Footprints in the sand

We got up at 6.30 am. We packed our bags. We walked to the railway station. We waited for the commuter train. We got on the train and hopped off in the KL main station. We made our way to the bus terminal. We got on the bus and off again after a six-hours drive. We waited three hours for the ferry. We sat on the ferry for two hours while dozing off, listening to music and watching the sunset on the horizon of the blue sea. We arrived at the island, squeezed ourselves in a 2-bed room, ordered an extra matress for the floor. We went to the grocery store and filled our empty stomaches with fried noodles. And then at around eight at night, after spending a day travelling in the heat, we were finally setting our feet on the beach of Pulau Tioman, opened our Carlsberg cans (that were surprisingly cheap - hooray for duty free alcohol) and sipped the cool beer as we were watching the stars in the clear sky, listening to the sound of the waves and enjoying the feeling of the sand between our toes.

Two months is actually a quite short time to stay in a country if you spend most of the weekdays working and only have the weekends to discover the other parts. That's why I started already in the first week to plan accordingly and started preparations for the remaining time. So now all the weekends are booked with upcoming trips to Hong Kong, Singapur, Cameroon Highlands or last-day shopping in KL. However, the first journey took me and my flatmates to one of the many beautiful beaches of Malaysia. We picked Tioman as it is relatively close and it was easy to arrange everything. Although the part of the island where we stayed didn't offer too much excitement, it was nice for relaxing at the seaside for a couple of hours.



While I was lying in the shadow and listening to my favorite playlists, I noticed a cultural difference between Asians and Europeans. They don't like to tan - or at least many of them. While I was enjoying the beach in a bikini, the locals went into the water with their clothes on and also my fellow travellers from Korea spend fewer hours at the beach than I did because they were not keen on getting a tan and were tired of the heat. Even tough I - for obvious reasons - was never a part of the hype of roasting in the sun / solarium to get some color or using artificial tanning products and I find it at times even quite riduculous, it's weird to see that people are kind of afraid of the sun, use umbrellas during sunny days and are totally into buying whitening products.

Although I truly enjoyed getting out of the suburbs of KL for a weekend, I once again discovered that I get easily bored with doing nothing these days. That's why after some at time the beach when I was getting to tired to read, I started to explore the island and was quite disappointed that my walking paths were kind of limited. That said, I'm glad that this was my last trip to a beach on my journey as I am much more into seeing and doing stuff right now. I'm sick of lying in the sun and being lazy. - Wait, did I just say that?


current music: Billy Bragg & Wilco - California Stars

Let's talk about sex

I have to say goodbye now to all those of you who expected any sordid details about my life, because you will be strongly disappointed - everyone else is welcome to read on.

As hopefully all of you know, one of the common ways to get infected with HIV is unprotected sex which is why this topic is also a very important part in our workshops. As this topic commonly arouses uncomfortable or embarrassing moments or laughter, I was a bit worried about how this section of the workshop will turn out. However, after the first session, I was very much relieved because I discovered that Malaysian 17-year-olds are not comparable with their Austrian counterparts, indicating that they are - or at least look - quite young and innocent and are not as presumptuous or sassy in the sessions, which might be due to their upbrining or a differet kind of discipline in the schools here (they still use the cane). So apart from some giggling or random jokes they are actually quite attentive and listen when it comes to the part where I explain in very technical terms about the different forms of penetrative sex and the risk factor of oral sex.
Although it is a bit funny to talk about sex when the kids are sometimes divided to the different parts of the room according to their gender and are even shy to shake hands with the other sex when prompted to - but then again you can never judge a book by its cover .

Depending on the school and the teachers we get various guidelines on how we have to address the topic of sex: sometimes we are not allowed to do condom demonstrations, sometimes they highly appreciate us explaining the proper use of condoms (like last week in an all-boys school), sometimes we should emphasize on abstinence, sometimes we are asked to use no colloquial terms and so on. I am actually quite satisfied with the freedom they allow us in the workshops so far and we were able till now to bring across the main message without problem.

explaining protection methods through a game

When it comes to talk about prevention and protection methods, we also mention the ABC-theory (Abstinence, Being faithful and Condoms). Admittedly, it was a bit strange in the beginning to refer to those three points as prevention methods regarding HIV. However, I must say that by now I really enjoy this part - as we also underline the meaning and risk of HIV by an interactive game - and feel a bit like I can really educate the kids on a very important thing. And of course I make sure to strongly emphasize on the terms of correctly applying all three methods (for example I do point out that faithfullness is only of any use if it is not one-sided).

Most of the students actually pay attention during the workshops and I think the games are a good method to transmit the underlying messages and objectives of our sessions. It is our aim not only ot educate the youths about what safe sex, HIV and AIDS are, how it spreads, how it affects the body, how they can protect themselves, but also to highlight the current state of HIV in their own country and to break ignorance and avoid stigma concerning HIV-positive people.

