Six Months On!

We have had six months here in Singapore already, time has gone so quickly. There were so many things we had on our list to do and see here and we haven’t seen half of them yet. The variety of things to do that exists on this Island the size of Lake Taupo is amazing. We have had many adventures, it seems like there are so many new places to explore and so many new adventures to be had. Asia is vast, and not at all like we had expected. I have begun to realize just how remote New Zealand is in terms of rest of the World.

Since our day out on Pulau Uban Ruth and I have been to Kuala Lumpur for a weekend with a group of 8 other Morris Allen Teachers. We had a neat three days. KL is big, it has tall buildings, lots of traffic and lots of green. Their twin tours are a sight all lit up at night. The city is quite spread out, but has quite a good transport system. We had fun playing on their Monorail system. Obviously in 3 days we did not see all that much.of KL. We did get a feel for the city and plan to go back again. From Singapore it is a 4-5 hour trip in an air conditioned coach. We chose to go by plane. This was interesting because our adventure started early on Monday morning, we took the train to Woodlands, the bus across the Causeway and into Malaysia to Johor Bahru, a taxi to the JB Airport and flew from there to KL Airport, we then took the bus into Town. The whole trip probably took longer than if we had taken the cheaper option on the air conditioned Coach from Singapore.

The highlight for us was the day spent with guide who drove us to Batu Caves , which have a temple at the base and various shrines inside them. Here Ruth and I both took the opportunity to get up close and friendly with a Python. There are monkeys everywhere there are people in Malaysia they can be cheeky and at times quite vicious. They expect to be fed and if you look like you have something they like to eat then you must feed them.

We recently had our term break, which for us was two weeks in June. Most of the schools in Singapore have a 4 week break. But we work for two of those weeks and have students showing up for their sessions. June is mid summer in Singapore, the temperatures range from 25-35, in other words from hot to hot. Sometimes it rains and the temperature goes down to 25-27, but mostly it is on the higher side. I must add that these temperatures are much the same throughout the year. One advantage is that while everyone at home in New Zealand are lighting fires and wrapping up in winter clothes we wear the same old shorts and t-shirt and take our daily swim.

During this holiday Ruth and I had a few days on Langkawi Island. This is off Malaysia at the top of the Straits of Malacca. It has one town and a few scattered villages. These seem to have a range of crafts that support them some of the Batik here was amazing. We went there to rest and charge the batteries plus to take part in the feeding of the Sea Eagles. We had seen a couple of these majestic birds in Singapore while out and about on our bicycles. They are bigger than our hawks but not as big as an American Bald Eagle. To see them feeding we took a boat trip out to an outer island. This was interesting, the eagles swooped in close scooping up the chicken offal being fed to them by the skipper of the boat. There were lots of eagles and kites ( a smaller bird of prey). The beaches in Malaysia are amazing, golden sands met by crystal waters that are warm. There were numbers of bright tropical fish. There is a good trip out to a dive platform situated on a coral reef that is an hour long boat trip from Kuah the main town on Langkawi. I think we will have visit that one on our next trip we just couldn't work it in this time. We had 3 days that we enjoyed and both of us felt that this was enough, even though we would both love to go back to Langkawi. In fact it is a good cheap destination to take visitors from home who have passed through Singapore before.

We have had Malcolm and Dot Roberts from our keep fit group in Thames stopping over so we went home to meet up with them. This was an opportunity to show them some of our favourite spots and to play tourists in some new ones. We had a great 3 days trying to fit as much in as we could. It was really neat to spend some time with people from home and to catch up on home talk. They left and we welcomed our friend Robyn for a few days. We took her off to Malacca, a very old town on the coast of Malaysia. This place was fascinating, it had been settled by the Portuguese in the 15th century. The Dutch had then taken it over,in fact there is a long history of various groups taking it over, including the British. It was an important sea port. It was also the place where Malaysia announced independence in 1957. This was another place where we enjoyed spending a few days. We met some interesting people among the locals who selling their crafts. A very friendly place to visit.

We are into July and Ruth and I are contemplating our next adventure. Life continues to hold new exciting experiences daily.