Southern Peninsular Malaysia - we love it
11th October 2005

Borders are always so unpredictable
First experiences of Malaysian roads - all positive
History and culture, this is a bit more ’us‘
Hah, large cities don't scare us! OK so they do.
Petronas towers - nothing Fawlty about these
Shoppers paradise - can it be real?

Hippy’s first time in Malaysia

We had not been getting well in Singapore. Whether it was the stress of bike importation or dorm living, or simply we don’t get on anymore. Whatever, we left Singapore with the understanding that we would see how things went in Malaysia and the maybe reconsider our situation in Thailand. On the basis that Thailand has a lot of cheap flights out of it.

I’d been over to fetch the insurance from Johor so I knew what to expect. Remarkable how one hour’s experience turns somebody into an authority. Only had one hitch at the frontier on the Malaysian side and that was a typical customs-official moment. Just as over in Singapore, the bikes have their own separate queue. We got stamped through passport control with consummate ease to be again faced with no way to get to a customs office to get the carnet processed. I pulled up on a bit of no man’s land and toddled over to the only office around. Not being particularly well versed in Malay, the best I could do was to hold up the carnet and look pleadingly. The guy just waved me away from his window. I mimed that I needed further information and could he repeat his wave away with a little more emphasis on which direction exactly and, if it wasn’t too much trouble, throw a distance in to boot. Clearly my shrugging and puzzled looks were not internationally accepted mime and the chap just got more irate refusing now to lift his eyes from his lunch.

His colleagues chorused over from the far corner of the building and when I caught their shouts, I turned to see them all inviting me over. Couldn’t have been a nicer bunch in stark contrast to their rice guzzling colleague. Bish, bash, bosh. Out in a jiffy. I am finding it surprising, though that the border officials of both Singapore and Malaysia struggle with the carnet document and require a certain amount of direction. I know that carnets are issued in Singapore for motorists travelling further north and so I expected they would have been used more frequently.

Typically, no one was interested on the Singapore or the Malaysian side in all the daft bits of paperwork Singapore had insisted on, the Autopass, the ICT or the insurance for that matter. No credit there, then, for being the most legal we’ve been in years.

While Pat was enjoying the air-conditioning I was watching the bike and a lovely lady requested I fill in her questionnaire on tourism, thus promptly buggering up someone else’s stats for them. I think it is fair to describe us as outliers in any statistical analysis that you care to make. But I did get a freeby set of coasters for my trouble.

Malaka, Melacca, Bandar Malaka - it’s all the same

Road signing in Malaysia is excellent. We were aiming for Melacca which is on the way to Kuala Lumpur and so we followed the signs to Malaka, Kuala Lumpur. Clever stuff, eh? I only just noticed that we’d been driving on the left since landing in Singapore when we were about 15 miles up the road in Malaysia. Distinctly odd feeling. Another very odd thing is British 3-pin plugs. I’d always thought the UK was unique in that department. There was something of a major irony in discovering that both Singapore and Malaysia use them but I’d taken the British plug off our computer charger lead before flying out of the UK to save space in our bags. I had to pay a whole 20p to buy a new one!

Petrol is cheap; about US$1.60 per USgal. Which is about 35% cheaper than the US. If you cross over from Singapore in a car, they check that you have a minimum of three quarters of a tank full. They don’t bother with a bike and so once again Bertha/Berthette’s capacious tank save us a load of wonga. You don’t need to cruise the pumps to find the cheapest gas as it’s exactly the same everywhere. It’s hard to see the point in having Shell, Mobil, BP et al when they are normally all supplied from the same tanks and have to sell at the same rate. The only possible difference in margin is how efficiently they run their tanker trucks and how little they pay their employees. Even the oils for sale on the forecourt seemed to be exactly the same price for equivalent grades at all of them.

