Welcome to Malaysia

Yes, this is what you see when you live in a flat on the 33rd floor in the center of Kuala Lumpur and you look out of the window. More precisely this is what you see from one of the bedrooms of the flat, the one in which we will be living when we rotate bedrooms.

So it seems that here we are, it looks quite like Kuala Lumpur out there. And it also looks like we have a new camera. Yes, I finally mooved to digital. Those of you who know me better, you already know that it is not that I didn't want to, it just was that I didn't find the right camera. As things have been happening lately, it seems that I bought it because I needed it, but I can asure you that if I had come here on holidays, I would have bought it anyway. What I probably wouldn't have done is spending all the money I am going to spend in lenses. Since I still didn't buy any, we are skiping the lenses stuff for the next time, ok?

So far, sightseeing, what we usually call sightseeing... I haven't gone sightseeing a lot. The first day I managed to buy the camera and to get some informaton from the toursit office (not as much as I would have liked but I already expected that). What was different as I thought is that it was more difficult buying the camera than getting the information from the tourist office. The problem was that the exchange office in the shopping mall was closed so I had to go to the center and come back again to the shop after going to the tourist office. On thursday I was trying to find out more information about the National Parks and searching for lenses. And on friday more of the same, more visits to offices and shops.

But that was not all. On Wednesday I met Dan, well, Zuzana told me that Malays use fake names so they don't have to tell you "Hi, my name is Chung Wan Lao" and then you start a stupid conversation like "What...? Chun what...?" and you spend at least two minutes like that. Dan is a nice guy with whom I ended up having lunch. He told me that on Thursdays and Saturdays there is a local street market that he thinks we might like. We were supposed to go today, but today it was raining one of those heavy rains and we decided to go some other day, what a pity.

Dan also told me that in October his brother (or it was his sister?... it doesn't matter) was going to get married and he said that for sure they will like us going to the wedding and that there won't be any problem if Iwant to take some pictures. Here in Malaysia, apart from aboriginals, there are three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Hindu. Everyone of them has its own ritual of celebrating weddings. I would like to see one of each one to see how they are. It seems that we are going to go to a Malay wedding, we will see how we manage to go to the other two of them.

Something else I saw the other day, when unfortunately I still couldn't take pictures, was that there were some people making small fires on the street while placing food around. I thought they were selling the food, but yesterday I knew that they were not selling anything. According to the Buddhist tradition, on the 14th or the 15th of the seventh lunar month of the Chinese calendar, they burn paper monies and give food as offerings for the wandering ghosts in order to appease them and keep them away. If you want some more information about it you can read it here.

Yesterday evening, when we were leaving home to take a walk and have a dinner, there were a group of Chinese people making fire on the street. Then I knew what they were doing.


The dinner yesterday was in a place prepared for occidental people, but I resisted the temptation of pizzas and hamburgers and I order any kind of chicken with a strange name that the waiter suggested me. Five minutes later I thought that it didn't matter if the food was going to be cold, because my mouth would keep on burning for the whole night.

The usual menu here consists on noodles (which are not only the thin long noodles, there are several types of them) or rice, and it's not always spicy. You know me when we talk about food... I want to try everything, but these days I feel a bit weird with my tummy (I think more due to air conditioning than food, because I can keep on eating without problems). And it is also that there are so many things that you don't know what they are... Today we were in an Indian street market and they had so many strange things. I didn't take pictures, as I told you it was raining, and I want to go there with a local, so I know what I take pictures of and what I eat (or maybe it is better not to know it until you have tried it). And for my Belgian friends, I think you could survive here with fritur, they have many of those stuffs here which look quite similar to the Belgian ones, but I can not tell you what is inside of all those things the fry.

So this is how days are here, it s not bad for warming up, but telling the truth, I am really looking forward to leaving all this paperwork and preparations, and starting the real adventure. By the way, talking about warming up, it is truth that it is warm and humid here, but I think it is not so bad.

Ok, Let's see how we finish the weekend.