Looking for...

... my wallet. Apparently I left it outside at the pool tonight at 2am and when I noticed that around 6am it was already gone. The real sucky thing is that I had to block my creditcard now and my drivers license and my id card were in there. Anyway there were only about 30 Euros in there so its not too too bad.

The housesearch here is a lot more difficult than we thought. We saw a really great house yesterday but thats already gone and now we rented a place that was not really our favorite for the first month. We will see if we can find a nicer place later maybe.

Alright, now off to tonights party. Will post pictures sometime soon.

Looking for...

... a place to stay. I arrived in Bali yesterday night (flight was delayed by one hour :/) and now I am out and about with the others to find a villa to rent. We have been calling around and already looked at one house. Wasnt too bad but we will see what we will get. I will post pictures and stuff later... no time for that now.

If you want to reach me here you can call my indonesian cell phone no at +62 812 376 783 86, www.teltarif.de will give you cheap call by call rates from Germany...

You have beautiful skin!

The last two days were not too exciting. Yesterday I wandered around KL to visit a few places I hadnt been to before and today I took an early bus to the ancient colonial city of Melaka about 150 Kilometers South of KL.

KFC is huge in Malaysia. Besides McDonald's it seems to be the Fast Food Chain with the most outlets around here and this one even has it's own bus stop. "Western Food" as it is called here is pretty expensive though, the BigMac at McDonalds costing something around 2,50€ which gets you a full meal including drinks at a local restaurant. I still couldnt resist to buy a few donuts at the Krispy Kreme outlet I stumbled upon in a mall yesterday... so good!


Another western influence around here. People love football but as Malaysia does not really sport any high-class teams people dig the English Premier league, especially Manchester United. You can see countless people in ManU Jerseys and one of the cabs I took in Langkawi even had an official ManU "Red Devils" Fanclub sticker on the windshield. Foo told me that when the Malaysian national team played against ManU last year everybody in the stadium was rooting for ManU and not their own national team...

View of the Petronas towers and the national theater from Lake Titiwangsa in the North of KL.

View from the rooftop terrace of my hostel in Chinatown. Nice place to read a book.

Town square and center of colonial Melaka with a Christian church, which is a rare sight around here. The city used to be the most important port in SE-Asia due to it's location at one of the narrowest points in the Strait of Melaka between Malaysia and Sumatra and therefore several colonial powers fought for the power over the city. In recent years the strait was best known as hotspot of modern piracy. It was under Dutch, Portuguese and English reign in it's long history and large communities of Chinese traders also left their marks in the city. The church in the picture was built by the Dutch.


The fountain in the middle of the square is dedicated to Queen Victoria. Proof of English colonial influence.

The large town hall is still called by it's Dutch name "Stadthuys" today.


The town center is completely overrun with large groups of noisy Chinese and Japanese tourists spilling from tour busses.

One of the many Buddhist and Taoist temples in Chinatown. The carved stone pillars are really impressive at close-up distance.

The last remaining part of the Portuguese Fort that once dominated the city is. The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie VOC) later planted their own coat of arms on it and the English eventually destroyed the whole fort leaving only this gate standing. A creole version of Portuguese called Kristang is still spoken by some people in the Melaka area.

This is the building that once housed the local English Club where the colonial "masters" used to gather is now ironically used as the "Proclamation of Independence Memorial".

In another Museum about Malaysian Architecture one of the security guys came up to me and asked me where I was from. I told him Germany and the next thing he does is the Hitler salute (he used the wrong hand though). Very weird but he obviously had no idea what that gesture stood for so I gave him a very short roundup of German Nazi history. Anyway we got to talk a little and he asked me for how long I had been in Malaysia. I told him only a few days and then he said that he could see that because my "skin was still beautiful" and that in a few weeks it was going to be all red and dark so that people back home wouldnt even recognize me anymore... I had to force myself not to laugh :D Still, he was really nice and explained some things about the museum and about the upcoming festival of Hari Raya to me.

Alright, I will say goodbye to Christine now, she will fly to Cuba tomorrow for studying there and then go to bed...

Island Hopping and Global Village

I came back to KL from Langkawi yesterday and met with my friend Alina from Romania, who is on an AIESEC internship in Johor Bahru in the south of Malaysia right now. She works for a travel agency called myoutdoor.com and part of her job is to travel around Malaysia and write articles about the best places. Sounds great, right? I actually applied for that same internship about a year and a half ago but they never even replied to me. The world is such a tiny place... Anyway, Alina and many other AIESECers came to KL to visit the Global Village at the AIESEC International Congress 2009 that just started today. But first a few pictures from my last day in Langkawi:

I went on a popular tour called "island hopping" where they take you to three different islands around Langkawi. The first one is Pulau (island) Dayang Bunting (pregnant maiden). With a little imagination you can actually see the pregnant maiden lying there on her back.

There is a freshwater lake on the island that is good for swimming.

The island was inhabited by a large number of monkeys. At the dock there were large signs that said you should not take plastic bags on the island and soon later a few chinese tourists discovered why. They had a plastic bag and where suddenly attacked by at least 10 monkeys that tried to snatch the bag from them, pretty funny to watch. At the next island they drove the boat into a mangrove bay and threw out some fish to attract the local eagles to show up. The eagles were huge and it was pretty impressive to see them dive down into the water right next to the boat but still I dont really approve of this bc the eagles probably dont even know how to hunt properly anymore bc of all the tourist boats coming there all day long throwing out fish...

The final island (Pulau Beras Basah) we visited had a really beautiful beach again.

So yesterday I flew back to KL and today I met up with around 20 people from AIESEC Kuala Lumpur and trainees who are in the city to go to the venue of the International Congress (IC). This is the biggest conference AIESEC has worldwide, where all country board members from the world come together for almost two weeks. Unfortunately I did not make it as a delegate to the conference but the event global village is open to the public anyway so there was no way I was going to miss that.

