Moon, Markets, Mansion and Melaka - A Multitude of Ms

Second week in Malaysia over! Unsure if I'm actually a student or just a backpacker pretending to be one..

The start of this week wasn't anything exciting - a few lectures on odd bits and bobs before we start our first module next week. Tuesday was the weekly trip to Tesco, which is always a highlight.

Wednesday evening was the SA's (student association, as union's are illegal out here, that's our version of the S.U back home,) first organised event - a night at Luna (that's our first M, if anyone is counting,) Bar - a really posh bar up on the 34th floor of a hotel in central KL. Photos courtesy of a certain Hector Stanley and Faye Greenwood, thanks for both of you taking good pictures :P If you right click the images, you can open them in a new tab to see the full size if anyone was unsure of how to do it.

In light of it being a posh establishment, the price list was to match. Us guys had one free drink included in our ticket, the girls had two. A glass of beer (maybe half a pint?) cost £5. Uurrrk. Well, at least it keeps most of us well behaved and sober! We weren't allowed in the swimming pool, which probably was for the best. Sadly at one point during the evening they closed the stage, kicking us all off of it due to apparent concerns of it collapsing - you'd think that they would've thought about making it strong enough for a bunch of people...  All said and done, I had a great night. Music, atmosphere, the people (naw,) setting, cannot complain. When I'm back in Reading guys, the poacher may not be good enough anymore ;) 

Thursday was spent moping around, with a few lectures as we all complained about not getting enough sleep. Pretty standard. We had somewhat of a "meeting," in the girls kitchen area in the evening to decide our plans for the weekend - with no real workload just yet, and us finishing at 1pm on the Friday, it seemed an opportune time to go do something. Pangkor, Batu, Melaka and Zoo Negara were all places/ideas thrown around during what turned out to be a rather hectic session of ideas and plans changing like the direction of the wind every five minutes. The meeting was mainly just the 10 of us Pharmacists, with a few others.  Plans were eventually decided upon.

Friday. In the morning we had a workshop on taking Medication Histories, followed by having roughly 30minutes to eat lunch and get myself ready for the weekend, as we had a bus to catch to the train station in order to get to KL. Reema, taking on the role of tour guide for the afternoon, suggested we go to the KL Craft Complex and engage in our zen side by doing some painting. As it turns out, we all had a deep zen side to us, as we spent two hours honing our creations. We're applying to quit Pharmacy on Monday, hopefully starting an Arts degree. 

After catching taxis to the Night Market (that's our second M,) in China Town, we were met by more fake Manchester United Shirts, rolexes, and every fancy brand knockoff than you can imagine. Every street was just wall to wall of fake after fake after fake. Wasn't the most exciting in terms of looking at things, as after you'd been down one alley, you'd been down them all essentially.

Haggler of the week goes to Faye, for ruthless negotiations and willingness to fight over 3 RM even after knocking 40 RM off the price. No mercy from what I saw, was close to being describable as terrifying. Special mention goes to Ollie for as usual, providing some comedic relief - telling one lady that the few ringgit he was trying to save was so he could buy some Mango, to which she replied she needed it to buy her soft drinks. Another seller promptly told him where he could go without much room for interpretation, after receiving a very low ball offer. 

Dinner was at some shacks in a semi permanent area off to the side of one of the streets. I was assured by an old man who recommended to me the GongBoa Chicken that it was not only good, but very very spicy. It did indeed taste good, but sadly wasn't anywhere near as spicy as he made it out to be. Tears remained in my eyes.

Shortly after we parted ways with the main group, to find "Reggae Mansion," (that's the third M!) The website looked nice, although we had met a supposed employee of said hostel in the china town market, who seemed a tadge on the creepy side, and fate had decided we were to walk past him many many times. He offered to walk us there, but we flatly declined... Vicky promised us she knew the way to Reggae Mansion, the walk there was down a fair few dark alley ways, which introduced us to some local rats, which looked larger than any rat has the right to be!

