Mr O'C in Malaysia - Melaka and Penang

17th July – Saturday

Travelled back to KL on the commuter train and then had to catch a second train out to Jelatek where Fauziah’s daughter picked us up.

Dinner that night included octopus. When ordering a drink I was asked if I wanted a large drink, as I drink a lot I of course said yes. The lady then brought over what can only be called a bucket. It took some work to get through it.


18th July – Sunday

Today we had a very long trip to Melaka, which is a historical town on the coast south of KL. The trip there, which included three trains and a bus took four long hours.

While there we checked out some of the historical sites, particularly from the periods the area was occupied by the Portuguese and then by the Dutch. All the history was overwhelmed by me having the chance to get my photo taken with a snake. I know it is very touristy but it was still quite buzz having it slither around my neck and to hold it for the photo.

The trip home to KL took even longer. We only just managed to get on an 8pm bus from Melaka. Stupidly I commented that the bus seemed a bit run down, and sure enough half an hour into the journey we stopped at a roundabout and could not get going. The blokes had to get off the bus and push it backwards away from the roundabout and then we all waited for another bus. This arrived but turned out to be very slow so by the time we got back to KL we were only able to get the first train of two we needed before the trains closed down for the night. We then taxied the last bit to Jelatek.


19th July – Monday

We travelled to Penang today. It is a large Island just off the coast of Malaysia. It is connected to the main lain by a quite impressive bridge. We stayed at the D’Ferringhi Hotel in Batu Ferringhi. Batu Ferringhi translated means Foreigner’s Rock and this certainly was a touristy place.

The beach was beautiful and the empty sidewalks convert into a massive night market at 6pm. Once again the ringgit disappeared.

We had dinner at Sails Restaurant. It can best be described as Fishermans Table on steroids. The restaurant itself resembles Fishermans Table but there was definitely an effort to make the service seem like it was very up market.

20th July – Tuesday

We had arranged for a local tour guide to drive us around some of the main spots on the island. This cost $100 ringgit, or $50 nz dollars, for four hours. So Ayob picked us up at 9am.

The highlight was the Key Lok Si temple. The original part of this temple started being built in 1890 and took twenty years to finish. The temple is now spread over seven levels including the top level where the huge statue of Guan-Yin is. The original version of this statue was done in 1967 but it deteriorated quickly. The new 120 feet tall bronze statue was put in place in 1999.

Mr O'C in Malaysia - Klang

12th July – Monday

New host family seem just as nice as my first. Veejay and Sheila have a beautiful house that actually has a small grass area that the boys, Kaveesh and Jayshven, can play football on.

My new school, SK (1 DAN 2) Tengku Bendahara Azman, is a lot smaller with only 250 students in the morning session. It has students from standard 1 to 6. It is also different to Pei Chai in that the afternoon session is a completely different school, with even a new principal.

My host teacher, Anira, had arranged for me to visit a number of classes including a music class where I was introduced to two traditional instruments. The first was a bamboo one you shake to make work, called Angklung. The second was a hand drum called a Kompang.

I also had the pleasure of meeting a blind teacher called Lim Mei Huey. She works one on one with blind students and showed me how to use a brail machine.

That evening I was taken to an area of Klang called Little India. This area is full of Indian shops and boutiques. Once again I found some of my ringgit disappearing.


13th July – Tuesday

I was feeling really tired and unwell. I managed to get through the school day where I visited an English class, the special needs area and a science class. This school is a National school with mainly Malay students. The atmosphere is much more like a New Zealand school with students being a lot more free and noisy than they were at the Chinese school in Kuantan.

The hectic pace and heat of the last ten days caught up with me and I died and slept most of the afternoon. I did recover enough to attend a dinner at Chandika’s house where I finally got to taste the supposed king of all fruits, the Durian. This is one of the most popular fruits in Malaysia. Of all the food I have tasted in Malaysia this was the first that I actually did not like. My screwed up face made it clear to my hosts that the Durian was not the king of fruits for me.


14th July – Wednesday

I felt terrible when I got up so did not go to school. Instead I slept until 12ish with just a small break to get some food in me. I also increased the amount of water I was drinking to even more than I was drinking previously. Even after the sleep I felt terrible so I was taken to the doctors. It turned out I had a chest and throat infection so I was put on a course of antibiotics and predisone. I was expecting a huge bill and to need to make a claim on my health insurance policy, therefore I was amazed when the cost of everything was only 50 ringgit, or 25 nz dollars.

In the early evening I was taken to see the night markets. This was an interesting experience as I looked around the vast range of food, clothes and pirated DVDs / CDs. The health department in NZ would go crazy if they saw the raw chicken hanging around in the heat.