The high-tech equipment I use for the condom demonstration. Before we switched to bananas there was an actual replica of the male sexual organ used (yes, a dildo),but it somehow disappeared (a couple of days before I arrived here - so no need for stupid comments or any highly inappropriate thoughts)

current music: The Quantic Soul Orchestra - Paintings & Journeys

My little corner of the world

I remember the first time I heard about KL was when my friend told me about her upcoming flights to "cool Sydney" and I thought, "yes, Australia is very cool indeed". Eventually I found out that she was actually saying "KUL Sydney" or "KUL-SYD" and that KUL was the international code for the Kuala Lumpur airport and her stopover on the way down under, but by that time I still didn't have a clue where KL was, so I googled it (or did we still use yahoo and altavista back then?) and discovered that it was the capital of Malaysia, so I looked up Malaysia and then had an idea where this country was located. Back then I had my mind still set on discovering the US as a part of my first big travel abroad and I filed KL in my travel plans in my mind under the section "yes, I want to visit this place sometime, but it's not on the top of the list and I don't know if I'll ever going to make it there" and adding a mental note "but if I do, I definitely have to take a cool shot standing in front of the highest building in the world".

Time passes by, things change. This route got cancelled, I spent some time exploring Northern America and these trips sparked a desire within me to discover the world, and also mankind's ability to construct monuments evolved, as the Petronas got kicked of the list of the highest buildings by Taipei 101 (of which I embarrassingly had no clue till I was actually in Taipei some weeks ago and looked down on the world from up there).

However, due to some surprising twists of fate and alterations in original intentions, I finally found myself in Kuala Lumpur and took one pic of me in front of the Petronas towers, the third-highes building in the world (as they were also surpassed by the Shanghai World Financial Center in 2008) - well, "one" is a bit of an understatment here. I got one from the front side of the towers, one from the back, one by daylight, one by nighttime, one where I'm smiling, even one where I have a double chin (which got deleted right away).

doesn't matter if it's day or night - i'm there :-)

And while I was standing there, firing off shots from my camera and not paying attention to the wondering glances of the people around me, the same thing happened which had already happened on many occasions all over the wold like when I found myself feeling rather small next to the Statute of Liberty in New York, following the light-show of the Eiffel Tower in a warm Parisian night, posing up there at the Corcovado gazing down at Rio de Janeiro or rather recently admiring the white sand and turquoise water on Phi Phi island - the place came into existence on my very own map of the world. It's always a bit like as if I have to be there, see it with my own eyes, experience a place in order to acknowledge its existence.

[I don't know if anyone of you was ever into strategy/simulation PC-games, but I was an avid fan of the Settlers 2 and 3 about 10 years ago and I used to spent hours and hours playing that game throughout the whole night until I literally fell asleep in front of my Windows-95-PC. Yes, I was or still am a bit of a geek and I couldn't stop until I finished all the missions and once this task was accomplished I wisely refrained from getting that involved with any other games. Anyway, what I wanted to illustrate was that in those games you were basically stranded on an island and had to conquer the world starting from your one-castle town and all the rest of the land was still darkened until you expanded your empire or sent an explorer to the unknown land - and then it would lit up on the screen and appear on your map and you where able to settle there.]

So finally, KL exists on my globe, is lit and ready for me to conquer. I was there, the memories are captured in my mind, I can cross this point of the earth of my mental travel list - only about a billion-minus-one places left to go.

KL by nighttime from the KL tower

current music: Flogging Molly - If I ever leave this world alive

The sound of settling

As i have been in KL for some days I want to shed some light on what I'm doing here. Apart from recovering and getting acclimated, the first days were spent with getting right into business. I did not only come to Malaysia to travel the beautiful country, eat delicious food or use the cheap shopping opportunities (although I can be found enjoying one of those things quite frequently these days), but to actually do something productive and not only productive I might add, but something meaningful.

Being without any form of occupation recently, I managed to organize an internship through AIESEC in Malaysia. After having some troubles before, I was very happy that everything worked out smoothly and I arranged the details with the assistance of the local TN-manager in a matter of days. (for all non-Aiesecers: if there are some words/abbreviations you don't get, than it's beacuse it's AIESEC-lingo, sorry about that, can't help it). So for the next two months I'll be working on a common project of AIESEC and Standard Chartered Bank in Malaysia (www.standardchartered.com) and will do my best to educate local students on the issue of HIV/AIDS which will be done through workshops in secondary schools and universities. The workshops are based on the model of Standard Chartered who conduct these sessions in many countries in Asia and Africa as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility/Sustainability program. We aim to create awarness among youth, enable them to make the right choice in their lives, break ignorance and discrimination and we do so by combining theoretical info with interactive games, which works quite well.

