Melaka in pictures

Garishly decorated trishaws are the way to travel Melaka
Couple culture is not just limited to Korea

The only bound-foot shoemaker in the world

One of Chinatown's many temples

Melaka

So after a laid-back start this morning, we got a lift to the bus station to hop on a bus to Melaka. After picking out the first listed guest house in the guidebook, we grabbed a taxi to the heart of Chinatown. I guess Lonely Planet destinations are aware of Lonely Planet users' ironic disdain for Lonely Planets, as the Sama-Sama Guest House has a new annex "NOT YET IN THE LONELY PLANET". I wonder how long it will be before it makes its way in there.

Melaka really is rather the epitome of the Lonely Planet's definition of chilled out. But it's good. And I guess Christmas is the time to take your holidays to avoid the hoards of tourists. We've just spent our day taking a very leisurely wander around Chinatown and around, nosing in at the various temples, learning a bit about the area's history and sampling the local cuisine. Very relaxing. I would like to upload some photographs but I'm not sure this slow internet connection would be able to handle it.

Kuala Lumpur

I like it. Everyone speaks English which is incredibly novel (and highly convenient), though coming from a predominantly non-English speaking society I'm finding myself conscious of what I can say (without disapproval from passersby) in public. But everyone is very friendly and accommodating; and Malaysia's multi-national people are not at all intimidating as I imagined travelling as a lone female at 2am when I arrived at KL airport on Friday might be.

KL is pretty small as far as capital cities go, and certainly being able to walk from one end to the other in the humidity is quite a contrast from the never-ending sprawl of Seoul. But despite its size, the rather convoluted road network rather does make navigation somewhat taxing as Ian and I discovered trying to cross the 500m from KL Station to Chinatown by a criss-cross of overpasses, underpasses, roundabouts and railway lines. We have been lucky to be able to stay with Ian's cousin and his family to get easy rides to places of interest, and of course getting a local's perspective of what we should do/where we should go and charge-free accommodation.

So after a morning's meander through Chinatown (complete with a roti canai breakfast and tour of temples - see photo) yesterday we took Peter's recommended tour of the swish department stores of KL, slowly meandering our way up to the sunset view of the iconic Petronas Towers (photo above). I've certainly been filling my photo quotas. Today - a Malaysian national holiday - we gave Peter and his 8-year-old daughter an excuse to take the car and walk up the 272 steps to the Hindi shrine-laden Batu Caves. The highlight was probably the scampering monkeys - around to keep the tourists interested, around to enjoy the banana-feeding - though playing "I went to the market and I bought..." was also a great way to pass the car journey. Teaching English to non-native children, I get a warped view of the level of language that young children have.

This afternoon we were let loose by ourselves to explore the Lake Gardens and foot our own entrance fees. We wandered the Butterfly Park, making for some challenging photography, before heading on to the Bird Park to walk through the extensive free-flying aviary. We'll head down to Melaka tomorrow before heading onto Singapore for the weekend.

In transit

So I didn't really consider what I was going to do for between six and seven hours at Beijing airport waiting for my connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur. I would take advantage of the unlimited internet access and comfy seats in the business lounge for a mere 50RMB (which I was forced to exchange into cash at 50RMB commission thus essentially paying double for my time, but whatever; that £20 in my wallet hasn't been spent on anything else in the last year) and spend more time online, but despite definitely being winter in China, somebody decided it would be a good idea to crank up the air conditioning as if it were 30 degrees outside. I purposefully didn't bring my winter jacket with me on this trip, foretelling the inconvenience of lugging it around in the heat. I carelessly forgot to take into consideration potentially heavily air conditioned buses and shopping malls, even where it might be appreciated where it is 30 degrees outside.

