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[a-traveling-small-human]

Flight to Malaysia

This time I booked my flight via Saudi Arabian Airlines. You can feel that it's not the top notch airline as Emirates for example but all in all its definitely a good option to choose. If they offer a cheap flight, you can definitely take it without any hesitation.

Food

Based on my experience of the two flights (one to Jeddah and then to Kuala Lumpur) the food was okay. It wasn't the greatest but it wasn't yucky at all. On my first flight I had the choice between chicken with potatoes and grilled yellow bell peppers, fish on rice, and pasta (they didn't specify what kind). I chose the chicken dish even though I was very curious what the fish would've been like afterwards.

Some small details where you notice that Saudia is a bit of a smaller airline than Emirates, Qatar Airlines, Etihad, Swiss airlines or similar ones are for example that you don't get a menu of what is going to be served beforehand. On Emirates and Swiss Aircrafts you'll always find small booklets either already at your seat or handed out during the flight where you can read up on the different dishes and have time to decide what you want. I tried searching the entertainment system for Infos about the menu but I couldn't find any.

Other details that I noticed were that they didn't server proper milk for tea and coffee but only had creamer powder, instead of trays you got a paper matt for your table (which if the trays on other airlines would get thrown away, I would definitely prefer), and that the staff hands you your drinks instead of serving it on a tray from which you can pick it up.

These details are all super nitpicky and don't really ruin the flight, but might take away from the experience a bit. The only real thing I find sad though is the part about the milk.

One thing to also keep in mind when flying with Saudi Arabian Airlines is that this airline does not serve alcohol, in case that is of importance to you. (On that notice also, you can't bring any alcohol in your hand luggage to Saudi Arabia, even if you are on a transit flight and you bought it at the duty free shop and got it in that sealed bag [I think cities in the UAE allow that, it's only Saudi thats super strict about it]).

Movies

Ayyyy, my favorite section of every journey: small humans movie recommendations!

The first movie I watched this time was a Chinese animated movie called "I am what I am". Although the animation might not be Pixar level, after watching the movie for a bit you appreciate the charm it adds to the movie and it's nice to see animation styles that are not completely like the western norm we see in so many movies. It tells a beautiful story of the young boy named Gyun who wants to be a lion dancer and the struggles of finding a team and training hard enough to compete in a championship. Besides this story, the movie perfectly encapsulates the struggles of families during the industrialization where families had to move away from the village into the city to work and support their relatives in the village while having a hard life themselves in the city. A lot of ups and downs and in my opinion a very nice and heartwarming and inspiring story that is being told. Still, you can't forget it's a animated kids movie so it's not blockbuster-level deep drama in there^^ but definitely worth seeing if you want to watch a eastern animated movie :)

The second movie I watched was an Indonesian dramedy about a guy who quit his job and persue his job of owning an independent business himself. He opens a laundry service with a lot of funny and crazy employees. This business has a lot of ups and downs especially after a laundry business opens up right in the other side of the street! I think it's pretty entertaining and a nice story to watch. :)

The third and last movie was the Japanese con-artist movie, the confidence Man JP. It follows the adventure of a japanese con-artist trio that challenge each other to steal a ancient greek figurine from a retired spanish drug Lord living in Italy. This might already sound crazy but you're not prepared for what is coming. This movie has soo many twists and turns and double crosses and reveals that your head explodes! It follows the scheme of heist movies but x100! Very funny, some might find it over the top and to much, but if you have nothing to watch and you wanna watch something new, it's definitely worth watching! :D

What's complicated about the entertainment system saudia is using, is that the movies you marked as favorites can not be found in any favorites folder/playlist. I searched everywhere but couldn't find where I could view all my marked movies. To avoid this, I recommend you clicking on "Add to playlist" rather that giving them a heart.

Other stuff

The second flight was better in terms of overall experience than the first one. Before takeoff we got hot wet towels handed out and during the flight a hygiene pack with hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and face masks as well as a sleeping kit with socks and a eye mask.

Another cool feature this plane had, was tinting windows. You could change the windows tint by the press of a button and there were sic stages to choose from. The tinting happened quite fast, only the 'un-tinting' took one/two mins. I tried the whole flight to find out how the tinting works and my best guess I could come up with, was a colored gas that might be blown into the middle of the two windows and according to the setting it increases or decrease the amount of gas in there. But that seems at the same time pretty crazy so I don't know. Maybe one of you guys knows and and lets me know in the comments :) otherwise I'll just get my lazy ass to Google it^^

A very nice feature I came across in the entertainment system this time was that you could set alarms named "wake me up for food" and "wake me up for landing" in the settings menu. That's probably nothing new for most, but I just now found it and I think it's super handy to have as I already slept through a meal once on a flight before ;-;

[a-traveling-small-human]

Malaysia Pt. 2

The small human is traveling again! After being in Malaysia for my semester abroad but sadly during MCO (Lockdown), I wanted to revisit the country to finally see more than only the hostel (and one time the street food street 'bukit bintang').