Later that evening VJ and Sheila took me to a Seik prayer service. Seikism is a religion that is only around 400 years old. It is a combination of Hindu and Islam. Its first prophet was born to a Hindu family in a Muslim villiage and he obviously combined the two to form Seikism. The service involved a lot of chanting, none of which I understood, but it was quite captivating and I found myself rocking slightly in rhythm with the chanting. The service was of course followed by food, any opportunity to eat is taken in Malaysia.


15th July – Thursday

Last day at Tengku Bendahara. The day is dominated by a hour and a half farewell to me which included me being allocated thirty minutes to talk. Fortunately I was able to get a data projector set up so I took them through my presentation on NZ. The school put on a wonderful show of traditional culture including Kompang, a Sumazam dance, a Joget dance and Choral speaking. Choral speaking is best described as polite rapping.

16th July - Friday

Went to a religious school called SAMT Sultan Hisamuddin. This is a secondary school covering the full range of secondary forms 1 to 6. The school is very similar to other schools in Malaysia but places more emphasis on religious studies than other schools do.

In the evening we drove to Bukit Belimbing, about an hour out of Klang. There we went on a tourist trip at the Firefly Park Resort. This involved going out onto a river in a small boat at night to see fireflys. Initially this was rather unspectacular as the lights were just sitting still in the trees and I thought someone had just put a few thousand LEDs up. But when we got closer you could see the lights moving and it started to look more like a fairy scene out of a movie as lots of the glowing lights began to fly around. A highlight was when Sheila tried to point out one flying above our boat which, much to her embarrassment, we all immediately worked out was a plane flying overhead.

Tomorrow we leave for KL. Another great week in Malaysia despite being sick. My host family have been very kind and I am sad to be leaving them.

Mr O'C in Malaysia - Kuantan & Pei Chai School

6th July – Tuesday

Up early ready to for the start of school at 7.30. Most Malaysian schools run two sessions each day. The first runs from 7.30am to 1.10pm, and then a whole new group arrives and is in school until around 6pm.

School starts with a full school assembly each day where notices are read out. I talked to four classes about New Zealand and found their grasp of English to be very good. Each of the classes had about forty students in them. This is normal in Malaysia where even the new entrant (called Standard 1) classes have forty students.

I was taken to lunch at an Indian Restaurant by a group of teachers. We ate a range of dishes straight off a banana leaf with our hands. In Malaysia it in traditional to only bring food to your mouth with your right hand, so I was very careful to follow that custom. Some of the dishes were quite spicy but I also discovered my new favourite drink which is fresh mango blended with yogurt.

It was hotter today than it has been and I was really feeling it. I was sweating lots and feeling really drained and low on energy. So much so I needed an afternoon nap.

Around 5pm Ai Li (my host) took me to play badminton. It is one of the biggest sports in Malaysia and the people I was playing with were good. The combination of the heat and my lack of skill meant I was pretty average despite the efforts by Ai Li's friends to tke it easy on me. It was easily the hottest I have ever felt and it took a long time for me to cool down afterwards.

7th July – Wednesday

Another day visiting classes at my host school of Pei Chai. Pei stands for educate or develop, and Chai stands for successful people. Also watched the practice for the Pei Chai sports day. It is going to be a very big affair with a marching band as part of the opening ceremony.

I have become very aware of how hard students here work. As well as school, where they learn three languages, Malay, Chinese and English, they all generally go for tuition for various subjects after school, or before if they attend the afternoon session. These tuitions are often very late at night with my host family’s children often coming back after 9pm or 10pm.

Food plays a big part in Malaysian culture. I am hearing "Makan Makan Makan" lots which means "Eat Eat Eat". I was taken to lunch twice today by the school principal Mr Goh, once with some of their Board of Trustees, and once with some of Mr Goh’s friends and other school parents. Each meal I eat I am introduced to new food including Rice Porridge at my second lunch. Also tried some new fruits called Mango Steen and Rose Apple. Both were very nice.

I was taken to a Karaoke bar that night by Mr Goh. Him and his friends had great voices. Unfortunately they made me sing and I let New Zealand down with a very poor rendition of “I did it my way”.

8th July Thursday

I forgot to mention that in Chinese people’s full names tend to have the surname first. Therefore all around the school I was known and introduced as Mr Jimmy, rather than Mr O’Carroll as I would be in New Zealand.

A day of visits today. I went to the District Education Office where Mr Goh introduced me to the district manager. He spoke only a little English so Mr Goh acted as translator for our conversation.
On our way back to school Mr Goh took me to visit a music school run by one of the parents from Pei Chai. The school was quite impressive with a large number of tuition rooms, all with a high standard of musical equipment, and at least two performance spaces that I could see. The school has hundreds of students signed up for tuition.