The actual place is pretty damn cool. Very clean, huge building so I imagine there's loads of dorms. It was RM 42/head for our dorm rooms, so just over £8. Really cannot complain. The actual dorms were cool, little cubby holes kinda (but fairly big, larger than a single bed size,) stacked two high along one side of the room, the other was empty for people's bags and things. 

 Our "rooms," were on the top level,  everyone secretly is obsessed with sleeping on a top bunk, there's something about having to climb a ladder to get into bed...

Chilling in the cubby holes.
Making use of free wifi to tell everyone we're not sleeping rough.
Picture from Vicky Richmond.

Sadly, we didn't get the best night sleep, as on top of the building, as it was a Friday night, there was a bit of a party going on, and as much as I don't mind a bit of Sean Paul from time to time, I'm not so keen on him at 1am as I'm trying to sleep. 

Travelers Tip: Bring earplugs or at least earphones to a hostel.

No slacking for intrepid faux-backpackers, we had an alarm set for 8. Breakie was included in the room price, so a large plate of noodles with scrambled eggs was in order. I'm getting used to this noodles/rice all the time diet. Reggae Mansion is right next door to Masjid Jamek train station (where we were last Saturday as it happens,) so jumping on a train to TBS (the largest bus station in KL,) was easy enough. As was getting a bus ticket to Melaka, our first real "exploratory," trip of our stay in Malaysia. The two hour bus ride, cost about £2...  

First off once we arrived in Melaka, we decided it would be best to try find somewhere to stay for the night, instead of leaving that till 11pm and finding nowhere suitable... Anna and Vicky had done their homework, so it wasn't too troublesome at all, the third one we looked at we settled upon. A lot cheaper than the previous night (£3/head,) for a small room with two single beds in and a mattress thrown in between them. Ok, so perhaps you do get what you paid for... 

The main reason for visiting Melaka (oops, I forget to mention - the 4th M,) was to do a bit of sight seeing, and for the food. Foolishly, we tried to do as much of the sight seeing/walking around the day markets in the afternoon, so we spent most of it baking and sweating out every drop of water. Melaka was originally a Portuguese settlement, and at some time a Dutch one, so there was plenty of old buildings to look at, and hide from the afternoon rays of the sun. 

After dinner (a laksa, chicken satay and a pot of tea,) we had expertly planned our boat cruise to co-incide with the setting sun, being the pro tourists we are. The boat cruise wasn't anything amazing, but it was a nice way to see some parts of Melaka we hadn't made it to, and just sit back and enjoy the sunset, a nice change from what had been a busy afternoon of walking around and looking at things that way. 

Continuing on the trend of our well planned itinerary, after stepping off the boat we headed to the Night Market (again that M!) in Jonker street, which we had been informed was a more traditional one of foods and other things compared to fake central in China Town, KL. Surprisingly it was busier than the previous night's one, but it definitely had a more natural feel to it. Somehow, somewhy, we stumbled across a pub that was having an Oktoberfest night, complete with a band of Germans dressed up in the gear and even a group of girls in their Oktoberfest outfits. Malaysia keeps on surprising me. We sat down to enjoy some German traditional music. I can now say I now what the song "Ein Posig," sounds like. Not something I expected to find out here in my year abroad... Instead of listening to folksongs all night, we started to head back, as we had been told there was yet another Night Market near where we were staying. On our way back down, we ran into a demonstration of a supposed Guinness World Recorder, his records were presumably in stabbing hard things with his fingers, as he was somehow managing to do this with the rock hard coconuts. Malaysia, once gain, never fails to surprise. 

Once back in our hostel, instead of locking ourselves away into the rather small room, we chilled in the common room for a bit, talking to some of the people there, and then representing Puzzle Club by doing a quick 128 piece. #PuzzleClubOnTour. I'd like to point out the use of that hashtag was in fact satirical, and not serious. Journey back to campus took about 4.5hrs all told on the Sunday, and I'm now enjoying doing nothing serious but writing this and uploading pictures. Might try find a place on campus to hang my rings from tonight for some training, being using my pull-up bar recently, but it's not quite the same, I miss using the rings! Lectures start for serious tomorrow, so holiday period is over.

