My Weblog-live from Malaysia

GoKart4Peace and Speech in Chinese

Guys,guys,guys,the number 6 is a magical number:
Pronounced in German it can be considered as sexual harrasement,added up three times in a row it’s the number of the beast,..for me it’s the number of days remaining until I’m flying back home.
People keep on asking me:
“So when are you going back?”
“In 14 days.”
“Oh you’re counting already?” (Smile on the face)

YES I am and NO I am not.

It will make you happy to know that the GoKart event organised by my chapter(the only funciton during my whole year I guess) made me think about other things than going back.
Since I’m a good AFS-student I didn’t drive the GoKart,I also didn’t manage to waive the flags as I hoped to do but nevermind at least I got to see all my AFS-buddies and the opportunity to reduce my sleeping hours from 13 to 6 per night.
Afterwards I chilled out at my chapterleader’s place,makan,talked about the good old times and dreamed of my Farewell dinner.
Since the other girl in my chapter left on Early Return under mysterious circumstances the dinner would be exclusively for me.
Well,the weddingdinner I attended later that day was like most of the other countless weddings I’ve attended before:

Getting ready and going to/finding the place took us longer than the actual dinner.
However I will remember it as the only Malay wedding the emcee spoke english at.
Yesterday(Sunday) my family and I went to a waterpark,somewhere near Jln Klang Lama to attend a function.Guess what?
The same uncle who sold the “all-in-one medicine” at our house the other day was the one getting an award as a “Diamond director” at the theme park today.
Luckily I only had to attend 4 out of the 8 hours function and could spend some times in the park together with my brothers.
The function itself was kinda weird:
Not only that I didn’t understand most of the speeches and live performed songs(probably due to the fact that they were in Mandarin) but the people around me acted more like as if the would go for a ver.di demonstration than for an award-giving ceremony.
Blowing whistles and screaming like at a Backstreet boys concert I wondered:
“Who are this people and what did they smoke?”
Nevertheless,I looked on the positive site,learned about how chinese people conduct ceremonies and how to become rich with a certain company within one year.

Right now I’m on a secret mission,more about it in the next post.

So far:
Gong xi!

SuperGT Sepang Racing Circuit

Since I’ve missed the Formula1 in March,I took up the chance to get to see at least the circuit in Sepang.Compared to back home the prices are quite cheap for SuperGT and still reasonable for Formula1,so I booked 3 tickets for the Race last weekend.More asleep than awake my brother,my friend and I arrived at 10 am to block our seats since it was free seating.Surprisingly we got seats right at the Start-Finish Line,where we also had a nice view of the Boxes.The next few hours we spent watching different kind of races,Ashton Martin Cup,Formula3,…and finally at 4 pm the Start of the SuperGT.Having good seats we also enjoyed watching the cars getting in position since the numberplates for the cars were presented by Japanese Models who wore……… Summer cloth.
Unfortunatly we forgot ear plugs,which made us use our hands to cover our ears since the cars were very loud,especially the F3s.
Well overall,the day was quite nice,we got to see lots of nice cars and hot chicks,but the fact that there was no programm besides of the races like performances by bands or something like that and the food was expensive,little and not nice brought our mood down a bit.
Nevermind,I’ve been to the circuit,I know what it’s like now and can treasure another experience in Malaysia.

Penang-Here I am once again

Penang,one of my favorite places in Malaysia has me back,at least for a while.After my Farewell in Ipoh I went there straight so that I could make the most out of my stay there.On my first day there I went to see the newly renovated Snake Temple which is said to be crowded by stoned snakes.Well,there were snakes,they looked fake though,so a plate saying “The snakes are real.Please don’t touch” was put right next to it.The amount of boxes with stuff that has been moved recently was higher than the one of snakes I guess.I was quite disappointed since the reason I went to see this temple although I’ve seen so many before were the snakes. Anyways my plan for this day was to circle the island once,so my friend and I went further down to “balik pulau” ( “the back of the island” ) where we were greeted with a amazing view of the kampung part of Penang and even Indonesia on the horizon. After chilling out on the beach for a while and buying some fresh fish on a kampung market, we went for a curvy ride with one of the famous crazy Rapid Penang drivers to Batu Ferringhi. Since we were not willing to buy overprized, non-delicious food in the tourist area we went to a night market and got ourselves one big bag full of local dishes.Once we reached the Batu Ferringhi beach,we had our dinner and enjoyed the gorgeous sun set while horses,jet ski and other creatures passed by.Although I enjoyed this atmosphere with the wrong gender it was still nice to watch There are a few things you have to do when you’re in Penang,one of them go to the Batu Ferringhi Night Market and bargain your a%& off.That’s what I did and unlike the last time I went there I didn’t need any assistant translator this time to get lower prizes.I seemed to be so good that one tourist complained: “Why do you only serve him?” Well,the fact that I caught up Malay in the last few months seemed to finally pay off.