In the afternoon we were taken to visit the Pahang State Education office. It was a very grand building and we were ushered in to meet the head of State Education for Pahang, the state Kuantan is in. We were given a tour of the many departments they had for each curriculum area. Subject areas appear to work very independently of each other.

After the visit it was home for a shower and short rest. The temperature is so hot I have had 3 to 5 showers each day.

In the early evening my host Ai Li and her son Shi Rong took me out to Telok Chempedak, one of the local beaches. It was a very beautiful beach with a couple of beach resorts, and plenty of monkeys.

After the beach Mr Goh took me out with his family for my fourth big meal of the day. I found out it was his wife’s birthday so his family made me feel very special by including me in their celebration. I think they thought I was missing western food so they took me to a restaurant that served steaks. I did take the opportunity to sink my teeth into a good steak. It tasted good.

9th July – Friday

Went into two classes today and shared about New Zealand. The students almost treated me like a super star, wanting autographs and even to know my blood type. I happily shared that my blood type was red.

After school we went out to a Batik Factory where cloth, including silk, is either printed or hand drawn on. Some of the work was amazing, with spectacular patterns and colours. The initial design is done with wax, and then dye is used to create the colours. The material then goes through a process to clear away the wax leaving only the picture or pattern. Spent some Ringgit (Malaysian dollars) here.

We also went out to view a turtle sanctuary and stopped to drink coconut juice straight from the coconut at a stall on the way home. Another refreshing drink to battle the heat with. I was fascinated by the old lady who hacked open the coconuts, six for our group. She must have been at least 75 years old.

10th July – Saturday

This was very much a tourist day. We drove out to a town called Sungai Lembing which is an old tin mining town. At its height it had close to 20,000 people living there but now, since the mine has closed, has a permanent population of only one or two thousand. The museum there is quite impressive and very informative. The conditions the miners used to work in were horrific but the money at the time was very good so many took the risk.

We visited a few spots around the town including the cottage of an old miner who now collects crystals from around the area, and went over quite long swing bridge. The interesting part of the trip across the swing bridge was meeting a man on a scooter using the same bridge, there was not a lot of room to get past each other.

On the way home we stopped in at Charas Cave. This is a lime stone cave which you get to by climbing up steep steps. I’m not sure why but this country seems to like getting overweight Kiwis to climb stairs in 32 degree heat. Once there it is worth the climb, deep into the cave is a reclining Buddha.

To finish the afternoon I was treated to examples of all three of the main religions in Malaysian, visiting a Muslim mosque, a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple. All three were in close proximity of each other.

I needed a quick nap before Mr Goh took me out for another big evening. Somehow he and his friends had managed to get me an invite to a Chinese Wedding Dinner. This was a huge event with around one thousand people seated at approximately one hundred tables. I was surprised to be put in a photo with the bride when we arrived and could not stop simply looking around in amazement. There were nine courses for the dinner as nine is a lucky number in Chinese culture. I was made very welcome by Mr Goh’s friends, particularly Mr Yee who I think wanted to find out how much Carlsberg I could drink. I politely resisted and behaved myself. The entertainment was mainly people from the attendees who has been prearranged to sing, karaoke style. They generally were very good but even I could not hold back the smiles when one lady attempted to yodel in a high pitched Chinese accent.

11th July - Sunday

Last day in Kuantan, and at Pei Chai school. The sports day that they have been practicing for all week has finally come. Most of the 1800 students are involved in some way, either competing, in the marching band, helping organize and filling one of the many other roles required. Almost all parents come so it is a huge event. The teachers, including me, needed to be at school at 7am to start the organisation.

There is a real mix of events. The more serious individual events are short distance (up to 200m) track events, with the 4 x 100m meter relays events ranking as the high status. There are also a serious of fun events such as ping pong ball and spoon or sled events for the younger children. All the events contribute points to the totals for the four teams that students are split into when they join the school. The points for the sports day contribute to the overall school competition for the teams.

I was treated as a dignitary and was seated on the nice cushioned couches that had been set up by the side of the track. I was in the company of the school board and a representative of the Pahang State government.

There was also an event for teachers and parents involving throwing a very light ball, and catching it in a cone. I represented New Zealand’s sporting prowess well with a perfect record.

As part of the closing ceremony I had to give a five minute speech. It was a little nerve wracking but once I got through the very short Chinese and Malay parts of my speech I loosened up and enjoyed the rest of it.

