A Quick Update - We're here pt1!
We now live in Penang... apparently
So this is where we live now!
This is the town on the North of the island we have ended up on.
Yep, apparently we have been living here in Tanjung Bungah for nearly two weeks! I know I should have posted before now, but it turns out that setting up a new home and starting a full time job take up quite a bit of time and mental energy.
It feels like both no time at all and an eternity, but that is the peculiar effect that your cognitive load has on your perception of time. Newness makes time seem to extend and there has been newness in abundance.
Fortunately we had engaged the services of an estate agent. Now estate agents here do a very different job. They work on behalf of the tenant to interface with the landlord and secure the property at the appropriate location based on your needs. They even negotiate the price down, which is a revelation. Our estate agent, Eunice, has been fantastic and as a result we arrived to a property that was furnished and where the internet connection had been installed by the end of that first day too.
We were also lucky in terms of the choice of school as the onboarding process has been brilliant and the HR team ensured that there were enough basics in terms of bedding, household goods and food that we could have managed without going to any nearby supermarkets, but given that we still had a few hours to spare and some needs that hadn't been covered we ventured out nonetheless.
Before we did though we were visited by one of the deputy heads and his wife (also a teacher at the primary school) who were simply brilliant to us. They were warm, welcoming and helpful and over the next couple of days they gave us a couple of tours and pointed out some fantastic local highlights - again, more evidence that we have landed on our feet.
The first day here then culminated in a frantic supermarket sweep style dash around a Tesco, of all places! It became frantic because we only discovered once we arrived that one of the SOPs that Malaysia has in place is to ban all under 12s from any enclosed public space. Why is beyond me, but those are the rules, so Thomas and Nicola waited in the car whilst I made my way around a Tesco that was hidden on the top floor of an aging shopping mall in a country I've never visited before, trying to fulfil a shopping list of essentials that included everything from towels to milk and all points in between. Suffice to say that my travel addled brain did not make a great job of knocking items of the shopping list.
I mean, hey, you try navigating a shopping centre you have never visited, where everything is priced in a currency you barely understand, where you have no idea what half the stuff on the shelves actually is and you are under quite severe time pressure. It's not easy! However, I did manage to get enough stuff for us to get thought that first day.
I mean, I'm sure all of this stuff is great, but what actually is it?
The first night was our first introduction to the local hawker market in Permai - it was brilliant! We ended up getting take out from a fantastic place on one corner of a fascinating little microcosm of Penang's food culture. We got some of the best dhal I have ever had (we've been back to that place 3 times already!) and Thomas has developed a taste for biriyani and masala wraps and the cost was ridiculous. Our first meal, which had enough food for all three of use and lunch for Thomas the following day, cost 22 RM - the equivalent of about £4.50 GBP??? I can't get my head round the numbers!
A great little park and recreation area next to the amazing hawker market and restaurants in Permai
The following day our very efficient and incredibly helpful HR manager had arranged an appointment for us to set up Malaysian bank accounts through HSBC. This took about two hours and we left with two accounts and debit cards for them issued there and then. This made life much easier as we could shop online in Malaysia as we now had cards registered to the address that we would ship the items to. This meant some IKEA shopping (although we had to wait 24hrs for the cards to become fully active) and some kit from Decathlon too on the following day. Things were beginning to come together.
Aside from the 'things' aspect there have been the people. In the short time we've been here we've met and got to know at least as many people as I did in 13 years of living on a street in Whitley Bay (that may be more about me than the street I guess). Thomas has also 'played out' - something that happened on no more than half a dozen occasions back home. Partly because of the weather, partly the physical aspects of the street (lots of cars) and partly just the way we lived. Here however, Thomas has been out for several hours every day and made friends with children both above and below his age who come from different schools and different countries. This was one of the aims of coming here - to give our family an experience that is more difficult to emulate in the UK.
So as we head towards the end of our second week in the house and both Thomas and I start school (okay it's online, but it is what it is), we are beginning to see some of the life we may lead. It's early days, but thanks mainly due to the people we've met, we're settling into some sort of rhythm.
We have been very lucky so far and long may that continue!
Until next time
Best wishes to all
John, Nicola and Thomas
The view from Tanjung Bungah beach out across to the Floating Mosque
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