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.

Catch Up

Hello everyone. I have to apologise for my lack of recent updates. This is mainly due to a combination of being busy and lazy. So, to bring you all up to speed, here is a synopsis of my last month.

Perhaps the most interesting food I have eaten was stingray -

It was absolutely delicious, like a combination of really good fish and chicken, and I would definately recommend you to try it.

Also, at a food court I found this amusingly-named restaurant;

(If you dont get the joke, 999 is the same as 911 or 112 i.e. the number to call for the emergency services)

Also, a few events have happend since I last posted, the first of which was Halloween. We had a mini party at the school for all the kids, I dressed as a zombie pirate, but the best costume was probably that we wrapped one of the teachers, Yanu, in toilet paper so that he could be a mummy.

It was fun watching him slowly unravel as time went by. The kids mostly came in fancy dress too, and we did face painting, pumpkin carving, bobbing for apples and scared the life out of the kids with ghost stories.

After all that activity, I needed a little break, so one weekend I went down to the gym for a workout and a swim. After swimming I decided to dry off in the sun for a little while. Unfortunately I fell asleep, and even more unfortunately I had a beard at the time, so when I shaved I had these very interesting tan lines;

Also, I have been given a morning class three days a week with an individual student. He's 18 years old and really hard work because he always says he understands, even when he obviously doesn't, and seems to hate writing and speaking. Anyway, I was explaining to him what 'describe' means, and when I was reasonably sure he actually understood, I asked him to describe me. He said "You are tall." I encouraged him to say more. "You have white skin." I wanted him to be giving good descriptions with clothes etc. so I pushed him some more; "You are fat."

Thanks for that, now do lots of writing and grammar work.

Nat had a birthday, for which we went bowling again and I developed some more unusual techniques. After that we went to a very good Indo-Chinese restaurant and ate delicious food, including chilli frog's legs. After the restaurant Nat, Steve and I went to Steve's house and made a bonfire, drank beer and had manly conversations. At 1 a.m. I headed home, but the taxi driver dropped me in the wrong place, and I had to walk through Kampung Bule to go home.

On my way through, there was the usual array of people trying to get me to go into their bars, but I just said, "I haven't got any money." and most of them left me alone, but one group insisted I come inside anyway. When I went inside I saw the ladyboy I had previously briefly met (photo in an earlier post), and she proceeded to give me bacardi and cokes, so I stayed and had a little chat and made friends before winding my way home.

Last Friday I again went to Singapore, for the penultimate passport stamp I need, and this time I had a lot of time to spend there while my papers were being processed in the embassy. I was in the Orchard Avenue area of town, where there are more shopping malls than one would think is strictly necessary for even the largest city. I walked around a lot, and took in the sights such as the streets lined with elephants;

(I think it was raising awareness for some sort of elephant charity), and the tall buildings;

and I ate some really good food, including duck noodles, sushi and McDonalds.

Whilst I was looking at my map, I saw the Polish embassy wasn't too far away, so, with opportunities to speak Polish very rare on this side of the world, I walked to the building it was in and went up to the right floor. Unfortunately it was closed, so I took this photo and left.

I then stumbled upon a huge bookstore, and went a little crazy, buying some new books by my favorite authors, a book about the universe and (remarkably for Asia) a book on Polish grammar!

The rest of the day was spent amusing myself with Singaporean strangeness, such as these things (read the name of the food aloud);

Then, Saturday was two events. We had a parent's information day at school, where were were all required to work to meet the parents, and it was also Michelle's birthday. The parent's day was a bit of a failure, as only 3 parents showed up (apparently our administration forgot to tell the parents about this), and we had nothing to do, so Nat taught me how to play cribbage and we also amused ourselves by making birthday-ish things to stick on Michelle;

Then in the evening we went out to a really nice restaurant by a pool which made delicious western food, including burritos and roast dinners and I ate a lovely Greek salad, before going out for a few drinks to a bar which is owned by the girlfriend of an English guy who used to work in the school.

Then, on Sunday, I started renting Tommy's motorbike because it works out a lot cheaper than taking taxis, and makes me feel more Indonesian. If you are worrying (yes, you Mum) I will drive carefully and always wear a helmet.

Now, I am getting more excited by the day, because, on the first of December, my girlfriend, Jo, will be arriving in Batam to stay with me. I really can't wait and I'm counting down the days (9 left!).

