Action-Packed Goodbyes

So, this will be my last post from Indonesia, and very soon I will be in Australia! I have had an action-packed last few weeks. I hosted my second couchsurfer, went to an adventure park that included paintball and go-karting, met some people from Poland as well as some from England.

I also went to a barbeque, a karaoke bar and a beach. The most interesting thing I ate was jellyfish. I played badminton, went to a buddhist temple and did go-karting (again) and bowling. Also, Steve got married to Tanti, so I went to my second wedding in Indonesia, and I also went clubbing.
Now I am about to leave Batam and head for Australia, and what with packing, saying goodbye to people and everything else, I don't really have time to post any more than the above list of things I've done and the below selection of pictures;

So, this is an ending (and a new beginning) I hope you have enjoyed reading my Indonesian blog. I will try my best to continue it when I'm in Australia.

Thanks

Aaron

Not Long Left Now...

Hello everyone, again it's been a long time since my last post. I reasoned that there is not much for me to do in Batam that I haven't already told you about, so I would wait a long time for the next post, but then looking back on the last 2 months, I have actually been quite busy... so here we go.

I made some new friends through CouchSurfing (for those of you who don't know it, it is a community of travellers organised around the basis of providing help, local knowledge and a sofa to sleep on for people who are travelling. Go to couchsurfing.org and check it out if you like to travel or meet interesting people) there is a small couchsurfing community in Batam, and I met up with them to try and make some local friends.

First we went to a movie, and then I offered to give them almost-free (in exchange for food) English lessons which were really relaxed and fun. Then I met one guy, Frank from Belgium, who was just about to marry an Indonesian girl, Laurina. They invited all of the couchsurfers to their wedding reception, so I have now been to a wedding in my 4th different country.

The wedding was interesting, this being Batam, the mixing pot of Indonesia's people, there were various groups, some completely tee-total and some sloshing down the alchohol almost in a Polish fashion (almost...). I'm sure you can guess which group I was in. There was also karaoke there and, with me being the only white guy present other than the groom, I was forced (although with a few drinks inside me it didn't take much forcing) to get up and sing - I just put on a raspy voice and sang Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and it went down ok.

In work I am still trying to make my classes as interesting as possible for my students, and one of the cool things I created was an instruction-based game drawn entirely on the whiteboard. The kids had to tell Simon the Pirate what to do to save the princess, get the treasure and return to his ship, and it sneakily included all of the vocabulary and grammar points I had to teach them;

Last month I hosted my first couchsurfer, a guy called John from California, he was really cool, had some great stories and we had a few drinks together and some good conversation. To be honest it was nice to meet someone new who wasn't from Batam, and showing someone around actually gave me a new perspective on the place (although the tour was nothing compared to my Krakow tour).

One weekend I went to my favourite restaurant (Goodies) when they were giving out free beer - yay! Steve came too, and afterwards he showed me a bar that brews it's own ales on site, including this, seaweed ale;

It was very light and refreshing and made a nice change from the fizzy lager that is usually the only thing available to drink here.

After that we went to a food court, one of the places where you can choose which fish, crab, or even frog you want to eat;

But I just played it safe and had noodles.

A couple of weeks ago I went with the couchsurfers to the "Asian Jazz Festival" which was interesting but I didn't really enjoy it so much. There were a lot of people there, but I think most of the went just because it was free and something to do. Nobody at all danced, and it was hard to spot a smile in the audience and it was a big contrast from music events I have been to in the west. When the band started doing self-indulgent solos I knew it was time to go.

Then, last weekend, I was invited on a boat trip by Rob, a guy who used to teach at EF but now runs his own school. Rob's girlfriend, Ayu, and her kids came and there was also a Australian, Phil, and a Scot, Jim, who both work in more industrial businesses on the island. We found a boat for rent and told the captain we wanted to go somewhere nice. After a lot of miscommunication, and a couple of stops to ask for directions, we told he to just go around until we saw a beach we liked. This is what we found;

It was a paradise island - I could really imagine Robison Crusoe living there, it had jungle, a perfect sandy beach with lots of crabs and even a lagoon. After we sat down for a while we even discovered it had monkeys. One of them came out and approached us, and as I had a couple of apples in my bag I started offering them to it. It was taking the apple pieces straight out of my hand and being really friendly, but then it smelled some fried rice (with chicken) and decided to go for that. I ran over clapping my hands to try and scare it away from our food, and it took a swipe at me, scratching my arm (no blood drawn so I don't need to worry abour rabies). So we let it have the food;

Then Rob, who had been prepared enough to bring vodka, sprite and even ice all in a cooler informed us that he had forgotten to bring glasses, so I improvised by attacking some water bottles with a key, and in the end it wasn't really a problem.