The spinal highway is excellent. I’m sure I’m continually committing a crime by riding on the carriageway - all the little bikes seem to ride on the hard shoulder. Given the frequency of broken down vehicles on the sidelines, I’d rather risk a ticket than bury myself in the bumper of a Proton. General driving standards are high so we’ve yet to face the manic driving we’ve heard so much about.

At each bridge there is a little sign of an umbrella and a motorcycle on a blue background. I can only assume that this is to encourage bikers to shelter there in times of rain. How civilised is that.

Toll stations are all over the place, but I haven’t a clue as to whether the tolls are excessive or not because I haven’t paid any. Yes, this country is so bike friendly that they have little motorbike bypasses at the toll booths. Possibly to placate the fee-paying car drivers or maybe just for fun, these little lanes don’t simply pass the booth to one side but often involve quite a lengthy scenic tour on a little strip of asphalt through manicured gardens. All very jolly.

All these things taken into account, Malaysia gets two thumbs up for its attitude to motorcyclists. British transport system could certainly learn a thing or two.

Highways get a bit sterile after a while so we turned off onto the local roads and were again pleasantly surprised; perfect road surface and pretty good driving standards. Learning through observation, I got into the local style of riding. Although a bit unsettling at first, the system of undertaking by bikes works rather well. Cars steer by the line in the middle of the road and leave ample space up the inside for motorbikes. One has to be a little aware of what is coming up ahead, for example one guy joining the road from his garden path paid no attention whatsoever and just hooned out into the pedestrian/motorcycle zone. Fortunately I was sticking to my ‘using the carriageway’ strategy at the time. I really have to hone up my observation and concentration skills - coupled with the heat this is going to be an incredibly tiring part of the world to drive in.

Traffic recognises pedestrian crossings, which is more than can be said for some Mediterranean countries. However, beware, pedestrian crossings are also places for motorcyclists driving on the pavement to re-enter the highway, and to effect U turn on dual carriageways. One way streets do not seem to apply to motorbikes, either, with them merrily going the wrong way up the side of the street.

There are obvious signs of the tiger economy that one doesn’t see in Africa and Central America. That’ll be because there are no tigers in Africa. Africa, sadly, fails miserably to attract investment, Central America is loaded to the gills with clothes sweatshops and a scattering of assembly plants (Mexico counts as North America, apparently, and has reasonably well developed industry), but here in Malaysia there are loads of people driving their Peroduas and Protons to go and work at the Fujitsu factory. In fact, they have a healthier car industry than Britain has had for decades. How much transfer of technology is going on I cannot say but the efforts of the government to achieve ‘developed country’ status by 2020 are laudable and seriously considered. I know ‘5 year plans’ are the old-speak of communism and now rather poo-pooed but I’d love to see something a little more solid in a manifesto before a British election. Even the expression ‘tiger economy’ is spoken with something of a sneer in Britain. Well wake up dudes, we’re going to get mauled.

My first views of Malaysia I was impressed. Even the small villages we went through, with houses reminiscent of Guyana, although simple displayed less abject poverty than many trailer parks in the USA. It seems that the signs are that the government push to achieve ‘developed’ world status is pulling most its citizens along, rather than leaving them behind. So many other countries, like the Philippines there are signs that money is being made, but the wealth seems to stay in the hands of a few, and the majority experiences little or benefit from ‘development’.

A town with history

Melacca has something of a British colonial past along with Japanese, Portuguese and Dutch (not in that order of course) and before that the city had a comparatively short history since being founded by a peripatetic prince. Story is that he spotted a humble mouse deer giving as good as it got from one of its hunting dogs and thought this a good omen, hence sitting up his city and naming it after the tree he was sat under. Now, when I studied geography with ‘Tanking Teddy” Hyde, a spunky mouse deer was not on the long list of plusses we were given as examples as to why a settlement would be successful. A water supply, yes. A defendable position, yes. Source of fuel .....blah, blah. But never a mouse deer. Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention. My grade C in O’ level is perhaps testament to that.

