Hello from Malaysia!

Hi all,
It’s been a little while since last time I wrote something, but life’s busy when you’re traveling the world I guess, haha. So let’s see…we left India on the 18th, spent 3 days at sea, and we arrived in Malaysia this morning! I got to explore Penang today and so far I love it!! Even getting off the ship here is an adventure. For whatever reason, we are not able to dock the ship right in the port here so we have to have little “shuttle”boats take us from the ship to the shore. They call them tender boats. Actually, the little boats they use to get us to shore are our life boats! So, I get to ride in the lifeboats! (they’re pretty nice actually! They’ve come a long way in lifeboats since the Titanic, haha) The lifeboats carry 150 people at a time, although it would be very cramped if there were actually 150 of us in one, say if there were a real emergency or something, but anyways indeed they’re fairly big and completely enclosed so if we were floating along in the middle of the ocean and it was very cold outside we wouldn’t freeze to death, hehe. Anyways so they “tender”us to shore, and then we’re right there in the city!

Today I had a trip for one of my classes about the ethnic communities in Malaysia, we visited “little India”and a Chinese community and a Malay village in the mountains. It was pouring down rain when we got to little India (Thank you SO much for your raincoat, Nick!!) but when it cleared up by the time we got to the village in the mountains it was nice out and the village was BEAUTIFUL! There were palm trees and exotic flowers everywhere and cute little houses and everyone was so friendly! It wasn’t like the villages in India or the townships in South Africa, the people who lived there were probably a bit wealthier but still lived modestly. The houses were pretty small and not fancy at all but they were well kept and the location was absolutely amazing. I would totally live there! Then I got back from that trip and went out for a snack with some friends, we found a fun little restaurant with great food. Malaysian food is pretty delicious! But there are so many Chinese and Indian people here also that there are a lot of those types of food everywhere too and I think that each of the cooking styles and flavors have kind of influenced each other and combined a little bit. But anyways the food is great.

Tomorrow I’ve got another class trip, and I’ll probably do some wandering around and shopping and such, and then Friday morning I am going with 2 friends to an island near here to spend two days and one night there, and I’m really excited! I can’t remember the name of the island now…haha. It starts with L. I’ll have to get back to you on that one, oops! But anyways whatever it’s called, it looks like a lot of fun. Lots of fun things to do outdoors (hopefully it won’t rain!) and Malaysia has gorgeous mountains! Well, they call them mountains, but since I’m from Colorado to me they look more like hills, haha. Sooo we’re leaving early Friday morning to catch a ferry over to the island and we’ll come back to Penang Saturday night. Then I’ll spend Sunday here and we leave Sunday night for Vietnam!

So far I’m totally loving Malaysia. It’s gorgeous here. And it’s far less stressful than India although of course I had an awesome time in India too! Anyways well I’m hoping to write at least one more update while I’m here and hopefully I can get some photos posted here or Vietnam. Sorry I’ve been slacking on the photo updates! It’s hard to find internet in some of these countries.

Well it’s been a pretty exhausting day so I’m just relaxing on the ship tonight, I’ll probably watch a movie, do some reading, and head to bed. I hope you all are doing well!
Miss you all!
*peace*