Singapore 

Last Friday, I left Lyall and Lenggong behind and met Reagan, Busby, Kyle, Erin and Hannah in KL. The next day, we got on our bus and drove to Singapore. 

We got to Customs at the border and had to go through security and everything. It was rather intimidating as they seem to love having the police officers carry around massive guns!

We eventually managed to get through but couldn’t see our bus. We waited over 3 hours and there was still no sign of our bus! We somehow managed to get a city bus and drive into the centre of Singapore. 

We got to the hotel and got ready to go out. We got a taxi to Clarke Quay which is bar central. Obviously when you’re in Singapore, the automatic choice for dinner is Vietnamese food! At least it was for us!

We discovered that the 10th best club in the world, Zouk, was right round the corner, so we tried to get in but the queue was too long.

On Sunday, we decided to go to Universal. It was hot and sweaty but we had a great time. Unfortunately though, Shrek wasn’t there. Sad, I know.

We stopped by Gardens By The Bay on the way back to the hotel. Although pretty, I didn’t really understand the big deal that’s made of them. Maybe that’s just because we went just as they were closing so we didn’t really get to see much.

Luckily for me, but very unlucky for her, Busby was ill so decided not to go out to the clubs with the others. This was good for me because I’m a lightweight and need my sleep! I was also rather relieved considering we had to get up at 02:30 for our flight to Bali! Luckily, she’s better now.

Bali

I am not a morning person, so I was not at all amused by the time of our flight. I’m kind of glad it was early though because the sunrise was beautiful.

I was a bit surprised by Bali. Driving from the airport to the hotel, there didn’t appear to be any main roads. We were just driving dodgy roads through tiny side streets. I later discovered that there are a few main roads!

We were all so tired but didn’t want to waste time by lying in the hotel, so we lay at the beach and napped instead!

The hotel driver was our own personal chauffeur for the week. We’re still uncertain of his name, but it sounds something like Harry Potter, so that’s what we called him.

He took his to one of his friends restaurant (yes, he is the typical foreign man that has friends that do everything). The place was lovely. It was right on the beach and looked gorgeous. Wouldn’t have expected that from somewhere called Potato Head (that is it’s actual name, I’m not just making it up!).

Tuesday consisted of Harry taking us on a tour. We saw everything from traditional Indonesian dancing to a silversmiths to coffee plantation and paddy field to a waterfall. We got to try all the flavoured coffees and tea. Unfortunately it was too windy to go swimming or jump off the waterfall, but we got some nice pictures at least!

Harry was meant to have another job on Wednesday, but it was cancelled so he took us to another beach. It was pretty dodgy to get to, we basically had to climb through a cave, but it was beautiful once we were down there.

He asked us when he saw us if we had felt the earthquake and he was glad we were okay. None of us felt a thing and somehow managed to sleep through a 6.4 magnitude earthquake!!

Since Bali is a beachy place, it would’ve been wrong for us not to do any water activities. On Thursday, Harry took us to his friend who owned a water sports company. We decided to go snorkelling and jet skiing. The snorkelling also included a trip to a turtle farm!

Jet skiing was great, but I discovered it’s not just cars I have a problem driving!

Friday was a pretty lazy day just wondering around markets. We spent some time in the pool at the hotel, but it was freezing! Kyle somehow lost his glasses and I later found them at the bottom of the pool as we were heading out for dinner. Wish I was the one clever enough to put them there!

Another early flight on Friday. We got back to KL and found Evie and Amy (8 month volunteers) in the queue opposite us at customs! They had just returned from Thailand. 

Hannah and Erin managed to basically get arrested at customs and the only way they were allowed in the country was by booking flights out of the country! Makes no sense to me either. Unfortunately though, they were allowed to stay!

We ditched Reagan at our hotel as she’s off to meet her family. The rest of us decided to go out since it was Kyles birthday. We started off in our favourite Irish bar but moved on to a club. We found out that Zouk, the club in Singapore, had one in KL too and that was number 26 in the world. We couldn’t get in though because none of us are over 21. We found another club, but we were the only people in it so we left after 5 minutes! We just chilled in the hotel instead.

My train back to school was on Sunday morning so I had to leave the others early.

I’m sad it’s over, but that also means it’s only 4 days until mum, dad and Emma come out. Glad I’m not at home watching mum stress out over packing!

Not last weekend, but the weekend before, me, Lyall and 40 students drove 8 hours to MRSM Kuala Klawang. After weeks of practising, it was time for the students to compete at Language Week (it was actually only 3 days but oh well).

We had 20 students compete in the Malay division and 20 compete in the English division. There were around 20 other schools there, some even coming from Borneo Malaysia.

Every single MARA school, competed in their respective zones. The zones are split into North, East, South and West. 

The students had to participate in competitions such as Drama, Story Telling and Poetry Slam. Each of these were then divided into boys, girls, lower secondary and upper secondary.

Lenggong saw 1 boy win a Malay competition. We also had Vikki, a Form 2 boy, win the English Story Telling for the lower secondary boys, and Kusshi, a Form 2 girl, come runner up in the English Story Telling for the lower secondary girls. Both Vikki and Kusshi are in my class, so I’m going to take full credit this (even though I didn’t help them at all)!

The winners of each competition will go on to compete against the winners from the other 3 zones for the overall title.

Kyle, and 3 of the 8 month volunteers were also in the same zone as us. It was nice getting to meet Amy, Evie and Aminaa and we spent the weekend getting to know each other.

Last week, I had the joys of putting up with Hannah. She wasn’t that bad, and she didn’t even complain about my cooking (she didn’t compliment it either though..)!

She spent the weekend in KL instead of coming to Camp with us, then she arrived at school on Monday afternoon. 

Last week was Activity Week so there was no classes and the students were off doing different activities. On Tuesday, we were a checkpoint for a Form 1 Scavenger Hunt. We joined the Form 1s again on a Zipline on Wednesday (should probably explain that we went down individually and we didn’t all gather on the zipline at the same time). Thursday was the day Form 2 students had to decorate their classrooms as if it was a birthday party and they had to serve their guests. We ate a lot of cake that day!

We left on Thursday afternoon and headed back to KL. We ventured up to the 47th floor of the Petronas Twin Towers to the walkway, then up to the 86th floor to the Observation Deck. Although it was good, the Empire State Building is proving to be unbeatable!

On Saturday, we went up to the rooftop pool, and we may have spent a little too long in the sun! But hey, at least lobsters can swim..

We finally managed to get rid of Hannah on Saturday night and although I haven’t been told she made it back alive, I also haven’t been told otherwise, so who knows where she is?!

Lyall and I came back to school on Sunday, had classes Monday and Tuesday, helped Form 3s with their English assessment yesterday, spent today in some sort of assembly and trying to find ways to fill the rest of the day as there aren’t any classes, and schools off tomorrow! 

I head back to KL tomorrow afternoon to meet the others before our bus to Singapore on Saturday. We’ll spend a couple of days in Singapore and then we’re heading out to Bali.

In the meantime, Lyall will be spending time with her mum.

When I get back from Bali, I’ll have a week at school before going to KL again to meet my mum, dad and Emma!

So I think that’s you all caught up in my life now. Sorry it took so long, I have a memory like a goldfish!