I know this post comes rather late after the change of the years, but I have a good excuse! Since 18th December, when my blonde Diana arrived, we've been traveling around Malaysia, in a trip that has contained everything - good food (Malaysian and Romanian); good booze (again, Malaysian, Romanian and from other parts of the world as well...we never discriminate when it comes to drinking!); beach, jungle, rocks and waterfalls; laziness and hiking; old and new friendships; Awww and Ohhh and Ahhh moments.
I will not bore you with the details of our wanderings - the photos on facebook will reflect it well enough, I'm sure. I will however share some of the things that happened or were talked of or just randomly passed my mind while in our various locations.
* It is possible to meet your soul mate in Malaysia! She might be from Slovenia and might resemble you tremendously! And no...it is not my soul mate that I am talking about, but Diana's. And not a romantic soul mate either - just a person that seems to be part of you somehow. It always amazes me how two people can just hit it off immediately and realise they have the same beliefs, convictions and general guidelines in life, even though their trajectory so far has been completely different. Lately, this strikes me a lot. I first got to witness it with my change of volunteers - my old and new volunteer overlapped for 10 days, one is Indian Malaysian and the other French, and yet it was like they were sisters! And something very similar happened with Diana and Tina. It's just lovely to see. And also lovely to know that whenever such people will meet again, the connection will definitely be there again, without much effort on either side.
* Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it. This one I'm gonna leave as such, with no further info, just cause it's more for me rather than anyone else.
* Island life is amazing, as long as there's mountains on it also! I've always chosen mountains vs sea, with no regrets whatsoever. This time in SE Asia though has made me appreciate a lot though a nice beach and clear water. So much so that I have reached the point where I'm ok with spending 3 days in a row just relaxing on the beach and not doing much else (before, I could not believe I would be capable of that). And I was almost thinking that I'd converted. But when, after such laziness, I got to go again next to rocks and waterfalls with cold water, I just got this feeling of "oh no...this is definitely where I'm supposed to be!". So no worries mountains! You're staying my number 1 choice!
* Malaysia is beautiful and it should be visited by everyone! Langkawi and Penang are both amazing and I only wish my center would be based there. Though that might not be so productive for my work :) Also, I realised again how big the impact of a place can be. In this period Melaka (which is a town about 2h south of KL) has become sort of my refuge city. The place where, if things are bad and annoying, you go and you just know...all will be good again! This time around, it was the same. After a very annoying journey, just stepping out of the bus made me feel immediately more relaxed and open to everything. I still wonder if it's the places themselves that do that or just our associations of them. Oh..speaking of associations, Diana and I decided that the word for KL is heterogeneous (based on the whole Eat, Pray, Love thing of associating words with cities)
* Karma is one amazing thing! Karma has been mentioned a lot during this trip of ours, because in a weird way, without much prior planning things just worked out! People have come together (I thought I was traveling just with Diana, but we ended up spending only the last 3 days on or own :)), fun was had, random occurrences brought us to amazing places, logistics came through, all these type of things that would normally stress you had a weird way of coming together. I am just hoping to keep that open, let it go feeling for as long as I can :)
* Christmas in a warm country is just not Christmas. Which was probably for the best. If it would have felt like Christmas, I would have missed my family like mad! Like this however, I managed to enjoy the moment to its fullest (sometimes maybe a bit too much:)). As a consequence, our Christmas presents to each other were rounds of cocktails on the beach. Not too shabby, some might say. It was a bit weird though cause they were putting up a very "tourist oriented Christmas celebration" which consisted of something very similar to New Years....fireworks and everyone hugging and going Merry Christmas at 00:00. We had a bit of a "Guys...that's not really how you're supposed to be doing it" moment but we let it slide, since we appreciated the effort :)
* Holidays are awesome! And people are what makes them awesome! :)