Hanging in Penang!

This weekend was really fun! Penang is beautiful, cultural, and all around amazing! It was exciting for a lot of us, because this weekends trip was one we planned on our own, as opposed to the trips that have been organized for us through the work study.

The weekend started with quite the commute to the airport... LRT, Speed Train, Bus... then once we found everyone (some people went to the airport straight from work) we had an hour and a bit to kill at the airport. Turns out planes here also run on Malaysian time, so we ended up waiting for about 2 hours to get on the plane and be on our way!

The flight was about 45 minutes, and once we landed at around 11pm and got our bags the 9 of us all staying at the same hostel (Stef, Breann, Jill, Sefel, Dylan, Thomas, Dean, Justin and me) got into the van we'd arranged to pick us up to start our weekend adventure! The hostel was really nice, just under $10/night and the people running it were so nice! Stef, Breann, Jill and I were all sharing a room and we had a great, big balcony where everyone came to hang out before we went to find the bars on Penang Road (where all the backpackers go). We caught up with the other girls from our group who were staying at a different hostel, and had a few fun hours out before realizing it was 4:30am and we should probably go to sleep! So we all went back to the hostel and hung out for a little bit before calling it a night and making a plan for the morning! Great start to the weekend!

There's bars for about 2 blocks on this street, all filled with backpackers and awesome people to talk to

Saturday morning came VERY fast, and we were all up for 9:30 to head to Batu Ferrenghi, the best beach on the island! The beach was gorgeous, there were tons of water activities and beautiful scenery! The 35 degree heat got to us pretty fast and we were all hanging out in the water instead of laying on the beach because it was too hot to stand! A snake charmer came by and did a snake show for us with his little snake pipe/whistle thing! It was pretty interesting!

beautiful beach!

Next stop was the Fruit Farms, located up in the jungle hills of Penang, We paid $5 for a tour of the farm, we got to see how all the local fruits grow, which was neat, and also hear interesting facts about the fruit. Followed by an all you can eat fruit buffet and a fruit juice made from fruits you pick! It was so delicious!! Definitely the healthiest meal we'd had since arriving in Malaysia! Did you know this is how pineapples grow?

And did you know that it takes 11-12 months for a pineapple plant to grow a pineapple, and once one pineapple has been produced the plant wont produce anymore!? AND to grow your own pineapple plant all you have to do it plant the top of the pineapple in a pot and in 11 months you'll have your own home grown pineapple?! I thought it was all very interesting! 

fruit buffet! YUMMY!

my fruit plate!

After the Fruit Farm, we headed back to the hostel for a quick little nap and then showers before Breann, Dean, Justin, Thomas and I went out for  dinner at a place down the street! It was delicious, Penang is known for its food, so eating was definitely a highlight of the weekend! On our way back to the hostel we noticed a little wine bar, so we stopped in there for a glass of wine, and felt sophisticated for the first time in about a month! haha It was so classy, and the people who owned it were british and so polite, and the service was amazing...which is very unlike the rest of Malaysia! 

our moment of sophistication!

After wine, we all hung out for a bit, and then ventured back to Penang road for some party time. We ran into one of the owners of the wine place and his friends and hung out with them for a while before finding a sports bar that was playing the soccer game (didn't really care about the game, but the locals are super into it, so it was fun to be in the excitement!).Time flies here, and after a quick bite that some locals bought us it was 4:30 in the morning again and we needed to head home to bed!

Once again, Sunday morning came WAY too fast, we all slept in until about 11, then got up to pack our bags and head out for a day of adventures! We started with an hour and half bus ride to Penang Hill... which is supposed to be one of the top things to do in Penang, but by the time we got there the line was way too long, and we only had until 7pm to travel around, so we skipped the hill and went to Kek Lok Si, the biggest Buddist Temple in Southeast Asia. It was so beautiful, and every aspect of it was so finely detailed. I took so many pictures because everything we saw was more beautiful than the one before it! Breann and I bought some wish ribbons to put on the wish tree, which was neat to be a part of at least one aspect of the Buddhist experience!