Anyway everyone, that's all I've got to say for now. I'll try not to wait so long until my next update. Thanks for reading.

Batam Birthday

So, apologies for not posting for a while, but last Monday was my birthday. I just turned 25, and I've had an interesting fortnight to tell you about.

The Saturday night after my last post I went over to Nat's house, because he was having a grill. There was a lot of good food and I met Nat's brother, Sirus, and his friend Ivan. We had a fun debate about where people and language come from, and as Ivan was from Hungary I had the chance to say the little Hungarian I know (all thanks to my former housemate, Wojtek). It was really fun and reminded me of the good times in Krakow.

After a nice weekend it was back to work, and I finished a project I have been working on. It's a "Murder Mystery", where students click through slides explaining a murder, and they must make the right choices, ask the right questions and understand the answers to find the true murderer. It took a long time to make, but it paid off because various teachers have used it with different classes and it has repeatedly gone down well, and now it has been sent to the head office to be used in other EF schools. I'm proud of myself.
I had a relaxing week, as a lot of my classes were coming to the end of their courses, and so were doing exams or playing games. With my conversation class I did a lesson full of introductory and team building exercises, which was really fun.

Friday came, and I didn't have any classes, so I decided to give myself an early birthday treat, and I went for my first professional massage.

It was a strange experience, one I haven't had before, and I was rather confused when asked what type of massage I wanted. I opted for a 'traditional' and was led to a room containing a matress, a pillow, a towel and a pair of shorts and left alone to 'get ready'. Not really sure what to do, I dressed myself in the shorts and waited. A lady came in and told me to lie face down, put the towel over me and proceeded to give me a massage, starting with my feet. It felt a little strange, but was very relaxing. There was one arkward moment when the girl accidentally touched my gentleman's area, but she profusely apologised and I was relieved not to be propositioned for anything untoward. After an hour and a half I was feeling very relaxed, and went back to school to do some preparation for classes.

That night we went out to another food court, ate sate and drank beer. Tommy sang on karaoke, and as I was merry from the beer I started dancing on stage, to cheers and applause from the entertained Indonesians. We returned home, and started to drink some Indonesian rice liquor. It's toxic stuff, and I ended the night vomiting in the bathroom, ruining all the relaxation I had from my massage.


On Saturday I woke up with a killer hangover, but I arranged with Nat to go to the gym, so off I went. After a good workout I had sweated away most of the toxins in my system, and then proceeded to enjoy the swimming pool and sauna. The gym was really nice and when I left it I felt a lot better.

That evening, for my birthday treat, Nat, Steve, Michelle, Tanti and I went bowling at a nearby shopping mall. Indonesian malls are quite strange, with lots of noise and robotic dogs and dragons which children (or Michelle) can ride around on.

We played 3 games of bowling and it was really fun, even though I'm very bad at it. By the last game we had virtually given up bowling normally and were just having fun. A crowd gathered to watch our crazy techniques, including baby bowling (which I was very good at), kicking the ball down the alley (and I still hit 8 pins), and the highlight where Michelle bowled backwards and got a strike! We concluded that the normal bowling technique is the worst one, and went for pizza before going home.

Sunday came, and as it was a very hot day a load of us decided to go to the beach. There was a sand (and rock) covered football pitch there and we played a game, barefoot, against some locals. It was very fun but also very hot, and when we finished I was really looking forward to swimming in the sea.

This beach was quite rocky, and the water was shallow so I waded out to try and find somewhere that the water was deep enough to swim properly. I put my foot down and had a painful surprise - I was bitten by a crab! I looked down and it was still hanging onto my foot, and when I shook it off I saw my blood mixing with the seawater in a very Jaws-esque way. I went back to the shore, patched myself up, and then the tide went out, so I decided to get some revenge and go crab hunting. I'm apparently not very good at this, and all I caught was a few sea-snails and a starfish.

We then went and played football again, when I made my foot bleed more and and was embarrassingly tackled by a 5-year-old, but scored a nice goal to make up for it. Then we went home to rest before work (and my birthday) on Monday.

I had a nice day at work on my birthday, everyone was shaking my hand and wishing me all the best, and after teaching my first lesson I came back to the staff room to find a chocolate cake on my desk.
 
