Hiiiiii! I am so sorry it has been over a month since I have written anything. That means that this is going to be painfully long and some of you may not make it through the entire post. I would like to start by saying a big THANK YOU to the Fels crew, who sent me an incredible video of all of them saying hello and sending their love. Thank you thank you thank you. That just made my day. It was amazing. I love you guys and I miss you guys. Anyway, I know there are no real excuses, but let me try on a few anyway. The rest of February was a bit crazy because it was the end of the school year and we had a lot of teachers leaving and Anneliese and I had to move house. It was a whirlwind and then suddenly it was the last week of classes and the last real week of February. On the last day of classes at Super English we had a party day for the kids during which it was the responsibility of Mitch and I to dress them all up in ridiculous outfits and take pictures of them. It was a lot of fun and the pictures are all on Facebook. Again - I have not been able to resolve the fact that Blogger will not let me post any more photos and now this is a boring text only blog. There are loads of pictures on Facebook and I will work on getting them all onto Flickr... it's just a matter of me actually doing it because Flickr's upload time is annoyingly and unbelievably slow.
So anyway, the last week of February into the first week of March saw a lot of action. First I had to say goodbye to Mitch, who is moving to Japan. This was really sad for me, because he was one of my favorite people here and it's just not going to be the same without him. But I played tough guy and I didn't even cry. Then Anneliese and I began our Malaysian adventure. On Sunday, February 27th, Anneliese and I took a god damned minibus to Hat Yai, which is a major city about 4 or 5 hours south of Surat. I say god damned because first of all, whoever designed and then bought the thing was a total moron. It had no trunk space and no storage space whatsoever. This meant that after all of us humans were crammed into the bus like sardines the luggage was stacked up, effectively blockading us in the van and totally screwing us in the event of an emergency. And the guy didn't even stop one time. So, it wasn't the most pleasant of rides, but eventually we did get to Hat Yai. Hat Yai was actually a whole lot cooler than some people claim, and we had a pretty good time just walking around the downtown area. I was a stupid, fat American and bought McDonald's for dinner. What can I say? My body was craving saturated fats. The exciting thing for me was that they still have the chicken sandwich we had when we were little! Remember when the chicken sandwich was just one huge chicken nugget, and they slapped some lettuce/mayo mixture on top? Yeah? Yum.
The next morning we left for Kuala Lumpur. I am going to try to give you a pretty brief rundown day by day of what we did. Again... all of the pictures are up on Facebook but I can't put them on here... sorry.
*Monday, February 28, 2011: Fly from Hat Yai to Kuala Lumpur. Take the bus from the airport to the central subway station and then the subway to the stop nearest the hostel. Thank god I had Anneliese with me because somehow my directional capabilities (as limited as they are) were not working at all. She navigated us to the hostel, which was really nice. It's called The Back Home Hostel and it's for sure the nicest I've ever seen. We got there in the late afternoon and we were starving, so we immediately went to eat dinner. To our delight, there was a Vegetarian Chinese restaurant directly across the street from the hostel. This was especially exciting for Anneliese, who is a vegetarian, because they had all of the fake meats and such that they masterfully craft out of soy somehow. She got fake mutton, which might sound weird but tasted amazing. After we ate we went and wandered around their enormous Chinatown, which had a whole bunch of different little shops selling pretty much the same stuff the markets do here; sandals, fake pocketbooks, teeshirts, etc. We had known that Amy and Jeehon would be arriving that night and also staying at Back Home, but we were completely surprised when we literally walked right into them walking down the street. They had been looking for the hostel but hadn't had Magellan Anneliese with them, so they were happy to have found us. After they dropped their stuff off we walked back to Chinatown and they ate dinner. Then we went Back Home and slept in a room with four strangers, one of whom had incredibly smelly feet.
* Tuesday, March 1, 2011: Anneliese, Amy, Jeehon, and I all took one of the public buses to the Batu Caves. The Batu Caves are a really popular tourist destination about 45 minutes or so outside the city center. They are holy to the Hindu population of the area and have temples in them. There's an enormous gold statue and 272 stairs to climb. I can't do it any justice in words, and I so wish this stupid blog would allow me to put up some pictures of it, because it was amazing. After seeing all that there was to see, we had some really excellent Indian food for lunch and then took the bus back to the city. We then decided to walk around KL and to go see the Petronas Towers. On the way my pocketbook almost got stolen by two guys on a motorbike. It was partially my fault, because I was walking close to the road with it on my outside shoulder. Luckily (thank you whoever is watching over me!) I held on tight in the moment and they couldn't get it. Because of this quick little struggle they swerved and actually hit Amy... not a lot but they did hurt her arm. All in all we were lucky, though, and that was the only bad thing that happened in KL. (Side note: there is one more bad thing but I don't want to sound like a spoiled brat. I saw my first flying cockroach in action and it freaked me out a lot. It was wholly unnatural and I don't know why God thinks that's okay. What was evolution thinking???) Anyway, after that little incident we did in fact make it to the Petronas Towers, two of the tallest buildings in the whole world. They call them the Twin Towers, but that kind of weirds me out. Anyway, they were cool. After that we went out for more Indian food, because why not??? We are deprived of it in Surat so we decided we should take it while we could get it. That night Chris and Brittney arrived, as well as Brittney's brother and his girlfriend. They were all staying at a different hostel in the city, one with a roof top deck. We sat up there for a while looking at the city. I met this British woman named Julia who is a lawyer and was on a 9 month sabbatical with an around-the-world ticket. She told me about all of her adventures and I wish I was her. Eventually we walked home and passed out.
