Malaysia
Visiting Malaysia was an amazing experience. The Malyasian people are so welcoming, friendly and generous and constantly went out of their way to help us. Our first stop was an island called Penang, just off the west coast. My highlight there was visiting a Buddhist temple called Kek Lok Si. To get to the temple we had to climb up huge flights of uneven stone steps which passed through bustling markets with lots of people calling you to have a look at their stalls. Half way up we reached a large pond which was full of hundreds of turtles. It looked very impressive (but they didn't smell too nice!).

When we reached the top, the temple was bright and colourful with large open prayer rooms and tiny hidden shrines. People were burning incense while they prayed and the sweet smell filled the air. It was all very ornate with lots of golden deities, flowers and fruit, and bells ringing.

You can see the incense sticks in this picture. 
The coloured ribbons on the left are called wishing ribbons - you could buy one and write a wish on it.

After a few days in Penang, we caught a ferry to a nearby island called Langkawi where we had a few days by the beach. The beaches were amazing with white powdery sand, palm trees and turquoise water against a backdrop of lush emerald hills. Unfortunately we had quite a lot of rain whilst we were there (that must be what makes the country so green) but it was still hot and sunny between the downpours, so we managed to fit in some swimming in the sea. 

We had some funny visitors to our room in Langkawi! The first one we spotted was yellow gecko on the ceiling. It reminded me of a story we read in Year 4 called Gregory Cool, when Gregory spots the gecko on the ceiling in Tobago. Do you remember it? So we called our gecko Gregory and let him stay! We also had a huge frog that sat on my flipflop for a rest and a cow that walked past our door one day!

A few visitors that we didn't let stay were the cockroaches! Huge, red, shiny cockroaches with hard shells! The funniest part was that when we told the lady who ran the guesthouse that there were cockroaches in our room, she came along and got rid of them for us... by crushing them with her bare feet! I don't think I could have done that! 

Our final stop in Malaysia was a place called the Cameron Highlands, which was a small village high up in the mountains. It was a little cooler there than the other places we had visited. We drove there by bus on small mountain roads which was a bit scary at times! While we were there we did lots of walking including a day long jungle trek which was great fun. We had an eventful start to the journey when the jeep that was driving us got stuck in the mud! So we all had to get out and walk for a bit which was fun but very muddy! I had mud all the way up to my knees!

While we were walking, we came across this giant 'flower' called a rafflesia. Our guide told us that it is actually a type of mushroom. We were lucky to spot it because it only flowers for about five days, despite taking around three years to look like this! We had a few more precarious bamboo bridges to cross over during the day but the views made it all worthwhile! We visited a mountain tribe village which was fascinating, a huge waterfall and a tea plantation which were all amazing!

That's all from Malaysia! I'm in Cambodia at the moment so will send you another update soon. Spotted a very unusual school which I'll tell you all about next time.

Hope you are all well,  

Miss Boughen