This time, we planned two awesome trips to visit many of the most interesting places in all of West Malaysia! Yes, we! I'm not traveling alone, there are two small humans exploring Malaysia together this time! ^-^

The first trip we are going to starts in Kuala Lumpur from which were heading towards Kuantan in Pahang after which we're going via Mersing to Tioman island! From there we will travel down to Johor and then over Malacca (a super historical city!) we go back to Kuala Lumpur.

The second trip will be consisting of the two cities Penang (which has the best food according to every Malaysian I talked to) and Langkawi.

There's a lot of exciting adventures we will experience and many crazy stories we can tell afterwards, I can feel it! ^-^

[a-traveling-small-human]

The weather in Kuala Lumpur

The weather here is so awesome! It's so the perfect climate for me here! It's always around 28-33 degrees and humid as hell, which I looove 😍😍 It's literally every day like this and I could definitely live in such a climate for the rest of my life! Every couple of days the sky will pour it's soul out for ~ 30- 60 mins but after that it's sunshine time again! Of course some days are also very cloudy but it's still warm. They say that Malaysian weather is unpredictable and it can switch from rain to sunshine a few times a day! But until now I haven't witnessed those sudden changes yet.

One time last week it stormed reeally loudly! I never ever heard thunders that loud! 😮 When the first one hit, it was just a one second after the lighting. I just saw and realized that the blink in my room was a lightning when the thunder boomed so loudly that I almost fell of my chair because I was so surprised by it! I managed to record another loud one but that one is sadly a bit quieter than the first one! It really sounded like there was a battle going on out there, that was really crazy! I'm really curious to see if that was a exception or if that kind of noise is normal when it storms here.

[a-traveling-small-human]

My new room

So this Tuesday I finally completed my quarantine!! 🎉🎉

My new room is now at the second floor of the building and the view from my window is...

Not really great! 😅

Sadly I've got a room where the window is directly in front of a wall^^ I tried to ask if I could maybe move to another room (there would have been a 100RM [~20$] fee but that would have been fine for me) but sadly the hostel management said that there are no rooms available where the window is not in front of a wall, so I guess I'm stuck with that room for a while... I don't mind staring at a wall as I don't look out of the window that much, but it makes my whole room very dark, so I always have to use artificial lights. The worst thing about it is that getting up is now much much harder for me. I wake up way easier if there is sunlight shining in my window, but when I now wake up I can't tell the difference between 8am and 11am.

Apart from that the room is fine though. Except the AC is making strange noises, so I have to file a complaint for that too... And there were ants in my room... I woke up on the second day to find my Laptop and desk covered in ants! I immediately wrote the hostel management that I wanted to change my room, but after killing like 20-30 ants while having my lectures they appeared less and less frequently so I thought that the reason might have been, that the window was opened when I first moved into my room. After my lectures I bought some bug spray from the 7/11 downstairs and fogged my whole room with the spray twice and left it like that for 10-15 min each time. After that I fortunately didn’t see any more ants. Because of that my room smelled like bug spray for the next two days though…^^ But well that’s a cost I’m willing to pay. That also meant that they most likely came through the open window, so I’m good now as I will never open my window anyways.

I started now to pack out all my stuff and really use and decorate my room. I still have to put up the pictures of my friends I printed out but apart from that everything is tidied up now and has its place 😋

The new shared bathroom and kitchen are luckily also very clean. My housemates really pay attention to have everything clean. What’s funny is that they have put so many shower gels and shampoos in the showers, it thought for a second I was living with girls 😄

aSpeaking of girls, in the house rules it was written that “unauthorized” visits to room of the other gender are strictly forbidden. I was wondering what exactly “unauthorized” meant, do I have to notify the management if I wanted to visit somebody or what?^^ I asked this my guide and he told me that it just meant that it is completely forbidden^^ It’s still allowed to be together in the common rooms and the hostel lounge and everything but they don’t want anybody in the private rooms. “So that there won’t be any “”accidents”” ”^^ A bit weird for someone coming from a very liberal country but yeah it’s still fine and somewhat understandable. After all this is a pretty strict and Muslim country, couples are even forbidden to show affection in any way in public^^

Aalso, what just came to my mind, at the reception there was sing of a survey about harassment in the hostel.

It might not be the most representative study, with 36 female and 10 male participants but still, it's very sad to see that there seems to be also a problem with sexual harassment at this hostel... Maybe for that reason it might be not that bad that the genders are separated into different blocks at this hostel.

