The Final Days in France.

This is a continuation of my last post.

Before going to Saint Nazaire, I dropped by Bordeaux, which was along the way, for prayers and lunch. The mosque I went to wasn't too far from the station, but I had a bit of trouble finding it at first as it was a bit hidden from view and looked nothing like a typical mosque from the outside. It was just a regular shop lot, and the roads that it directly faced were more like alleys. There were also  a few soldiers with large guns standing guard outside, with their number increasing to about a dozen as prayer time got nearer.

After that, I decided to look around for a place to eat. I had a few hours, so I wandered for a few blocks (didn't reach the city center, though), even passing a marketplace of sorts, the first one that I'd visited in France (I'd seen one in Toulouse, but it was closed at the time I walked past it with Remy). Eventually I found a halal fried chicken fast food joint called HFC - yes, I thought the 'H' stood for 'halal' too, but it doesn't. I ordered a five-piece chicken meal with fries and a canned drink for five or six euros, which I thought was a good price.

After that, I went back to the train station and continued my journey to Saint Nazaire. I got there in the evening, maybe about an hour before Maghrib. Borhan, the last of my Rembau friends in France, met me there, though he did come a bit late as he had been up to some cleaning. A pipe in his house had burst the night before, so he'd had to take care of the damage caused. I was supposed to be staying with him at his place, but the faulty pipe meant that both of us would have to bunk over at his friends' house. Borhan was also due to move out of his place soon anyway, so there was little point in going back after he'd cleaned everything up.

Before I continue, let me just provide a bit of background about Saint Nazaire, the only place I visited in France that I had not heard of prior to being told that a friend was studying there. It's a small town, kind of like Nilai, in the west of France. It doesn't even have a mall; the largest shopping center it has is more or less like the Tesco or Giant in Nilai. The town is notable mainly for its beaches and its harbour, where I'm told a couple of the world's largest cruise ships were built. Another noteable feature of the town is that none of the architecture looks typically French; according to Borhan and his friends, this was because the whole place got bombed by the Germans during World War II and had to be rebuilt. Apparently the Americans helped out with that, which explains the presence of the American flag being flown with the French one along the Saint Nazaire coast.

We took a bus to get to the house we'd be staying in. It was a nice place with a beautiful garden that it shared with the house next door, and besides that the first thing I noticed upon reaching there were the number of shoes scattered in front of the door. The first room we entered was the kitchen, and sure enough, there were four or five people there preparing dinner, two of them girls. There were a few other guys in the living room as well. Two more of them came later on. Just like in Nice, the guys here were big on having iftar together, especially since they were all (except for one senior and a few juniors) from the same MFI (Malaysia France Institute) batch. Borhan later told me there were about 60 people in that batch; I must have met about half of them by now.

I would go on to be based in Saint Nazaire for the rest of my France trip. I was supposed to have moved on to Tours to stay with another friend, but circumstances dictated otherwise. It just so happened that a few of the Saint Nazaire guys, including Borhan, would be around until after I left, and they didn't mind me staying with them. Most of the people I met on my first night in Saint Nazaire left for Malaysia soon after I arrived, however. Our iftar gatherings got smaller and smaller, until eventually only five of us remained.

I didn't get up to much for the first few days in Saint Nazaire. In the day I mostly slept, went on YouTube, and played FIFA 16 on the PS4. Borhan and one of his friends did take me to one of the numerous beaches once, though; we didn't stay for too long, but I enjoyed walking barefoot on the sand, climbing up rocks to reach the top of a cliff that overlooked the beach and the sea, and then checking out some abandoned, heavily-graffitied military bunkers on top of said cliff. Borhan and his friend lagged behind while I scoured the place with an almost childlike enthusiasm.

The day came where I was supposed to move on to Tours via a stop at Angers. I wanted to cancel my tickets but the office opened too late, so I ended up deciding to just go ahead with my trip to Angers. I did manage to cancel my ticket to Tours and replaced it with a return ticket, though I don't really remember doing it. I probably did that at the Angers train station but, like I said, I have no memory of it. That's what I get for not writing about it right away.

I'd actually heard of Angers due to the recent brave exploits of its football team, Angers SCO, in the previous season's Ligue 1. After getting promoted from France's second division, they somehow managed to find themselves in third (I think) midway through the season before eventually finishing 9th. I passed by the official club shop while walking through the city center; a jersey cost 85 euros.

Angers is known for its history and art. Besides walking through the city and seeing the sights (and the sights were quite good), my main activity in Angers was to visit the Chateau d'Angers, a scenic medieval castle next to the Maine river. The price to enter was, I think, 6 euros or so, and I decided to pay up after having turned down paying  to visit the castle in Carcassonne.

The Chateau was quite aesthetically pleasing, which made me wonder why the place's management decided to put Braille markings on the castle map in front of the entrance; I just figured that people who visited the place would, you know, be able to appreciate its visual beauty.

The sights within the Chateau included its gardens, medieval architecture, and a view of the city from the top of the castle ramparts. The place also housed the Apocalypse Tapestry, a tapestry depicting the end of the world based on its description in the Bible's Book of Revelations. All in all, it was a good place to visit for history lovers and those with a medieval aesthetic. I am, in fact, neither of those, but I still found the visit to be a good experience. I used to read about medieval times as a kid and, just like in Carcassonne, visiting a place like this felt somewhat surreal.