after one of the workshops

(branding our LC also over there)

preparing the workshops

Apart from working, I finally unpacked a bit after one month of living out of my backpack and got settled in the flat. I also used the scarce moments, when it doesn't either pour down or is blazingly hot to wander around the neighbourhood to explore the surroundings. For some reason I find it very hard to just sit still at the moment and constantly crave for some kind of activity or diversion (I guess it's due to the active live I had while travelling), so I constantly find myself encouraging my flatmates to do something.

my cool flatmates - before we went to the cinema

skating ring on the ground level of a shopping mall - didn't try it yet

As my second flatmate arrived only a couple of days after I did, we decided to have a welcome/cooking party in our house. Lazy me was relieved that most of the food was prepared by my fellow interns or brought by our Malaysian guests and so we were happily munching on Kimchi, Bulgogi, Korean pancakes as well as local seafood dishes and pastries. However, I wouldn't have dared to not represent my home country and spent quite some time in the kitchen to prepare the probably most laborious and complex Austrian dish and as I compensated the lack of a mixer with sheer manpower, I was quite happy that it turned out finger-lickingly-good :-)

my version of a Kaiserschmarrn with Applesauce

the guys enjoying a funny and weird Malaysian Aiesecers ritual "Happy corner" -
but then again we have our "Schweinebauch" :-D

current music: Slightly Stoopid - Collie Man

Home for now

As you can read in one of my posts from the beginning of March 09, I am currently - yes, I still dread to say it and it feels werid - unemployed. I started this journey out of a mixture of sicknesss of Vienna, desire to discover new countries, frustration and boredom. Although the last month was great and I didn't have any regrets about my decision to leave Austria for a second, I noticed that I was having troubles to really just relax and enjoy the ride, but that I constantly was worrying about what will come after this trip. So when offered the opportunity, I took the chance to do something productive and applied/signed up for a development traineeship in Malaysia through AIESEC. I guess if I have had any permanent job secured for after my travels or if I hadn't spent the most part of the last months with sitting around in Vienna waiting for applicaiton results, my choice would have been a different one and I'd just continue my trip. But with things being as they are, this seemed as the best option at this moment.

Petronas towers in KL

There I was in the bus on my way down to Kuala Lumpur where my next adventure was waiting for me. I have to admit that while hopping from one place to the next is fun, I am in general more a fan of discovering a city more thouroughly by living in that place for a while. This offers you the chance to build a connection with a town, figure out your favorite spots, discover streets apart from the main sights and develop a routine. I guess it's because of this that to this day I remember London and Boston as my favorite cities from all the places I visited and would at any moment consider relocating there as I could definetely imagine calling those spots "home" - even if it would just be for a while.

So my next interim home will be KL and I'm looking forward to getting to know it. Usually the first months in a new city are a bit of an emotional rollercoaster - at least for me, as I experience altering feelings of happiness and excitement and also loneliness and disappointment till I built up my routine and social envrionment. My arrival in KL was quite pleasent as I was picked up by local Aiesecers and got a ride to the internhouse were I'll be staying for the next to months. The house is located in Subang Jaya, a bit out of KL, but I already discovered the way to get into the city by public transport and it's quite easy. The house is ok-ish, quite basic, but more or less clean and after a day spent scrubbing and mopping it reached a level of comfort I can live with. For now I have my own room and share the house with two other AIESEC interns from South-Korea with whom I get along really well so far.

the internhouse

The only downside of my first days in KL (although geographically incorrect, as I live in Selangor to be excact, I'll continue to refer to my current location as KL, because it's easier and it's shorter and it just sounds better) was the fact that I was not in the best of health. After surviving the last month without any problems and eating mainly food from the street - well not literally, but stuff I bought at stalls on the street - I finally was taken down by some food that was apparently not totally fresh - and I already have a suspect ... - and spent most of my first two days with sleeping and frequent trips to the bathroom. However, I quickly recovered and everything is fine again and I'll continue to eat food from the streets but will refrain from anything that looks even the tiniest bit suspicious.

no need to worry here - very delicisous

current music: Parov Stelar - Love

When the rain begins to fall

I was sleeping as suddenly the minivan stopped and everyone stormed out in a hurry. Not fully awake I thought we arrived and started to gather my things as a women screamed "Get out". I did not understand a thing until I noticed that there was smoke and a flame coming out from under the passengers seat in the front where the motor is located and I hurried out. It was not until a couple of hours later that I realized that I probably was quite lucky and was actually in serious danger because the motor of the car caught fire and a burning car is probably not the safest thing if you think of all the gasoline ... .

