Burma, Whaler and Music Festival!

For the end of February we were asked to join an international school course for their expedition. None of us were particularly happy about this as we thought it would be just the usual spoilt kids who moan all the time and don’t want to be here. We were very wrong! This was a school from Burma(Myanmar) and the kids were brilliant! Due to the country they had grown up in they weren’t spoilt because Burma is only just opening its doors to the rest of the world with its McDonalds and Playstations etc. The course was a lot of fun and the kids put on a great performance at the end of course BBQ with everyone dressed up in traditional Myanmar dress! Since we didn’t do a 25day Classic Course when we arrived we were going to have whaler training! This has been my favourite training! After 6months we were finally getting to go sailing on the whalers! The plan was to head down from OB to Pulau Rumbia on day one and then back up around Pangkor to Syawal on day two and back to OB on day three! On day one there wasn’t much wind so we had to row most of the way, around 20km. I think everyone out of the 9 of us was seasick apart from myself and Alistair so we pretty much had a continual rowing shift while everyone else tried their hardest when they felt reasonable enough. The bay we were anchoring in should be pristine with a lovely view out to sea however due to the currents and stupid humans dumping rubbish the whole shoreline in the bay was lined with plastic, bottles, slippers, tubs, balls, fishing net etc it is really quite upsetting how much litter there was. It made me realise how much rubbish there must be floating in seas all over the world, this was only one wee bay. I have never seen mosquitoes like the ones at this campsite, it was insane, and they were really small so they could fit through the window net on the tent so we had no ventilation all night! Day two we got the tides and wind just right! We sailed all the way up with the tide in our favour and as soon as we turned around the north of Pangkor the tides also changed to continue to be in our favour! It wouldn’t be a proper training session if there wasn’t some sort of disagreement so in true training style with Syawal in sight there was debate as to whether we should stop for lunch meaning we may lose the wind and would drift further away from Syawal, or whether we should just press on for another half hour and reach the campsite and then eat. We pushed on. Syawal also has a lot of nyamuk(mosquitoes) but not quite so bad thankfully. We set off a Chinese lantern out on the mother boat when it got dark which was nice seeing it float of into the distance and blend in with the stars before burning out. Day three was an easy hour cruise back to OB! Unfortunately we all had two back-to-back corporate courses next each 7 days long. Not the most exciting courses we’ve been on, but hey at least I finally got to do HTM trek! A very uneventful two courses! Far more exciting though was Future Music Festival Asia (FMFA)! A one day music festival that included acts like FUN, Rita Ora, PSY, The Temper Trap, Bloc Party and Prodigy! We were at the barrier for them all!!! All of them are amazing live! Hannah even got the guitarist from FUN’s guitar pick!! This was a really fun weekend down at Sipang, Malaysia’s Formula One circuit! Only cost £28 for a ticket as well, well gid! Shortly after, we got a visit from our Desk Officer Chris Hitch from Project. It was nice to see him again, we expected some practical jokes since last time we saw him there was a fish head left in his tent! He also commented on the amount of time that we spend eating or thinking about food or having conversations about food! Of course we took him to Biri’s! Libby was on course so we went over to Pangkor as well so Chris could see her. He said he normally cooks a meal for the volunteers one night, so for us he also cooked a meal, on the boat! It was an amazing meal too! Homemade roti, a tasty salad and the normal rations spiced up a little! Damn I’m speaking about food a lot again, maybe Heloise and Chris have a point…nah! I’ll repeat Ali’s quote again: “Malaysia is food”!