Right from travelling in the land of martyrs in Vietnam to the rejuvenating beaches of Bali, I have either had extremely pleasant or overtly morbid experiences. These life threatening experiences usually involved me showing off my clumsier side such as toppling over a high speed banana boat in the middle of a sea in Bali, getting whacked by a 50 year old turtle in midst of a photo session which went tragically wrong and falling off a camel in the dunes of a dessert safari in dubai. Gosh! What a colossal mess.
So, I would like to ease up and type out a rather interesting yet not horrifying or physically harmful experience during my school trip to the heritage city of Melaka, Malaysia.
I was in 9th grade in an international school in singapore when we were taken for a 3 day getaway from our exhausting study oriented lives to the city of Melaka in Malaysia which was just about a 6 our drive considering how well laid the roads were.
On the second day of our stay we were taken for a little heritage treasure hunt for bringing out that little competitive streak which usually sparks an adrenaline rush among 15 year olds. We were divided into random groups which none of us found pleasing, but all we knew was that we had to win this trail.
It all started off well and we were manoeuvring around the place looking for answers when we realised it was way past our time limits because all we did was shop, eat and click pictures. It had been more than 2 whole hours. Our teachers and schoolmates were worried sick as they had no clue about our whereabouts. We were officially lost!
We had gone deep into the trail and surrounded by millions of tiny kiosks which sold clothes, artefacts, and junk. We tried asking around wether people knew the way out but due to our lack of knowledge in the local language we had to do so with great difficulty and mostly sign language.
We finally found a small sign saying 'English coaching classes' and went in there to ask for directions since we now had a reliable source of communication other than speaking in broken Malay.
Luckily, the people in Malaysia are really hospitable and friendly (thank our stars). The receptionist of the coaching classes guided us towards the start of the trail herself. We were pretty sure that if we were in any other part of the world, we being vulnerable and clueless teenagers, would have got mugged. Our teachers thanked the receptionist and we went through several episodes of sound thrashing. But the journey continued to be a pleasant one.
It's probably best that you do a little homework regarding the language of the place you intend to visit. It might work wonders!