Kek Lok Si Temple

Wish Tree

After the temple we headed back to the area where our hostel was to do a few more temples around there and then met up with everyone for the bus back to the airport... we had a long wait at the airport, but all slept while we waited, on the plane, on the bus and in the cab to our house before we finally got home at 2am... Needless to say, this morning came a little too quickly, and I'm excited to sleep tonight, then start planning out next weekend adventure tomorrow night!

It's FRIDAY!

I am so excited that it's friday! Work is definitely the least fun part of being here! But I get today off woo! So excited!

This is our Friday anthem! I'm sure most of you have heard it, and it might be the worst song ever written, but it gets blasted in this house every friday,to celebrate the end of the week!

So yesterday I decided it was time that I needed a little space for myself, because since getting here, the only time I've actually been alone is when I'm showering! Three weeks of no alone time can get a little taxing, and I think everyone has been feeling like that. The whole group has been a little less patient with each other! It's kinda like mini real world (a reality TV show for those who don't know!) and we're at the point when people stop being nice and polite and start being real haha. There have been a few spats amongst the whole group, and our little lovely family had a few little family feuds last weekend.

 Family of girls in 0ur room... verane, breann, stef and me

work family... rebecca, kashika, me, kitty, vivien, rostam

So I decided it was time for some me time! After work I went across the street to The Mall (thats legit what the mall is called.. they should be more original next time!) and got a massage, a manicure and my eyelashes extended! It was a little bit of a pricey day, but I decided that i deserved it! The massage was amazing, carrying my laptop to and from work for 3 hours everyday hasn't made my spine very happy, so an hour massage was definitely needed! And it only cost me $20! Next was my manicure, it's prettttty! and only cost $13! and finally eyelashes, $25, but now I think I could give alex's gorgeous lashes a run for their money!

Today I have the day off, and it's raining which sucks! But i'm hoping it will clear up by this afternoon for a few hours in the sun before we head to the airport for our weekend adventure to Penang! There's 12 of us going, and 9 of us are all in the same hostel so it should be a very fun time! I'll post a blog and some pictures when we get back!

Hope you are all surviving the rain and cold in Calgary! I'll try to bring some real summer weather back with me when I come home in 6 weeks!

Wonderful Weekends

Well as I said in my last blog, we LIVE for the weekends. Friday comes around and everyone is eager to go out and do something. This weekend though, about half of us (not including me) were sick. Whether it was food poisoning or a virus we're not too sure, but they were sick and it wasn't fun. So we all took it pretty easy. I to the mall for dinner with Breann, Jill, Sefel and Dylan (stef was in bed sick). Then went to a pub with Justin, Alyssa, Thomas, and two of Thomas' friends who were in KL for the weekend and had a few drinks with Justin's boss and coworkers. Afterwards one of the guys Justin works with took us for a late night Malays snack and gave us some tips about KL. Pretty interesting and low key night, but it was fun!

Early saturday we were up to get on the bus and go to UiTM (Universiti Teknologi Mara), the biggest university in Malaysia with over 20 campuses and 200,000 students! Pretty amazing compared to lethbridge's just over 8000 students. We went to the university to share with some of their students what life is like in Canada and to get to know some locals our age. After a quick breakfast and a few presentations we got back on the bus with the students from UiTM to go to the Blue Mosque in Shah Alam (one of 14 states in Malaysia) The mosque was beautiful, and interesting, but the outfits the girls had to wear were not!

I have a whole new level of respect for the Muslim women who wear outfits like this everyday. I can tell you, in 35 degree weather, this outfit does not cool you down, or make you look any better! haha Never the less, it was a very entertaining few minutes when we had to put these outfits on, the guys of course got to keep their shorts and t-shirts...lucky. But it was pretty humorous, and we got some good pictures!

After the mosque we drove to Putra Jaya, another one of the states, for lunch at the mall there and then a tour of the modern architecture in the area. It is a major center for goverment there, so many of the government building were newly built and renovated and were fairly interesting!

We got back to the hotel at around 5, excited to lay by the pool and work on our tans, but mother nature decided to be mean and bless us with a thunderstorm. So instead of the pool we all got together and planned a trip for next weekend! We were going to go to Singapore, but decided it was really expensive and there wasn't enough to do to make it worthwhile, so we switched to Penang instead! We're staying in a hostel there for 2 nights, and there's a lot of cultural stuff to do there, so it should be fun! I think most of the people on the trip are coming too, but maybe not staying at the same place, so we might see them there!