I loved my time in Kuantan, where everyone looking after me was very kind and generous, but it was a very tired Mister Jimmy who climbed on board the bus for the trip back to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately the bus was a double decker that understandably was designed for Malaysians, therefore little leg room and space meant not a lot of rest was had during the bus trip.
Once in Kuala Lumpur we were picked up by Fauziah and dropped off at KL Sentral which is the main train commuter hub. We then had to sort tickets and catch a commuter train to Klang. If you picture a crowded commuter train in Wellington, add more people so it is even more crowded, and then add two foreigners with massive suitcases you will get a feel for how ridiculous we must have looked.

We were picked up at Klang station by Chandrika. She then took us to her house to meet and pick up her family and we all went out for dinner. So by the time we were dropped off to our new host families it was close to 11 pm. I was shattered but still loving the adventure.

Mr O'C in Malaysia - July 5 & 6

5th July – Monday

Travelled by bus to Kuantan which is on the eastern coast of the Malaysian peninsular. My host family made me feel very welcome and I even had a little tour around the school I would be attending. The school is called Dewan SJK (C) Pei Chai and is a Chinese school.

6th July – Tuesday

Up early ready to for the start of school at 7.30. Most Malaysian schools run two sessions each day. The first runs from 7.30am to 1.10pm, and then a whole new group arrives and is in school until around 6pm.
School starts with a full school assembly each day where notices read out. I talked to four classes about New Zealand and found their grasp of English to be very good. Each of the classes had about forty students in them. This is normal in Malaysia where even the new entrant (called Standard 1) classes have forty students.
I was taken to lunch at an Indian Restaurant by a group of teachers. We ate a range of dishes straight off a banana leaf with our hands. In Malaysia it in traditional to only bring food to your mouth with your right hand, so I was very careful to follow that custom. Some of the dishes were quite spicy but I also discovered my new favourite drink which is fresh mango blended with yogurt.
It was hotter today than it has been and I was really feeling it. I was sweating lots and feeling really drained and low on energy. So much so I needed an afternoon nap.
Around 5pm Ilee (my host) took me to play badminton. It is one of the biggest sports in Malaysia and the people I was playing with were good. The combination of the heat and my lack of skill meant I was pretty average. It was easily the hottest I have ever felt and it took a long time for me to cool down afterwards.

Mr O'C in Malaysian

I will try to put some updates about my trip to Malaysia whenever I get the chance.

3 July – Saturday
The trip started badly with the loading computers at Wellington Airport going down meaning they had to do a manual check before we could take off. The flight was delayed an hour meaning when we go to Auckland we had to rush from the Domestic Terminal to the International one. We ended up being one of the last to get on the Malaysian Airlines flight. Now I what know what those people who hold up flights feel like when they do the walk of shame to their seats, all the while being angrily stared at by the waiting passengers.
Eleven hours later, after a pleasant but uneventful flight, we arrived at Kuala Lumpur. The airport is massive and we had to walk for bit plus catch a train just to get to luggage retrieval. Customs etc was quick and efficient and we were met in the terminal by Kohan from AFS.
As soon as we walked out of the air conditioned terminal the heat hit us. It was still 28 degrees and I was pleased to get into the taxi for the one hour trip into KL where we were staying. The taxi ride was a great introduction to Malaysian driving. It appears staying in one’s lane is optional and you need to be watching out for motor bike / scooter riders who can suddenly appear from anywhere, including coming the opposite direction on the motor way.
We stayed the first night in Tasman Keramat at Fauziah. She was a wonderful host, greeting us with iced drinks and a freshly baked cake. A nice supper before we going to bed at about 10.30pm local time, or 2.30 in the morning New Zealand time. I was lucky enough to get an air conditioned room to myself. Fiona, who is the teacher travelling in Malaysia with me, also got an air conditioned room but had to share the room with our host and two girls who were german AFS students staying overnight in the house. There were also two lads, one German and one Argentinean, and Fauziah’s AFS son from Costa Rica. So it was a full house.

4th July – Sunday
At 5.45am I was woken by a megaphone voice nearby calling the local Muslims to prayer. It was a very surreal experience and made it clear for me I was in a very different country.
We went to AFS for our orientation briefing from a woman called Chandrika. Her and Kohan then took us to lunch. Food is a big part of Malaysian culture, and with the base Malaysian cuisine mixed with the Chinese and Indian influences there is a massive range of flavours and tastes.
We then went out to the Batu Caves. This is an holy Hindu sight where you climb up 272 steep steps to get to the massive lime stone caves. In the Malaysian heat this was no easy task. There is also a 42.7m (132 feet high) high statue of Lord Muruga. This was unveiled in January 2006, having taken 3 years to construct. It is the tallest Lord Muruga statue in the world.
In the evening we were driven around the centre of Kuala Lumpur which included taking photos of the very impressive Petronas Towers.