Fourth week: A weekend of unfortunate events and a computer "bug"

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Week Four: Sep 26th - Oct 2nd

I'm so embarrassed that it's been almost two months since we have updated the blog! We are still here and doing well, I promise.


The week started out with a shopping trip to Gurney plaza (where most of the expats shop). I meet my friend Carla for lunch and we shopped around a bit. I found a great pair of shoes (black, of course) but they didn’t have my size. Big surprise! 10’s aren’t too common here. My main reason for going there was to grocery shop at Cold Storage. Since it is close to the expats it stocks a lot more imported food. Yay! I found tortillas, salsa, beans, mac’n’cheese, good, real cheddar cheese, chips and some other “American” food. Yes, most of it was junk, but it’s comforting to have a bowl of mac once in a while. I also started our dvd collection. Penang is notorious for “alternatively procured” dvds. The store we went to mostly had movies that had recently been released on dvd. They even had copies of the first season of Desperate Housewives which came out in the US only a week earlier! At 7 ringgit per disc (that’s less than $2US) they are an absolute steal. It’s very obvious that they are fakes (tons of spelling errors) but I figure that if we really like something we will probably buy the real thing when we go home.

On Tuesday Phil and I played badminton with his co-workers. It was really fun! Afterward we went to a department dinner that Phil’s boss was throwing in honor of him and several other employees from India being here. There were about 40-50 people, we completely took over a little restaurant near the ocean called Crab Palace. All seafood, as you can guess, and pretty darn good. We ate some things that I never thought we would (see the shell picture) and Phil survived (just barely)! The atmosphere of the dinner was pretty hilarious. We were all seated at two long tables and there was no rhyme or reason as to how/when the food came out. It was like feeding baby chicks; whoever was the loudest got the food first. We had a great time.

Friday I had breakfast with Phil at his work. It’s custom here to get into the office early then have breakfast together as a team around 8:00. I got to talking with some of the women Phil works with and mentioned the shoes that I found and that I had to go to the store in KL (Kuala Lumpur) to get my size. Somehow that conversation snowballed into half the team planning a weekend in KL for us! We could get a ride with so-and-so, you can stay here and go see this and that; it was great!! After a long discussion it was decided that we would drive our car and Phil’s coworker Kian Kok would come with us. Many people here go to their hometown on the weekends and that’s where he is from. I had not yet fixed the tire from last weekend’s little run in so I left to do that and make a hotel reservation. The rental company just changed the tire with the spare so we didn’t have to pay for a new one, yay, and I made the reservation at a recommended hotel, only $50US a night. This was looking to be a pretty good weekend. I packed our stuff up, they guys came home from work and we were on our way.

Kian Kok said he would drive to KL and that was just fine with us. Since this was our first trip on to the mainland I wanted to look at the scenery and not worry about driving. The drive time was about 4 hours so we decided to stop half way for dinner in Ipoh. Before getting to Ipoh we went through a mountain pass. It was beautiful! Not quite as high as what we have at home, more like foothills covered in jungle. Coming down into Ipoh we could see all of the marble hills that surround it. Many of the hills are quarried which makes marble plentiful here (our apartment floors, counters, bathrooms and tabletops are all marble). The light was fading so we couldn’t see much but you could tell that it would be really nice in the day time. We got off the highway and paid the toll (the main north-south highway is a toll road) and headed into Ipoh for dinner. We were a little lost but eventually found a mall to have dinner. To my surprise there was a Schlotsky’s Deli!! I though those had completely gone out of business. The last time I ate at one was in college in Eugene. We had to check it out to see if it was the same. Pretty much. How strange and random!!! After dinner we headed back to the car and Phil remembered that he needed to withdraw some money so we found an ATM. I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing until he started pushing the buttons really hard and cursing. “The machine ate my card.” What!?!?!!!!!!!!! The atm apparently didn’t like his card because it didn’t have a chip and ate it instead of returning it to him. Oh crap!!!! We both stood there stunned and had no idea what to do. Kian Kok said we could go to one of the banks on Monday and tell them what happened and they would return our card. After all, how many Bank of America cards end up in a foreign atm? Fortunately we had a decent amount of cash with us and we decided to try to pay with the credit cards as much as we could.