After planning our trip, stef wasn't feeling well, so Breann and I went to go and see a movie, but got there to find it sold out and settled for shopping instead! Didn't find much, but wandered around for a while. When we got back, we ran into a few others and went down to hang by the pool for a bit before bed.

Sunday morning came way to fast, and we all got up to head over to the Petronas Towers! Stef's boss got us free tickets, which was nice because normally you have to be at the tours at around 7 to get tickets. We just had to show up for 9:20, which was difficult...we got there a few minutes late, but thanks to malaysia time which means nothing, we were able to go up with our time group. The bridge is half way up the towers at the 41 floor and we were given 15 minutes to take pictures and admire the view. It was beautiful and we got a few good pictures!

After the towers we headed to the Sunway Lagoon Water Park! It was fun to spend a day in the sun going on waterslides and rides and seeing a few animals in the wildlife park! It was a family outing, so our whole room went minus Verane because she was sick. But I think Stef and Breann and I were 3 of about 10 girls in the whole park with bikinis on.. we were getting a lot of attention, being light skinned and not covering up! Stef had to go down one of the water slides with a stranger because you needed partners and everyone was cheering for the "lucky" guy who got to go down with her! It's like we're celebrities here, having people take picture with us, and of us, it's pretty entertaining!

After a full day of fun at the water park, we headed home for dinner and a quick rest before Stef, Breann and I went to a movie. Pirates of the Caribbean.. it was pretty good, but the best part was our seats.. In Malaysia you can buy Gold Class, Preferred Class, or regular class seats, and we of course bought Gold Class, which provides you with a private theatre, lazyboys to sit in, blankets, and a call button to have food brought to you whenever you like! AWESOME! there are some pictures in my Malaysia 2 album of the full movie experience!

I'm at work right now, and sad it's monday! But the weekend is only 4 and 3/4 days away so i'm pretty excited!! I'll try and write another post this week with a new update! and Lani... i'll do my best to keep you entertained with at least 2 posts a week!

Love and miss you all!! <3

My Malaysia Life

We had a short week this week, since there was a holiday on Tuesday here, and we didn't get back to work until Wednesday! Every morning Kashika, Rebecca and I leave our apartment at 7:30, take the commuter train (which is the worst thing that ever happened to me) to work which takes about 45 minutes and then go get breakfast at a Kopitam (cafe) that's near our office. I always get a Kopi Ais (Iced Coffee) and Eggs on Toast (don't ask me how to say that in Malay because I couldn't tell you! It costs about 8 Ringget, so just under $3. We get to work and socialize for about an hour and a half with our co-workers who are hilarious and such nice people. They always want to help us with the language and take us for lunch and tell us where we should go and what we should do. LOVE them!

After a "hard" morning of work, which usually involves a lot of facebooking and some research about what to do on the weekend it's time for lunch... lunch here is from 1-2 which is weird, but works for them I guess! We usually either go back to the Kopitam or go out with our coworkers. After lunch, the afternoon progresses quite similarly to the morning, with a few more  conversations with co workers and maybe a few hours of work!

The day ends at 6, with usually a ride home from Rostam (one of the men we work with, who is apparently in love with me!) or we get a teksi (taxi) to the LRT because we all hate the commuter train. For those of you who wonder why we hate the commuter train and think it can't be that bad... let me tell you why its the worst thing ever! Between Thursday night and Friday morning, I spent 5 hours on the commuter train, or a platform waiting for the commuter train. Again with the time meaning nothing here, apparently that also means trains don't have to come at all haha. On friday morning our train broke down so we had to take a teksi to work. boo.

Work is looking up, I've always loved the office and people, they're quite the group! But so far haven't had much work to do. When Roger (my boss) finally came into work on Thursday I asked him for more work and he put me in charge of finding a course for 144 people to play at for a shotgun. Seems easy enough, until you start trying to talk to Malay people in English... I got hung up on twice, and apparently "I need the quote by the end of the day" means I will hopefully have the quote by Monday in time for the board meeting I have to present at! The board meeting part I'm excited for! Hopefully it will give me a good idea of what being on a board will be like, so when I get on one in Calgary I'll know what to expect!