A few days after visiting Angers, the guys I was staying with had to move house as their rental contract was coming to an end. We spent much of the last day in the house cleaning it and, of course, moving our stuff. The cleaning we did in the house was different to how people in Malaysia usually clean when moving out - here it has to be done much more thoroughly. When I moved out of my first house in Nilai, all my housemates and I did was basically sweep all the floors and throw out all the trash - here, the guys even mopped the floors, cleaned up the stains on the stove and in the oven and took the sofa pillows' casings took the cleaners. It just seems logical that all these things should be done when moving out of a rented house, but I doubt very many people in Malaysia have such standards, landlords and renters alike.

There were four of us at this point, and we moved into three separate apartments, each belonging to juniors who'd gone home for Raya. Borhan and his friends were actually waiting for their university placements (one of the guys had actually already gotten a place in Nancy, but was still yet to move there), so they would be staying in these apartments for the time being. Borhan would be leaving for Malaysia a few days after me, and he was planning to shift to wherever it was he would be shifting to by then, so there was a bit of uncertainty on my part as to where I would be staying if he had to move before I left. Thankfully for me, that didn't happen.

I was due to meet up with a friend coming from the UK in Paris the day before Eid. We would be renting a room on the outskirts of Paris in a place called Villejuif until the day after Eid, and we'd be spending our first Eid away from our respective families seeing as much of the city as possible. That left a gap of a few days between moving into the new apartment and my Paris sojourn in which I had absolutely nothing planned, so I expected them to be very uneventful.

I was, of course, proven wrong when my phone chose to die early on Saturday morning, just a few days before my Paris trip on the coming Tuesday. It had served me well for the past three years or so, so I figured it was probably about time anyway. Still, I sent it to the one phone shop in town in hope that it could still be salvaged, at least until I could go home and get its replacement in Malaysia. The shop wasn't open on Sundays, and it was afternoon when I sent the phone in, so I thought it was fair enough when the guy at the shop said I'd be getting the diagnosis on the phone on Monday.

Monday came, but the diagnosis didn't. Borhan called up the shop for me (since, of course, he spoke French) and was told that the guy who had received the phone on Saturday wasn't in that day. Apparently, we would be able to get the diagnosis the next morning, the same day my train would be leaving for Paris. Considering the likely possibility that I would have to get a new phone, I had to do my best not to burst with rage at the slowness of the service I was getting. If this had been Malaysia, I would have gotten a diagnosis in fifteen minutes.

On Tuesday morning, soon after the shop opened at 10.00, Borhan and I dropped by to check on the phone. Surprise, surprise - there was still no diagnosis. They said they could have it ready by 2.00 pm, but considering that I had a train to catch around that time and Borhan would soon have to leave for Nantes with his friends to catch a bus to Paris, I decided to just take my phone back and hurry to get myself a new phone. We'd already wasted enough time.

Borhan and I took the bus to the Casino supermarket, where I found that they sold game consoles on shelves; in Malaysia, you could only find those in specialist video game stores. They also sold smartphones as well; again, those aren't things you'd find outside of a specialist store. I didn't have much choice or time, so I ended up purchasing an Asus Zenfone 2 Laser for 144.50 euros. My old phone cost about RM800, so this new one was actually cheaper considering that 1 euro was equivalent to about RM4.62.

Later that day I went to Paris, which I'll talk about in a later post. I came back a couple of days later, happy but tired. At this point, I only had a couple of days left before leaving for Malaysia, and I still hadn't met my friend in Tours. She'd been busy as her pre-university program in Tours had been wrapping up, and she was moving to Nantes for the next stage of her studies, so we decided to just meet up there the next day. Due to certain complications with the public transport, we only managed to meet for about 40 minutes at the Nantes train station.

The next day was my last in France. My flight was at about 3.30 pm, and my train to Paris was at about 6.15 in the morning. I said goodbye to Borhan after Fajr, and set off on the long journey to the Charles de Gaulle airport. It was mostly uneventful, except for a brief exchange with a middle-aged Frenchman during transit in Nantes in which he was a bit awestruck by my power bank. I wondered whether those things were uncommon in France and, if so, why.

My plane took off as scheduled (maybe slightly later) and reached Dubai without a hitch. The transit was almost four hours long, but I was just glad it was much shorter than the last time I was here. The Dubai International Airport looked different in the middle of the night, what with all the sleeping people everywhere. I didn't join them in catching Z's, though, as I didn't want to risk missing my flight. I also figured I could sleep on the flight later anyway.

As it happened, my seat on the flight home was sandwiched between a married couple with a baby on one side, and a talkative British-Chinese teenager named Alan on the other. Alan was nice to talk to, of course, but it would have been equally nice to have spent that time sleeping instead. I did eventually get some sleep, but not as much as I would have liked. Still, I wouldn't mind running into Alan again at some point in the future, so there's that.

