What It's Like

It's raining, which doesn't make for a good time to wander around China town being chased by shop and stall workers. So I thought I'd write a bit of a "What It's Like" post. Currently, eminem is playing in the internet cafe, like I said it's raining, but we haven't really seen that much rain since we've been here. We've stayed every place for two nights so haven't gotten too comfy anywhere or too bored either.

The east coast, which we only saw one small area of, was somewhat dirtier and less developed. I had expected the less developed part, but not the dirtier part, with more run down buildings. Mersing looked like a war zone to us, in some places. The highways in the East had much narrower roads and more wildlife as well as tiny run down cafes on the side of the road and more garbage too. So far, what we've seen of the west has been generally cleaner, and more well kept but also much busier streets, filled with people and traffic. The people have generally been very kind, and respond to a smile. We have been very lazy in our language learning as generally in every shop or place at least one person speaks some English. We haven't gotten much past thank you in Malay. I love the food, and keep trying to avoid the western places, which is hard sometimes when at the mall we were surrounded by KFC, Starbucks, oh and "Kenny Roger's Roaster" - I'm not sure what he's doing here?! Kev quite likes the food too, though I think he's also managed to have fries everyday. Hmmm.

People often advise us not to bother booking things, and then when we don't follow their advice, we learn that we should be glad we didn't. We would have missed a bus, or not had accommodation. We've also clued in that cold showers are quite nice things when it's 30 degrees day and night all the time. They're refreshing. In cities like KL, jaywalking is sometimes a necessity to getting through traffic, and sometimes you stand in the middle of the road between cars. Safely, I promise. Driving in general is crazy here, as I've decided most places outside of North America must be. There seem to be laws, most of the time, but it's not always clear. Scooters weave through traffic with two children loaded on, everyone tailgaits like it's going out of style and bus drivers run scooters off the road AND take it upon themselves to control the lizard population.

Wherever we go people are trying to sell us stuff, which for people like Kev and I feels quite strange. People passing us fliers, yelling out that I need a handbag, offering us "special rates" on the bus, in hotels, for taxis makes the beach seem pretty appealing sometimes. At the same time, we have our fun with it too.

I suppose that's plenty for now. Until next time.