“Hello, Mr., Can We Practice Our English With You?”

Traveling as an English speaker is a luxury. English is essentially the universal language today, which means that wherever we go, someone speaks our language, with varying degrees of competency. Being able to speak English in the countries we have visited is a highly prized skill, one that everyone we have encountered in Southeast Asia has been eager to hone with us. But the strangest incident of English learning we have seen has been here in Indonesia, where for the past week, we have been physically stopped by kids looking to “practice English” at tourist sites.

Education Tourism in Kuala Pilah

Hands down one of the best days of our trip was the day we spent on a strange historical quest in Kuala Pilah, a town about one hour south of Kuala Lumpur. We went to find the school where Rebecca’s dad had taught during his three-year stint in the Peace Corps after college from 1964-1968. We didn’t know what we would find when we got there. It was an educational adventure for us, one in which we learned that quintessential lesson of travel: no matter where you go, things are more similar than they are different.