2025 Malaysia- Menlo Abroad

Hello everyone from the Penang Airport! This morning we woke up at around 7:30 and had an amazing breakfast with yogurt and granola that Raj, the manager of the Hickory, prepared for us. We then finished packing and shuffled into our jeeps to make it to the bottom of Penang hill. We got on the bus ride to George Town where we then met one of Ms. Buxton's friends, Michelle, for a heritage trail trishaw tour. Each of us embarked on our own trishaw where we met our spirited drivers. We first stopped at a Buddhist Temple, Goddess of Mercy, where we witnessed some unique fortune telling and some of us tried it as well. First you get a cup of 108 sticks and you shake it until one stick comes out. Then, you get bean shaped rocks and you must throw them up and if one lands face up and one face down, you receive your fortune, if it doesn’t you shake the cup for another stick. It suddenly began to rain super hard outside and so we had to hide out in the temple for a while but it was definite...

Today was our last full day in Malaysia, and it was still really packed with lots of places to see! We started the day with a visit to the beautiful Kek Lok Si Temple. We took the funicular down and then hopped on a bus. Our tour guide, Sam, took us around, and we wandered through many of the smaller individual temples, each complete with several Buddha statues and extravagant designs. The view at the top of the hill was so beautiful—we could see the entire city from the gardens and gates throughout the grounds of the temple. After we finished walking through the temple, we made a quick stop at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel, where the opening scene of Crazy Rich Asians was filmed! We were all really excited to see some of the locations, especially because we had watched it all together a few nights ago during our overnight stay at the hotel in Kuala Tahan. Once everyone had finished taking their photos, we drove over to Little India in George Town, where we were greeted by our tour...

    It’s Ella!! On our first day on Penang Hill, we had a yummy Western breakfast at 7:30 a.m. sharp to catch the funicular down to George Town. We got broken up into groups, and after a bit of briefing and a short car ride using a popular local service called Grab, we got to wander George Town, shopping and taking pictures of the many cool-looking murals. It was really interesting to see the different pieces of street art scattered around the city’s walls—from polished paintings of cats and people to wire iron cartoons and wayward graffiti. I really enjoyed taking pictures of everything—both for the mural scavenger hunt we were assigned and for myself (I ended up taking so many that my camera battery died). I also really liked seeing the architecture of the city and how different styles coexisted and merged with one another. Penang has a pretty strong Chinese influence, and you can still see Malaysian and colonial British influences on the different buildings. My group also s...

  Hey everyone, it’s Ava again!! We had a really teary morning as we said our final goodbyes to our homestay families. Before we left, I got a fire breakfast of banana bread and an egg sandwich from Angah and her family, who have all been super sweet, along with a really nice T-shirt highlighting Taman Negara and Kuala Tahan. Angah and her family brought us to an area where the bus had parked, showered us with gifts, and stayed with us until the bus left, waving at us as it departed. We were all crying, they were all crying, and I said goodbye to an extra-special person: Nuha (Neil and Benjamin’s homestay sister). We received some letters from our homestay families, which we read on the 8-hour bus ride to Penang.  The bus ride was so fun! We created a new card game and played lots of music through the portable speaker. We wrote down all the words we know in Malay now and journaled about our homestays and the Malay culture. We stopped at a few small rest stops, and then for lun...

News! News! I have big, sad news… it’s our last full day in the precious village of Kuala Tahan, and we’re all devastated. But don’t worry—in true Menlo fashion, we’re not going out without a bang! This is Sienna reporting to you on June 3rd, 2025—preparations for our final farewell dinner are in full swing this afternoon. Let’s take it back to this morning and recount how it all started. Ananya and I got to sleep in a bit until 8, when Angah dropped by the house and woke us up. Unfortunately, we missed our last chance to watch Didi & Friends today, but of course we still know the theme song. Horah Hooray! Angah, who is our host mom Hidayah’s sister, joined us for breakfast, which was roti and curry with bananas and nasi goreng. And again, we had to have our giant coffees with tons of condensed milk. It’s a Hidayah staple.  At around 9, we left the house to join the rest of the group at the community hall. After our daily VIBE check-ins (Vitals, Internal, Basic Needs, Excited ...