There are plenty of clues to the existence of the Dutch; the Stadthuys, Dutch cemetery and even a little replica windmill on the town square. Less mention of the British and only a replica galleon in the maritime museum to represent the Portuguese influence. Japanese history is marked by a few pieces of currency used at that time and pictures of the Brits surrendering to the Japs and vice versa a few years later. Clearly the endearment of colonial masters varies and can be identified by the number of icons that remain in museums and urban surroundings.

Since it’s independence in ‘57 Malaysia has retained its Sultanates. I’m a little ignorant about how a Sultan compares in rank to our monarchy system, it seems to be like prince without a king, I think. hopefully, I haven’t managed to completely offend all the Sultans, out there. There are 11 states in Malaysia, 9 have Sultans, the 2 others have kind of Sultan substitutes, the head of State rotates through the Sultans each getting a five year ‘reign’ over the elected government. All seems quite fair to me. There is, of course, less chance of a child being ‘top Sultan’ if his father has been since there must be a gap of 50 years between the same families tenure. This would mean it would be highly unlikely that Prince Charles, say, would succeed the Queen. Not all bad, then. The government is democratic, liberal and Islamic.

I began to worry a little as we cut through coastal villages. Every woman and schoolgirl had their head covered. Damn, I thought I would be OK without a headscarf until Iran.

I was much relieved when Fatima, our host for the night greeted us at the door, bareheaded although she was a ‘convert’ to Islam, . Fatima is a Filipino, married to a Malay-Singaporean. She was not short in coming forward, in her opinions about the corruption in Philippines, and seemed almost disappointed that we were unable to name the dodgy customs guy who had wanted to fleece us for $2,000. The anticipatory fervour, of being able to report a miscreant, visibly deflated at our lack of further information. It rightly angered her that she could she other Asian countries profiting from tourism while the Philippines’ dodgy reputation was keeping them away. She found her countryfolk a bit spineless in their reluctance to report dodgy officials. This is a little unfair; as ex-pats we are all safe from retribution from the ‘services’ and so can generally say what we please. Her relatives have to make their protests without attracting attention to themselves - tricky stuff.

It was rather remiss of us not to report on the contents of the newspaper while in the Philippines. Imelda was having a bit of a moan as all her seized jewellery was being auctioned off in aid of the public coffers i.e. to be redistributed among the current incumbents of the civil service and government. Also in the news was one of our favourite public officials, a customs officer. The public wished to know how it could be that this minor official whose salary amounted to a couple of hundred quid a month had managed to amass a fleet of seven swanky cars and a portfolio of 5 properties. Did they really have to ask? This was surely the git who was asking 2000 dollars from us to bring our bike in. I’m afraid that when corruption can be so openly flaunted, there is obviously so much confidence that the graft system will never crack that it probably will not. Even the current ‘democratically’ elected president, Ms Arroyo, is just about to face impeachment over her having dolled out cash to voters before the last election.

I was rather worried about poor Fatima. She was carrying on bravely with an injured foot that had obviously had a rather deep cut that was taking a long time to heal. The doctor that she’d seen had recommended stitches but she’d opted not to have them. Though she’d followed a course of antibiotics, there was still a great deal of pain and swelling. It became something of a talking point and I wondered whether it would be appropriate for us to offer financial assistance for her to get more treatment or whether she had turned down treatment on grounds other than economic. It is very difficult to know what might be an appropriate course of action. Had our terms of accommodation been described as a home-stay then it would have seemed a natural thing to do to offer assistance with medical problems. Fatima describing her business as a hostel, and it having a capacity of two dozen punters, changed the ground rules somehow. Odd. I hope her trust in the natural healing powers of aloe vera is not misplaced.

Malaysia is yet another convert to the karaoke cause. The shopping centre, which had all the sophistication of, if not more than, any European counterpart had a stage set up in the foyer. A succession of young men were adding their vocal disharmonies to a light rock track. Enough said. Elsewhere in town, a huge stack of speakers had appeared in front of the Independence monument and high power local music was beating time for a troupe of artistes performing Malayan dance routines. Here the Portuguese heritage was better represented and there was no evidence of Morris dancing at all. Funny that.