Also of course the gentle reminder: always stand up for women if you see something bad going on. Speak up and curse on them assholes if you see them harassing women or pushing them to uncomfortable things. Most of the time you will witness something like this in public, so people will help you if things go out of control. And if you see something like that going on with only you around, especially step in and help people in need. If you're afraid of them attacking you, call the police first, take pictures and then step in, the worst that can happen is that you get a black eye and if it gets worse than that you at least called the police which can take care of you. But that's like the worst possible scenario and I'm pretty sure that won't happen most of the time. And I think a small injury is definitely worth saving people from harassment, discrimination or worse things.

Well, coming back to the main topic^^, the next few days were packed with lectures and assignments I had to do, it caught me a bit off guard how fast it went to full study mode. I had to pretty long assignments in the next days and we learned about all the different group assignments we have to complete over the course of this semester. I first was worried that I would have trouble finding groups, but it was actually quite simple, I just wrote some people over Microsoft Teams and they all were very nice and had no problem taking me into their group :)

The assignments will be quite some work, we have to do a whole website in one class where we partner up with people from the school of business. They have a business idea and a plan on how they want to have their website and we have to build it for them, it will get a bit challenging as the schedule is very tight, but I think it also will be an exciting task! I already had a similar group assignment back in my home country so I kinda know what to expect.

The other group assignment is creating a web application in php, as I have no foreknowledge in that area it might get a bit trickier. But then no one in this course has so much knowledge as it is a beginner class so it shouldn’t be super hard. For the last group assignment I still don’t know what we have to do as we get the tutorial for that next week, but it will involve virtual machines, kali linux and network security so I’m really hyped to learn how to penetration test networks and stuff! The last class I have doesn’t have a group assignment but our lecturer told us that the exam will be very hard and if I read it correctly we will also have a mid-term exam in that class, so I can’t allow myself to be behind with the subject. Our whole semester is 12 weeks and we're already done with week 2, so 10 more weeks and the semester is already over! :o But I think somehow I will manage it. Somehow everything is manageable^^

Because of the classes and assignments I haven’t gotten the chance to go off campus yet but I plan to go to the next biggest mall tomorrow to get some stuff I wanted for my room. And on Sunday I might manage to get really into the city and wander around a bit! 😋

Speaking of malls! Guess what, my whole hostel building is actually a mall!!

Yesterday I met with the guide who was assigned to me from hostel management! A really nice guy called Liaw. He’s a student here and study architecture for a year now. He originally came from the Malaysian part of the island Burma, so he’s not really local too. But he showed me around the hostel area a bit and offered me to show me the city and everything too! I’m really looking forward to that!!

Anyways back to the mall, the hostel reception is at the first level and from there upwards the rooms are. But the ground floor and lower levels 1&2 are filled with shops and restaurants! We have four small shops like 7/11 or FamilyMart, one haircutter and many different restaurants! From Chinese to Indian to fried chicken and noodles, there are many places to try out! It blew my mind that there was so much more to the hostel building than I expected! There’s even a Starbucks! I’m not a big fan of Starbucks but its crazy that we have one! Some of the restaurants are still closed but many are open. We even got a vending machine with the craziest popcorn flavors you have ever seen! :D

Also we have a lake at our campus which looks pretty nice :)

Also the singing of the muezzin is very nice here, you can hear it all five times a day :)

(The sound may sound a bit botched though, you can hear the singing pretty clear if you're standing here, but my phone makes it much quieter so I had to enhance the audio and try to get rid of the background noise, but still you get the idea^^)

It was very nice talking to Liaw as we had many topics and even talked about Chinese politics and stuff which is like one of my favorite discussion topics^^

I also talked to one housemate next door who also seemed very nice, he also immediately offered me help I f I had any questions. He’s also a local from here so I hope I can maybe hang out sometime with him and he can show me a bit around :)

Today I was outside with a housemate I met while we were both isolating at the same floor. We went for lunch and dinner at the hostel mall and walked around the campus a bit. The university campus is open and looks so awesome! I haven’t taken any pictures yet but there is so much I have to show you!! Walls full of descriptions showing different innovations the students of interior design and architecture came up with and a really nice common room! And that was just a bit at the ground floor which I saw while walking by. So I think there’s still way more to discover!

