My Week in Malaysia Pt. 1

I spent a week in Malaysia visiting my friend Allison before starting TESOL class in Cambodia. Allison is from Phoenix, AZ and has lived in Costa Rica for a year, Panama for 3 years, and now she has been in Malaysia for a year! She's quite the worldly woman, and I knew a visit with her would be a great way to kick off this adventure.

Best tour guides a girl could ask for

I was pleasantly surprised by all that KL had to offer! The city felt much bigger and more modern than I had expected. I'll be honest, the extent of my Malaysian knowledge was pretty limited to the recent plane crashes. Oops, ignorant American. What I found upon arrival was a diverse, fast paced city filled with delicious food, friendly people, luscious greenery, and a fabulous skyline.

Kuala Lumpur skyline at Sunset

Let's jump right into the important info. I had so much delicious food during my visit, a few highlights included:

Who, What, When, Where, Why...wait what??

This post was intended to be created prior to departure, but I'm a bit of a procrastinator. Better late than never right??!

While nobody was super surprised by my Vietnam announcement, they did have a lot of questions. Here are my answers.

Who: Me, duh. I've always loved to travel, in fact after traveling in Europe for 6-ish months in 2007, I had planned to move home, save a bunch of money, then go travel and teach in South America. Instead life happened, I wound up finding a great job working with some even better people that sent me traveling me around the world. My wanderlust was satisfied for a while and I never ended up heading South. Fast forward to 2015, and things were finally aligning for me to take the leap. It was now or never and I chose now.

What: Move halfway across the world to a country that I've never visited and don't speak the language. Shrug, why not. I can travel, help people learn a language, and get paid to do it? Sign me up! Originally I had planned to get an online TESOL certificate (neccessary to get a legit job) and find a teaching position immediately. I had read that it is super easy to find English teaching jobs in Vietnam, and I was ready to get started. However, the more I thought about it I realized I want to be a really good teacher, and I wasn't sure I could learn enough from an online course; face to face teaching seemed like a better option. I found a month long TESOL program that took place in Cambodia for two weeks, then moved to Vietnam for the second two weeks. Sounded like a good option to me, I got to check another country off the list while working towards my goal, so I signed up for the class, bought my plane ticket and started making solid plans.