southeast Asia, the Bird Park, housing over three thousand feathered friends.

There’s also an orchid and hibiscus garden providing a strikingly colourful panorama of more than eight hundred species of the flowers.
                                              

Making our way along the winding path we ended up at the Islamic Museum, which houses almost ten distinct segments. Inside the modernistic / traditional Middle Eastern architectural building were amazing weaponry, textiles, jewelry, sculptures, manuscripts and art among other things. We then made it to the National Mosque, whose buildings are a unique blend of Ottoman and Mogul empires as well as Gothic and ancient Greek designs.

The Kuala Lumpur Railway Station is just outside the park, which is an example of the British colonial adaptation of western Moorish architecture. We enjoyed another Indian meal in the Brickfields district before heading back to our neighbourhood, the heart of shopping and entertainment. Our evening consisted of just that. The next day we monorailed to the historical center of Chinatown, formerly known as The Old Kuala Lumpur. We visited many temples dedicated to many different gods, with mixtures of Chinese and European Baroque styles, embellished with lavish ornaments.

Petaling Street was our lunch location, offering an excellent selection of restaurants and food stalls serving Chinese cuisine and local favourites. Then we went to the Central Market, the biggest Malaysian arts and crafts center, featuring Art Deco style buildings. Not far from there is Merdeka Square, where the country’s independence was declared just over fifty years ago. There’s a lovely Victorian fountain as well as a hundred-meter flagpole, one of the tallest in the world. Across the street is the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, which is an elegant symmetrical brick structure featuring a 41-meter high clock tower, arched colonnades and copper domes.

The old railway station is now the Museum Tekstil Negara, whose design is alternating red and white bricks with an Islamic style façade and raised onion-shaped domes. Finally back to Bukit Bintang, the popular Alor Street is chock-full of vendors open until all hours of the night. The abundance of sightseeing over the past two days left us bone-tired, plus we had a 9:30 flight the next morning resulting in a 6am wake-up. KL provided an action-packed start to our trip, but we’re more than ready for some peace and tranquility in Bali! 

An Ending & a Beginning

“Set lao!” I exclaimed to my students, Thai for finished, as I wrapped up my last day of teaching. With every final test score retrieved and an empty desk, it was a bittersweet day. As busy as the last week was and as glad as I am that it’s over, I can’t believe I’ll never see my students again. Having almost four hundred teens under my wing for the past four months has been more than a life changing experience. I always thought that high school teachers have one of the most difficult jobs, dealing with the typical adolescent behaviour, but I’ve gained a fresh perspective. There’ll always be a few troublemakers in each class, but they’re easy to deal with once you learn the ropes. I never got to the point of simply leaving a classroom out of frustration, unlike others who’ve taught at my school. Flicking the lights usually helped quiet the students down, as well as bringing out the red pen. Marking a red ‘x’ beside their name on the participation record induces all sorts of pleading. When the higher-ups get a hold of those records the marked up students are in some kind of trouble that’s bad enough for them to understand that red x’s are to be avoided. Also, when the test scores are processed they’re matched with the participation records, explaining why the lowest marks belong to those with the most red x’s. It’s upsetting to see students fail, but it’s overridden by seeing those 100%-ers. My over-achievers were some of my favourite students, simply because they were so eager to learn. You feel like you make a real difference in their lives when you see true improvement over the course of a semester. Being able to have an actual conversation with the few we ran into during our last adventures around town was very gratifying. It was also great to see the few sights left in Hat Yai before moving on, giving us a sense of completion with the city. 

Packing up my apartment was bittersweet as well, reminiscing about all of the created memories but also getting excited to make so many more! Kuala Lumpur is our next destination, marking the beginning of our 5 weeks of backpacking!

Only One Week Left

As the semester comes to a close at the end of this month, the students are required to write final exams. Similar to most colleges, the exams are administered during/after the final week of school. Thai teachers test each student on their acquired knowledge from the entire year, obviously requiring a great amount of studying. For this reason, English teachers refrain from testing during that week to avoid overwhelming the students. So we test two weeks before instead, putting us currently handing out our final exams each day to each seperate class, a monotonous task. But another factor has come into play, the bi-annual speech contest. This includes different categories of memorization, comprehension, pronunciation and summarization. For the last month, I have been working with the comprehension contestants every Tues-Fri from 2-4. During this process, my four students are given ten minutes to read a speech and prepare to speak it. Then they say a memorized introduction before reading the speech with proper pronunciation and body language. After corrections, they summarize what they've read before I ask them questions about it. So overall, this process actually includes every category with mine being the most difficult. As you can imagine, understanding a speech written in another language can be tough if you don't know the meaning of every word. As helpful as a native English speaker is over a Thai, volunteering has caused me to miss my classes during that time. It wasn't so bad when the students missed small lessons, but it's quite the inconvenience when testing. Luckily the contest is tomorrow, so next week will be free to finish collecting my final grades for each class. Then come the weekend, Wes and I are packing up and starting our travels. We haven't been living large in Hat Yai simply to save as much money as possible before backpacking for six weeks. However, we have been spending a lot more time downtown since the weather has taken a turn. We haven't had a drop of rain in weeks, perfect for taking in the best (or worst) of this city while we're still here.