That said, perhaps I should quit uni and use my loan/grant money to go travelling for the year...

Much love,

Jacob xx

Where Do We Enlist?

So much has happened since I last wrote...

That was Wednesday I think? We had most Wednesday off. Thursday we were stuck in boring talks aimed at freshers/first year uni students. I'm loving the free sports centre, both using the pool for cardio workouts, and we all go down there some evenings to just mess about and put some music on. Friday, we had talks in the morning about studying science - it wasn't anything too interesting either... Managed to get the afternoon off, as we talked to the lecturer giving the Pharmacy talk, and he told us we were fine to skip it.

Oh, did I mention we had the inaugural meeting of both The Puzzle Club and The Breakfast Club? No? Well, us international students from the UK are a pretty cool bunch of people... Someone picked up a thousand piece puzzle in Kajang, that's mainly just various shades of brown, which prompted the creation of the Puzzle Club. We just sat around in the kitchen on the girls' kitchen, playing music and doing some serious puzzling...

Once again, Reema and Amy make an appearance somehow, this time concentrating on the fiendishly difficult puzzle. 

The Puzzle Box, with all the "middle," pieces laid out. We've started doing the edges on the main kitchen table, with a note (in Malay!) telling the cleaners to please leave it. 

The Breakfast Club, is the same group of us, but, as the name suggests, we all meet in the (same) kitchen, and eat breakfast together... I don't know what events lead to us all "creating," these clubs, but somehow we did. And we're all the much cooler for it. I think. Right?!

Vicky, Anna, Hector and I took a trip to Seminyeh to try do a few things - like Tesco, the bank and the clinic for a few odd things. Didn't get it all done, but oh well. Friday night was the first visit to the "local," JJs. JJs is basically a few tables laid out on a street corner near the off campus student accommodation. Us students make up 90% of his trade I'd imagine, and there's not much choice beyond a few beers/the odd spirit. That said, it's only a 15 minute walk, and he lets us put on our music.

The Tiger Beer we had at JJs. Not sure how he gets this.... 

Saturday! The KL trip! The international office organised a trip to KL for us, at RM 50. Includes transport there, lunch, a few stops on the coach trip, advertised as 9-6. We (pharmacy crew+some others,)  decided to stay in KL, and try go out to some bars in the evening, and perhaps crash at some hostel. As the day went on, we kinda went off that plan, as I'll detail later.

The trip firstly went through the local village (Seminyeh,) with a bit of a talk about it's history, some Malaysian facts. If I'm honest, most of us were shattered, so used this time to catch up on some winks. I'm sorry to the tour guide for this <3 The highlight of the organised tour was next up. 

In KL is a really really tall tower, called something starting with M. It's the fourth tallest in the word, at 431 m. We were to be having a buffet lunch at the revolving deck. It was great, good food, loads of it, and awesome views. As I said, it was revolving, so your view was constantly changing. Pretty disorientating. Tried the durian porridge for dessert, not a fan... There's plenty of pictures of the views going up on facebook, so I'm not going to post them here. 

Next stop was the "mega-mall," of Mid Valley, a huuuuuuuuuge shopping centre on the outskirts of KL. Upon arrival, the plan was stated that we would stay till 9pm, until at which point we'd head over to the strip for  bars/clubs whatever. Now, I'm not a sexist, nor would I like to negatively stereotype anyone... But us guys really really are not good at shopping. Even more so over a period of five hours. And most of the girls seemed to love the prospect. We tried to shop until about 6.30pm~ until at which point we(Anna, Vicky, Hector, Joe, Imran and Inul(I think that's right,)) decided we were going to ditch the bar idea, as there was no chance we were staying in the "megamall," and retaining sanity until 9pm. Instead, Inul who seems rather knowledgeable suggested we go to Masjid Jamek (spelling is tough,) which was about two train trips away, costing something like RM 2 per person in total. Once we crossed a few roads (which is the most dangerous thing I've done in a long time, the locals seem unperturbed by weaving through traffic moving at high speeds and just walking casually over. We resorted to running like maniacs to get to safety asap,) we serendipitously discovered this military fair/show thing. 