Chinatown was more what I would think of as a town in China than we had seen in Singapore. There was more of an enclosed community feel about it. Every other house had a shrine of some sorts facing onto the street. Narrow little streets, were a treasure trove of delightful wee shops; eateries, bicycle mechanics, chinese antiques, tea emporiums, puppet makers, herbal pharmacists and incense sellers. I disciplined myself to stay out of the antique shops, the ceramic and detailed wood carving looking so tempting, but what really were we going to do with a full size embroidered fire screen - practicality must win out.

We passed a couple of Chinese temples and snapped off photos of the twiddly, intricate decorative roofs, only to realise when we made it to the final temple on the road how crass in quality the first ones had been. This temple was the oldest in Malaysia, and somehow it made the others look tawdry, gaudy, cheap imitations of the real thing. I was mesmerised. The roof line was framed by adornment of sweeping, delicate and intricate sculptured forms of mythical creatures, flowers, people, trees and images of water. When you zoomed in at the detail, the colours looked garish and fussy, but somehow the scale was perfect on the building to create an elegantly trimmed temple. On the gables, where the plain white walls met the tiled roof, a frieze of hand painted chinese scenes, like illustrated stories, delicately edged the walls.

The interior was a fiesta of lacquer work, again somehow it’s super ornateness, was so exquisitely done that it did not seem OTT. It was serene; with the Buddhist monk doing his thing, the incense burning, the candles flickering. It was an atmosphere that fostered calmness and seemed timeless.

There’s a preserved old house in the Chinese quarter that hails from the time of greatest prosperity for Malaka. Owned by a Chinese family, it was furnished with a blend of European and Oriental styles. Most odd were the prints of fox-hunting and chocolate box English country scenes on the wall. Clearly there was some perceived status in being aware of British lordly pursuits as they weren’t particularly amazing from an aesthetic point of view. I think that maybe the expatriate folk of the time wanted pictures to remind them of home rather than exotic works of art and so prints of idealised twee stuff probably filled the empire stores. One would hardly want pictures of the rat infested sections of London, would one?

The Chinese influence was the thing that hit you as you entered. Fine elegant embroideries hung on the walls, delicate lattice wood carving edged the doorways. Large, shaded, open areas gave the place an airy light feeling, an escape from the muggy heat. The people here had lived in style.

We dined every night from the same counter of a huge food court. Not your average collection of pizza, burger, sandwich, salad bar that one has come to expect from food courts the developed world over. Malaysia, as Singapore, draws culinary influences from India, China, Indonesia, Thailand and the Middle East as well as its indigenous traditions. So many influences in fact that we have been struggling to find out just what exactly Malay food is. Here there was the choice of all kinds of noodles prepared before your very eyes along with roast duck, strange donutty-looking creations. So much stuff we couldn’t describe that we settled on a top little buffet that was attracting a steady stream of clients. Curry, green beans with tofu, peanuts fried with tiny dried fish, all this and more for 3 ringgit (50 pence).

I really do love Malaysia. If only they could turn the heat down a bit.

Capital city navigation stress

As we left Malaka, a huge display delighted in telling me the time and that it was 36 degrees. Humidity must have been around 90 percent. Picture this in full bike gear. Nice.

Inland and further north, the arterial highway rose appreciably into verdant hills. To either side was evidence of clear cutting and replanting with palm trees. It seemed perfect banana territory but hardly a banana plant in sight never mind a plantation. Maybe they have plenty elsewhere. We pottered along at our usual 50-55 mph which seemed a popular speed with the other bikes and trucks. Traffic seemed pretty light and so the cars didn’t seem to mind being held up a little during grinding overtaking manoeuvres. The odd biker obviously felt the need to demonstrate their ability to eke out 5 more miles per hour and crawled past us only for us to catch up again while they eased off to stop their overheating engine from seizing up.

