Ernst-Jan en Wouter in Maleisië
Op deze web-log komen de avonturen van twee nederlandse zeevaarders die begin juli vertrekken naar het land waar ook hun voorouders ooit kokosnoten gegeten hebben. Zij zullen hier de cultuur beleven en ook de natuur niet links laten liggen.
Heb je vragen, suggesties of opmerkingen aan deze twee heldhaftige lui, aarzel niet en reageer…

Hello everybody!

This will be our very last log of our great trip. Today is our last full day, and tomorrow at 23:10 we will be taking off from KL international airport, and head back to Amsterdam! It has been a great 2 months, with a lot of great things to think back off when we will be back in rainy Holland.

At the moment we are in Malacca, a city with a lot history. It was a thriving trading town in the 17th and 18th centrury. It has been ruled by a lot of different countries, Holland being one of them. Today we saw a few graves of Dutchmen, and a building called ‘the Stadthuys’, a dutch word for cityhall. There are quite a few other signs of the Dutch presence here. We are staying with an Aiesec-er who grew up here, so we have our personal tour guide, and a good place to stay!

The last week we spend in Universiti Malaya, supposedly the best in Malaysia. We hardly did any Aiesec related things, but we did present one of the weekly meetings. The highlight of the week was our visit to the Skybridge that connects the petronas twin tower. Althought the view from the KL tower was better (mainly because the viewing deck of the tower is at the top of it, and the skybridge is not even at the middle of the twin towers), it was still a great experience, its one of those places you really have to see when you are in KL.

The other activity we spend most of our time with, was shopping for cheap presents, so if you get a rolex or guess watch, it probably costed less then 3 euro

well this will be the end of our reports of the Ambassadors program in Malaysia…
We hope to see you all in good health back in Holland, or any other place!

Till then, take care!

Ernst Jan

Pulau Perhantian… just paradise!!!!

Our pet in Pulau Perhantian, fantastic and magnificant animal !

The ideal spot for snorkling. Coral, Sharks, Stingrays, Turtles…. wow

A Trishaw driver in Kota Bahru.. he was exhausted after giving EJ and me a ride, sweat was pouring from his eye-lashes after trying to move more than 150 kilo’s forward..

Cameron Highlands, a beautiful place in an mountainious area with a cooler temperature and wonderfull hiking oppertunities

Make the road unsafe in Penang….

Hungry for some (Donald) Duck ??

Chinese temple and paddy field in Kuala Perlis

Sunset in Kuala Perlis, together with some UUM friends

Hello Everybody!

And another update from the Malaysia masters…

We are having our official vacation now (As you all know this is NOT a vacation, but a study tour… ) and just came back from the Perhentian Islands. Remember the pictures we showed you of the other Island, Tioman? That was good right? Well, the Perhentians are even better! (try to google for some pictures ) It was a very relaxing time, we had a hotel with its own beach, and no other beaches connected to it. Our main activities were snorkeling, swimming, reading and listening to Bob Marley music. I don’t think I’ve ever did so little in 3 days.

At the moment we are in a place called Kota Baru, a place in the north east of Malaysia. We were actually hoping to visit some musea here, and buy some batik, a local shirt with special drawings, but because its a muslim state here, everything is closed on Friday (How could we know..) So we wandered around town a little, and went to the beach, but that was not very exciting either.

In 2 hours we will leave for the Cameron Highlands, a mountain resort with ‘cool’ temperatures (still a good 20C) and a lot of thea plantations, and some good opportunities for hiking. After that we will go to Langkawi, a taxfree island north of Penang, which means it’s in the northwest of Malaysia. Taxfree really means that the alcohol and cigarettes are cheap and that it is a party island! Looking forward to that of course!

langkawi will also be the end of our official vacation week, so afterwards we will go to USM, Penang again, where we will help out with recruitment once more. When we leave there we will only have one more week left here in Malaysia, and we will spend it in UM, which is in the KL area. We will have our flight back on the 28th in the late evening, and we will arrive in Amsterdam at 5:40 in the (very early) morning. (Just in case anybody wants to come and get us from the airport?? no?? nobody?? come on…)

Some fast updates on the local news:
Because of large forest fires in Sumatra there is a very serious ‘haze’ problem in the mid-west part of Malaysia. They keep talking about an API index, and at this moment it is above 500 in some places, which means that all old, young and sick people will most likely die when they go outside (seriously…). Luckily (for us) there are only 3 places where this is the case, and its not close to anywhere we are. However, it doesn’t look like the situation will improve soon so we might actually run into some of that haze.

well this is it for now, hope to talk to you soon, and have a good day!

Take Care Ernst Jan

Hi everyone

For 2 weeks already I havn’t updated the web-log…. sorry
Often we don’t have the oppertunity enter the internet or the internet connection is just too slow.

But now I do have time and do have a rather fast internet connection!!

Since 3 days we are in UUM. It’s Malaysia’s most Northern, most isolated and most conservative university. UUM is located in the middle of the jungle for the reason to develop the surrounding region and give it an economic boost. I’m wondering though to give an economic boost to who.. to the monkey’s? because the nearest city is 25 minutes by car and students are not allowed to have any car or motorcycle. The state UUM is in is a muslim state with muslim rules and regulations; girls and boys are strictly seperated, not allowed to touch each other and sometimes not even allowed to sit next to each other in class. They can not enter each others rooms and by kissing or other intimate signals you can be kicked off the university.