After spending several hundred Ringgit that night,I had to buy a huge back pack to carry all the stuff home ^^

The next day,Tuesday the third of June, we decided to visit Penang Hill,which offers a great view of Penang after taking a cable car for 20 minutes.Of course we did not take the cable car but climbed the hill up instead.According to my Guidebook it should take between 2-4 hours to reach the summit,depending on your level of fitness.After climbing for 1 hour in the jungle I already regretted every single gram I carried up for no reason.
We reached the summit after about 3 hours,but where the fish was the cable car that was supposed to be there?All we found was the ruin of a house and 3 arrows all pointing in different directions.What happened?Did we really climb up the wrong hill? Following the sound of an engine we took a path down and after a while we reached a road,a toilet and a resting area. Civilization!!! And the best thing….the engine we heard was the one of a McD motorcycle who was about to deliver some stuff to the people on the hill.Isn’t it funny?When you don’t need this guys they’re there.
We rested for a while and after having checked out the area we were sure that the hill we went up was definitely not Penang Hill and that we were about to have still a long journey ahead of us.I’m going to shorten it up a bit here,since the next 2 hours consisted basically of sweating,walking and hoping to reach the summit soon. On the way up we were greated what we came for:
A fantastic view over Penang,old houses in British Style,a Buddhist Temple,flower farms and the cable car you passed by while the passengers were looking at us and probably asking themselves what we were doing here.

After 5 hours of natural shower,no water for most of the time and lot of optimism we finally reached the summit. Lying down on a covered bench and enjoying the view while having a cold drink was the best thing we could do.As we woke up after our nap, we decided to go down,by cable car this time.We made our way to town,hanged around a bit there before going back home and watching EURO.
The next day we went to the KekLokSi Temple,which is also about to get renovated and dived into the chinese culture.It was pretty cool seeing all the Buddha stuff again,since this one was quite different from the other temples I’ve seen before,so check out the pics.As I’ve mentioned in my last post about Penang, donation plays a big role in Buddhism.This time I gave way to my chinese side and also donated some money,of course for a special reason and with getting something back. Since the statue on top of the hill is going to be covered with a roof I purchased one of the tiles with my name written on it.Once again we went to chill out in town and since it was my last night in Penang,I invited my hosts to my favourite mamak stall,which I’ve eaten at a number of times before during my stay here.
To finish it all off,we took the ferry to the mainland,namely Butterworth, to check out the trainstation there and watch the sunset on the way back.As you can see the trainstation was dead,since there are only two trains a day,one to Bangkok and one to Singapore.The sunset was beautiful and really enjoyed watching it.Once we had reached the jetty we had to wait for the bus to come.Not an unusual thing to happen,but this night was special.Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badahwi’s action to raise the Petrol Price from 1,90RM to 2,80RM per litre the next day,although he promised not to do so until August,made every Malaysian rush to the petrol station to get “cheap petrol” before the price hike.Since there are more cars than inhabitants in Penang,the roads were jamed badly.People queued up for more than 4 hours to get to the station.I waited 2 hours for the bus to come until it finally arrived.My plan to do some shopping before the mall closes had to be cancelled since it closed shortly after our arrival.

The next day it was time to say good bye,I was heading back to KL since I wanted to send off Fanni from Hungary who was flying back home that night.Being fed up with the uncomfortable seats I’ve had so far I decided to spent twice the amount of money to get a ticket fot the “NICE Bus” to check out how nice it really is.
Besides of the stewardess being unable to speak properly(she spoke like Kevin Kuranyi),the food from Delifrance and the “free” drinks were quite cool.Not forgetting the seats (this time made in Germany by Vogel Sitze) which offered lots of space for people of my height.
After coming back from the airport,taking a deep breath before going to sleep I realised that once again I’ve had a great time in Penang,thanks to the people I can call more than friends.