MRSM

The thoughts as we travelled from the safety of Seremban to the hustle and bustle of KL where a mix of apprehension and excitment. The journey lasted around and hour, mostly dominated by a view of palm oil plantation on either side for as far as you could see. When we hit civilisation again, we where in the outskirts of KL with the huge Petronas Towers visible in the distance.

We pulled up outside our hotel, "Quality Hotel" right in the middle of KL. 

http://www.quality.com.my/KL/

The size of the place was huge, just a little larger than Gairloch. We had to travel to the 17th floor for our room, in a glass elevator on the side of the hotel. What a view. Then we realised our room our room was not yet finished, so we dumped our stuff and went shopping at a traditional Malay mall down the road. It was a nightmare, I still have no idea how many floors it actually had and everywhere looked exactly the same. Eventually we had what we needed, plus loads we didn't so we returned to hotel where we promptly watched Ice Age 2.

That night we met our MARA rep Marwati who took us out to KLCC where we had lunch at a Malay food court, most of us had Subway. we then went to the central plaza, directly under the Petronas Towers. The lights where all on, plus there was a light show and fountains in the water. we could have stayed there for days. 

http://www.petronastwintowers.com.my/

The next morning we all dressed into our smartest attire and prepared to meet the big boss, the Head of MARA. Before this however we had to cross the road, this was made difficult by the 6 or 7 thousand soldiers marching through Kuala Lumpur practising for the Independence Day march. this was further made difficult when they began cheers and shouting at the site of 12 very smartly dressed Orang Putih. We where now very embarrassed Orang Putih, it was certainly strange to be this noticed. 

After meeting with the big boss and having our final briefing, we said goodbye to each other and boarded our respective school buses. we had an 8 hours drive ahead of us, however 10 minutes down the road we stopped for some lunch. Our mentor, Reen was advising us on what to have at this Malay truck stop for we told ourselves we would not have McDonald's again. a chicken dish caught our eye, so we inquired about the strength of the spice. Mild, Reen said. Well if this was mild hot could have killed an elephant. After finishing half out of pure politeness, we where informed that eating large amounts of spicy food can caused some potential bowel related problems. We quickly stopped eating and went to McDonald's, where strangely we found the rest of the volunteers all whom had stopped in the same place but had been sensible enough to stick with familiar food.

 http://goo.gl/maps/tB54y

 

After this it was a straight run north to our school, MRSM Pasir Tumboh. Our orientation had been fun, but now it was time for the real work to begin. Or something like that.