That guy was also very nice but he seemed a but sad as it is the first time for him being away from his family and having to get used to so much new stuff without man people he knows. He’s also Bengali so I’m pretty sure he is quite a family person so I can imagine that it might be extra hard for him. For me it’s a bit easier as I got used to being on my own from my previous travels and living in a rented apartment back home. But I think he will become accustomed to everything once he’s here for some months. The pandemic makes such stuff way harder though, although we live in a hostel with so many other students it’s way harder to meet new people. Also having only online classes doesn’t work in out favors here. But well, if you try you can overcome all those obstacles and still have a good time 😋

I’m really looking forward to the next weeks! I think I have to take the uni stuff very seriously and should not spend too much time exploring the city but I think every now and then I can allow myself to drive to the city and look around a bit 😁

[a-traveling-small-human]

[a-traveling-small-human]

Ordering Food and Groceries

Ordering food and groceries is luckily super easy with apps like FoodPanda and Grab. Grab is like Uber, UberEats and UberEats for groceries if something like that exists. It's a very well designed app which is used in many Asian countries. I also used it often when I was in Vietnam.

I got Ramen and Karaage on my first day and today a Malay dish called "Nasi Ayam Goreng & Sayur" which translates to "Fried Chicken with Rice & Vegetables". I also ordered a Iced Milo 😋 Both meals were very good and cheap too! For my first meal I payed ~ 8 Bucks and for today's meal ~ 3$

I used Grab to order a 24 pack of 600ml water bottles to get me through quarantine, which also worked with no problem at all! I would love it, if we had these services back home too!

[a-traveling-small-human]

Checking-in at the students hostel

The transfer from my Hotel to the Hostel went pretty smoothly. When checking out, I got some papers I had to hold on to, in case the police would stop me. After going up to my room again to wait for my driver, I noticed there were some errors on them. They said I was 23 instead of 22 and that my entry port was Qatar instead of Dubai. When someone came to bring me downstairs (I was not allowed to use the elevator by myself), I told the reception about my errors. It took them a bit to get the responsible person, just that they would tell me, that it doesn't matter, as these papers only matter for 24 hrs and they are mostly just to verify that I am negative. Oh yeah, I've had a nasal swab the day before, it was very quick and not that unpleasant. The only thing was, that I had the feeling of being at the edge of sneezing for 15 mins, that was a bit weird^^

I also got a red hard-case booklet which I just opened. It's a certificate that I completed the mandatory quarantine in the hotel, nice little gift 😄 only thing is, that they messed up the number there too, the wrote 10 days instead of 7^^

The ride to the Subang District was great! Finally seeing new stuff and not having the perspective from the 17th floor but at street level felt awesome! :) I saw a nice mosque and many nice streets I can't wait to wander through. You could already tell when we were close to my uni as there were really big billboards advertising different universities and colleges! Seems like this district is like the central hub for academics.

The first bad thing that happened when I arrived was that I got informed that the rent contract is set for 1 whole year. I had in mind it was only for 6-months... Seems like I should have read the contract better... The payment was 6-months in advance, so I thought you pay every 6-months and either extend or quit the contract. The Management staff told me that I could quit after 6 months but then I won't get my deposit back. But that still seems like a better choice as that would be way cheaper than paying for another half year. Well, lets see how that goes.

Other than that the check-in procedure went pretty smoothly and they kindly explained to me everything I need to know. I also got a WhatsApp number which I can turn to, if I have any other questions.

For the next 7 days I have to check in the MySejahtera App (Malaysias Covid App, you have to check-in by scanning a QR-Code whenever you enter a building or taxi, etc) and filling out this form regarding my health.

Today also a person wrote me, saying that he was assigned as my guide from hotel management, so I have another person to speak to and maybe later ask a few question about how life is like here in the hostel :)

My room itself is pretty nice, I knew it would be very small and for what it is, I can't complain! Everything is clean, the mattress is hard as I lie it and the colors are grey with green accent which looks very nice!

The Building my room is in:

Having an ultra-wide lense on your phone sure comes in handy when taking pictures in small rooms^^

Sadly I can't decorate my room yet as I am in a different room for my quarantine than my actual stay. But at least I can get a picture of what my room will look like and how I can decorate it. Can't wait to finally have my real own room! :D

After the luxury I had, I think I will need a few days to accustom myself to the new situation^^ Especially with the shared bathrooms. I don't mind showering "in public" but normally I prefer closed toilet rooms over stalls^^ also I now can't get around hosing myself down with water after I finished my business as the stalls don't offer any toilet paper at all 😅 But all that is of course nothing you won't get used to in a couple of days. At least everything there is clean which is a much more important point for me.

I actually had in mind, that I only have to share a bathroom with one other person instead of five, but that could maybe change when I'm in my proper room, so lets see.

The day I moved was unfortunately also the day of my first lectures. I wrote both my lecturers that I won't be able to participate in class and both assured me that it would be no problem and they would upload recordings of the classes, so I can just rewatch them. Gonna do that later.