Fabric vendors and pigs' heads in Gim Yong Market

Consistent with the typical pattern year after year, February is the end of the wet season and the start of the hot. It's been gorgeous until now, but it'll be perfect to get out of town when it gets unbearably hot. Hopefully the weather deities will have mercy on us during the final week!

Escape to Langkawi

Only an hour by minivan to Thammalung Pier then an hour fifteen on a ferry, Palau Langkawi is the closest island to Hat Yai. It's beaches are noticeably Malaysian, with quite the variety of sun bathers, compared to the influx of Swedes on Thai islands. That isn't to say they aren't there though, we thought we made friendly with a few down the hall until they constructed a goodbye gesture of stacked furniture (every single piece from the veranda) in front of our door the morning we were trying to leave. This resulted in us sprinting down the ramp to the ferry that was scheduled to depart fifteen minutes earlier. We wish we could thank the Swedes for the stress and panic they ensued, but they're lucky they didn't do worse. But back tracking to the afternoon I arrived, the first stop is always the beach. Cooling off from the persistent sun in the crystal clear Andaman Sea, once again, is one of my favourite pastimes. 

A beach walk and an early start with the one dollar Carlsbergs brought the real vacation feeling. We came upon a deck of cards, which consumed each evening we spent on the veranda of our hotel. The sunsets never let us down, nor did the cheap Indian food. We rented motorbikes the next afternoon when we finally got our acts together, and cruised until the sun was setting. A 2.5 hour loop around the island turned into four as a result of our pitstops, the first being gas at Harbour Park. Langkawi definitely has the cheapest fuel we've seen in our travels thus far, making long trips ridiculously inexpensive. 

We went to the small Oriental Village, then stopped to see the skywalk on Gunung Raya Mountain. A bit of a splurge for backpackers, we didn't go up but looked at photos of the 700 metre high, 360 degree platform with breathtaking views. Then, we hiked up to the first Well of Telaga Tujuh, the Seven Wells Waterfall. Alex, with his crippled knee, was the only reason we didn't make it up further. It was meant to be though, with not much water flowing as it isn't rainy season. It was definitely a great cool off in the potholes at the base though. Cute monkey sightings as well.

Next, we drove the long stretch to the most secluded beaches on the island, Pantai Tengkorak and Pantai Pebble. And then Langkawi's most beautiful beach, the claim of which we didn't agree. Tanjung Rhu was very long and wide but not scenic. Our favourite beach of the day  was the fourth and final, Pantai Pasir Hitam. Literally meaning Black Sand Beach in Malay, it's actually a mix of both. Unlike other black sand beaches, this sand isn't volcanic in nature - iron oxide is believed to be the cause of this phenomenon. Some people also believe that it may have been caused by the burnt soil from the rice fields that were burnt during the Siamese War. Apparently the burnt soil flowed to the sea and got washed up onto the sand. The ancient fishing jetty at the end of the beach is also an interesting attraction.

After cruising through the National Park, we made it back to the port we'd all arrived at. A gigantic eagle statue mars the tropical-ness of the harbour, however it is quite impressive. There were a few sites we'd missed after making it back that day, but we managed to check them out the next morning/afternoon before having to return the motorbikes. Ulu Melaka, the tallest peak on Langkawi, stands at almost 900 metres. We also made it to a local hangout deep in the jungle, flaunting smooth basins of brisk water perfect for lounging. A walk around Pantai Cenang town later in the day left us seeing the remaining few sights worth checking out, one in particular being The Colourful Motel.

This tropical weekend turned out in a bit of a panic, as previously explained, but everything added to the excitement. Also a touch bittersweet, not knowing when I'll see my brother again, but we're hopeful. He plans on spending the next month in Indonesia, which is where Wes and I plan on touching base in before February escapes from us like January did!