For the most part my work day starts at 7:30 and ends at 7:30 when I get home... after that depending on whether theres a thunderstorm going on or not, we'll turn right around and find a place for dinner, and pick a part of the city to walk around. Usually Little India or China Town, the markets are fun and always busy with people, so thats fun!

Thunderstorms here are amazing! Loudest thunder I have ever heard, and the lightening is beautiful. The skies literally open up and dump water down hard for about an hour. The rivers overflow their banks (but they're used to that here, so they're built cement walls to allow for flooding) and I swear every time the storm is right overtop of us because the thunder and lightening occur simultaneously. Rain essentially shuts the city down for 2 hours or so. People on the streets will find shelter to stand under until the rain passes, and if you're driving when the rain starts you have a long drive ahead of you. Traffic jams are insane when it rains. People drive more cautiously thank god! And it's like a sudden snowstorm in calgary the way traffic just slows instantly.

I think that pretty much sums up what life is like here. We live for the weekends, dread work, and wish we could explore this amazing city all day long! It's amazing, I wish you could all be here with me to experience it!

AMAZING weekend!!

Well we got back yesterday from Tioman Island... hands down the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life!

Before I tell you all about the weekend, I'll sum of the weeks not so interesting events! Work is going well, but people are so unreliable and time means nothing... so Kashika and I have had very little to do for the last week. We're waiting for the woman who runs the golf tournament to come in and talk to us, and for Roger (my boss) to get the venue for the golf course finally booked so we can start contacting the previous cash and in kind donors for re-donation... so basically my work has been Facebook and watching shows on my computer all week. I'm hoping that will change this week, but who knows!

So Friday FINALLY came, and Fridays are the best because Muslims are supposed to pray at lunch time which means the rest of us get 2 hours to go shopping! This could turn out to be a very bad thing for my wallet, but for now it's fun. Since changing jobs, I don't need to wear formal business wear anymore, so it's nice to have some time to buy some more casual, but appropriate dresses and clothes for work!  Kashika, Rebecca and I went shopping with a few people from work, and our 2 hours of shopping soon turned into 3... which worked our great for me because it shortened the work day by a little! When it was FINALLY 6:30 and time to go home we took the LRT home... it takes about an hour... and got ready to party! We all got dressed up and went to this bar called beach club which was really fun! We pre-drank around the pool with everyone then went to the bar at around midnight and got home around 4am!

On Saturday we all had a recovery day... lay by the pool in the morning, when for lunch, but got caught in a torrential downpour on our way to the restaurant and Sefel stole my umbrella which is why i look like I had a shower in my clothes in some of the pictures! After lunch, Breann and I went to the Batu Caves, it's a religious are just on the edge of KL and is so beautiful! We saw our first monkeys here and climbed 272 stairs to the top of the caves in the mountain.. it was beautiful and an adventure! On our way down the stairs torrential downpour number 2 started and after finally drying off from the first one, Breann and I were both soaked again! Since the trains don't run in the rain we decided to get Henna done on our feet which was fun, but that got ruined when we had to walk barefoot through puddles back to the LRT station with a broken umbrella! After we got back from the caves, Stef, Breann and I went to the mall for a delicious sushi dinner and to wander around a bit, then home to bed for our early morning wake up on Sunday!

So after finally getting around to packing at about 1am, no one was very happy when their alarms went off at 5 to head to the airport! Everyone was so overtired everything seemed funny, and after a 1 hour flight, I was in the most beautiful place in the world! Crystal clear turquoise water, 33 degrees, beautiful beaches, with palm trees and lush jungle everywhere! We all changed... went to  the duty free shop... we got 40's of vodka for $18 canadian, we were set for a great day at the beach! We hung out for a bit, then had a buffet and snorkelling amazing fish, and some people saw sharks and turtles, but I didn't see either! boo. After that we all went back to the beach and lounged for a bit before going for dinner and ready for a night of partying! Sitting outside at night here is amazing because there are no bugs, it's still so warm and it's just the best atmosphere. So we all hung out and had some beers until about 2am and then went to bed. Monday morning we booked a waterfall tour and went to the beach just in time for a torrential downpour to start! We had to sit that out, and then had about half an hour of sun before we had to leave for our tour!