As there is a 10 picture upload limit per post on tumblr 🙄 I'll talk about ordering food here in another post.

[a-traveling-small-human]

My Quarantine Room

Oh, my Quarantine Room! I love it so much! After this seven days I will have so many great memories with this place! Like laying in bed and watching TV ...or sitting in bed watching TV ...or walking through the room while watching TV...

Jokes aside it's really not that bad! My room is very spacious, the food is (mostly) great and I've got enough things on my list which I can finally do without having any excuse of too little time or having to do other stuff! I'm finally learning how to really use Ableton to make nice beats and I have the motivation to make sports everyday! I even made yoga today! I also have some recipes I still want to publish on my food blog, maybe I'll do that tomorrow! Of course I'm also laying around watching TV or YouTube, but this time I'm enjoying it! Normally I don't like hanging around doing nothing that much, as I always feel stressed that I should do something else instead, but as I literally can do nothing (or not that much) and everything important for my uni is settled, I can really relax this time and enjoy watching stuff for hours.

Besides, almost all TV channels either have bad connection or are teleshopping channels in Malayan so I'm watching mostly the Asian Food Network and learn about new recipes! Just yesterday I've seen a recipe for a gluten free cake with homemade rice flour and it didn't look that difficult. Luckily, I could remember the ingredients they said in the start so I could write them down. When I'm back home I'm so going to try bake that cake! It might take some tries when eyeballing the ingredients but I think I'll manage 😋

I also finally made a little Photoshop project today! It's been a long time since I've done a fun little edit there. Here's my result, everything I did the last days and will do in the next days in one picture:

I get food 5 times a day! Breakfast, Lunch, Tea, Dinner and Supper. Sadly I'm to forgetful, so I don't always manage to take a picture before I eat, but I will make a collage or something when I'm done with this week and have all the pictures I need. As I said, the food is mostly great, sometimes you taste that there were packaged sauces used but most of the time it really tastes great and it's really diverse! Although a bit chicken heavy but that's fine with me. I also get a package of Milo or Nèstum (smth like Horlics) with every tea which is pretty neat. I have a kettle in my room so I can make them myself.

Even though I can choose from two beds to sleep on, my choice somehow always lands on the queen sized bed^^

I even got an iron, an ironing board and a scale here! I don't really need any of that but it's nice to have anyway :D

Something interesting I found out the other day was an arrow on my ceiling pointing to a wall. On it the word "Kibalt" is written, which is Malay for "Qibla" which is the direction towards the Kaaba in Mecca, so everybody always knows where to pray towards. Malaysia is a Muslim country, so I figured I would see religious things here and there, but I never would have thought about such simple things as an arrow on the ceiling to point the direction. I think it's pretty cool that the Hotel even thought about this issue, I think even in other Muslim countries/ hotels here in Malaysia, you wouldn't be guaranteed to find an arrow on your ceiling.

For the end, here's a time laps of the view from my room:

It's not the best and the angle is a bit off, but I just felt like it today. Maybe my next one will be a bit better^^

[a-traveling-small-human]

My University's Orientation Presentations

The first awesome thing about yesterdays orientation info-presentations was the waiting music that played before the event, Ievan Polkka by Hatsune Miku :D

Aside from this funny intro music, the orientation and general information presentations were great! It was so interesting and entertaining to learn about all the different clubs and activities you can take part in at this uni! For Instance, we have the Malaysias largest Gym with over 16,000sqft of training space, together with a boxing ring, tennis-, soccer-, basketball-, and other courts and so much more! And that's just the Sports section of our University, we also have Speech-clubs, a huge career center and many more organizations you can be involved in. We even have an esports club :D

I'm thinking of joining the Muay Thai club and maybe the chess club, but only if the meetings are in person, which the presentators assured should be the case in a couple of weeks!

We also had breakout sessions in smaller rooms, where we played some icebreaker games to get to know each other better! I'm normally very stressed at such events and the first exercise was to say our name, where we're from, which course we're studying and a fun fact about ourself. I hate that "game" I get so stressed thinking about a fact that is also fun to know about me, I don't know what's funny about my personality!

But nevertheless I'm of course not the only one with that problem and everyone said just some kinda interesting fact about themself which obviously was totally weird for everyone.

