The countdown for home has started! I leave in about 2 weeks and have one week left of work. I've started to say goodbye to my students and my 6th graders will graduate next week. I don't think I am actually ready to leave and I'm going to miss it here a lot, I love my students and wish I could have a little bit more time to hang out with them but unfortunately I didn't renew my contract so Chicago, I hope you're ready for me!
Any way, last month I finished up my winter camp (Harry Potter themed) and then got ready for vacation! I had about 2 weeks off and so I went to Malaysia and Hong Kong with two friends who are also teachers in Busan.
Malaysia was our first stop! Our first impressions of KL were that it was hot, humid, and very tropical. We had to take a taxi drive to the hotel which was located in KLCC, about an hour away from the airport. The drive there was a little scary (speeding, weaving around other cars, and the occasional text while driving) but we finally arrived at hour hotel in one piece. We were staying at new(ish) hotel called Expressionz (the 'z' is not a spelling error) and our room was much nicer than we had expected, although the number of mosquitoes in the hotel was unexpected and very unwelcome. Once we got settled into our room we ate a quick dinner (McDonalds since it was literally the only thing open for us to get) and then went to bed after a long day of traveling.
We spent about a week in Malaysia but we stayed mainly in Kuala Lumpur. After our first day of hanging out and exploring the city we realized that KL was nothing like we expected. The city was super nice which we had assumed it would be, but what we didn't expect was that there was TONS of shopping malls throughout the city. Everyday we would walk around and eventually end up in a mall to eat or cool off, and the funny thing was these malls were really nice. Like they all had super high end stores in each of them and we felt like we were back in North America. Most days in KL we explored the city and like i said, walked around the malls, but we did decide to get out of the city one of the days that we were there. We took a tour that went to the Genting Highlands, and Batu Caves. The Genting Highlands seemed intriguing to us, we bored the cable car that would take us up to the top of the mountain which was a gorgeous (yet nerve inducing) ride; the entire ride up had us humming the Jurassic Park theme song. As we got close to the top though, we realized that the Genting Highlands were a lot stranger than we had expected: at the top, close to the cable car stop there was a theme park that looked abandoned and incomplete, and the fog and cloudy sky made the whole situation feel super eerie and uncomfortable. When we finally got off of the cable car, we ended up in...another mall. Yep, another one. But this mall was special because inside there was a theme park, a Ripley's Believe It Or Not, a spa, a zombie escape room, and more random activities. Also connected to the mall, I kid you not, was a Premium Outlet Shopping mall. Still not sure why. Any way moving on, after the Genting Highlands we got back on the bus and drove to the Batu Caves.
The Batu Caves is a well known tourist attraction in Malaysia. There are 272 different colored stairs that lead to a cave with a Hindu shrine inside. In other words:
"The Batu Caves is a limestone hill comprising three major caves and a number of smaller ones. This 100-year-old temple features idols and statues erected inside the main caves and around it. Incorporated with interior limestone formations said to be around 400 million years old, the temple is considered an important religious landmark by Hindus. Cathedral Cave – the largest and most popular cavern in Batu Caves – houses several Hindu shrines beneath its 100-metre-high arched ceiling."
After avoiding the millions of pigeons hanging out around the entrance of the temples, we made it to the bottom of the stairs and rented sarongs and started our way up. From what I know, Batu Caves is known for its colorful stairs, the huge gold Kartikeya statue (the Hindu god of war), and the terrifying monkeys that run around on the stairs trying to steal things from tourists. And often succeed from what we saw. We finally made it to the top of the stairs without losing anything to the monkeys and were able to walk inside and visit The Hindu shrine. The Batu Caves were super gorgeous and interesting, it was unlike anything I've seen before and made it a cool place to visit.
After Malaysia, me and Celine headed to Hong Kong for the remainder of our vacation while our other friend, Jess, stayed in Malaysia and heading to one of its Islands. Our hostel in Hong Kong was located on the Kowloon side, and it had only taken us about 30 minutes before we were in love with it. After we dropped off our bags, we decided to walk around the area we were staying in and find something to eat for dinner. We stopped to get a bubble tea from a stand on the main road and holy crap let me tell you it was the best bubble tea I've had. After walking for a bit we grabbed a bite to eat and then headed back to our hostel for the night. The next day we started our morning with walking to Tim Ho Wan for an early lunch. Tim Ho Wan is a pretty famous dim sum restaurant and when we arrived there was already a line at the door. I've had dim sum once before but it did not compare to this. Even though I couldn't actually eat a lot of the stuff on the menu everything we ordered was delicious and I am now a huge dim sum fan. For the rest of the day we explored more of Hong Kong.
Our second and last day started off with a nice breakfast since this is something that we don't really get in Korea. If you know me then you know I love lavender flavored things and I ended up finding a cafe that had lavender lattes (!!) and dragged Celine there with me. After breakfast we walked around the city and had planned to go up to Victoria Peak but the line was CRAZY long so we didn't end up going. We did wait in the line to get famous egg tarts though. Also delicious. After walking around all day we went to the pier and took a sunset cruise on a red sail Chinese junk boats called Aqualuna. We drank wine and enjoyed the super pretty views while trying to ignore the fact that what looked like fog was actually smog. Apart from that though, the Hong Kong skyline at night was gorgeous and I wish we could have had more time to hang out on the boat. That night we walked around a cool area of Hong Kong and went to a bar where we tried a local beer flight and pretended like we understood the difference between them.
Our time in Hong Kong was way too short and the next day we were really reluctant to leave and go back to Busan. It is definitely on my list of places to return to and I wish that I had traveled there sooner.
So as I said before, I'm leaving Korea really soon. I'm going to be busy packing up my stuff and wrapping up my time in Busan in the next week and then I'll be spending a few days in Seoul before the move home. I'm crossing my fingers that next week won't be too sad and that the goodbyes aren't going to be too difficult. Until then I'll be packing and saying goodbye to my second home.
