Chinese New Year, Singapore and Pulau Kapas

In February we got a visit from Heloise the Educational Development Officer at PT. She was in Thailand and Cambodia so decided to come to Malaysia specially to visit the OB volunteers. Knowing nothing of Malaysia or OB we decided that we would teach her all we knew: food! Pretty sure she left feeling like she wouldn’t have to eat again for another week!! We also did pretty much nothing OB related other than tell her about it. We did however go around the island on the speedboat, eating sugar crackers, stopping only for a little snorkelling and to get some more food! After pestering people about getting time off to go down to Johor for Chinese New Year we were given 10days off. First stop Kuala Lumpur for two nights to meet up with some of the other PT’ers. Guess what we did…yup went out for a few drinks, went to the cinema and ate food! We also saw Clea from OB Sabah who we hadn’t seen since first arriving in Malaysia so it was great hearing about another OB. Next stop Johor (after worrying slightly that we wouldn’t get bus tickets as the station was literally full). Myself and Alistair took up the offer to celebrate Chinese New Year with Kelly, one of our Chinese friends, and her family in Johor in the south of Malaysia. Their hospitality for us was great especially since we were “ang mow” (white people) invading a family celebration! Kelly’s parents are amazing, they allowed us to stay at their house, fed us as many Chinese cookies as possible and showed us around Johor Bharu explaining the meaning behind all the New Year traditions. We were taught that “wot” and “fatt” both mean lucky in two different Chinese dialects although I can’t remember which ones! This caused absolute hilarity in the back of the car ie. “You’re fatt”, “Wot?”, “Yeah you heard!”, “You calling me fatt?”, “ Yeah!”, “You’re fatt!”, “Thank you!”, “Wot?!” yeah so basically it kept us amused for a good 15mins! We saw the traditional dragon dance and lion dance, kind of like the ones you’re probably thinking off when you think of CNY! They set off very noisy fire crackers and bang a drum to ward off the bad spirits(?!) It’s all very impressive! We had a number of home-cooked meals with Kelly’s family like cow intestines (surprisingly tasty)! My chopstick skills were laughed at and we didn’t quite understand the traditional salad tossing so while everyone else lifted the salad a little, myself and Ali literally tossed up in the air! We were also privileged enough to be given ang pow, the small red packets containing a small sum of money! Ang pow are given to young single people by those who are married and grown up. The money we made in the ang pow we were then made to bet with at a relative’s house! I made a loss of 1RM which is pretty good considering how pro these people were! After Chinese New Year we headed across the bridge to Singapore. Now Singapore is not a place that we like. Know why? It’s bloody expensive! By Malaysian standards anyway! However it has some very spectacular architecture, a boat sitting on top of three skyscrapers?! We found a 3 person slingshot bungee at the harbour that we splashed out on doing, there is a video but that is not for public eyes!! It was far scarier than the bungee jump I did as a fundraiser! There is no warning that they are releasing it, Ali was mid sentence when they released it and sent us spinning up skyward and then toward the ground, its so disorientating! Great fun, mind you! Oh we were sitting in an Indian restaurant one night when I went to wash my hands and some Indian lady comes up to me and invites me and MY SON to her wedding later in the month!! What on earth?! Do I really look old enough to be Ali’s mother/does Ali really look young enough to be my son?! Told you to keep the beard Alistair!! One afternoon I went to a “theme park” called Haw Par Villa. It was basically an area that has lots of weird statues in it, like gorillas, tigers, owls and anything else! It also has the “10 Courts of Hell” which is a disturbing display of statues depicting Chinese myth! I had great fun wondering around on my own taking selfies with the statues! Enough of spending away our money in Singapore, we took a bus back to Johor and then another to Kuala Terrenganu to meet up with the other PT’ers again but this time on Kapas a small island off the East coast. It’s a beautiful island that was almost deserted when we went as it was just the end of monsoon season when the whole island just shuts down! The place we stayed was so nice, a single building up on huts literally on the beach with hammocks everywhere and the jungle right behind! It was very rustic but the owner was lovely cooking everyone staying there a meal on the last night! It was nice to be able to chill on a beach and go swimming without a lifejacket on! Back on the mainland we stayed at Nick and Josh’s project for a night. Although I had to stay with one of the female teachers as Terengannu is a very muslim state. We had hoped to get a bus back to OB around midday but when we tried to book one we were told they were all full! Little did we know that all the universities started the next day so students were all heading off to uni! We finally managed to get a night bus leaving at 11pm to get in at 7am. So we had a full day in KT. KT doesn’t have very much to do! We wandered around a lot and then found a mosque called Crystal Palace which looks a little like the Disney Palace! The bus ended up getting in at 8am and by the time we got picked up from the station we had 20mins to shower ready to start work at 9am!