But the other games we played were pretty fun, even with the weird quiet situations in online meetings where nobody is talking and everybody is waiting that somebody is making a move^^ Still a fun time :D

The people organizing this also created a space on a website called padlet.com. They created an "Ice Breaking Padlet" where everybody could post short descriptions of themself to make getting to know each other easier. I found that a great idea! I of course took a bit of effort to write a post a description of myself there, but eventually I did it! And I think it's a great idea to make it easier, especially at times where randomly meeting at a lecture isn't possible. I'm really looking forward meeting people that way while I'm in quarantine and have no option to meet people in public :)

[a-traveling-small-human]

The Flight (food, movies, etc)

As I said, the flights were pretty normal. Of course, the stewardesses had to put on a thin cotton overalls on and everybody had to wear face masks, but for me, I'm already pretty accustomed to them so I don't really notice them.

The food on the first flight was pretty good. In fact, I was so hungry that I started eating right when I got my meal, so I sadly have no picture to share with you.

My stay at the Dubai airport was pretty good too. The transit zone was very big and everything was so shiny! I purchased a water from a small café for 9AED (~2,50) which is halfway reasonable for a transit zone. As I only had a five, I at least have now a nice 10AED note as a souvenir 💵

Waiting there was still pretty boring after a while... I had to wait 3½ h and there was only so much to do.

The second flight was awesome, I had a whole row by myself! Almost everybody had, either there were just soo little people flying to Malaysia or they purposefully spaced everybody more out. Either way it was awesome as I could lay down over three seats and sleep in the most comfy airplane-sleep position there was! 😋

We got some cheese sandwiches before the "night phase", some juices in between and in the "morning" there was the option between Breakfast with eggs or noodles with fish. Just woken up, I was feeling a bit weird so I just took a bread and with butter and jam.

I only noticed at this flight, that the light always adjusted to the time they want to simulate, it goes from normal bright yellow-white to orange, red, purple, blue, dark-blue and no lights. Also they got stars at the ceiling!

The movies I watched were:

The Farewell (2019)

I started it on my last flight but couldn't finish it then because we already landed. This time I continued it and it's a lovely story from start to finish! It's a nice and entertaining movie, I really recommend watching it!

Family Story (2018)

This was a bit weird, it was a kind movie about a son who doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps but the main character is sometimes a bit hard to like as he is so hard in his "I don't wanna be like you! I'm gonna rebell" phase. It's not about a kid though, don't get me wrong, the son is about 20/21 as he's already studying. Still a pretty little movie if you have nothing else you really want to watch on the plane.

Rent a Friend (2018)

This was also a good movie, sadly I fell asleep during the movie and didn't catch the end, but it's an intersecting concept about a woman who rents a friend in Japan to write an article about "Can women and men be just friends?". Didn't catch the ending, but pretty sure she falls in love with him.

My blanket was made out of recycled plastic bottles!

[a-traveling-small-human]

Off we go into another great adventure!

Yeah that's right, while everybody else is staying at home and the world still isn't the same as it was, I'm just gonna piss right off to participate in my universitys exchange program and study one semester abroad in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!

The last few months were loaded with paperwork I had to do so I could leave my country and enter Malaysia. Thankfully everything worked out almost in time. It was such a relief sitting down in the plane, knowing that very little could go wrong now and it was the biggest relief when I finally worked my way through immigration and knew for a fact that I made it and nothing could go wrong at this point!

The flight was very good, it was so awesome to finally experience the excitement of traveling somewhere again! Although I really don't get the safety concepts on board. On my first flight to Dubai I sat next to a couple, while the row in front of us was completely empty. The same could be seen all around the plane, many rows where completely empty while strangers had to sit together. Maybe they tried to separate rows from each other, but I didn't really get it. Also there where pop-ups on the entertainment system telling people to protect yourself and others by having your mask on at all times ...while food was handed out. The timing was too comedic on this one^^

But I'm not really that mad or anything with the many strict orders put out by various governments, the airlines will surely have a plan and know what they're doing. Also prior to the flight every passenger has to present a negative covid test result which isn't older that 72 hrs, so technically the risk should be minimal to start with.

On the second flight the crew was a bit more cautious, the pilot announced that before we lift of the stewards will go through the plane and sanitize it. Which meant that they sprayed disinfectant from the height of the luggage shelf. We were informed that some may get slight skin irritations and people with contacts where encouraged to close their eyes while the crew was spraying.

After landing in Kuala Lumpur I had to spend almost 3h in immigrations going from desk to desk, presenting different documents, filling out more documents, waiting to be called up to show and fill out even more documents and finally be through and collecting my luggage! Even though it took so long, they set up the different stations very nicely with enough staff to handle the crowd of people in an acceptable speed. Sadly I couldn't take pictures of any of this as you are forbidden to take pictures at a border.

After collecting the luggage we were guided outside, where our hands and luggage were deeply sanitized. From this point on until now, I only saw people in plastic onesies , face masks and sometimes those plastic face shields. Malaysia is making no joke with foreign arrivals. They do their very best to ensure nothing has a chance to be spread from people coming into Malaysia. I was really impressed by this, until now I never seen these type of measures. In my country most people just have to go home and quarantine for two weeks when they come from another country.