As the sun started to go down we left the island, stopping on the way at another island with a town, where we had a delicious seafood meal at a traditional restaurant, before heading back to Batam.

I also played football last week, and had what was probably the best game of my life. In one hour I scored 13 goals, and 6 assists, including 3 perfect (and a little lucky) volleys and 2 goals from in my own half. It was the day after England got knocked out of Euro2012, and my students were telling me Roy Hodgson should have picked me - and it really cheered me up after staying up late to see England lose on penalties.

In other news; Nat's wife, Marine, gave birth to a baby girl a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday I went to visit Luisa for the first time. It sounds like a cliche, but it really is amazing when you see a newborn to think that it will one day grow into a walking, talking, intelligent entity. So here's a pic of Luisa;

And congratulations to the new family.

Also, next week me and the couchsurfers are planning a trip to go paintballing and go-karting. I'm really looking forward to it because I've never been paintballing before and I love go-karting (hopefully I won't flip my kart this time).

And finally, I now have only 6 weeks left until I go to Australia - how exciting! I will try and write another post before I go, but I'm not promising anything. Kangaroos and Koalas (and Jo) here I come!!!

Thailand, More Monkeys and a Movie

Wow, it's literally been ages since I wrote a blog post, and I honestly have no excuses of of being busy or whatever - I have been remarkably inactive for a month and a half of the two months since I last wrote. Honestly, I have just been lazy. Sorry. Anyway, here's a summary of how I've spent my time.

At the end of January Jo and I went on holiday to Thailand, although we almost didn't, we were flying from Singapore to Phuket in the early morning, and so we had to take the ferry to Singapore the night before, usually that isn't a problem, because there are regular ferries, but when we turned up at the ferry port we were told that all the ferries for that night were fully booked. Then followed a lot of pleading from us, until the woman at the counter finally found us places on the last ferry of the evening - phew!

So, with not too many more problems, and after getting a long-awaited Burger King (it's strange what things you miss when you don't have access to them), we caught our flight and arrived in Phuket.

We were planning on meeting two of Jo's friends from Poland, Agata and Olga, and getting a ferry to a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, but we had almost the whole day until they arrived, so we decided to explore Phuket a little, and found a bus that would take us from the airport to the town centre. Unfortunately the bus took forever (a precise measurement of the time wasn't possible due to sleep deprivation), driving the scenic route, and then when we arrived in Phuket Town we realised there wasn't really much there, and decided to get a bus to go to a popular beach called Patong.

We arrived there and it was a modern tourist town, with big hotels, bars, some shopping malls and lots of people. The first thing we did was stop at another Burger King, where I ate a triple whopper;

Then we did a bit of shopping and headed down to the beach, which was very beautiful, but a little crowded;

And Jo even managed to capture a couple of crabs;

After some relaxing beach time, we went back into the streets, as we had to find transport across the island to go and meet the Polish girls. As we headed along the streets, we came across a man who had a small monkey-like thing, and for a small fee he would let you take photos with the cute primate;

Shortly after that we found a taxi that would take us to the pier we were meeting at, from where we would get a boat to the island where we were going to stay. We arrived there just after sunset, and waited for the girls to arrive. When they came we exchanged greetings and then found our boat - a small longboat, not dissimilar to the boats the Vikings might have used, except for the outboard motor strapped to the back of it, and set off for our destination - Koh Yao Noi.