One of my classes found out it was my birthday and sang to me for five minutes, and my final class was covered by another teacher so steve, Tanti, Tommy and I could go out for some drinks at a food court.
At the food court, I wanted to eat something 'interesting' and so had baby squid cooked in their own ink;

Later on, after a few beers I was talked into singing on the big stage for karaoke. After a difficult decision about what I would sing (they didn't have much in the way of good English songs) I ended up singing "Wavin' Flag" by K'Naan, and even though I'm not a great singer, it went pretty well, and I did some silly dance moves to accompany my singing, which were very well recieved by the crowd.

So that was my birthday over and done with, and it was back to work, where I have taken on a new class who are all very eager and fun to teach.

The hilight of the week came on Thursday, with my conversation class. At the end of the lesson when I asked "Any questions?", one of the seemingly shy girls said she didn't understand a word she'd read. When  I asked her what it was she gave a very surprising answer; "Sado-masochism", and took my shocked silence as misunderstanding, and wrote it on the board to clarify. Needless to say I was very careful in my answer.

Thursday was also Tommy's last day at work, so we went out for drinks at a different food court, ate barbequed chicken wings and sunflower seeds. After playing a drinking game, we started trying to put sunflower seeds in each other's beer, culminating when Tommy went to the toilet and returned to find more seeds in his glass than beer.

Then this weekend, I had to go back to Singapore for a couple of hours to renew my visa (Indonesian paperwork is verrrry slow), just about long enough to eat a longed-for Burger King and catch the ferry back. And I have moved house, as the school's rent lease ended and they found a house closer to the school. It very nice and spacious and much closer to shops, food and work than the old one was.

Also this weekend I played basketball, went to a food court and explored a few bars.

And now it's Monday, time for another school week to start.

Lucky to Be Here

It's been a little while since I posted. After I went to Singapore I have been very busy, having a full teaching schedule every day and keeping myself occupied at the weekend.

My classes have been fun, I made a game called "Dinner Party" - where students randomly select a characteur to act as, there is one person with a magic frog, one who loves ice cream, and another who sneezes whenever they hear the word "frog" and laughs when they hear "ice cream", as well as a lot of other crazy people. It was really fun to do. I was laughing, and my students loved it. It went so well I used it in 3 classes and gave it to other teachers to use.

Also, for the first time ever, I sent a student out of the class. I was teaching an all-girl group, where most of the girls are very sweet, but a few are absolute terrors. I introduced my form of classroom discipline - a smiley face on one side of the board and a sad face on the other, the students names go on the board to show if they are behaving well or badly, if a student on the bad side misbehaves, they are out of the class. When I put one girl's name on the board she kept repeating "I don't care" and disrupting the class further, so she was out.

For a treat on Friday another teacher, Michelle, took me to a place called the Candy Bar, where they serve English food. I ate a steak and Guiness pie, and it was delicious, it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. I got talking to the owner of the bar, an English guy called AJ, and he invited us to the bar's one year birthday party on Saturday.

Later that day I was teaching my regular class of upper-intermediate students, and they had a task to write about their problems when learning English and meeting native speakers. One student wrote that her biggest problem is that it's difficult to lip-read people if she doesn't know them. Yes, lip-read. It turns out she is almost deaf and has to watch people's mouths in order to understand what they are saying. I was amazed, I have taught her about 10 times, and I didn't realise until she told me. Yet more, when I checked her writing, it was virtually perfect, with no grammatical errors at all!

On Saturday afternoon, Steve, a returning teacher - Nat, and I played basketball. It was fun, even though I'm not used to the sport, and in Indonesian heat it was really good exercise. Then in the evening I went to the Candy Bar's birthday party with Phil, Michelle's boyfriend, where there was free food and drinks. I got quite inebriated, and may perhaps have made a fool of myself by dancing on a pole. Anyway, the most remarkable part of the evening was that I actually got a picture with a ladyboy!

His/her name was Jasmine, and (s)he was quite a convincing woman, with just a few give aways such as (s)he was taller than me, which doesn't happen with Indonesian girls, and had big hands despite the effeminate handshake.

On Sunday I woke up with only a mild hangover, and my students picked me up to go and play football, I had fun, but again we lost, and again I only scored one goal. After the game they took me to a food court to try some pork soup, which was very tasty. However, when we went back to the car, we saw that while we had been eating someone had smashed the passenger window and taken one of the student's bags. It was a really unlucky thing to happen to such nice guys. So we cleared up the broken glass and went home, feeling a bit dejected.