We approached a lay-by and it seemed to be advertising a view point. As it was now a good deal cooler, I thought that we might manage to take a quick time out and take in some of the splendour. It was clear when we pulled up that the view point was up a considerable flight of stairs. As we don’t like to leave the bike fully loaded, it was obvious that we’d have to take turns to go and see the view. I gave Hips the option and she decided to go first.

As I dimped out my ciggy, I could see Hippy descending the stairs and approaching, looking less than excited. To her great credit, although this had clearly been something of a sweaty trial, she simply stated that there were 200 steps and not much to see. I felt terribly guilty. Should I go and suffer the same trial to seem fair even though the promised benefits were unappealing. I declined and I could see that poor Hips looked a bit cheated. Sorry my love. I promised that on the next similar occasion I would go first. It was the least I could do.

We had chosen a Sunday to head into the capital, this is generally a policy of ours when going into an unknown huge city to try and time it for the least traffic, for our own sanity mostly. Now we had only to navigate Kuala Lumpur using the city map provided by the tourist board that seemed to be a ball of spaghetti and typically, failed to identify where the main roads entered the city. We had one major trick up our sleeves. KL is home to not just the tallest high-rise tower in the world, but it’s twin, too. To those of you that thought that the Twin Towers in New York had been the highest, they were in fact 10m shorter, but they did have more floors. If you’ve ever seen a picture of the Petronas towers, you will appreciate that they must make quite a distinguishable feature on the skyline. If all else failed, we could head to the towers, get orientated and navigate away from their base. Sure enough, the road signs didn’t really give us an idea of where we were. The names were all too long to try and find on our city plan as we were carried along in the wake of grimy trucks along the smokey corridor to the heart of KL. As usual, we eventually found our way. So far we’ve only been beaten by Bucharest and Guatemala City where we’ve had to be guided by helpful locals. Housing for Berthette tends to be a problem in cities and given the relative modernity of KL, there were none of the courtyard-type establishments that we’d become used to in South and Central America. None of the places we went to look at (the cheap ones obviously) had any potential for off street parking. We gave up on the idea and simply opted for the cheapest which was, naturally, a dormitory in a backpackers’ hostel. Turned out that we could put the bike in the back passage after all. Result.

Hostel = dormitories = bunk beds = pain in the butt when readjusting position in bed at night. This must have been the squeakiest bed of all time. What he didn’t realise was that, when he turned over on the top bunk, the whole structure moved, so much so that one night I awoke in the middle of a nightmare that I was in an earthquake. In an attempt to be mannerly and in no way hypocritical, it is important for us to not make to much noise in the dorm and disturb the others. We didn’t do too well here but I don’t think we caused any upset.

The eateries around Jalan Bukit Bintang (this is typical of the sort of road name we’d been looking for) fall into two categories; Indian and Chinese. We followed a lead to track down Malay food in the BB Plaza. Huge mall, no luck. Time running short with the footy due on the telly, we resorted to a quick curry. We politely reviewed the offerings in the buffet trays and made our selections, ordered a nan bread and some drinks.

Everything was going swimmingly until I pulled a plastic bag out of my mutton curry. I caught the eye of the manager and he came over and prodded the plastic bag and nodded that this was not good. I opted to carry on as I couldn’t see that plastic was in any way poisonous.

Two forkfuls later and I found a prawn on the end of my fork. Had it not been for the bag I might have carried on regardless. As it was, I could imagine only two alternatives; either the kitchen was so appallingly run that they couldn’t guarantee what ended up on a plate or someone was having a little joke putting all manner of crap in my curry to see how I reacted. The first possibility means that there could be no guarantee of hygiene, even if they replaced my meal, in which case we ought to leave, the second could only provoke the same response and so I stood up to leave and told Hippy as much. She’s right, I could have discussed what I was going to do before I acted. The staff didn’t get upset and try to stop us and make us pay which I can only take as confirmation that we did the right thing.