We got back on the road and headed for KL. Thank goodness Kian Kok was driving! It poured all the way there. Coming in to KL we had a beautiful view of downtown and the Petronas Towers. It reminded me a lot of Seattle. A bit about KL. Kuala Lumpur is the capitol of Malaysia. Literally translated KL means “mud estuary/river mouth” (or the mud bog as we like to call it) because it is located at the junction of several rivers. The Petronas Twin Towers are located here. They used to be the tallest buildings in the world but have since been passed by the Taipei 101 tower, which will soon be passed by the tower in Dubai, which will be passed by the Freedom Tower (or whatever the heck they are calling it lately) when it’s finished in NYC. Petronas’ claim to fame now is that they are the tallest twin towers in the world. We finally got to our hotel at 11:30 (we left Penang at 6!) and were shocked to see that a) the lobby was full of people checking in, and b) it reeked of cigarette smoke. Ick! Yes, smoking is allowed in most public spaces here including hotels. We made sure to ask for a non smoking room. At first they said there were none available. I was looking pretty pissy at that point and they “found” a room for us. In general it’s bad manners to have an angry American attitude when faced with a challenging situation, but you’d be surprised what an annoyed look or two can get you. We grabbed our key and went up to the room. In the elevator we noticed that there were specific smoking and non-smoking floors. I honestly can’t remember which we were on, I just wanted to sleep since we were getting up early the next morning. We got to our room. Hmm……. Not exactly the romantic getaway weekend I had imagined. The room looked more like a dorm room with the box spring and mattress on the floor and dingy white vinyl wallpaper. It wasn’t horrible but it was nothing to rave about. At least it was cheap and clean. We passed out.

The next morning we woke up before 6am so we could meet Kian Kok in the lobby at 7 to start the tour of the city. He had taken our car the night before and drove to his mom’s house. We were off to the Petronas towers to get tickets for the tour. The reason we were up so early is because the tickets are free and there are only a set number available each day. We were there by 7:30 and the office didn’t open until 9am. They guys went to find coffee while I held our place in line. Glad we got there when we did. People just kept coming and coming. The guys came back. Only one place was open for coffee, but it was good, probably the best cappuccino I’ve had since Italy. Finally the office opened and we got our tickets. There is a pretty cool museum next to the office that chronicles the building of the towers. It even has a Tesla coil to demonstrate the need for lightning rods on top of the towers. For those of you who don’t know who Tesla was or what the coil is, no worries, I didn’t either. The only knowledge I had of Tesla was that they were a bad 80’s hair band. Of course Phil looked at me dumbfounded! He studied engineering in college so of course he knew who Tesla was, and then explained it to me. Tesla Anyway, the museum was cool and soon our tour started. There is a reason the tour is free. Basically all they do is put you in an elevator, send you up to the 41st floor (which is where the bridge between the towers is located), they talk a little about the towers and the bridge, then you get to spend 10 minutes on the bridge taking pictures, etc. I though it was pretty cool; Phil wasn’t so thrilled to be hanging over 400+ feet of nothing. The tour ended and we went back down to the lobby and into the mall that surrounds the towers. It’s a NICE mall, as in Prada, Versace, Cartier, etc, nice. Drool! We got some food and went looking for the shoe store to get my shoes that started this whole trip. We couldn’t find it! There was another branch of this store in another mall in KL so I still had hope of finding them.

We decided to walk to the KL Tower which was close to the Petronas Towers. That weekend they were sponsoring a base jumping event so as we approached the tower we could see people jumping off the top! We even saw one guy who almost crashed into the overhanging roof next to the area where they were supposed to land. Crazy! Phil and I bought tickets to go up to the observation deck of the tower. Kian Kok had already been so he hung out in the market at the base. The view from the tower gave us a great introduction to KL. The smog was pretty bad that day so we couldn’t see very far, but fortunately there are big pictures at each station showing you what you are looking at and what you could see if it were clear. The tower is very interesting in that it was designed according to Islamic art principles. Islamic art and architecture are very geometric and contain no adornment other than geometric patterns.
After the tower we walked back to KLCC mall (the one at the base of the Petronas Towers) to have lunch at Chili’s! Yay for big cities with semi-Mexican food!!! We were quite excited and the food didn’t disappoint. It was good, tasted just like home.

