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Sunday October 26th
Today is our last day in Malaysia. We had an 11:30 flight out of KL so we left our hotel around 8:30 to leave ourselves plenty of time and took a taxi rather than a bus. We hung around the airport for a little bit and picked up some free internet and were getting live updates on the Phillies and Penn State games.
The flight was uneventful which was good. Slap Shot and I were both going on a FDP to an orphanage at 2pm which meant we had to get on the 1pm tender leaving from the boat to make sure we were on the pier at 2. This also meant we had to hurry back from the airport and get the 12:30 tender back to the boat, and we just made it. Today was the hottest and brightest day yet so the tender was extremely hot. We ran onto the boat, dropped our stuff and got back onto the tender. Once back at the pier we walked around a little bit and saw Lacey, Steph, and Steph's roommate Erica. Steph and Erica were also going to the orphanage so we all headed back to the pier and got on the buses.
The orphanage was called St. Joseph's home and was right in down town Penang. There were only about 50 kids at the home and about 80 SAS kids going to visit them. We were the first bus to get there and after we got off the bus we were basically turned free to interact with the kids. The home was a big building with a courtyard in the center. The dorms were upstairs and the kids slept in rooms with 4-5 other kids. The floors were cement and they didn't have glass windows, just bars because this allowed for ventilation into all the rooms. This was typical of Malaysian houses because it is such a tropical climate. After the 2nd bus of SAS students got there, it was a lot more difficult to interact with the kids and there was a lot of standing around. Overall it was a fun experience to interact with the kids. We learned that the kids live at the home and go to school during the day. Some are orphans but others are just there so they can have the opportunity to go to school because their families may be too poor or there may be other issues. Adopting is not allowed in Malaysia so the orphans will spend their entire childhood there. They all had nothing but good things to say about living there so it was not at all depressing to see the home because the kids were all better off here than anywhere else and not to mention happy to be there. At 4:00 we headed back to the pier to catch the last few tenders back to the ship.
Malaysia was a great country and a good transition into Asian culture. I have said it a bunch by now but it is a melting pot of all the Asian cultures. It is a tropical climate so there are palm trees and green grass unlike India which was just all dirt and rubble. Penang had a lot of British, Islamic influence that came from India with the East Indian Trading Co. during colonial times. There was also a lot of Chinese influence in the amount of temples and architecture of some of the houses. It was a great country that does not have one major attraction, but such a wide variety of things to do that you can't possibly do it all in the amount of time we had there. Of course this is the story for every country we have been to and are going to. Good-bye Malaysia, here we come Vietnam!
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