First Week of the big KL

So Malaysia has been pretty cool so far! This first picture is of my legs in Dubai airport. I was happy and having fun, not knowing how shit I would feel from jetlag just 12 hours later. A fun fact about Dubai airport, I was dying for the loo, so went to the loo. It was filled to the brim with piss. I went to another cubicle. The same thing! I tried flushing it down but unfortunately it just refilled it to the brim with piss. I was very afraid but had to go for it. The worst bit was feeling the heat rising from the warm piss. (Sorry Mum, I know you're probably going to read this!)

At Dubai airport we randomly got bumped up to Business class for no reason. I'd only ever been on easyjet before, so Emirates Economy class had already blown my mind, but business class was so good, I just had to take some photos of it. 

They actually made some effort with the food! Was pretty nice!

This seat was the best thing ever. It went back into a bed if you wanted and I had an ipad next to me to control it with! I ended up putting on the noise cancelling headphones, the eye mask and falling asleep listening to Norah Jones like a proper lad.

I genuinely didn't think I was tired at this point but I think the photo tells a different story!

As a guy who's afraid of heights, I wasn't best pleased to hear we were on the 22nd floor of our hotel (we are staying here for 2 weeks whilst the school put on induction activities). I do have to say though that the view was beautiful and was especially cool watching the lightning during one of the frequent thunder storms!

Cheeky sunset!

One of the cool things about my new school is they took us out on a few trips to see KL. We were randomly having dinner in the Chinatown part of town when this big procession of people came down the street. In amongst the mentalness, I saw my first Chinese dragon! Then loads of people let off firecrackers which was pretty cool, but I don't really know what the point of this was. Made my sweet and sour chicken all the sweeter though!

On one of the days Han and I went to see what all the fuss was about with the Petronas towers. There are lots of big buildings here (so many hotels and condos) so I thought it wouldn't be very impressive. It was amazingly impressive. We had to travel back really far to photograph it and even then couldn't get it all in! We're going to wait until people come to visit to go up them but I cannot describe how big they are. They are bigger than anything I've ever seen in Somerset!

This is just me chilling by a fountain. I'm looking towards the Petronas towers.

 Another cool trip we went on with the school involved going out of KL. I really loved all the naturey stuff out there and this river was beautiful. We were eating in a restaurant that backed onto the river and I managed to catch these pictures of the sunset. As Malaysia is near the equator, the sun rises and sets really quick so it's all over quite fst. Very beautiful though! The restaurant was lush and I got to smash a crap claw with a hammer and ate some delicious fish!

After the meal, we went a few miles away (in the dark) to a place where we were taken our on little boats on a smaller river than this. When we got close, we could see some fireflies! It was awesome and one landed on Hannah. They were so small, at first we thought they were conning us with fairy lights, but then saw them moving around. We are going again in the half term and I'll try and get hold of a better camera to take some photos.

This is me in a chinese restaurant. Still looking pretty jetlagged. I had no idea how much jetlag takes it out of you. I was absolutely blazed for 4 days when I got here and nearly fainted in a train station! I was being a bit of an idiot and had gone to the gym 2 days in a row and was drinking my usual tiny amount of water. I soon realised that water was actually pretty important in a climate such as this so have been drinking loads of water ever since!

As part of one of the school trips, they took us to a monkey place. This wasn't a conservation area, just a random road up a hill. The monkeys were pretty laid back and climbing on people if they thought they had food! They had a really chilled out manner as you can see from these photos.

This guy here had a nice little surprise for me!

He obviously has no shame.

Just me being one of the monkeys! I managed to touch a few (they were quite soft!)

One of the things we learned was that when you put down a deposit for renting a house, this is all done in cash. As such Han and I have taken out around £2000 which is about 11,000RM. This was my wad full of 100s and I felt pretty rich!

A post about the first two weeks would not be complete without mentioning some of the food. At first it was all a bit bewildering and the fact that some places leave the bones in the chickens takes some getting used to! After I got used to it though, I got a bit more adventurous with my choices.

On the left is mango and salmon skin sushi and on the right is salmon, lobster and mayo sushi. The other picture is of me drinking some mango juice - it was lovely!

This place was awesome because we ordered a plate of food then when it came the guy blowtorched it! It caught fire for a little bit then when it calmed down we were able to eat it! On it was a flame grilled fish, fish bites, prawns, mussels, rice and veg. All for around a tenner!

 This badboy was like £6, and was a salmon set. We got teriyaki salmon, 7 bits of sushi, miso soup, salad, pickles, some disgusting looking mushroom broth (which went solid by the end of the meal) and watermelon for pudding. Very nice!

 So yeah, we went to dominoes, but I was glad to see they had slightly different pizzas out here. I went for this monstrous sounding badboy! As we walked into dominoes, I saw a cockroach crawling around on the floor. As I was pretty hungry, I didn't mention this to Han until after the meal.

 This is a little side street in Bukit Bintang which is quite a built up area. A few streets back though and you get a wonderful road full of street food. Han took a photo of me which looks down the street. It was really cool and I'd love to come back and try some more of the food!

Oh I totally forgot to mention, the reason I'm here is the teaching, so we got to look around our new school and although it's a bit building sighty in places, the resources are fantastic. Don't wanna put the name of it or website link here in case any of my blogs are anything less than professional but if you know me, you know where it is, check it out because it's amazing, hopefully I'm going to really enjoy teaching there!

This week we have been sorting things out, so Han and I now have OLD phones with Malaysian numbers. These phones still have polyphonic ringtones so are pretty funny and every now and then a torch light comes on and we don't know how to turn it off. Still, it was useful for contacting estate agents.

