MALAYSIA!!

Hello everyone..
I am still in the process of writing my blog about India. I need a lot of time to reflect on everything, but haven’t had that time. We arrived in Malaysia just 3 days after leaving India. Now, I am on my way to Vietnam.
Malaysia was beautiful. I’m not sure what kind of expectation I had for it, but it was exceeded. We arrived in Penang at about 8 am on Monday, and I had an SAS trip at 9 am. The dock in Penang is under construction or something like that, so we had to anchor the ship out in the middle of the ocean and take our lifeboats as tenders to the dock. My trip was the Penang Island Orientation. We got on huge air-conditioned buses and drove around the island, stopping at a few different spots. We went to the Penang Butterfly Garden, Snake Temple, a Buddhist Temple, and a few other spots. It was nice getting to hit all the popular attractions in one day. That night I had signed up for the Welcome Reception, so we left the tour a little early to get the tender in time for that. So these tenders leave the ship and the dock about every half hour or so, but the line for them is ridiculous. I really hope we never have to do it again because it was so horrible and HOT. Malaysia is the hottest place we have visited yet. So Eric, Terron, Jaime, and I went to the Welcome Reception, which was nothing but sitting in an auditorium and watching a shadow puppet performance. Every single one of us fell asleep.
Okay, so Tuesday Jordi, Mary, and I went to this huge mall in Penang that is like 7 levels and has all these different hallways and stuff. We went to an Internet café in the mall, but it was about 5am at home, so no one was online L. As we were walking around the mall, Jordi saw a girl wearing these pants that she has been searching for since Mauritius, so she asked her where she got them. The girl said that she had just gotten them from the market in Kuala Lumpur (KL). Well, there was no question; we had to go to Kuala Lumpur in search of these Magic Pants. We stopped off at the bus station and looked at times, then went back to the ship to pack our bags. The bus didn’t leave until 10 pm, so we got some dinner and some snacks from 7-11, and then headed to the bus station around 930. The bus ride to KL took about 5 hours, so we arrived around 330am.
We weren’t even sure if we were actually in KL because we thought we should be getting there around 2:30am so we got off anyway hoping we weren’t in Singapore. So, praying that we were in KL we asked a taxi driver to drive us to a hotel so we could get a few hours of sleep before the long day of shopping ahead of us. We woke up around 11 and walked to the Twin Towers of Malaysia (some of you may know them from the movie Entrapment). We walked into the towers and saw Eric, Terron, Darren, and Lydia; which was so random because, well, we were in KL, and didn’t expect to see any SAS’ers let alone our friends. They said that they had bus tickets for 1 am, but we weren’t sure what time we were leaving yet. So after walking around the towers we got a taxi to a mall, but it wasn’t what we were looking for, so we got another taxi to Central Market. Basically, Central Market is Canal Street in NYC times 1,000. We walked around the market all day buying tons of stuff (I got lots of gifts for people). We were at this stand at the very end of the market, the last shop because Jordi was bargaining for a purse, and I looked across the market at the shop and saw something that resembled Magic Pants. I ran across, and asked the lady and she got really excited that I knew what magic pants were, so she got all the colors together for us. Jordi came running over super excited, and because of this we couldn’t bargain with her haha. So Jordi got 3 pairs of these magic pants, and I got 2 so our mission was accomplished. By the time we were done shopping it was about 730 pm. We stopped at Pizza Hut to get some dinner before heading to the bus station. We saw these really cool buses that had super reclining seats slash a bed so we paid a few extra ringgits to get that bus. The company told us that the bus left at 10 pm, but it didn’t end up leaving until almost 12. This was the most amazing bus ever! The seats were so comfortable, and each seat had it’s own personal entertainment system with movies and music to choose from. We all fell asleep, and when we woke up we were back in Penang. It should have been 4 am right? Nope, it was 6 am. We got a taxi back to the pier, and got in the tender boat, and the boys were already there! They were so surprised seeing us because I guess they thought we would have gotten there about 5 hours earlier.
I got a few hours of sleep before I had to wake up for my orphanage visit that day. We went to St. Joseph’s orphanage in Penang. There are 52 children here between the ages of 5 and 18. Some of the children were still at school, but we had the opportunity to play or talk with the kids that were there. I made friends with a 17-year-old Malay girl named Avita. She talked to me about her family, school, and her hobbies; I told her about myself. We were there for a few hours, and when it was time to leave Avita and I exchanged e-mail addresses, and I took a picture with her that I promised to send to her. Even though I have done other service visits with SAS this one was one of the hardest to leave. I was crying the whole way back to the ship, as were a few of the other students. I got back to the ship at about 530 pm, and decided I was not going to get off again because on ship time was 9, and I knew the line for the tenders was going to be ridiculous. Jordi, Mary, and I watched a movie until 930 when we called our friends to find out who got dock time. Now, I am on my way to Vietnam. We are having a Passover Sedar on the ship tonight, and Easter is tomorrow. Archbishop Tutu is having a sunrise Easter service, but I am not waking up at 6 am. Happy Easter and Happy Passover everyone! Keep sending me e-mails, I love getting them. Happy Birthday Tal if I don’t get to talk to you before then!!
P.S. Check out Jordi’s blog- she posted pictures.