WE ARE ALL DONE!!!

Well sort of all done, starting Monday we will be taking the journey of our lives but before we discuss that we are going to fill you in on our last couple weeks at INTI.

First here are some pictures of where we have been studying the last couple months...

And contrary to popular belief we did do some studying...

Last week we participated in the Halloween night at INTI. Meghan went as Superwomen and Shannon went as Batman, yes BatMAN, we do not discriminate. As you can all imagine we spent the night fighting crime and doing it well. But between saving the world we participated in different games, a costume contest, and also danced the night away. Overall for none of them actually celebrating Halloween before and the fact that it was over a week early; they still did a really good job with the décor as well as the different festivities. Now here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure…

And now onto our travels…. We leave November 3rd from Kuala Lumpur and head to Bangkok, Thailand. We will be spending a few days in Bangkok then taking a night train up to Chang Mai to do a two day one night trek. We will also be checking out a famous night market that Chang Mai has every Sunday night and hopefully buying some fisherman pants. On the following Monday we fly to Luang Probang, Laos we will be there a majority of that next week then we fly to Hanoi, Vietnam. From Hanoi we are going to take the train down the coast which we have been told takes roughly 24 hours! We will be splitting the trip in half by stopping in Hoi An for a night. Keep in mind that all of our dates for Vietnam are subject to change, but we would like to leave around November 24th. From here we will take a bus into Phenom Phen, Cambodia. Our total time in Cambodia is roughly a week. We fly out of Siem Reap on December 3rd and back to Bangkok. We are going to spend a couple more days in Bangkok to see whatever we may miss on the first go around. On December 7th we fly to Ko Samui, an island in Southern Thailand. We are going to spend most of our time here relaxing on the beach and possibly do a day tour of the island. On the 11th we will take a Ferry to Ko Pha-Ngan for the Full Moon Party that they have everything month and is suppose to be amazing! From here we head back to Malaysia and then for home on December 15th! This will conclude what we like to call Southeast Asia in 45 days!

Last weeks in Malaysia

This past week we took part in a treasure hunt on campus. The first thing we did was find clues around campus, and then we played six games. Some of them included Shan crawling under several ropes on her hands and knees in the pouring rain, trying to catch water balloons falling from a story above us with our shirts, and picking tooth picks out of an orange without using your hands. It was super duper fun, and we ended up getting third place out of thirteen teams so all around not too shabby.

On Friday night we went to our friend Casey’s good-bye party. He is actually going back to Chicago for a couple of job interviews. He studied in the UK for two years and has been in Malaysia for the past year, and has only been home for a week during all of this! We have had a lot of fun with Casey, and it was sad saying good-bye, but unlike most people at the party we are confident that we will see him again and soon. He is planning to come see us during our lay-over in Chicago on our way home, and he is already planning to bring us a gallon of milk!

Then, Saturday morning we took a train to Seremban. Tsi Ying invited us to her house, and we gladly took her up on the offer. After we arrived we took about an hour bus ride to a pretty famous place in Malaysia called Melaka. This place was ruled by the Portuguese, Dutch, and British until 1957. We went to a museum, market, and tried some of their famous food. In Malaysia it seems that everywhere you go there is some kind of famous unique dish special to that particular area. Tsi Ying’s parents met us in the evening and took us out for dinner and brought us back to Seremban. It was comforting to be in a house, and her parents were extremely welcoming. Some of the biggest differences between her house and ours are that they don’t have a yard, their kitchen appliances are much smaller, and the shower isn’t separated from the rest of the bathroom. On Saturday night we actually got to watch TV… and American TV at that! We got some quality Friends watching in on Saturday night, and then went to breakfast on Sunday at a nearby shop. I believe that we got to experience a traditional Chinese breakfast which included a half baked egg, noodles, fish balls, and some kind of rice wrapped up in a leaf. Meghan enjoyed it, Shannon appreciated seeing it. Tsi Ying then showed us around her town, and we went to a mall for awhile. Then, we went out for dinner and has some familiar Chinese… Sweet and Sour Pork! We were begging to think that American’s just made up dishes and claimed them to be Chinese. After dinner her father brought us back to campus. It was fun to get a little taste of the home aspect of life here!

Now, we are getting ready for our last week of classes! We are excited to be done studying and start traveling, but kind of sad to leave INTI. We have had a really good experience here, and have met some great friends that we are going to miss.

Relaxing Weekend?