Eventually I reached KLIA and, after picking up my luggage after what seemed like an age, took the KLIA Express to KL Sentral (for RM55, which was quite a hike on its old price of RM35) where my mom and a few of my siblings picked me up. I went home and had spaghetti for dinner for the first time in what had felt like forever.

It's been almost a week now since my France adventure ended, though some of the effects are still being felt. For instance, I've had trouble sleeping as my body clock readjusts to Malaysian time. Malaysian drivers and traffic have served as unwelcome reminders that I'm not in Europe anymore. And the days seem to pass by so quickly.

France was a fantastic experience, and a much-needed escape from daily life. I'll (hopefully) be starting work soon, and it was refreshing for the mind, body and soul to escape Malaysia and the real world for a while before starting this new phase in my life. Travel can be addictive for some, and I wouldn't be inclined to disagree after having a taste of it - my current lack of money, however, is a strong deterrent.

It would be great if I could visit more countries in the future, but we can never know what the future holds. For now, I'll just have to focus on the present and see where it takes me.

Toulouse, Part 2.

This is a continuation of my last post. Obviously.

The day after we went to Carcassonne, I needed to exchange some train tickets in the city. Instead of taking the public transport (and thus having to spend money), Remy suggested we cycle. One of his housemates had two bicycles - one was a mountain  bike, while the other was a racing bike - so we could each take one.

I had honestly not ridden a bicycle in years; not since our bikes at home got busted and no one found the time to get them fixed. I remember trying out a friend's Fixi in Manipal a few years ago (and failing miserably), and, now that I think about it, I may have also tried out a housemate's bike once during my freshman year, but that was pretty much it. Furthermore, we were going to cycle on roads and into the city center, which was something I'd never done before - my cycling prior to this had only ever been limited to just going about my own neighborhood. I decided to see it as an opportunity to try something new.

My cycling was not smooth, particularly when going through small gaps and making sharpish turns. I also had no idea how hand signals worked, and mostly just copied what Remy did. Heck, I even had trouble getting on the bike at first, and the problem just kept on happening throughout the day. The added pressure of cycling out in public didn't help, as I couldn't help but feel like my poor cycling skills were being judged by the drivers on the road as well as the pedestrians. Other than that, though, I actually enjoyed myself.

Remy took me through the university he was studying in before we went to the city. It was pretty deserted as it was the summer holidays (Remy himself was on holiday as well), except for some students who had to resit papers from their recent exams. It wasn't the biggest or most scenic campus I'd ever seen, but it was still interesting to see. I've visited quite a number of colleges and universities in the past, and this was another to add to my collection.

After that, we set off along the path to the city, which lay along the Canal du Midi, a canal stretching over 200 km long through Southern France. The canal was lined with plenty of trees, so there was an ample amount of shade. There were boats in the water (including ones that looked as if people lived in them), and the path we cycled along was shared by pedestrians, joggers and other cyclists coming from both directions.

We eventually reached the Toulouse Matabiau station, the same one I had gotten off at when I'd first arrived. I don't remember how long we cycled for, but it must have been about 20 minutes at the very least. We were allowed to bring our bikes in (you're even allowed to bring your bike on board at least some of the trains too, in fact), and so we did. After I was done with my tickets, we got back on our bikes and went into the city.

We didn't cycle the whole way, of course, as there were a lot of people and I was concerned about my lack of control. The Wales-Russia game was going to be on later that evening, so we saw a large number of Welsh and Russian fans walking about. There were a number of military guys about as well, which was understandable given the trouble that some Russian fans had gotten involved with in Marseille earlier in the tournament.

Remy had a dentist appointment later that afternoon, so we didn't stay for too long. We planned to come back the next day, however, as there was going to be something called the Fete de la Musique, which is an annual nationwide celebration of music, held on the longest day of summer. We'd seen a stage being set up in the Toulouse Capitol, and Remy said there were going to people playing music on the streets everywhere, so the next day promised to be pretty 'lit', as the kids these days would say.

So we went back to the city the next day, in the mid-afternoon, by metro this time. The place was packed with people, but it turned out that we'd come too early. Street musicians had set up their stuff here and there, and there was also the occasional DJ set, but overall we had the impression that things hadn't really kicked off yet. The big stage in the Capitol had been walled up and only people who were wearing special wristbands were permitted to get near it. We could see people performing there, but only as a rehearsal. Remy said the actual concert would only be starting in the evening and, sure enough, we managed to catch some of it on TV later that night.

It was a hot day and we were fasting, so naturally it didn't take us too long to get tired. Our final stop for the day was a park, in which we could see plenty of people relaxing in the shade and lying on the grass. The place also contained a Japanese garden, which I visited alone as Remy elected to take a nap on the grass instead. The garden wasn't that big, so I didn't stay for too long. We went home after that.

We didn't really do anything for the last few days of my stay, so I spent them just going on the internet and editing my vlog. The day for me to leave for my next destination eventually came, and Remy came with me to the train station to send me off. I had a long train ride ahead; about seven hours of total travel time.

I'd enjoyed my time in Toulouse, which was mostly due to Remy and his housemates being wonderful hosts. It would have been nice to stay longer, but I had to move on to my next stop: Saint Nazaire.