In the beginning it was a bit shocking these rules, but it’s an experience as well.
Every night so far we watch a DVD with our neighbour Andy, though it’s illigal to watch DVD’s..
therefore he hides them on the sealing of the bathroom, because there can be random checkings in the rooms for illegal material (as DVDs and nude magazines). Students can be fined for it and kicked off the university for such things… but anyway Andy don’t mind to take some risk, so we watch DVD’s in his room. Yesterday we saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a copied version though. For around 1 euro you can buy the latest movies here.
I prefer to buy the pirated t-shirts and shorts. Shirts with brands as Diesel, VonDutch, Levi’s, Billabong etc. cost only around 2,5 euro (with some bargaining though..).

We have a lot of fun here, because luckily the students here are not that conservative (at least the Chinese, the muslims are rather conservative). And eventhough the area around the university is a bit underdeveloped we managed yesterday to have one of the best day-tours in Malaysia so far. We saw sugarcane plantations, rice fields, caves, besar’s (for cheap clothes), Duty free shops (the one’s with the Thai border, because that’s only 30 min from here), sunset and we had the best meal so far as well. We ate sea food in Kuala Perlis a fishing city in the North were you can take the ferry to Langkawi. This meal was so delicious!! Crab, prawns, squid, fish, etc and ofcourse rice!! and aterwards a beer… couldn’t be any better.
Since the Chinese average size is considerably smaller than ours, the amount of beer they can take is also considerably smaller.. the result is often that they end up really drunk. This was also the case with at least one of our friends (a girl) who was really drunk…

Tonight we’ll leave to Kota Bahru and it’s the start of our 7 day holiday trip through North Malaysia. Hopefully we can take the boat to the Perhantian Islands soon… these islands are of superb quality and the dream of every scuba-diver, we look forward!!

No promises, because so far I couldn’t fulfill them as well, but I hope to update asap!!!

Greetz Wouter

Hello everybody!

apologies for not updatig the log more often, it has been a combination of a lot of activities, and laziness.

Wa have done quite a lot of things since our last real update which was during our trip to singapore. After our harbour trip through the biggest port in the world, we took it easy and just chilled out in probably one of the best hostels in Singapore, with ‘the cheapest beer in town’ (That was what they said). Funny thing was that the beer mugs were comming out of the fridge, so you would get a cold beer in a frozen glass, and let me tell you, that tastes good after a warm day! Next day we went to a few mosques, the botanical gardens and a shopping mall where you could only buy cameras. In the evening we left for UTM, the LC we would stay with that week.

After a good night sleep we meet 2 new people, one was Mustafa, a Turkish guy who lives in Germany, trainee somewhere over there, and Eva, a girl from Slovakia who was studying in Cardiff, UK. Because there was no real program for that day, they took us around. After we wandered around town for a while we ended up at the Sultans Museum, which had all the treasures, throphies and gifts of the former Sultan of the state of Johore. Quite amazing, esp an umbrella holder made out of the leg of an elephant.

The next 2 days we spend recruiting people for AIESEC in a boot (stand) with Eva and Mustafa, and this was a lot of fun. Fun to see how the muslims girls are very reluctant to talk to us, while others are very interested. It went reasonable well, and we met our targets.
Then on Wednesday evening we had the first of two recruiting activities, and it was a lot of fun! Met a lot of new people!
Right after this we left to Tioman, the Island that is on the pictures you probably have already seen! We did this together with Eva. And a picture might say a thousand words, I will tell you again: It was sooo beautiful! The first day we hiked across the island to some deserted place. The second we went snorkeling in the morning, and a small hike in the Afternoon, and sadly enough we already had to get back then, because the next recruiting activity was awaiting us. This one took the whole day and was filled with Aiesec dances(soooooo many :-S), discussion sessions, and all kinds of other activities. Was a very interesting day!

That marked the last day in UTM, and the next day we left for UPM, where we would stay for only three days. There were not a lot of activities planned, so we spend most of the time hanging out there, and doing some sightseeing. We did have a good time though, the AIESECers were very nice there!

Now we are in Penang, a famous Malaysian Island with the third biggest city, called Georgetown. It was here where the English got on land first. We heard it is suppose the be a great place with the best food in malaysia for the lowest prices!

I think this is anough for now, we will updat a lot sooner next time!

See You Ernst Jan

EJ and I have had a busy time last week

Sorry for our lack of new updates…

We have so much to tell actually, but pictures say a lot as well

We will write asap

Tioman island

EJ, Eva and Wouter

I updated the pictures..

Finally I could copy my photo’s to a computer with my card reader!!
..so that means that there is for you this oppertunity to have a look.

Click at the link at the second upper left column: Pictures !!

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?username=malaysiamasters

Some examples:

Singapore

Kuala Lumpur City Centre

This morning we arrived safely in Singapore. We went by night train and it took around 7 hours.

We just came back from an exhausting day looking around, walking around and taking a harbour cruise…

We will update you as soon as possible about the details here in Singapore!