Georgetown

However, nothing serious happened and I safely made it to my next destination, located across the Thai border, in Malaysia. I decided to hang out a couple of days in Georgetown on the island Penang before travelling down to Kuala Lumpur where I'll spend my next to months (more about that later on). Pulau Pinang, as it is called locally, is a meltingpot of the different cultures predominant in Malaysia - Indian, Chinese and Malay and in Georgetown you can still see traces of the once colonial town. As I was exploring the streets of Georgetown I indulged for the first time into the broad culinary offer in Malaysia and tried tasty Indian Roti as well as Chinese noodles.

I used the days in Georgetown to explore the island, hide out from the pouring rain, do some administrative stuff online and exchange stories with other travellers. The monsoon-like rain set in daily at around six pm and from then I usually staid in the hostel and watched DVDs with other backpackers. Watching DVDs seems to be a popular activity in quite some hostels and restaurants and sitting in the common area of your interim home and seeing a flick with interim mates somehow creates a similar comfortable atmosphere as if you would hang out for a movie night with friends at home.
I therefore saw quite some movies while I have been on the road so far. I have been touched by "Slumdog Millionaire" for about four times (it is really popular around here), laughed at "Knocked Up", was disappointed by the "Curious Case of Benjamin Button", identified myself with the backpackers in "The Beach" and added "Milk" to my favourite movies of this year.

The skyline of Georgetown

Monkey Beach at Pinang National Park

current music: Slumdog Millionaire - Jai Ho

Climbing up the walls

I found myself hanging on a rope about 10 meters above ground, holding on to the cliff of a big rock located on the beach. While I was trying to grasp a part of the huge stone above me I looked around me and took in the nice view over the sea. Feeling totally hot and sweaty and with my arms getting weaker and weaker with every moment, I was determined not to give up and aimed for the last bit of the climb as I pushed myself up one more time and was filled with pride and relief as I touched the anchor. I finally made it. After having failed twice and announcing "I'm giving up, let me down" - I altered my mind as the instructor asked "Really?". And I fought, I struggled and finally made it to the top.


The one-day rock climbing class marked the highlight of my 3 day stay in Krabi and Railey. Or rather half-day climb as I had to change the full-day course into a shorter one after being totally exhausted after a mere 3 hours and a handful of climbs.

During my stay in Krabi I once again noticed that I am totally a city girl, meaning that I'd choose the bright lights of an exciting, cosmopolitan city any time over the calmness of the countryside or a small village or even the sunny spots of a beach. Of course this doesn't mean that I don't enjoy to get out of town once in a while, but one of my favorite acitivities to unwind and reflect is wandering around the busy streets of a metropole at any time of day or night and soaking in the multicultural atmosphere while listening to my favorite tunes on my Ipod and thinking about life.

And in Krabi I simply felt trapped after only one day as I felt that I exhausted the possibilities of walking through the small town and I was tired of walking from one end to the other while having to repeatedly decline the offers of screaming taxi drivers. So by the end of my second stay here, I was feeling really sick of Krabi and the only relief was an evening spent drinking with some funny random backpackers in a Thai-Reggae pub while listening to Bob Marley.


current music: Bossa'n'Marley - Buffalo Soldier

Hello again

It's funny how fast we develop relationships to places we visit and return to again. As my plane was descending into the Bangkok airport after my trip to Taiwan I felt a bit like coming home. Well, not home home, but like returning to my homebase, a city I know, where I am not a completely new stranger. I knew where I had to go, was familiar with the immigration process and didn't have to look around anxiously for a possibility to get into town. As I neglected the offers from the annoying cab drivers for an overpriced ride downtown and went directly to the cheap public bus while offering advise to newly arrived backpackers, I remembered the feeling I had when I arrived here just about 3 and a half weeks earlier - a mix of curiosity, thirst for adventure, uncertainty and yes I admit it, a bit of fear. But this time, I only felt tired and was looking forward to get to the familiar hostel in order to get some sleep.

Democracy monumentLumpini park

I spent the next day in Bangkok by wandering around familiar streets, chatting with fellow travellers, visiting the famous weekend market where everyting is sold from meat, fruits, bags, shoes, clothes, jewelry, .... . I completely lost my orientation (the place is huge) and gave in once again into my guilty pleasure for cheap shopping opportunities.

MBK - one of the many shopping centers

I chose to stay in Bangkok for 3 days not only in order to get some rest, but also because my friend Verena was once again flying into town and so I took the opportunity to meet up with her and spend awesome 24 hours together. The time was flying by as we where acquiring more great stuff at the night market, ran away from big fat rats in panic, desperately searched for passion fruits and enjoyed a great aroma massage. And before I knew it, I was once again boarding the trian to Southern Thailand for my next destination.


current music: The Shins - New Slang