Malaysia

Malaysia was the start of my wild shopping spree, and it was good to catch up with Jo again! I arrived in KL after a day with lot's of melting and freezing.. I arrived in Singapore at abt 6:30 am and was picked up by Feli and her mum. Spent half a day with Feli and then took the bus to Malaysia. Jo lives in one of the suburbs, about 30 minutes from KL, depending on the traffic. Malaysia was a huuuge difference from home. I felt the cultureshock when I arrived there, I'm soo not used to be a minority, but whenever we had lunch or dinner in her town, I was. Strange feeling, but also a good feeling in a way. We spent loads of time eating and shopping, her parents are the sweetest parents on earth, as they took us wherever we wanted to go, basically. We all went to Melaka, which was one of the more touristy cities there. I liked it a lot. We went to the old portugese fort, we went ard town shopping for a while and then Jo's parents took us to a Baba-house. That is a restaurant that cooks food that has it's roots in both Malay and Chinese cooking. It was sooo nice! Best food ever. We went to the night-market where I bought loads of stuff, and returned home late as. :)

Jo took me to Batu Caves, which is one of the Hindu sacret places in M'sia. It was coool. (But not cold at all! We completely melted!!) There was a Huuge gold statue there at the entrance of the cave, and the steps were steep as. About 280 steps, so dixon street times 2. After going into the caves we went ard the stalls, bought bindi and some other stuff. Then we headed to KLCC for some shopping (of course). ^_^ I got to see a lion dance one of the days, which was cool cause I've never seen one before. They were good, and now that I've seen one, I'm supposed to have good luck for the rest of the year. Whee!

I had durian for the first time in my life, and thought it wasn't as bad as the rumours that I've heard. The smell isn't that intense, and it tasted ok. And I didn't feel that my fingers smelled either after I had washed them, but definitely, my breath did smell like durian! hehe. Other than that Jo's parents took us to a wide variety of local restaurants, and I have tried so many things that I really can't remember the name of... food is probably very important to the Malaysian society. :)

3 things that freaked me out:

- Traffic!! I've never experienced it worse. everyone drives like maniacs, and we saw some motorcyclist get squashed between two cars on the motorway, just in front of our eyes when we were trying to get a cab. YIKES. Memorable was also Jo's mum's highspeed carchase after a guy hit her side-mirror on the road to a shop.

-Squat-down-toilets! Ok, really it's silly. It's just that I'm not used to them, have never seen any in my whole life, but they were a fright when I really had to go.

-Spiders! We saw some nastily big ones at the butterfly park. Man...


3 things that I L-O-V-E loved:

-Shopping! Never before have I ever been in such a heaven for shopping. Shoes! My favourite thing to shop were really cheap there, I bought 3 pairs. Shawls. Yum.

-Seeing and interacting with a culture completely different from what I'm used to. Awesome. The many different costumes, the many different kinds of ppl, the strange rules and all that.

-FOOD. All the yummy food that I tried. My gosh.

Malaysia was definitely one of the best holidays I've ever had in my entire life, that inspite of the fact that my stomach was kinda upset some of the time. It didn't hinder me too much though, have seen a lot, and spent heeps too much money. Ah well. It was worth it.

Singapore I'll do tomorrow, I have to do my readings!!