Surfing at Weligama
Weekend in Kandy


A journey through Sri Lanka with my mother
Waikalla

Habarana



















Kandy


Nuwara Eliya


Kataragama - Yala national park









The south coast










Malaysia
In total my internship in Sri Lanka will take 6 months. After three months I got the chance to go to Malaysia for two weeks, a nice break right in the middle of my stay in Sri Lanka. I travelled around a bit, visited beautiful places, met wonderful people, but also took a lot of quiet time to study. In Sri Lanka things often don't go the way I plan them, so I got a bit behind on my schoolwork, in Malaysia I managed to catch up on it. I'm really happy I did this trip, I feel ready for the next three months of internship now I took some me-time to enjoy myself and to study. The pictures of me working for school in the hostel are a bit boring, so I'll post some of the nice things I saw in Malaysia underneath.
Penang
There is a large number of Chinese people living in Penang. Some of the so called "Chinese clans" have built very impressive mansions here.
Fort Cornwallis was built by the British East India Company in the late 1700s.
The Kek Lok Si temple on the Penang hill is the biggest Buddhist temple in Malaysia.
Georgetown is known for its streetart...
...so we drove around the city with a rikshaw to see all of it.
A lot of cultures in one city means a lot of different food to try. I came for the heritage and the museums, but my priorities shifted easily and I started spendig a lot of time eating. This Lebanese food was amazing.
But the first price goes to this street food stall where you can prepare your own Malaysian Satay in the fondue.
After all that food I needed some exercise so I went parasailing! One of the most thrilling things I ever did
The view up there was amazing!
And of course, I met some great people on the way. Safe travels guys!
Langkawi
After Penang I went seven days to Langkawi, an island in the north of Malaysia. More than enough time to study (on the beach sometimes) and do a few trips with some nice girls I met in Penang.
Ladies on the road... and they trusted me to drive the car :)
On Langkwai we saw lots of eagles and a hornbill...
... and many beautiful sunsets.
Kuala Lumpur
At the end of the trip I went to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. I was there last year already but I promised my fellow students that I would meet them there for a couple of days. It was great to see them in this lovely city.
Like all other tourists, we <3 KL ...
... with its magic fountains...
... and its crazy birds...
... and its nice skyline by night!
On my last evening in Malaysia I went to the Thaipusam Hindu festival at the batu caves. I was very impressed and wrote how I felt about it on facebook: "The last three years I spent more time in Asia than at home, and yet new experiences await me every day. This week about one million hindus climb up to the Batu cave temple near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to sacrifice little buckets of milk to the gods. And so I joined the crowd tonight. Some of them had been fasting for 48 days, were in trance now and carried the buckets attached to fishinghooks that were pierced into their backs. It looked like a terribly hard thing to do, a few collapsed on the way, but the support they got from the others was wonderful. Pure compassion! At the moment I finally reached the top there was a powercut. At first fear took over "I'm stuck in a pitch black huge cave in the middle of the night with thousands of people, if they start to panic this might turn into a very dangerous situation". But they didn't panic. They took out their phones turning the cave into a starlit sky, started to chant harder, show each other the way in the darkness and support the weakest other even more. All of a sudden I got to experience this festival the way it must have felt like back in the old days when people climbed by candlelight while chanting to the gods. #onceinalifetime"
Thousands of people climbing the steps to the Batu cave temple, next to the gigantuous statue of Lord Subramaniam