JJ Lim!

Jing Jie:

Before the trip everyone was very excited although we know that a lot of time will be wasted on the bus ride from place to place itself. But that only gave us time to rest and interact more with our class mates.

On the first day, it was a lot of fun because we only visit the Mini Malaysia which had no one except us. The place would look so empty if not for us being there. After that we went to the Historical and Ethnography Museum. The facts given by the tour guide was quite interesting. She showed us a set of utensils in the museum that was used by the Peranakans, used only when there are big events, which was valued at a very high price and our form teacher claimed his family also have a set. We had dinner at a local restaurant and I think that our class finished the food quite fast because we were one of the first to arrive at the hotel that night. I think quite a few levels of the hotel was booked by our school. We weren’t allowed to go out of the room after 11pm and being very good students, Zenn, Benjamin and I didn’t leave the room at all! We just let people come that’s all…

The next day we went to a school visit but I think that it was quite useless given the fact that this school isn’t a secondary school and we didn’t go to their classrooms or have any interaction with the students there. After that we went to see a few monuments, the parliament house, the Istana and the Putra bridge.

The best part of that day should be the shopping! The mall that we went to was very big and had a lot of shops. Everything that we needed could be found there. I wanted to buy a pair of shoes there but in the end I can’t decide on which one to buy so didn’t buy my shoes there. Benjamin bought a wallet at BodyGlove though. After that we went back to the hotel to rest. One of the first again because Mr Teoh thought there isn’t really much to shop here. We went back at 7.15pm when the shopping was suppose to end at 9pm. But I agree with him that there isn’t really a lot of things to do at the mall, would rather go back and rest.

I think that the most interesting part of our journey to Malaysia would be the limestone cave in Ipoh. It was the first time I entered such a cave and it was really interesting to see those funny shaped stones carved by nature. The most special part of the journey would be the wind tunnel. We are inside a cave but where does all this wind come from? Until today I cannot understand why but I think it doesn’t really matters. What matters will be whether we had a fun time inside the cave and whether the bats drop anything on you. We went to Cameron Highlands next. And me being who I was went to sleep the moment I went up the bus because I tend to feel not quite well every time I go uphill on buses. About a few miles from the hotel we visited the BOH Tea Plantation, Honey Bee Farm and Strawberry Park in which all the strawberries have been picked by the previous classes.

We checked into the Equitorial Hotel on the peak of Cameron Highlands. As the hotel is 1680m above sea level it is very cooling up there in the evening and at dawn. Dinner was held at a ballroom in the hotel. This hotel had apartments other then the main building which was too small to hold all of us. So boys were staying at the apartments and girls in the main hotel building. Our apartment was one of the furthest from the hotel, it was so far that we used a van provided by the hotel to bring our belongings there.

On the fourth and last day we had breakfast in the hotel’s ballroom and then all the classes down Cameron Highlands. Zenn found out that you can breathe out “smoke” or cause the air to condense because of the coldness. The trip downhill was even more uncomfortable then the one uphill. Its really called a winding road twisting left and right every few metres. Xiao Xuan and Daphne had a very fun ride for a part of the journey because it seemed like a roller coaster ride but then they got bored…We shopped at this mall at Putrajaya for about an hour or so, where I found my shoes and then we headed back to Singapore!

On the whole I think that the trip was very enjoyable and I had a lot of fun with my classmates while learning a lot about Malaysia. I also learnt that a female cow is called a dam! That was according to our tour guide.