The tour was beautiful, but an experience to say the least.. 7 girls all crammed into the back of a pick up trick being driven STRAIGHT up hill FAST... our mothers would have had a heart attack if they could have seen it! But it was so nice to be in the fresh air in the jungle! The waterfall was pretty, but a lot smaller than I thought it would be! I went swimming with Jill and it was really nice! After the waterfall we went to a turtle sanctuary and pet a blind turtle named Jo and swam on the most beautiful beach I have ever seen!

So we got back to the hotel about 4 hours later and swam in the pool with everyone and told stories of our days, then had a delicious bbq buffet dinner and showered for our nightly hang out on the beach! Stayed up until about 2 and then had to be up for 7am breakfast on tuesday morning to head back to "real life" in KL!

Flight home was pretty good, everyone was either still drunk, or way too tired, so I think it was the quietest we've been since we got here! When we got back to our rooms Stef Breann and I went down to the pool for a few hours and then headed in for a little nap! When we woke up we went to the mall for $12 pedicures and then home to wake the boys up for family dinner in Chinatown! We had a long weekend because it was Buddha's birthday, so we decided it would be fitting to go to Chinatown, and wonder through the markets! So we had family dinner which was delicious! And then spent about 3 hours walking through the markets! Got some sunglasses, perfume, a bracelet and a bellybutton ring because mine fell out in the ocean!

Home to bed and then back to reality this morning with work again! GREAT weekend, I don't know how the rest could possibly live up to this one, but we'll do our best! Tonight we're booking our trip to Singapore in 2 weeks, so i'm pretty excited for that!!

I miss you all, am having the time of my life, and hope this post wasn't too long for you to read! lots and lots and lots of love!!

First Day of Work...

Where do I even start.... work was the most boring thing I have ever done. You could hardly call it a job, and not worthwhile at all.

All the people at work were really nice, and Verane and I found the office okay after a slight detour around the block the wrong direction. There are two other boys around our age from Indonesia who work there too, and they are really nice, but don't seem too keen on their jobs either. We were all sitting silently in this tiny room and by tiny I mean like a right angle triangle where I could touch everyone who was in there without moving... and the bathrooms, don't even get me started!

For lunch they took us to a western restaurant and asked us a bunch of questions about Canada and what we like to eat and how we're liking Malaysia. The people here are so nice, I haven't met a single person who's not really friendly.

We do get stared at though, according to Bernard, we're exotic, so no matter what we wear people will want to interact with us, especially girls, and especially blonds...

I'm going to talk to Andrea tonight about making my job a little more worthwhile, so we'll see how that goes.

Don't have any big plans tonight, just hang out with the roomies and go for pizza and beer.

First Weekend!

The first weekend was amazing! So hot (we got here in a heat wave) and haven't seen a drop of rain, which is apparently very uncommon. It gets so hot it usually rains (and by rains I mean pours!) at least every 3 days.

After we got settled into our rooms and decided who was staying where we went down to the pool to hang out with everyone. Everybody seems really nice and friendly, and we have a great time together!

On Friday night everyone was so tired and jet lagged that we all went to bed pretty early. We got up early on Saturday to go to the mall and get some groceries and other necessities. Then we headed to the pool with a few beers to hang out for about 4 hours before we went on a tour with Bernard who owns the building. He's really nice and showed us good places to get our money changed and paid for all 18 of us to eat at a really good Indian restaurant... delish! After the tour and dinner we all got ready to go to the night market and out for our first bar adventure! It was fun to hang out with everyone and experience night life in Malaysia... the bars never close here so it wasn't busy until about one in the morning and we all came home around 3... all around good day!

On Sunday Stef, Breann and I went to the aquarium and walked through the gardens outside the Petronas Towers before coming back to meet Andrea and the group for dinner. Dinner wasn't very delicious and was really expensive... so won't be going there again! After dinner everyone went to get ready for work and get to bed so we could be great little employees!

First weekend was amazing, not too culture shocked or jet lagged. Just anxious to explore and see new things! I love this place!!