You normally only get 1 post a month but here you are getting several this month! This is the second, but there’ll be more to come soon.

Today marks 10 months since being here, and only 40 days until I’m home.

I’m currently on a train back to school after spending the weekend in KL. One of my friends has been travelling since January and arrived in KL on Friday so I gave her a whistle stop tour of the city before she flies home tomorrow. It was great catching up with her again and hearing all her stories. She was also very impressed with the VIP treatment I get at Healy Macs!

Last night, we met Holly and her friend, who has also been travelling, and Lyall who had an unplanned trip to KL after she was left stranded in Penang. Trust her to be the one to miss her train back to school!

That’s all that’s happened since my last post so not much to update you on. We have school this week before heading off to Langkawi on Friday. 

These past few weeks have seen us enjoying yet another holiday.

The couple of days leading up to our holiday were busy. We were invigilating the last of the exams and I somehow found myself taking part in a Petong competition! I don’t really know what Petong is to be honest, it’s kind of like boules but different! Google it, they’ll probably have a better explanation! Little Wan (we have Big Wan and Little Wan, both of which are teachers) appeared at my desk and very shyly (he hates talking to us. We’ve somehow managed to spend a total of 10 hours in a car together, completely silent) asked if I wanted to be part of his team (there are 3 people in a team but I can’t remember what the other guy teaches). Think he figured since I curl, I should be good at this but I think I proved him wrong! Somehow, we found ourselves in 3/4 playoffs, which we won!

The day we were leaving for our holiday, was also the Teachers Day celebrations (even though Teachers Day was 2 weeks before!). We finished the Petong tournament and watched other activities (one of which was riding a bike as slowly as you could). We then moved into the hall and were seated at big round tables and served food as the students sat and watched us eat. There was some speeches, videos that students had made, and a Secret Santa type thing between the teachers.

Unfortunately, me and Lyall and to leave early to catch our bus to Kuala Besut. As we were on the never ending journey, Amy text us to say that I had won the ‘Get Fit in 40 Days’ challenge that I had completely forgotten about! Apparently lying in bed is a great way to get fit (I didn’t even lose weight, everyone else just gained some so really, I won by default!).

Anyway, we eventually made it to Kuala Besut where we met Reagan and Holly.

On Saturday, we risked our lives on the terrifying boat over to the Perhentian Islands. It was totally worth the risk. The island, and the watersurrounding it, is beautiful.

There’s not a lot to do on the island except sunbathe, snorkel and dive. So we hired an underwater camera (since Kyle and his GoPro left us) and snorkeled at Turtle Bay. It was absolutely stunning.

We decided to get a boat across to the small island (there are 2 islands, we stayed on the big one) and watch some fire dancing. There was also a cloudy day so we went for a boat trip around the big islands…never again! It was terrifying. The waves were bigger than the tin can we were sat in, and I get seasick on the ferry across to Arran so you can imagine how I was feeling then! The boat also ran out of fuel, so we just went floating across Shark Point as the man filled up. Too bad if there were any sharks!

Miraculously, we survived all that, and the boat back to the mainland! And I even got a tan in the process!!

When we were back on dry land, we decided to leave it again. This time by plane. We flew from Kota Bharu to Kuching, and I had to listen to Reagan’s endless questions of “how do they know how much fuel to put in a plane”, “how do they empty the toilets”, and “could the scene from ‘Catch Me If You Can’ actually happen”.

When in Kuching, we went to Baku National Park where I was made to trek (in Converse may I add) to a beach. I wasn’t even allowed to go swimming in case the crocodiles got me. Totally wasn’t worth the trek if you ask me!

 

We also went to some hot springs which were…hot funnily enough.

Kuching is famous for it’s orangutans (despite being called ‘Cat’. Literally. Kuching is the Malay word for cat. There weren’t even that many cats there), so of course we had to go and see some. We went Semmengoh Rehabilitation Centre and it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. We just stood and watched some ginger monkeys swinging about the branches, which is fun for the first 10 minutes but when you’re standing there for an hour watching the same 5 orangutans doing the same thing, it gets pretty boring. But we were lucky to see them. Most of the time, they’re not out long enough for visitors to see. I don’t quite know what to expect, but obviously I’m happy I managed to see them.

Holly and Lyall wanted to go to the Sarawak Cultural Village so we went along too to see what all the fuss was about (we also heard there was a beach nearby!). I’d read about it online but all I’d seen was that there was a couple of houses belonging to each Malay tribe – and that literally all it was (oh, there was also a cafe!). We looked around all 13 houses but there wasn’t any information on them so it was hard to picture what life would’ve been like. Instead, Reagan and I went house shopping for us and our children!

We then flew over to Kota Kinabalu. Our hotel was…interesting to say the least. We spent some time just walking around the city but it wasn’t quite as nice as Kuching.

We visited Kinabalu National Park and were ready to climb the mountain when we spotted a restaurant so went for lunch instead! We then went to Poring to do a tree canopy jungle walk which was basically just a couple of ‘I’m a Celebrity’ bridges. You had to pay extra if you wanted to take pictures but we thought that was stupid and tried to outsmarten the man but he came chasing after us!

Instead of just wasting a day chilling in the city, we thought we’d go island hoping. We went to Sapi Island and Manukan Island, the latter in which me and Reagan went parasailing.

Afterwards, we went to central market and stocked up on totally pointless souvenirs which will join all the other totally pointless souvenirs we’ve collected over the years.

Back to KL we went and did the typical eat, sleep, and consider drinking thing again!

Spending 4 days in KL seemed like a bit of a waste, considering we’re always in KL, so we thought we’d spice it up a bit and go to the Genting Highlands. It’s only 45 minutes away from KL, but my God it’s cold up there (it was 25 degrees but still, it’s cold!). We got the cable car up to the very top only to find out our hotel was back at the bottom and we’d just wasted 8 ringgit on a ticket! But oh well, at least the views were nice (or as nice as the inside of a cloud can be).

Everything seemed to be back up the top so at least our return ticket came in use! Unfortunately, we were too young (and nowhere near fancy enough) to go to the casino, so we went 10-pin bowling instead!!

The last day was spent back in KL before we went our separate ways and came back to school.

Yesterday was a day off, so I spent that tidying up as Lyall went off to Penang with Holly and her friend. Back at school today, and spent it booking last minute things for our next holiday!

We have 2 weeks at school, off to Langkawi and the Cameron Highlands for a week, 2 more weeks at school and then that’s us done. We’ll have a while between finishing school and flying home, but that’ll give us a chance to say goodbye to Healy Mac’s!