* Wednesday, March 2, 2011: Amy and Jeehon left for London, and Chris and Brittney left for India. It was sad to say goodbye to Amy and Jeehon, who are both moving to Japan, in fact about only an hour away from where Mitch will be living. So it was back to me and my girl Anneliese. We decided to walk to the city parks. First we went to the Butterfly Sanctuary. This place was actually really cool and they had butterflies and frogs and turtles and fish and such. Again - better said through pictures. We then went to the Islamic Museum of Art which was also really amazing and full of beautiful things. After that we had been walking for hours and needed to refuel, so we went and had Indian food again, why not? After that we went back to the hostel and set our minds to finding out about some movies in English, of which we are also deprived in Surat. We were told there were plenty, and it was just a matter of what we wanted to see. We went online and decided that we would go to the movie theater at the Pavilion Mall and see "True Grit". First, I will say that "True Grit" was really good. I enjoyed it and I would recommend that you see it as well. Next, let me say that Asian malls are AWESOME. In Bangkok and in KL. Asian malls just put American malls to shame. The Pavilion was so great. And they had a Forever 21. And I totally bought a dress. And I also bought a delicious frozen yogurt with fresh strawberries. It was definitely a successful trip.
* Thursday, March 3, 2011: First we walked around the Central Market. This place was really cool and had a lot of shops with Indian and Malaysian crafts. Then we took a public bus to Putrajaya, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Putrajaya is the government city of Malaysia, kind of like a preplanned Washington, DC. It was pretty lame, unfortunately. The upside was that they had a Middle Eastern restaurant called D'Arab Cafe and we got to eat hummus, cucumber salad, falafel, and olives. That kind of made everything else okay. The trip to Putrajaya ended up being an entire day trip. It was clear we needed our spirits lifted, and Anneliese came up with the best idea ever. We went back to the Pavilion and had Mexican food for dinner. (Again, Middle Eastern and Mexican food are two things you cannot get in Surat.) It was a great idea and the Mexican food was actually really good. I think I would have even thought it was good if it hadn't been the only tacos to touch my lips in months. After dinner we walked around for a while before we caught the subway back to the hostel.
* Friday, March 4, 2011: We traveled for 10 hours getting back to Surat. I don't want to talk about it.
So, that was our trip to Malaysia. All of the food I ate might make it sound like I missed out on the culture of KL, but that city is a funny place. First off, it's super modern. There's almost nothing old there, as KL itself is less than 200 years old and Malaysia as in independent nation is not even 100. Because of its newness, it has been able to create a metropolis that is very modern while still reflecting the cultures of its inhabitants. KL has many Muslim Malaysians, but it also has a huge population of Chinese and Indian. So, when we were eating all of that Indian food we were eating Malaysian food. It seems from an outside perspective that these three major cultural groups get along and that they work together to make Kuala Lumpur the success that it is. A lot of people in KL speak English, almost everyone I met. This made it really easy to get around and to order food, etc. Many of the people I met seemed to be trilingual--English, Malaysian, and Mandarin, or Malaysian, Hindi, and English, etc. It was more expensive than Thailand, but still really really cheap if you were working with an American or European budget. It was a pretty cool city and overall I really liked it a lot. I would definitely like to go back and to see Penang.
So then I was back in Surat. I spent much of Saturday moving the rest of my things into our new (awesome!) house and packing for a month away. Then on Sunday, I flew to Bangkok to meet my mother. I am happy to say that she arrived safely from America, even though her luggage never made it out of London. Luckily they sent it to our hotel here in Koh Samui so by the time we got here yesterday it was waiting. So on Sunday we just hung out at the hotel and talked and got room service. Then on Monday we flew into Surat Thani, which I tried to warn her isn't very impressive and doesn't need a full day but she really wanted to see where I live. Then yesterday we took the ferry here to Koh Samui, and now we are at Lamai Beach. We have a bungalow on the beach and right now I am sitting on our little front patio. I am looking at the ocean, which is full of angry waves due to some crazy wind that's been acting up since we got here. I hope that it calms down a bit so that we can take a leisurely swim without the risk of being killed by the undertow. Today we just sat around in the sunshine, read our books, and ate some good Thai food. We are here in Koh Samui until the 13th, when we will go to Phuket. We will be in Phuket until the 17th, which we will spend in Bangkok before my mother leaves late that night. I am so happy to have her here and I feel so lucky that she traveled 9,000 miles just to see me. Then Liz will be here for two weeks! Yay! Anyway, I will not let it go so long again... I'm SORRY!!!!
I love you guys!
