PIMP, photographers and pirates

So 2/5 back-to-back courses are done and I'm knackered! Never have I been so appreciative of long lunches, means I get to nap. The first course was MMSB who were a group of engineers, really nice people but the course was only 3 days. Pretty much all we did was a night walk in the jungle (saw a few fireflies!), rafting (despite being engineers their rafts weren't the most stable!) and kayaking (they were reasonably good at this taking only 25mins to all get to Teluk Batik 1.5km away). From what I can remember it was an easy course for us, mostly just observing since it was our first corperate course. As far as we knew we had the next week off until this weekend so we went out to Lumut for a few hours, had dinner, went to the night market and then to the cinema. A very late night since we went to Biriyani's for supper at 12.30am! We saw Looper although this was basically Shukri talking his way through the film and eating Libby's peanut butter! Note to self: take a jumper next time you go to the cinema, its freezing! We were told that we could try haggle at the night market: didn't go so well with me trying to get a discount on RayBans which were only 10RM (£2)because the RayBans logo was missing on one leg! The stall holder wasn't so keen. We decided we better go to the training office the next morning to find out what we were doing for the week: we were on course for 5 days, yayy -_- Nah it was amazing actually, I'm really glad we got to do the CIMB course! Pretty much bankers who've paid a lot therefore they had incredibly good food, a lot of fun, a gala dinner as well as plenty of rest time when they were conducting their own activities that OB wasn't needed for. The rafting race was a lot more motivated than normal groups, team flags were made, chants were chanted and overall morale was high. We were the turning marker in the pram. We weren't really needed for kayak practise other than to show how to capsize and recover the kayak. Boy and Khaliq spent their time practicing rolling the kayaks, we've been told we'll get tought soon enough! That night the participants had to do a BBQ for everyone but this wasn't just any BBQ this was a competition of taste, presentation and effort. The food was brilliant! Next morning was a dawn kayak to Teluk Batik for breakfast and then over to Sekadeh beach on Pangkor before returning to OB for lunch! Minus a few people being sea sick and poor man getting stuck in his kayak when we beached at Sekadeh it was without event. When at Sekadeh there was time for a swim and a game of "throw the football so it splashes water in peoples faces"! This was done on a coral beach I may add, with sea eagles flying overhead with fish in their claws! Libby kept me well entertained on the way back by attempting to be Scottish and then making up a Scottish song to the tune of P I M P!! Surprisingly good! We were treated to a culture show that evening, resulting in us dancing to some Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian dances! The culture show also had places we should go in each country so we've got even more ideas for holidays. As if we weren't undecided enough! We were also informed that the next night would be pirate themed celebration dinner, everyone else had know for weeks, we had less than 24hrs: challenge accepted! Before that though there was still the whaler race. After being slightly dissapointed that we would be on the motherboats and not the whalers, it ended up being very enjoyable, there was some brilliant banter on our boat at least! On our boat there was only me, Ali, Ros (one of the photographers) and the boatman. Unfortunately a pact was made agreeing that what happened on the boat stays on the boat *cough*seaisnotatoilet*cough*!! Ros kept changing his mind about who was his favourite Scot depending on who gave him food, made him laugh or had the better music taste! Embarrasingly though he had a better knowledge of Scottish films than me and Ali put together! We all got a chance to drive the motherboat as well:D The gala dinner that night was pretty cool, our pirate costumes weren't too bad for last minute! I even had blackened teeth :O haha my poor retainers! Someone commented on the choice of weapon: "the participants all have plastic swords; the instructors have real ones!" Before eating there was an instructors against facilitators Pirates of the Caribbean style chase for a treasure chest, unfortunately we were all shot and the treasure stolen! The food was good but the banter was better; a forfeit for those not dressed well enough as pirates allowed us to make a fool of them by dressing them up as the ultimate pirate, cause pirates definately wear RayBans and green face paint! A little dissappointment next morning when there was no cereal at breakfast like the previous few mornings :( After giving our facebook's away to multiple people and being asked for photos they were gone! Yayy a few hours rest before AM Bank! *I started writing this over a week ago but didn't have time to finish it, I'm now finished all 5 back-to-back courses so you'll be getting another post later on today as well!* P.S. sorry for the length of the post, hope it doesn't bore you too much!! P.P.S. Forgot to add in one of my highlights: Libby left her packet of cookies open overnight so when she went to take one the next day, guess what...a mouthful of ants!!! P.P.P.S. I tried to upload photos to this again but the internet connection is too slow so theres pictures on my facebook! http://m.facebook.com/?_rdr#!/media/set/?set=a.4171821787004.162248.1628054921&type=1&__user=1628054921