Much To Tell...

Hello everyone, a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Apologies for the more-than-a-month-long delay in writing this post, but hopefully I can make up for it with lots of stories and pics...

Just after my last post (on the 1st of December) my girlfriend, Jo, arrived in Batam to start her two-and-a-half month visit. I started renting a motorbike, and I took her to see a lot of the places I have written about in previous posts. We went to nice restaurants, food courts, to visit some monkeys (one of which had a little monkey-baby clinging to it's belly);

And also went to the nicest beach;

And stopped at some of the picturesque bridges on the way;

We also made several trips to the gym, which has a nice pool, and on one of these trips we had a very funny experience. We were on our way to the gym on the motorbike, when we passed a policeman on another bike. I had previously been warned about the road police here - how they are very corrupt and just want to take extortionate bribes from the people they stop - and was told to try my best to avoid them.

The policeman saw me, and obviously thought a white man was a good opportunity for a bribe, so he pulled alongside me. Initiate Plan A; Ignoring. I pretended not to notice him and continued driving. He kept alongside me and started shouting "Hello", so onto Plan B; Misunderstanding.

I waved at him, said "Hello" and carried on driving. This technique worked well until we got to some traffic lights, where he maneuvered his bike in front of ours and made us pull into the police post. Joanna and I agreed to speak only Polish, and thats where it started to get really funny. The only thing we said to him in English was "No Eenglis, Polis" and then thoroughly confused him with further Polish. When he (labouriously) told us that we didn't stop when he said "Hello", we said "Po co? Dlatego jestesmy bialy, kazdy ludzie mowi 'Hello'. Bialy. Hello. Bialy. Hello.".

He was obviously very confused by this, and radioed for help, and more officers arrived - none of them could actually help with Polish translation, but all of them seemed amused by our presence, and were giving us hi-fives and laughing. Then the officer who pulled us over tried to move on to what he wanted, and showed us a list of offences (all in Indonesian) with their associated "fines" (to the police here, 'fine' means 'bribe') and tried to get us to pay 1 million rupiah (about 400PLN or 100GBP) without even telling us what we had done wrong. "Nie mamy pieniadze, jedziemy pływac!" - with much pocket-patting and shaking of heads. Nonplussed, he just pointed to a half-million fine. Repeat, and down to 250 000, and then, strangely, when we said we didn't have that, back to a million.

In the end he seemed to realise we wouldn't pay him, and settled for me writing a note (in Polish) on the back of a newspaper, saying I would pay him "pozniej" and sent us on our way.

The next most interesting thing which happened that week was finding a gecko sleeping in our fridge;

Also, Jo came to school with me on a couple of days to watch my classes, and true to form my students came up with some good quotes. In a class about similies and metaphors, I gave my teenage students a free reign to create their own similies, and one girl came out with "Sweating like a sinner in church" - genius. Then in the open questions section of my conversation class, a student asked "What does 'transvestite' mean?".

Just before Christmas, Michelle left to go with her baby back to America, and before she did we all went out for a meal at a Korean restaurant. Korean food is quite strange and, other than beef and rice, I wasn't really sure what I was eating (although I'm pretty sure the meat was actually beef). Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of this, for reasons which will be outlined later.

I also organised a really fun class for my students. It was about accents, and I got Jo and Michelle to help me, giving lots of examples of the different accents in Britain, the US and Australia. The students enjoyed it and it went down well.

My Christmas was a simple affair, Jo and I went to a beach. We decided to try a new beach and it was a strange one, popular with Indonesians because of the loud music, but with not much sand and a lot of rubbish. Then we headed to a very nice restaurant, and later went to visit Nat and his wife, Marine.

Just after Christmas we went to visit a Buddhist temple. It was very nice and serene, with statues, lots of incense and turtles and fish to look at;

After that our holiday started, and first we went to spend 3 days on the nearby island of Bintan, to a resort on Trikora beach. Although the resort itself was nice, with wooden beach huts, it seemed to be in the wrong location and at the wrong time of year, the weather was overcast and rainy, and the beach was covered in seaweed. 