My driver Mandonna was very kind and even lightened up my waiting time by teaching me basic Malayan sentences :)

On the way to my Quarantine Hotel he also updated me on the newest regulations and told me a few things about the city and its buildings, which was very interesting and made the 50 min ride feel way shorter.

Driving with Mandonna reminded me of the scenes with Hamburger Man from Mr Robot 😅. Fortunatley with a bit more talking than in the show^^

Arriving at the hotel, my luggage was handed to a colleague from Mandonna, he was completely sprayed with sanitizer and headed back to the Airport while I was guided to my room. The whole hotel was closed shut from outside, the installed a high wooden wall which separated everything else from me and the elevator. I was taken to the 17th level and brought to my room. because of all the safety measures I really felt like I was in a movie where a zombie virus had broken out^^ everybody in some kind of hazmat suit and bags with the biohazard sign on it, it felt a bit surreal^^

My room itself is super comfy and I have everything I need, the food is local and tastes good so far and the hotel service is very nice and helpful on the phone. I think I can deal living in this room for a week 😋

[a-traveling-small-human]

Super clean City!

I was very surprised how clean the whole city and especially the metro + stations are.

At every station and every public place there are signs that you should not eat, drink or smoke. Even water is forbidden, a common mistake by foreigners is to think that water is a exception, which is false.

If you ignore those rules you can get fined up to 10.000 NTD (~320$)!

Taiwan also separates trash. You’ll always find two trash bins next to each other, one for normal trash and one for recyclables like plastic bottles. Most of the trash bins even have small ashtrays on them.

[a-traveling-small-human]

Plastic

Walking around in Taipei you'll notice that everything is wrapped in plastic. Everything is given to you on little plastic bags. Sometimes you get plastic bags for something in a plastic bag.

(Breadsticks insinde a plastic bag inside a plastic bag)

Also the high concentration of bubble tea and milk tea shops are also producing a ton of plastic waste.

I drank two already but I hope I don't get into the temptation to buy another one of these.

Some Taiwanese people carry their teas in small holding-bags made of cotton instead of plastic, a new type of making those bags more stylish. It's good but way too less.

I'm trying to get as few plastic bags from the vendors as possible but sometimes even your food is wrapped in plastic.

The government should really do something about the high amount of plastic used per day.

If you're there please don't forget to still be as ecological as possible. Don't stop thinking about the waste just because you're in on vacation.

And if they're thicker plastic bags, take them with you and reuse them for further purposes.

[a-traveling-small-human]

Day 1 - The flight and arrival in Ximending district, Taipei, Taiwan

The trip to Taiwan was perfect. The train had no delay, we had enough time at the airport and the security checks were fast and without any problems. The flight itself had a 30min delay because of high traffic at the runway (yes, even there there's traffic 🙄) and some minor turbulences but nothing where you had any concerns.

The food on the flight was pretty tasty. Lunch was served pretty quickly after takeoff. I had a chicken curry with rice. The chicken was very tender and the sauce was good. Dinner/Breakfast was served at 12am home-time/6am Taiwan-time, which was a bit odd. I got green beans with an egg omelett and a sausage. Both meals were served with a small bread roll and butter and some fruits. A bit later we got a little sandwich for a snack but I forgot to take a picture. It was a standard ham and cheese sandwich, but the bread was made with seeds and raisins in it. It gave a nice unexpected twist to the taste!

The landing was perfect, no shaking at all! Immigration was fast and also problem free, tthey take a picture and the fingerprints of both of your index fingers.

After the baggage claim we changed our money. The exchange rate was 33NTD (New-Taiwanese Dollar) for 1€ and 31NTD for 1$ which is acceptable.

We got ourselves some ice cold drinks from a vending machine and bought new SIM cards. They were much more expensive than in Vietnam! There I paid 9$ for a month of unlimited high speed data, here it was about 22$ for 15 days for unlimited data and 100 mins. It's still affordable off course.

We also bought an Easycard, a prepaid card for public transportation and small supermarkets like 7/11. In Taiwan you'll get your receipt with a special number on it. With that you automatically participate in a free lottery with prices up to 1 million NTD (~31.980$)!! Even foreigners can claim the prices. The Taiwanese government introduced this lottery to encourage legal tax reporting. When you buy something with your Easycard the numbers will also be saved on it so no difference on how you pay. The drawing is every two months on 25th so sadly we can't participate in the drawing while we're here.