This weekend we had a few offers to explore other parts of Malaysia, but frankly we were just too tired to except them. So, we decided to just stay around INTI this weekend and get some sleep and studying done, or at least that was the original plan. On Friday night we decided to accept an offer to go dancing in KL with our friends Kafar and Casey. By the time we got everyone together, found a taxi, and made it through a couple traffic jams we got to the club at around 12:30. We met up with some of our Iranian friends at the club, and danced the night away until they closed at 3:30 in the morning. Dancing was extremely fun because they were playing techno music, but we were all dancing Iranian to it. Humm how to explain Iranian dancing in words… you move your arms, hands, and shoulders quite a bit but it is very fluid and graceful. Hopefully, by the time we leave we will be able to do it justice and show you in person. Anyways, so after the club closed we said good-bye to our friends and tried to look for a taxi. During this process we found a group of INTI students that Casey and Zafar knew, and they said they had room in the van they had taken and offered a ride. In the sheer excitement of saving $70 RM we accepted. Before we left KL we went out to eat a bistro, where Meghan had some delicious Chinese noodle dish and Shan had some banana roti. We finally left KL around 5am and headed back to INTI. Just as we were about to fall asleep in the van, we woke up and realized that there were flashing lights in front of us and that we were about to be pulled over by the “Malaysian Police” at a road block. We use this term loosely because Malaysian police are nothing like American police. The government is very corrupt here, and often times the police will set up road blocks and stop anyone who is not Malaysian and threaten them with tickets only to make them pay cash on the spot. The guy driving the van had a proper license and we didn’t exceed the capacity of the van, but there were several foreign students in the vehicle. The Malaysian government obviously had a problem with this. We aren’t exactly sure what all went on because there were three natives in the car who were speaking Malay with the police, others were discussing the situation in some middle eastern languages, and we were just sitting there shocked at how government officials could act this corruptly. After about 15 minutes I guess an agreement was made and we paid them $50 RM and were allowed to leave. We didn’t really feel threatened or scared in this situation, we were just confused and angry that the police are allowed to act this way not only because they demand cash, but because they get away with being discriminatory towards anyone who isn’t native Malay.
On Saturday we actually did get some sleep, and yes studying done. Then, on Saturday night we went over to one of our classmates apartments and hung out with him and a group of his friends from Kenya. We taught them a few American games, and we tried a rice dish they had made and made a sad attempt to learn some Kenyan dancing styles.
Today, we are going to try and prepare for our debate we have this week in our history class on civil disobedience, our history test, moral studies assignment, accounting test, our Malay project, and plan more of our 6 weeks 6 countries backpacking journey that we embark on in three weeks!

Q: Did I like Bali? A: No...I LOVED it!!

Trying to be responsible adults we planned to arrive at the airport three hours before our departure. So, we would have enough time to eat, check in, and get in some quality people watching time before our flight to Bali. Little did we know that people were seriously meaning business about screwing this plan up. It all started when our taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong airport. Mind you we repeatedly told him the right that we needed to go to the other terminal. So, we had to take a shuttle to the other airport only to find that this terminal was under construction and there was mad chaos everywhere. We finally found the right check-in line, and discovered a long line FULL of people who thought it was their god given right to go to the front. Don’t worry though they at least got a taste of the wrath of Shan. She decided this kind of behavior was not going to fly and cut off a few people herself. No one was going to stand in the way of our week in paradise!! Well, I guess one more guy tried too. Right as we were putting our bags through security a greasy haired guy with leopard print glasses came and cut us off. Usually not a problem except for that he tried to bring through cans of soda, and every aerosol product known to mankind. After security we realized our names were being called over the loud speaker saying we needed to board immediately. Three hours later we safely arrived in Bali J

Turns out that Shannon goes crazy in Bali and made it a direct point that we will be going out our first night in Kuta even if it is already MIDNIGHT! We walked around where all the main clubs are in Kuta, Bali and found a great restaurant that served the best western food we have had in quite some time. Following dinner we went to burn off some calories dancing at Club Bounty, which was followed by a cool down swim. This left us going to bed at 6 am as the sun was rising! On Sunday after waking up a little later than we should have we spent our afternoon at the breathtaking Kuta Beach and working on our bargaining skills. We closed the day by once again going to Club Bounty where we met two really cool people from Austria, who helped us with our surfing skills on Monday. On Tuesday we toured around the local shops and went Bungee Jumping. Needless to say we were both scared out of our minds but it was AMAZING. We went at sunset and we were overlooking the entire beach that goes on forever.

Turns out that it is really nice on the bank account only spending $5 a night on a hostel but not so nice on our bodies. We had a transition night that we had to stay in something that was lets just say it is from paradise. We both work up with red welts all over our bodies. This gives a very literal meaning to “don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Sadly this night of sleep was not very restful and we spent the next day lying on the beach trying to recover. On Friday we took a sail boat to Lembongan Island which was absolutely beautiful! We spend the day snorkeling in crystal blue water, kayaking, and swimming in an infinity pool. Not too shabby huh? Now we are finishing our amazing week by trying to stuff everything into our backpacks and not being very successful! Michelle you may be right about the devil bag after all! We leave tomorrow afternoon so we are planning on getting up early to go to Dream Land to cram in a few more hours of sightseeing!

Just a little about Penang

So, a couple weeks ago we headed off to an island in Malaysia called Penang, with a group of people from INTI. There were eight of us that went, and it’s about a 5 hour car ride from where we are staying. This island is famous for their food… I wouldn’t say that we found it to be amazing, but it was definitely interesting. We had a lot of fun hanging out, spending time on the beach, building sand castles, trying the food, bargain shopping, and visiting a temple.