KL is a city that is in many senses as modern as Singapore but is somewhat less formal. Obviously the Islamic nature of the country means that social codes are in some ways stricter but in other ways there is more freedom; motorcycles do as they please (even using the pavements to by pass gridlocked queues), cleanliness is clearly not such an issue and where things aren’t necessarily dirty, they at least look a little unkempt. As Hippy puts it, Singapore looked manicured and slightly too perfect which suggests, if we keep the fingernail analogy going, that KL has a few split nails.

Twin towers

As an engineer, I simply had to visit the towers. Word on the street was that free (that sounds good) tickets to visit the viewing level of the towers are issued from 7:30 in the morning until they run out - usually about 9 a.m. This meant an early start for me to extract the bike from the back passage. Parking at the towers was pretty straightforward as it cost 1 Ringgit (15 pence) for the whole day. Unfortunately I only had a 50 R note. The nice man on the gate let me in for free rather than go through the aggro of counting out all the change.

I found the queue for tickets containing about 100 people all waiting in an orderly fashion. To clear a space at the bottom of the escalator we were realigned and a few folk took the opportunity to steal a few places in the queue. I just won’t let these things lie. “Dreadfully sorry” came the response from the majority of perpetrators who dutifully returned to their deserved place in the line. Just one obstinate German felt he had to be a smart-ass and remained in front of me and turned to the others saying “When someone asks me to stand behind them in a queue I tell them that I might be a pickpocket” I thought I might just pick his pocket to show him who laughs last. Instead I just let him have his place in the queue and waited. Sure enough there was a movement in the queue while he was looking the other way and I reclaimed my place. Pathetic isn’t it. Couple of stereotypes lived out in one episode - whinging English and arrogant Germans.

As it was there were more than enough tickets to go round - they were still available when we’d concluded our tour at about 12:30. I guess the advice we’d been given is probably true at weekends. I had been worried about whether they’d give me multiple tickets and I had taken Hippy’s passport with me to support the application. As it was they were giving any number out to anyone that wanted. So, top tip is to send just one member of your team in early for tickets while the others sleep off their hangovers. Of course I’m not implying that Hips had a hangover. We’re at an all time low on the alcohol consumption thing at the moment - no bad thing when we both have so much weight to lose. Mainly, because both Malaysia and Singapore alcohol prices seem disproportionately high compares to food. Think of this 5 R (80p) for a full curry with sides and about 7.50 R (£1.20) for a 330ml beer, come on that’s more than Bolton prices. Imagine paying £7.00 for your curry back home and then £9.00 for a small beer to accompany it. Added to which the beer isn’t particularly good. We have later heard that Malaysia has a high consumption of alcohol, the Chinese mostly. There is some money here.

No one can belittle the engineering achievement of the Petronas towers although ‘our Dad’ would point out the advantages had they chosen a steel frame rather than concrete. The figures are astounding. A 30 metre deep hole over, I believe, 13 acres had to be dug in the middle of the city to start with. Having seen the grid lock at rush hour on an average day, I can’t imagine what it was like with wagon loads of muck adding to the melee. The structure was completed at an average of one new storey every three days. As we were herded up to the 41st floor ‘skybridge’ to take in the sights, I got to chatting with our guide about the construction. He pointed out that half way through the job the chief engineer nearly bailed out. I can imagine. The perpendicularity is a big issue because of the super fast lifts that whack up to speeds of 6 metres per second. I asked the guide how they achieved this and he waffled about state of the art GPS surveying. I only asked the question as the presentation had cheerfully told us that the tower sways by about 75 cm. Which part of that 75 cm do you want vertical? Does it generally lean one way because of a prevailing wind? In which case you want to build it slightly off plumb to counter the wind effect. Tricky stuff. What does one clothe a 1.9 billion dollar tower in? Glass and stainless steel, of course. I could quote the square metreages but its just meaninglessly big numbers. Suffice to say there is a lot to keep clean. Talking of which, the gantries used to suspend the window cleaner’s baskets looked a bit flimsy to me. I’m sure they’re quite strong enough to do the job but I’d prefer an extremely chunky looking object belaying me when I’m hanging over a thousand feet from the ground.