So we all arrived at our destination in the early evening, sat by the sea with a few drinks and chatted until it was time to go to bed. The next morning we woke up and were able to see just how beautiful and unspoilt our location was;

We were renting very nice chalets only a stone's throw (literally) from this beach, and so we all spent the next few days sunbathing, swimming, exploring, getting massages and eating delicious Thai food - there was one place that made a green curry which was one of the nicest things I have ever tasted. It was so relaxing, with good company, great food and fantastic scenery. I'd recommend anyone to go there.

After a couple of days we hired a boat and a captain and went on a tour of the surrounding islands. Our first stop was called Hong Island, which is a naturally formed lagoon, where the only way to enter is like this; 

The lagoon is very impressive, with high cliff walls and crystal clear water (until you stir up the sand), the boat rental included snorkelling gear, so we started to search for things; 

I managed to find some starfish, which were a source of amusement for a while;



but we couldn't find any fish, so we moved on with the tour. Our captain took us to beautiful island after beautiful island, most of them looking a bit like this;

There was one with a particularly nice beach and scenery, where there was shallow water and lots of beautiful fish. It was great for snorkelling, but as we didn't have a waterproof camera, this is the best picture I can show you;

After that we went to the last few stops on the tour, through more amazing scenery;

We even saw, from a distance, this cave quite high up on one of those rocky outcrops, which seemed to be inhabited by what I like to imagine are modern-day pirates;

The penultimate stop was two small islands joined by a sandbar, whaich was very picturesque, but by this time we were all quite tired and sunburned, so we didn't linger long;

The last stop seemed like an unremarkable island, but as we approached we saw why we were stopping there;

So we spent some time feeding the monkeys, before heading back to our resort to rest.

The next day we rented a pickup truck and went off to explore Koh Yao Noi. We went to the shopping area, and bought a few clothes, and then went around to the relatively isolated North side of the island. As we drove along we saw this sign; 

And decided to go and find out what this beach was like. The road turned out out to be a narrow dirt track, which wound through plantations of rubber trees, up hills and down gorges, which really tested my off-road driving skills;

But eventually it was worth it because we arrived at this pristine and isolated beach;

So we spent couple of hours there, before heading back, with a stop for food on our way. Later that day, Jo and I decided to rent a canoe and paddle out to another island we could see in the distance. I guess it was about 2km away, and we were paddling across open sea, but we made it without any problems, explores the island and paddled back. It was fun, and really felt like an achievement. We got all the way back to our island, and then I jumped out of the canoe to push it onto the beach - and landed right on a rock, putting a big gash in my foot - oops!

So our last day I stayed near the resort resting my injured footand my sunburn while the girls went to explore a nearby beach, and after some good food it was time to leave Koh Yao Noi.

Unfortunately, I had to go back to work, so I said goodbye to the girls as they boarded a boat to a town called Krabi, and I caught a different one going back to Phuket, so I could catch my flight back to Singapore and then to Batam.

They continued their holiday for another week without me, going on elephant treks, petting tame tigers and seeing ladyboy shows - generally making me very jealous with their updates on their days.

After that Jo came back to Batam, she only had a couple of weeks left until she went to Australia, so we made the most of the time by eating in the best restaurants, going to the beach;

And, of course, visiting more monkeys;

Then, sadly, all too soon, Jo had to leave. Since then my life has been a lot more boring (this is one of the reasons I haven't updated sooner). I have just been working a lot and trying to save as much money as I can. My plan is to go to Australia after my contract finishes in September, I have already been granted a year-long visa, so perhaps this blog will change from "English Teacher In Indonesia" to "English Man in Australia".

Anyway, while I am still teaching, I'll talk about what I do. With one of my classes I decided to try and make their learning more interesting by getting them to make a movie. We did an adaptation of the Cinderella story, with the students improvising all their lines and everything filmed on their mobile phones. The final product is probably not worthy of an Oscar, but if you are interested you can watch it here;

EF Nitarella on YouTube

It was such a good project that I have decided to do a similar thing with another one of my classes, so hopefully there will be another video in my next post.

Finally, this blog has been nominated for an award (whoever nominated me, if you are reading this, thank you) the nomination is for "Best English Teacher Blog" and there is a week to vote, so if you would like me to win, please click here

 

Fascination Awards - Teacher Blog

 

Thanks for reading everyone!

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.