At the metro station we met two students from our homeland! Both of them separately got here to study a semester abroad. We chatted a bit while we rode to the Taipei main station and exchanged numbers. But I don't think that we'll ever hear from them again^^

The view outside the metro was awesome! So many skyscrapers, log houses but also beautiful forests! We got more excited with every second we looked outside.

When we arrived at our hostel we couldn't check right in. Online they wrote that you could check-in any time but in reality we had to wait until 3pm. So let's check out the city then! It was around 9am and we didn't just wanted to sit around even though we were pretty tired already. 

We walked to a park nearby, it's a memorial Park for the 10.000 - 30.000 people killed from the Chinese government on 02/28/1947. It's a really beautiful park and the monuments honoring the killed are really overwhelming.

Them we went into the city and the streets were... empty. It was about 10am and still most of the shops were closed and few people walked around. After a bit walking we found some sick graffiti. The street art game in our district is big!

I also found some leaflets of the Hong Kong protests on some walls! I follow the events since their beginning and was excited to see those posters and caricatures in real life! If you don't know about the Hong Kong protests, stop right here and go on Google and Reddit and look it up, it's important that as many people as possible know what's going on there!

We ate breakfast at a small restaurant, soup with some meat dumplings kind of things. They had a interesting texture and I don't really know what was inside of them but they were soo tasty so I don't mind 😄😋

I made my soup a little to hot though, I forgot that Asian hot sauce is actually very hot 😅

But it was still the perfect breakfast! 

We then drank a bubble-tea and walked around a bit more. Now the first shops were open and we went to an Anime store. Really a Manga-Fans dream. So many mangas and statues and whatnot. And not even that expensive!

After looking around a bit we went back to our hostel and enjoyed the air-conditioned lobby. Luckily our room was ready at 1pm so we only had to wait about an hour there. Our room was small but still enough space for everything. You got a locked which opens with your keycard and it's big enough to fit a bagpack and some other stuff in it 👍🏽

But the "beds" are way different than you would expect. They are shelf-like beds, always one on top of the other one. It looks small but you still have enough space to sleep comfortably. With this "technique" they managed to fit 8 beds in this small room! I'll send a picture of it the next days.

We took a short nap until 4pm, showered and got ready to really discover the city.

Now there was finally life in the streets! Everything was open and so many people were everywhere. It was great to walk through the streets and watch the goings. We saw a few places that we decided to visit the next days but didn't really do anything because we still were way to exhausted from the flight and everything. 

We just went to a nice Temple, the Longshan-temple, a really beautiful Temple with a small waterfall and koi pond. It had so many ornaments on the roof! It's really really beautiful to look at.

At the evening we ate dinner at a small corner restaurant. We ate soup with some real dumplings in it. They had a meat/herbal filling and oh my God they were sooo tasty!! The herbs gave them such a nice fresh taste that you almost couldn't stop eating.

At this point I couldn't think straight anymore because I was so tired. I was so sorry that I didn't finish my meal but my body didn't want to do anything. I was so relieved when I found out that our hostel was just around the corner! After chilling a bit I was fit enough to grab one beer with my friend and so we went to the 7/11 bought a beer and walked and talked a bit. 

At 9pm we were back at our hostel and I immediately fell asleep as my body touched the sheets.

Let's see what tomorrow brings!

[a-traveling-small-human]

I hate tumblr

I just wrote an hour on day 1 and then it froze and everything was gone. It's 2:30am and now I have to rewirte everything + day two. Kill me.

Edit: Too lazy to do it now, posting tomorrow three days at once

[a-traveling-small-human]

Here we go again!

The next vacation is at the doorstep! I just came from an awesome camping trip with some friends, had one day to pack my stuff and now I'm on the way to the airport with a friend of mine. This time we're going to Taiwan! Super hyped already, althoug my luggage wasn't that excited as me xd

But my travel-buddha is happy in my backpack and ready to bring me luck on my adventures :)

[a-traveling-small-human]

Day 31 I woke up, packed everything together and checked out of my hotel. I walked a last time around and bought a thing or two. Then I got to the Tattoo studio to say goodbye. They wished me the best and gave me some advices for Cambodia. I really hope to meet the soon again :) At 3 o'clock my bus went from Saigon to Phnom Penh, at about 9pm I arrived at my hotel. I went out to eat something and then went to bed. I’m in the Happy House Backpacker hostel in the 13th street, it’s very cheap and you see also why. I am in a 20 bed room if I counted correctly and there is a very small bathroom. It’s really okay for the price, about 3$ per night and it’s not really gross or dirty. And with the location it’s pretty good, the Wat Phnom temple is about 10min walking away, the city centre should also be pretty near and a street full of bars is also just a corner away^^ Sadly I didn’t took any pictures of the bus ride because I was sleeping almost the whole time^^