So since I landed in China I've had a reasonably leisurely brunch, followed by a half hour of surfing while my fingers froze off, followed by a wander to the gate, getting distracted by a coffee shop, spending an hour warming my hands on some warm tea, followed by cooling my hands once the cup was empty. I dislike air con. So I decided to warm up my toes by walking the length of the airport back to the business lounge, and that's where I am now, slowly numbing my fingers again.

I'm also pretty tired. Four and a half hours of interrupted dream sleep isn't my favourite kind of sleep. I did get an hour on the airport bus and maybe another hour on the plane, but sleep in a chair just isn't as good as the sleep you can get in a bed. I guess I just don't fancy battling with the air conditioning to take a nap in the airport. But I like airports. There's something about being between countries that kind of makes me feel trapped in time. It doesn't matter that I'm tired now. I'll catch up when I'm out of the airport. I guess I really would get tired if I were Tom Hanks in The Terminal.

After all this procrastination (but it's forced procrastination, and perhaps that's what I love; there's nothing I have to be doing, largely because I can't. And for goodness sake girl, you're on holiday) I only have a couple of hours left to wait. My fingers are sufficiently numb now to decide to go and take that walk back down to the gate again. But if this post wasn't enough evidence of the excitement that Beijing airport has to offer, here's a picture that I took of my tea.

Merry Christmas!

Despite being away from friends and family in the UK, I have had a most relaxing Christmas in Korea with all my closest friends (bar Jaideep who I will see in Singapore in the next week, but still managed to phone in his Christmas wishes to us all) exchanging gifts, eating food (not necessarily traditional Christmas food, but good food nonetheless), listening to music, dancing, and generally enjoying one another's company. After all, home is where the heart is and all that, right?

So now I'm packed up and ready to get the 5am airport bus tomorrow morning to head on out of the sub-zero temperatures of Seoul on for warmer climates in Malaysia. No doubt I'll do much blogging and photo taking from there, but in the meantime I wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas!

Wonder Girls – Nobody

Another inescapable chart topper.

Airport goodbyes

Another weekend on friend-filled fun. I think we're all getting a bit partied out; hopefully the holidays will bring a lot of excuses to sleep! Anyway so for Jaideep's final weekend in Seoul it was back down to Wara Wara in Sanbon on Friday night with their delicious fruit soju cocktails; salsa class on Saturday followed by shots and raspberry mojitos at Bonji and dancing at Caliente; and for the first time in a long time we all went our separate ways at 4am, to reconvene in Hyehwa at midday on Sunday. This was just in time for coffee and lunch and to make our way to the airport to send Jaideep on his way.

I'm not a big fan of airport farewells; they're sad and prolongued and well, sad. Luckily Jaideep attempting to take five large suitcases on the plane to get charged $2000 excess baggage rather detracted from the sadness as we spent an hour packing it all up to ship (for a meagre $500 :-o), and after a final dance with all the girls there was little time for tears. Of course he will be missed, but we're living in a small world. I have no doubt that the adopted salsa family is yet to disperse.

And just as a relevant aside, Andrew dreamt that on questioning when we'd all next see one another, I distributed fingers of a severed hand and assured everyone that once the fingers revived themselves we'd know to get back together. Someone's subconscious is running overtime I fear...

Sleeping in Sanbon

With everyone living at different ends of Seoul, if indeed in Seoul at all, it's usually easiest for the weekend Itaewon salsa crew to congregate at the Itaewon dance studio at the weekends. However, sometimes you just don't wanna dance salsa. So where do you go??

Sanbon baby! All the way down south on line 4 about an hour's journey on the subway, home to Robin and Sebastian. One wonders why people would choose to live so far out until you visit and find out for yourself. Like a city within a city (no, not like Croydon), it has all your life's needs: all the big high street shops, restaurants, coffee shops, and of course, noraebang. There's pretty much no reason to leave except to sight-see, and, well, salsa.