Between the two towers for the first six floors is a huge complex that houses, along with the obligatory mall, a concert hall modelled on the classics of Europe, an interactive science museum, multi-screen cinelma and an aquarium. We hovered around and people-watched for a while to avoid having to go out in the muggy heat. A hugely diverse population was represented here; Hindu Indian, Moslem Indian, Chinese, Malay, European business folk down from their elevated offices to take lunch, holidaying Europeans, holidaying Japanese and even a Buddhist monk to top it off. Almost as rich a blend as you’d find in a London tube carriage. The clothes were the most fascinating thing. For once it was the Islamic ladies who appeared the most brightly and stylishly attired. Below their bright scarf, they had flowery and other jolly patterned skirts and tops on. Not that I was looking of course, for that would be most impertinent.

Even I, who is normally irritated by Pat’s obsession with analysing civil engineering works, was impressed by the Petronas towers. Frankly, it generally leaves me cold, when Pat mutters about stresses, strains and reinforced concrete, but I was fascinated. The towers did not really seem that big until you realised that only half way up you looked down on the roofs of the tower blocks around it, which is a tribute to it’s good proportions. It is a tremendous edifice, which is an icon of Malaysia’s vision for the future. Just as Warsaw’s Palace of Culture, it is seem as a symbol of a new era, and very much a place for the people of Malaysia.

Bargain hunting

There’s huge shopping malls in KL purveying anything you might want so long as what you want is clothes, mobile phones or hooky DVD’s. We pondered whether to buy a bunch of DVD’s to while away the hours in dire hotels - we will no doubt be staying in some somewhere down the line. For the princely sum of a quid each we could have plucked a selection of ripped film from the clutches of the vendors but we decided to walk away and think about it. Part of the downside (apart from the obvious poverty that would face our Hollywood heroes because of our copyright breaching) is the fact that we’ve tried to shed a load of clutter and thinned out the CD’s that we carry to the basic system discs for the Mac. Seems mad to start amassing more stuff now. I tried one of the discs belonging to the hostel in the ’puter to see what zone coding it had and whether I could copy it onto the hard drive to watch later. It was a revelation - although there would be no zone issue for the DVD drive, it was not possible to copy the disc (seemed a bit cheeky that a ripped off DVD came copy protected!) but worse of all was the fact that it wasn’t even a proper copy but had been produced with a video camera in a cinema. This level of technology takes me back to dreadful recordings of Led Zep at Knebworth rendered on someone's Realistic™ portable cassette recorder. Did anyone else watch Clockwork Orange on that VHS that must have been circulating for about 20 years?

We wondered whether the designer clothes that were on sale at a third of their European price were genuine or not. As so much of the ‘designer’ clothing that is sold in ‘developed’ countries is actually sourced in these countries, it makes perfect sense that they would be cheaper here. But who says sense has anything to do with the economics of these products? Consensus is that they are genuine and so I would offer this advice to would be bargain hunters; fly into Kuala Lumpur and get your fill of clothing before flying on to Singapore for your gadgets, topped off with a quick visit to Thailand for crafts and cheap booze before returning home. Alternatively, but it all in Britain and sit back and reflect on all the good you taxes are doing for those less fortunate than yourself.

There was a proper glut of footy on the telly at the hostel. Following the plastic and prawn in the curry episode, we had to put up with the ignominy of losing to Wigan in full view of the hostel staff. There were so many games on that I rather couch-potatoed. The day after, there was loads more and then it was all repeated, analysed and repeated. It got to the point where it was hard to work out whether any new games had been played or whether is it replays from random previous weeks.