Which brings me onto the lush news. I can now safely say that we are moving in to our new apartment on Tuesday. The condo is called Verve Suites we are in the Vox building (Block D) in a Duo Centrix apartment. As it's only 6 months old, it looks exactly like the sales photo. The apartment is amazing, although that isn't the selling point. On the top floor of each block is something cool everyone can use for example there's a nice rooftop garden and pond on the top of Block C. On top of Block D is a beach!!!! They have put a beach on top of the building and shoved in an infinity pool on the 34th floor. As if that wasn't enough, there's also a jacuzzi there too somewhere. There's 2 gyms, numerous other pools, communal indoor and outdoor cinemas and even a grocery shop! I never thought I'd be able to live like this, but for the same money as I paid for a tiny 2 bedroom flat in Brighton, I get a beach on my roof. Life is pretty amazing at the moment!

 And finally... this is a little bit of bunny origami that was left on our bed by the maid. I think it sums up our experience of Malaysia so far. Everyone has been so helpful, polite and kind and I really look forward to finding out more about it as I live here over the next 2 years.

 Thanks for reading this, hopefully it wasn't dull!

The Big Day

So on Saturday I got married and it was a wonderful day.

The night before, we had the rehearsal which went well and it was nice getting everyone together. After that, my mum and my two best men rushed off to book in at our hotel then off to dinner.

The hotel we stayed at was Brooks Guesthouse and it was lovely. We were running late for our dinner reservation as we got there, so asked if we could quickly drop our things off in our room before going out. The man at the front desk was very nice, but didn't pick up the hint so proceeded to show us EVERYTHING there was in the hotel - the laptop, the kitchen, the wifi, the sofa area. I could see mum going a bit mental with worry at missing the dinner and she asked him to skip that and show us our rooms. He then began again showing us all of the different things in the hotel!

After dropping our things off and getting away, mum, Shane, Ash and I went to the Cherry Duck, a lovely little Bistro harbourside in Bristol. We had a lovely meal with Rose and then started table dancing to a reggae song that came on. It was a bit weird but other people (well one other person) joined in and it was all good fun. Then on our way back to the hotel, we stopped off at a pub playing live music and danced around there for a while. We had a great time until Ash accidently kicked the singer's guitar and he stopped mid song to tell us to back away from his gear. A bit awkwardly we left soon after! Was a great night though!

Back at the hotel, I shared a room with Ash and Shane and was awoken by the birds (seagulls) at around 6am. We met the rest of the groom team for brunch at Spicer and Cole in Bristol and had a massive breakfast. It was lovely seeing everyone and amazing to think that in a few short hours, I'd be getting married!

After that, we headed over to the church to get ready. I had my second shower of the day (I had to make sure I smelled good) and the best men and I sipped champagne. After that was a lengthy wait in the church as I sat there in a weirdly calm but surreal state, as I was unable to really take in what was about to happen because I was so excited. Luckily Shane and Ash were on hand to keep me talking!

The Ceremony was beautiful, the readers were wonderful and the singer and violinist were amazing! I was so excited when I saw Hannah walking down the aisle! She had told me she expected to see me crying, but I was so happy and excited, I only manged a grin. Evidently we kept smiling at each other all through the ceremony, and I certainly felt the happiest that I've ever been.

After that we got confetti'd outside the church and had some formal photos taken outside our reception venue.

Hannah's friends all looking prettily in the same direction as all my friends try to copy Josh!

I've never been photographed so much and I have to say I do think that my new wife was looking absolutely stunning!

When we got to the tables, we found a rude surprise waiting for us as our two name tags got close!

The afternoon was spent eating lush food, listening to some of my talented friends singing and playing songs. My new Father in Law gave a wonderful speech, I managed to make my mum cry in mine (in a good way) and both my best men really pulled it out the bag with brilliant speeches which had people laughing.

There was still a bit of time to mingle with friends before our final photo session.

This is me with one of my best men - Ash.

To kick off the evening's music and dancing, Hannah and I had our first dance. Our song was "This is the First Day of my Life" by Bright Eyes and we had practiced a simple routine to go with it!

Luckily it went well and I didn't fall over or drop her!

After the formalities had finished, we all got nicely merry with copious amounts of cider after having finished off all of the champagne and wine. Hannah's Granny started DJing and the night went from there. Everyone was up at some point or another showing off their moves!

And there was more than a little emotional hugging!

The day seemed to fly by so quickly and before I knew it, it was time to go. It was a bit emotional saying goodbye as this was the last time I'd see many of my friends before moving to Malaysia. The made it a wonderful day though, and truly the best day of my life!

After the wedding, we stayed at the Pear Tree Inn which was lovely. We got in at 2am, exhausted after a long but amazing day.

The following day we got up early (ish) and made our way to London for our Minniemoon in Shoreditch House. It was a lovely place to stay, very relaxing and stylish. We sipped Mojios on the rooftop terrace on the first night then snuck off to the street food market round the corner for a cheeky burrito and fajita for dinner. As it was our Minniemoon we splashed out and got Nachos too! On the second day, after a delicious smoked salmon and scrambled egg breakfast, we each got a 90 minute massage. It was lush - I can't wait till I'm rich and can have one every day! In the evening we had more cocktails and went to the hotel's restaurant! The final day I got a full english, then we went shopping in London and I managed to convince myself that it would be a good investment to buy a pair of nice sunglasses for Malaysia.

Finally we got home and opened a whole load of cards and presents from our generous and kind friends!

Truly the best week I have ever had!