Taiping, jungle trekking and a hindu wedding

At the end of October, we had a very fun night at Oktoberfest. It's a big party organised by the German society with German beer, Bratwurst and Sauerkraut. There are also drinking contests, dancing and a big brass band. We made some new friends and had a great evening, if slightly hampered by teacher training at 9am the following morning!

Making the most of a long weekend (and one of 16 yearly days of Public holiday!), we headed to Taiping in Perak which is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Penang. It's not the nicest of towns but has some lovely lake gardens with hills in the background which makes it a great place to spend a relaxing few hours.

Taiping also has a surprisingly good zoo with big open areas for the animals. We liked the giraffes - reminded us of the West Midlands Safari park where you can feed them. Some big cats and bears too - not bad for 3 quid!

Bukit Larut, or Maxwell Hill, is close by and you can get a jeep most of the way up (or walk up if you are very fit or just crazy as it's a steep 22km!). There is a nice path up through the jungle to get to the very top. Disappointingly there's just a hill station at the top but still some decent views over Perak. Lovely and cool up there and quiet as most of the locals don't seem to venture up to the very top.













Suzanne's 'not impressed' face

Getting a bit of a taste for jungle trekking, we planned our first walk up Penang Hill with some friends but instead of taking the easier route, someone suggested taking a different route starting at school which turned a fairly tame walk into a 5 1/2 hour marathon hike! This was not helped by one too many wines the night before with some new friends for the US. Walking up not one but two hills with a bit of a hangover in 30 degrees and 90% humidity is not recommended unless you like taking regular breaks to puke all the way up. Enough said...



Really helpful signposts



We got up close and personal to some leeches for the first time, clambered over fallen trees and hauled ourselves up the last bit with ropes. And that's not an exaggeration... We arrived at the top muddy, exhausted, dehydrated and covered in blood from the leech bites. No wonder they weren't too happy to see us at the rather posh place that serves traditional English cream tea's complete with jam, butter and cream for the scones...




Also this month, we were very excited to be invited to our first Hindu wedding celebration, and really pleased that Thamarai (a maths teacher colleague from Tenby) invited us. It was big, colourful and had a great party atmoshere with lots of singing, dancing and great food. It was interesting to see how a different culture celebrates a wedding and lovely to see Thamarai looking beautiful in her traditional wedding Sari.

 

Last sunday, we decided to have a day being proper tourists so we visited the magnificient Buddhist temple of Kek Lok Si, on the side of Penang Hill. It's a beautiful temple and we look forward to returning for Chinese New Year where it is all lit up and a fantastic place to celebrate.

It's  hard to believe that's it's only 3 weeks of school left until the holidays (4 for Steve) and so we'll be heading home for Christmas in less than a month! Much as we're loving it here, we're really excited about coming home and catching up with everyone. Hopefully see you all soon x

P.S. Got our first visitor booked in for February (Steve's brother, Chris) - we're really looking forward to having someone to show around and hope he'll be the first of many!