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.