The tides also seemed to have a big effect on the place; at high tide the beach was completely covered and at low tide the sea was over a kilometer away. Also, due to bad weather we were not able to do snorkeling or kayaking and the place ended up being quite boring, except for one thing, A cat at the resort had just produced a litter of 4 kittens, so we spent most of our time playing with them;

And helping the mother take care of them;

Until they were so exhausted they fell asleep in the most random places;

Very occasionally broken up by us going to the beach when the tides and weather allowed;

Then on our last morning at the Bintan Resort, the weather decided to show us how nice it could be if we were leaving... 

So then we boarded a ferry headed for Malaysia, in glorious sunshine. (Cue douchey boat photos);

And we arrived in Malaysia, specifically Johor Baru, with a "Well, it's got to be better than Indonesia" kind of mentality. Johor Baru itself is just to the north of Singapore, very industrial and we decided to only spend one night there, sampling the good food and exploring for interesting things...

We found this intriguing concept - a clinic and surgery (which was open all night) offering a strange list of 'treatments'. Midnight circumcision anyone???

And also this strangely named 'design and contracts' firm...

So on New Year's Eve, after spending only one night in Johor Baru, we caught a bus to the town of Melaka (or Malaka, or Malacca - I'm not really sure how it should be spelt). That turned out to be a good decision. Melaka is a great town with hundreds of years of history and culture (it reminded me a little of Krakow, but hotter). We checked into a guesthouse called Ringo's Foyer, where the owner/manager, a guy called Howard, who is cool and friendly, if sometimes forgetful, showed us around and introduced us to the other guests (sometimes more than once). He showed us a ghost-related performance art show that was on for the New Year.

After watching that for a little while Jo and I combined with some other guests - a German guy, an Indian guy and a Dutch girl - and got our party crew together and hit the streets of Melaka;

It was good, we had lots of fun and it was a unique new year, the town was decorated in an oriental style; 

and we went around experiencing the culture and tasting (or sometimes only looking at) lots of food;

This is one I only looked at, and I think it's some sort of animal's manhood - I didn't ask questions.

That's about all I can remember of my New Years Eve, well, that and a few drinks.

So the new year came, and after recovering from our substantial hangovers, Jo and I still had 2 days to explore the town of Melaka. We visited a replica of a Sultan's palace, it was an impressive building built entirely out of wood, without a single nail, standing above the ground on stilts;

Some of the sights in Melaka are a bit less traditional, like the Orangutan house;

which is an artist's studio, selling prints and t-shirts.

And, strangely, a statue to the 'Father of Malaysian Bodybuilders';

The town is very beautiful, with a mixture of buildings in oriental, Portuguese, British and Dutch style, reflecting the town's heritage;

And lots of maritime references showing Melaka's importance to historical trade, as well as modern-day shipping (40% of the world's cargo passes by this town).

We were lucky enough to have great weather, and watched the sunset by the sea front;

On our last day we walked along the river, where all the buildings have been painted with brightly coloured murals;

And then visited a Dutch-influenced wooden shoe shop, where we each bought a custom-made pair of wooden sandals;

Then, sadly, it was time for us to leave, so we said goodbye to Howard at Ringo's Foyer (I highly reccomend staying there if you ever visit) and Melaka, and caught a bus to Johor Baru before catching the ferry back to Batam.

So we arrived in Batam, and soon after I got back I needed to put credit on my phone, so I went to the shop, put credit on, came back and realised my phone wasn't in my pocket anymore. Of course, this being Indonesia, when I tried to call it it's new owner didn't answer and then turned off the phone. Great. With the phone I lost a lot of picture and other stuff, and that's why this post isn't as picture filled as it could be.

So now I've been back at work, which has been pretty unremarkable, but am getting very excited about Chinese New Year on Monday and a trip to Thailand on Thursday. Hopefully my next post won't take so long.