Saturday was kind of long and boring. Started off with customer calls - if I get up early I can catch people at work late in the afternoon of their day before. Then I was able to get a long bicycle ride in on the stationery bike at the little rooftop gym. Showered, reorganized my bags. Skyped with Tony for a bit. Checked out at 11a (they would not give me an extension, meh.) Put my bags in a locker and wandered around the CBD (Central Business District - what we would call "downtown", I guess.) Thousands of pedestrians and lots of street performers. I found my self in a little Chinatown section - closer to my hotel there seems to be a little bit of a Thai-section, but this was a proper China town. I wandered into a dimsum place and pointed at some things and ate them. Who knows? Dumplings, rice. It was tasty and filling. The mango pudding was very nice. I had thought about one last bubble tea, but then because I had the mango pudding I didn't really feel like it anymore. Kind of bored with just wandering around I went on back to the hotel to get my bags, took the 1 mile hike (much harder with my big suitcase, pulling it upt he hill) to the skybus and headed over to the airport. Really about an hour early but there just wasn't much for me to do for that hour. I would have liked to have extended my room for a bit longer, but if I couldn't do that, the airport was a second choice. Got checked in, through immigration and was at the gate relaxing when I was approached by a woman working for the government tourism board. She politely asked if she could interview me after showing me her credentials. That actually managed to pass 15 minutes quite pleasantly and afforded me the opportunity to figure out what I had spent while in Australia this trip. To be honest, I've been careful and I did pretty well.
The flight to Kuala Lumpur was bad but not awful. I was in that center section of five seats again, near the back. This time I was in the dead center seat. The lady next to me was small and the woman on the other side about the same size as me, so I wassn't horribly uncomfortable, but I couldn't really do anything and the movies are all the same ones from my flight to Melbourne from KL a week before. I did find things to watch - and I catnapped. And they fed us twice - the exact same food that I had on both other Malaysia Airline flights. Eight hours later I was pretty happy to get out and walk!
The KL terminal train is under refurbishment, still... so it was a long walk and a bus ride to change planes. I found a place to have a "frozen milk tea". I felt very parched - so that was a pleasant respite. Back onto a plane - this time a 3/3 configuration and I was stuck in a middle seat with large unpleasant Indian men on either side of me. I have rarely been so miserable - and it was almost 5 hours. I just put my head forward and tried to sleep through it. I didn't eat or watch whatever video they were playing on the big screen. Just tried to use astro-projection and leave my body behind. Ugh. It wasn't over, yet, either. Immigration guy just cannot understand why my passport is American and I was arriving on a flight from Malaysia. When I tried to explain that I had actually come from Australia he started to get pissed and accusatory because my passport was American. I thought I might be in trouble - but we smoothed it over and I went to get my bag (here's a bonus: it was waiting for me on the carousel). Then out to find the taxi ... that was painless too, no waiting. Little did I know that the pain was about to start!
Pedestrians step out into traffic, they walk along in the middle of the left-most lane. The cars then sort of straddle the other lanes and jocky for position. There is no reverence given to blinkers, to staying inside lane lines and no quarter is given no matter what, ever. The horn is a constant sound track. At one point my driver honked at and passed an ambulance with its siren blaring! There are dozens and dozens of mopeds careening around without thought to how much smaller and more vulnerable they are than the cars they are dodging around. More than once I saw a whole family on a single moped. One rode along side us and I kid you not, on a regular standard moped like a vespa or something there was a man and woman and their THREE children. We dodged in and out of slums and then places that really weren't slums but were still gritty and crowded. Mopeds lining the streets like shrubbery. People out walking and sitting - and remember this cab ride was after midnight local time!
Finally we got into this area called the Milleneum Brigade - or that might be two areas, I'll learn more. But its sort of an enclave near the big corporate campuses of more elegant apartment bulidings. I am staying at the one where the itty bitty company has their contract. Finally got checked in and settled into the room. 1:30a local time, 4a in Melbourne I think. A very long day of travel - so I crashed immediately and with much appreciation for the room to lie down.
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| The view outside my room |
The place where I'm staying is a "club". It is not much like a hotel, but it does have a restaurant. It has a spa and a fitness club - but I haven't figured out where that part is or whether I am invited to use it. I will figure that out. They are busy this morning setting up for some sort of function on the outside patio. I really haven't seen any other guests, not even during the included breakfast.
SUNDAY MORNING: I go down to breakfast and I'm offered a menu and I don't know what one thing on it is. There are three "combination breakfasts" so I point to that page and tell the waiter to please give me whatever he would have. He recommends the Indian Pancakes and Lassi. The lassi can be sweet or salty. I decided to start with sweet. He said it is a "cultured milk". I would say that it is like yogurt that you drink, but it has the texture of buttermilk. I don't really like yogurt or buttermilk, but I didn't mind the lassi. The pancake was this huge "hollow" folded pancake - tasted like a normal pancake maybe... maybe a little more like a corn griddle cake or something. Stuffed with a potato mixture with spices and served with two spicy side-dishes. It actually was very tasty and very filling. Pictures of my breakfast are below for your amusement. I don't really have any plans for today - may just hole up and take a rest day. I will be out and about for the rest of the week - and will have little time to work, so may as well get ahead if I can. I have this clean, relatively quiet room with a desk and internet. I am full enough from that breakfast to suspect I won't need to eat again for days. I might venture as far as to figure out the whole fitness club part of this place, but that is the limit of my ambitions for today.
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| Milk coffee, lassi and the paper |
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Poori Bhaji - Indian pancake, Sauce on left is spicy and tomato-based
the one on the right is also spicy and probably humus
and the waiter says coconut. |
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| Inside the Poori Bhaji - potatoes and who knows? |
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| The lassi leaves legs on the glass like buttermilk |
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Finished - and you can see the potato
filling better. |