So that's where we crashed on Friday night. Saturday morning was planned for a hike up the local mountain in view of Jaideep's imminent departure from Korea, but (un)fortunately he got called away for a conference at 7am so we scrapped that plan in favour of a lie-in. And by the time we finished brunch and sufficiently recovered after squeezing 7 people into a one-bedroomed apartment, it was time for Robin and me to whisk ourselves away for a private ladies' salsa styling lesson with Helen before class. Most helpful.

Having had so much fun the night before the group agreed to veto the all night Saturday salsa party and head back down to Sanbon. And who needs salsa bars when you can salsa and sing in any one of the multitudes of noraebang that Sanbon hosts? By 5am we were all flaking somewhat, but that didn't stop Robin from delegating brunch tasks the next morning while she sorted out her flat. Sebastian and I were on DVD duty, and in preparation for Christmas we brought back Love Actually. It was a group decision.

So Christmas is upon us folks! In 10 days' time I will be swanning about in Malaysia, far, far away from lesson plans and cold wintry weather. And get this, in less than 12 weeks' time, I'll be saying my teary goodbyes as I put my umbrella up to prepare myself for the perpetual drear of England. My flight is booked and my flat needs a clear out.

Destination: UK--?

As my close friends will be all too aware, I have spent the last few weeks battling an internal struggle with myself over what I will do once the school year finishes at the end of February next year. Ultimately where I am or what I'm doing for six months of my life doesn't really matter as long as I'm having a good time of it, but whether I will be having a good time of it is another matter.

I guess part of me wants to hang out in Korea, take advantage of the cheap subway clothing stalls and salsa it up in Itaewon with my friends at the weekends. The other part of me really misses fried eggs on toast and afternoon tea.

So I had thought, if I could negotiate with my school so that I only worked part time in the afternoons, essentially only teaching the kids I'm teaching now so that I won't have to deal with setting the ground rules again with a new bunch, that might work out for me. I'd have more free time to learn Korean and spend time with those friends that don't work regular 9-5 hours in the mornings and evenings. But then I thought, I probably wouldn't have a whole lot of time in the mornings to get all the way into Seoul and back, and I probably wouldn't get off work any earlier than I currently do. So I might just be a whole lot more bored, and with a decreased salary I might actually have to start worrying about money.

During negotiations I fleetingly suggested to my boss (mistake) that I could stay on full time for a couple of more months. Then I went away and thought about it. As much as I love my life in Korea, I guess I realised I just don't love the weeks quite enough to be living for the weekends. So I decided to come home in March as was originally planned.

So that fleeting comment was naturally taken as the written word, and my boss then went and started making plans for the new year with the intention that I would be staying. We had a chat this afternoon, her saying, "Oh but I want to change the English program, and you'll have more support, and you'll only have to teach the older children, and they are already used to English lessons so it will be easier, and it'll be easier for a new teacher to take over from you later in the year," and other such reasonably valid points.

It is thus that my excitement about coming home and eating all the fried eggs I can stomach and drinking all the afternoon tea the afternoons can offer started to wane, as I thought about how much I'll miss the kids. It's not that I feel any particular responsibility to the school, but I really will miss the kids. Today one of them unexpectedly just gave me a big hug and said, "Oh Teacher I like you!" It kinda pulls at heartstrings.

But writing this I realise, I'm going to leave at some point, so I'll have to leave the kids at some point. If the English program is going to change then I will have to oversee it. Well that sounds like a lot of effort and stress right there. I think another issue is that Lauren and I set up the whole English program in this school from scratch, and I don't like the idea of passing that responsibility onto someone else. But yes, eventually I must pass the baton, and it may as well be sooner rather than later.

I should book my flight before I change my mind again.

Winter dancing

Went to a three hour workshop on basic ballroom dancing steps today with Joey and Helen.

>Getting your toes stepped on as a bunch of beginners make their way round the room just like in the movies? Painful.

>Storming across the room in an attempt to master basic American tango? Invigorating.

>Waltzing to Christmas music to find that it's snowing outside? Priceless.