Monday came, and I met the head of EF Indonesia - Alan, the guy I did my interview with over 4 months ago. He's a Scottish ex-serviceman who has been in Indonesia for 20 years, and gave me a few good tips on culture and teaching techniques.

After work on Tuesday we (Alan, Steve, Tanti, Tommy and I) went to a place called Golden Land - another food court with a karaoke stage - to eat sate and drink beer. A few drinks later we were feeling merry when a girl came over and said to me "Hey, you handsome." (which as far as I can tell over here means "Hey, you are white.", but anyway). She asked me if I wanted to sing on karaoke with her, at first I said no, but everyone egged me on, and seeing as I have made a fool of myself singing before, I agreed to be led up to the stage...

She then proceeded to lead me straight past the stage, into the car park behind, where there was a car waiting with a pretty girl in the driver's seat. The girl who led me away introduced me to the girl behind the wheel and then opened the back door and told me to get into the car. I looked in the car and there was a guy sat in the back seat. I obviously refused, and they said they were going to take me to a bar to sing karaoke. At that point Tommy, who had noticed them lead me away, came running and started shouting at them in Indonesian. The car drove away, and we went back to our table, confused and angry. We explained what had happened and then, amazingly, the girl who had originally led me away came and sat at the table. Alan told her in no uncertain terms to go away, but she just sat there staring at him with an insolent look on her face. The atmosphere started to get unpleasant, and we left soon afterwards, with the girl following us to the car, shouting insults in Indonesian.

After that my week has been pretty uneventful. I've spent most of my free time working on a project for a class which will write about in my next post.

Eager Waitresses and Singapore (Shortly)

After work on Friday Steve, Tanti, Tommy and I decided to go out to a local food court for a few drinks. It was definately an experience. The place is called Windsor Food Court, an open-plan space with tables in the middle, restaurants around the outside and, curiously, a giant karaoke stage in the middle.

From the moment we walked in it seemed as though every waitress wanted to serve the bules, and we were immediately surrounded by about 20 of them, all trying to persuade us to drink their beer or buy their food. I am not great at making decisions at the best of times, and was instantly lost. Luckily the others ordered the beer and the surplus waitresses left us, so I had chance to drink Bintang (the local lager) and peruse a menu. I decided I wanted to try flower crab but, as the menu had no prices, I was advised to check the price before ordering. Tommy came with me to translate. I chose my crab from this tank;

and we negotiated a price, then they asked me what I wanted with it, I chose some broccoli and then Tommy (whose English isn't the greatest, but not for lack of effort or enthusiasm) said to me "Do you like seafood?", to which I answered; yes, I do.

When the food arrived there was more than I expected, at a higher price. It seemed what Tommy wanted to ask me was "Would you like extra seafood with that?". So this is what I ended up with;

but it wasn't a problem, I ate it all anyway, and it was delicious and still relatively cheap.

After food we started to play some drinking games, with waitresses watching interestedly. One of the waitresses asked me if I was married, I said, "No, I'm not", shortly afterwards another waitress asked if I was single, and before I had a chance to reply, the first waitress said, "Yes, he is.". It seems there are no shades of grey here. We continued to play drinking games and listen to the strange choices on karaoke (the most popular song was a dance version of 'Happy Birthday to You').

As we were heading home, I was drunkenly telling Tommy he was a good guy, to which he answered "I am not a guy." I had about a minute of confusion, where I was wondering about ladyboys, until I realised he was confusing the difference between 'guy' and 'gay'.

I didn't do much for the rest of the weekend, just a trip to the supermarket and some minor chores. This was the most intriguing thing I saw in the supermarket;

Now, I've heard of whitening toothpaste, but whitening body wash???

On Monday it was back to work for a busy week. I am now taking more classes each week, and really do have a full schedule. Monday was good though, my regular classes are easier to manage now I know all the kids names and habits.

Today is Tuesday, and it's already been a long day. I have now been in Batam for 30 days, and my original entry visa was about to run out. Indonesian beauracracy moves even slower than Polish, so my final work visa has not yet been confirmed, but the easiest way to fix this problem is simply to leave the country and come back, getting a new entry visa. So I have woken up at 5am this morning, taken the ferry across to Singapore, hung around there for the return ferry, and returned to Batam. All I did there was buy a couple of books and some breakfast sushi, and take this photo from the returning ferry;

So now I am pretty tired and still have 3 classes to teach... I wonder if I can get Red Bull in Batam?