By now, it was about 7pm, so getting dark. All around a grassy square area where different tents with different Military equipment on display/for messing about with, and tanks lining it. I'm not sure what the occasion was, but it sounded like something we wanted to have a look at. All thoughts of hunger were immediately  gone when we found the guns and started re-living our boyhood fantasies of running around shooting people (no, we don't need mental help, it's ok!) Anna and Vicky seemed rather bemused by the large grins on our faces everytime we picked another one up and pretended to aim towards the facing cameras we all pulled out. Many many photos later, we moved on, the euphoria of pretending to be soldiers worn off, hunger came back. I'm embarrassed to say we resorted to burger king as it was the first thing we found, and near our train station that we needed to get on. 

The decision to not go out clubbing turned out to be a great one, and I had a brilliant evening exploring something I would not have seen otherwise. Only one downside...

Where were we meant to enlist?!

Looking forward to a day of finally doing nothing tomorrow, before lectures start on Monday.

Hope everyone is good and well, 

Much Love,

Jacob. 

Night Panic and a Mass Exodus

Hello! I've arrived safely! I'm alive! If I haven't yet messaged you it's not because I don't love you, it's because I've got a boat load of people to reply to.

Timeline of relevant events:

Landed in KL about 3pm Sunday local time.

Arrived on Campus at about 4.30pm - after a rather hair-raising bus drive in which our driver absolutely had to write what seemed to be a shopping list, whilst driving.

Checked into my room at Kapas Hall ~ 5.00pm. It's pretty close to the sports centre(which I've yet to have a look at,) and the canteen/foody place.

Two pictures of my room in Kapas Hall. It felt a lot worse in there than it looks - or perhaps I'm just a soft white boy.....

Ended up going to sleep at like 9.30pm, and slept until about midnight. Midnight, woke up, feeling pretty bad about the whole situation. A combination of not feeling comfortable in the room, lack of sleep and jet lag lead to me wandering about the halls in a dressing gown, trying to think when the next plane home would be, and what I was going to do back in England.... Yup. Great. 

Managed to calm down enough to go back to sleep at about 2am, and thankfully slept just fine until 7~

Met up with the other Pharmacists that morning at breakfeast, and I wasn't alone in not liking the halls at all. There's 8 of us in the Kapas Hall, and the other two are in the new halls the other side of campus. We had a few things to do in the morning like sort out our medical examination and other junk, so for the moment, it was kinda out of mind. Then soon after lunch (chicken curry+egg = £1.20 :O I can get used to this...) we discover that Amy and Reema have already moved out of Kapas, and are at the new halls waiting to be allocated a room. Now, to those of us at lunch, this sounded like a pretty good plan... It's a bit more expensive, around a tenner extra a week, but the rooms (we went to look at one,) are much nicer, and there's a mini fridge in them too. Yup, I'll take that please. Today too would be wonderful :P

Actually getting transfered over was super duper easy - we all re-packed our stuff in a mad dash, and there was even a bus to take us over, saving us walking with all our stuff. Next plan of event was get internet sorted, register, then we went to Tescos to buy supplies and things, followed by dinner in the foodcourt we found there - 70p for a Laksa... Getting a taxi back proved to be slightly harder than anticipated, but managed it in the end, getting back onto campus at about 9.

Since then, I've yet to start unpacking, had to send messages to you all/reply, figured that's more important ;) I'm happy with my situation now, and am no longer wanting to board the next flight home :P

Love you all,

Jacob