The very posh venue of the IC. The "Palace of the golden Horses" is located pretty far outside the actual city in a kind of rundown area but the hotel itself is really awesome.

So this was the global village. There the delegation from every country (AIESEC has 107 member countries right now) brings typical foods, pictures, information, clothes and whatever from their homecountries and represents their culture at their boot. You can just walk around and talk to the people and try everything out. It was just really bad timing that today Ramadan started and so a good portion of the people there was not allowed to try any of the food. I was told today that as a Malaysian Muslim you can even go to jail when you get caught eating during the day in Ramadan... crazy! Still global village was super awesome and really made me wish I could attend the whole conference :/

The delegation from AIESEC in Indonesia performing a traditional Indonesian welcome
dance. I talked to them later at their booth and they are having a national conference in in Java in October. If I can find the time I might try to go there as a trainer/facilitator. I also talked to some people from Singapore and Hong Kong about their conferences. Hope I can make it to one or two of those to meet a few locals.

And some more random pictures:

I was craving some snack in Langkawi so I bought a pack of these crackers. It was only at home when I saw that they had tiny fish baked into them... ugh!

Selamat Datang = welcome... somebody was misled by Google translator here...

I will be staying in KL until Wednesday, but I might go to Melaka for a daytrip on Monday or so. On Wednesday I will then fly to Bali and finally meet up with the other guys. Cant wait!

Scooter!

Yesterday I finally got to rent that scooter and so I set off to explore the island right away.

First I went up Gungung (mount) Raya, the highest peak on the island which is easily reached by a paved road. Unfortunately the weather was really that nice and there were clouds and fog everywhere

Almost ran over this guy, he was pretty big, about as big as a hand. Creepy!

View from the top of the mountain obscured by clouds.

Going back down and taking "Ecki-style" pictures while driving.

I then went to a place at the northwestern end of the island called Telagah Tujuh (Seven Wells). The waterfall there is not that impressive but.

... when you scramble up a steep staircase to the top of the waterfalls you reach the actual "seven wells", a series of pools and water cascades. You swim in the cool pools and slide down the cascades... really awesome and a nice relief from the heat.

After that I drove on further north to Datai Bay but on my way there I was stopped by a massive rainshower. Waited for over an hour under a bridge with a guy from Australia and a local Malayan and then decided to drive back very slowly in the rain because it was about to get dark. I was completely soaked when I got home and freezing too but anyway it was kinda fun to "fight" the rain on the bike.

Today I set out early again to head to the West of the island. There is a tall range of mountains there and usually a cable car can take you to the top to a lookout point. Anyway the cable car is closed for maintenance this week so I decided to take the stairs up instead. It was a steady steep 1.5 hour uphill climb through thick jungle covering some 630 meters in height. I was completely drenched in sweat when I arrived at the top, and also the maintenance workers gave me pretty funny looks because the trail is not really used a lot and they didnt expect anyone to come up. It was in pretty bad condition acutally. Glad that I brought my hiking boots.

Met this guy on the way

Easily the biggest millepede (funny word) I have ever seen. It was fast too...

Great views from the viewing platform at the middle station of the cable car.

View to the south where you can make out the airport and Pantai Cenang in the distance

Had that place all for myself.

peak station of the cable car with the skybridge. I would have really liked to go up there!

Somewhere on the way down.

My treat to myself after making it back down. A nice fresh cold coconut! So yummy.

Back in the parking lot from where I started. The structure on top of the mountain is the middle station of the cable car.

After the exhausting climb I went to this small beach (Tengkorak beach) at the north of the Island. Easily the most beautiful beach I have been to so far... just awesome and no crowds either!

What a great place to read a book. The Island in the background is Ko Sarai and belongs to Thailand.

View from another Beach at the Northeast Corner of the Island called Tanjung Rhu.

Passing some rice fields close to Pantai Cenang on the way home. Overall a really great day, the only thing that sucks is the sunburn on my arms and neck. I used plenty of sunscreen and still I seem to burn even worse every day.

Langkawi Island

So I flew to Langkawi on Air Asia yesterday. Unfortunately I did not have a window seat so I could take pictures during the approach to the island. We flew over a bunch of small islands with white beaches in bright blue waters, magnificent! I then took a taxi from the Airport to Pantai Cenang in the south of the island.

Main, and only street of Pantai Cenang.

I wasn’t really in the mood of walking around looking for a hostel for a long time so I checked into the first room that was offered to me. In fact the room was pretty crappy and expensive for what it offered so I moved to a much better and cheaper room today. As it was raining yesterday I didn’t do all to much, just took a short dip in the sea and went to bed early. After sleeping through my alarm I went out trying to rent a scooter this noon but had no success. Most places would not give me a scooter bc I don’t have an appropriate drivers license and when I finally found a place that would rent me one it turned out they didn’t have any scooters available until 4pm. So I decided to let scooter be scooter and just hit the beach.

The place where I spent most of the day. Shady too, because of the trees. The water is so warm here that it merely cools you down just when you get in. Still, there is a constant breeze going and the air is way nicer than in KL. Despite putting on sunscreen and sitting in the shade most of the time I got sunburned, sucks!


These... "structures" are all over the beach. Small crabs built them out of tiny sandballs. No idea why.

Later I witnessed the greatest sunset I have seen in my life so far. It was SO awesome! The following pictures can maybe convey a little of the greatness:

After that I had Thai beef curry for dinner in a restaurant right on the beach, now I’m writing this and soon I will go to bed, because I will try to get up early tomorrow so that I can actually rent a scooter and explore the island. Cant wait to see more of it.