Ought to mention having passed a competition on our way to KL. At the side of the road, round a volleyball court, a large crowd had gathered to watch teams playing keepy-uppy volleyball. Not sure where I’d read about this, but it seems that this really is a popular sport. Invert the rules of volleyball and you have the idea. No use of hands or arms. Can use any other part of the body. 3 Contacts per team. We once played this over a bush in Guyana, innocent to the fact that it is a pukka sport.

Other hostlers were rather tame for once. The only nutter we can positively finger was the guy from the Canary Islands who seemed to be simply on a shopping spree. He was interested to know what the marijuana situation was like in Singapore. I confessed to a complete ignorance and suggested that, knowing how draconian the Singaporean attitude is, he would be better not taking his stash with him. It does say on your immigration card to Singapore, “Death penalty for drug traffickers”, after all. He was adamant and arrogant that he would take his stuff with him as they surely wouldn’t be so beastly to foreigners. I sincerely hope they are.

Malaysia is so cheap (apart from the booze, as we’ve pointed out) that we’ve been accruing a little reserve of money, even after managing to pay for the insurance and an oil change out of our first week’s budget. Looking for something a bit different to our usual curry, we ventured into the pork restaurant two doors down to peek at their menu. We’d just blanched at the prices and were half way through turning on heels when a genial German Alsatian (is that really how one refers to someone from Alsace?) popped up next to us to lure us back to a table on the promise that he could cut us a deal by splitting a meal for us. He produced a mini version of a wonderful meal. If he’d called it nouvelle cuisine, he could have charged twice as much and justified the amount of plate showing through. To be fair, he gave us a 3-course meal for two for £6. From the cup of soup, through the deliciously marinaded pork chop to the samples of pudding, everything tasted wonderful and was sufficiently different to make the perfect change. I still felt like nipping out for a kebab later, though. It was a delight, all the dishes perfectly prepared with subtle flavours which was a relief from the heavy curries we had been having. If you go to KL and want a lovely meal I recommend El Cerdo.

I did manage to drag Pat away from the footy couch to see Batu Caves, a local Hindu Shrine. Unfortunately, the shrine is going through a bit of an upgrade, with new 4 storey high statues being sculpted in concrete, and new temples in the making. This meant the place had something of a building site feel. The 227 steps that led up to the cave were home to a troupe of monkeys and that had learnt that pilgrims and tourists are excellent feeding stations. They scampered eagerly down the bannisters and stairs, assessing the latest potential donor. As we ascended, a couple of middle class Malay tourists had come armed with peanuts and sweet fig bananas. A helpful gent on the ‘down’ side of the stairs leant over to warn her to throw the food because the monkeys get impatient and aggressive, just in time for a rather precocious monkey to grab and run off with the whole bunch of bananas complete with placky bag and sit with his prize on a knoll of the newel post.

I felt slightly saddened that these monkeys have now become so accustomed to tourist ‘treats’ that they foraged in the litter on the stairs collecting the scratchings of E numbers from crisp and chocolate wrappers. A couple of Swiss tourist we had met in Melacca had been disappointed that in the nature reserves in Malaysia they had not seen a single monkey. We now know why. Just as the foxes in the UK have traded their country hedgerows for urban allies, monkeys here find easier pickings on the temple steps than the rustic jungle.

My understanding of the Hindu Gods is pathetically poor. All I know is that there are lots of them, mostly zoomorphs with human features. So the significance behind the various little shrines to the different deities, went rather over my head. I mentally vowed that before India, I would try to get my head around some of main themes of the religion. The idols were intricately painted in bright, gaudy colours, that were in sharp contrast to the rough, grey cave walls, and stood out like gnomes in a bramble bush. With Diwali being weeks away the pilgrims were few and far between, which was nice in a way because we didn’t feel that we were intruding on others’ worship, but we were a little