After lunch we drove to another mall in KL that specialized in electronics and computer stuff. Yes, they have whole malls for that! The mall was in another part of downtown so we had to drive. The traffic was terrible! It’s what I imagine it would be like to drive in New York City. Barely moving, bumper to bumper, everyone on the horn. We made it to the mall and just managed to find a parking space. Parking is serious business; it took us quite a while to find someone who was leaving. People often park early at a mall and stay all day. This mall was very interesting. Floor after floor of stores selling every kind of electronic equipment you can imagine. And these aren’t nice stores, either. They are tiny and crammed with stuff, much of it looks less than legitimate. Some of the stores are literally a counter along the walkway and a single wall of inventory. And everyone is shoving flyers into your hands, people stationed at each end of every escalator and in front of every store. Craziness. I was very worried about my purse. There were so many people someone easily could have grabbed it and ran into the crowd. I had it clamped under my arm with a death-grip on the handles! Phil was looking at all kinds of stuff while Kian Kok kept saying that the prices weren’t that good. We ended up buying a DVD burner for about $60 US, and Kian Kok still said that wasn’t a great price. Are you kidding?? A burner for less than $100?? That’s a fantastic price. Yes, we won’t have it under warranty when we leave Malaysia, but who cares. It’s not that much. It’s hard to convince people that we think it’s a great price with the currency conversion. It was like trying to convince your parent that it was really a good buy and having them look at you like you’re crazy. Kinda funny……

After the tech mall we went to a museum. The National Museum is a natural history museum. The exhibits were all about Malaysia, the different ethnic groups that settled here and key parts of their culture. Very interesting. It also had a display of animals and bugs that are native to Malaysia. Oh my God, you don’t want to run into the gigantic yellow jackets or the 20’ crocodile! For dinner Kian Kok took us outside KL to a place that specializes in satay. Let me preface this by saying that stores of a similar type are often grouped together to the extreme, like the tech mall. All one type of product, all in one area. We walk in to the satay place and are instantly taken to a table. At first I don’t get what is going on. The tables in the center of the building are ringed by satay stands, at least 10 or 15 of them, all run by different people, all selling satay, all wanting your business. Crazy! We went with the first person who grabbed us. Satay is satay. And it was good satay! After several dozen chicken satay (they’re small) we went back to our hotel, which is conveniently attached to a mall. There are a lot of malls in KL! We wandered around the mall for a while trying to decide what to do. I was really exhausted and not in the mood to do anything more. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but we were going at a pretty frantic pace today and dealing with bad traffic can really get to me. Kian Kok decided to go home and we cruised around the mall trying to find my shoe store. No luck here. There was, however, a Chili’s here so we stopped in and had drinks and dessert. It was only 8:30 when we headed back to our hotel room, but that was just fine with me. We were getting up early again the next morning to have breakfast with Kian Kok and Michael, another co-worker of Phil’s who was in KL for the weekend.

Sunday morning we were greeted with front-page coverage of the terrorist bombings in Bali. So sad and really scary! We had just been talking about going to Bali last night; I guess those plans are scrapped now. For breakfast we went to Klang, a city outside of KL, for Bak Kut Teh, which literally translates to meat bone tea. It is pork slowly cooked in an herb broth. It was really good! Michael came back to KL with us while Kian Kok went to a doctor’s appointment. We went to another mall, 1 Utama, which is the biggest mall in KL. And it was huge! We wandered around the mall and bought a few things. At a DIY store we got some more power converters and again had to argue with Michael about what we were buying and was it really a good deal, was it big enough for what we were going to use it for. I appreciated him trying to make sure we didn’t misread the labels and buy the wrong thing (being foreigners) but I was really getting tired of people constantly second-guessing our choices. I also looked for my shoe store and finally found it! It was actually under a different name than the one in Penang which is why I couldn’t find it in other malls. They had the shoe but not the right size, but KLCC had the right size. Argh! We were just there yesterday! Oh well, we could still make it work. We also bought badminton rackets at a department store.

After a quick lunch we went back to the city center to pick up Kian Kok and then back to KLCC to get the shoes. Phil and I ran into the mall while Michael and Kian Kok stayed with the car. The store (which we had passed several times yesterday) was having a sale and was packed with women! We got the shoes and were out of there in record time.

Finally we were on our way back to Penang. I decided to drive home since Phil and Kian Kok had done most of the driving over the weekend. In the daylight it was ok. As soon as it got dark it sucked! The toll highway is two lanes each way with a speed limit of 110k, about 70mph. Not too bad, but we never drive that fast on the island so it was a little foreign to me and took some getting used to. Then there were the other drivers to contend with. The left lane is the slow lane and is used by everyone who wants to go slower than 110, the right lane is the fast lane for everyone who wants to go faster than 110. I. the law abiding foreigner, just wanted to do 110 and was forced to constantly swerve back and forth between lanes to avoid the slow people and not piss of the fast drivers. And boy were they obnoxious; flashing their lights and tailgating so close that I couldn’t see their headlights! It was a horrible drive. At one point in the pass north of Ipoh I came over a rise that had just been repaved but the lines hadn’t been repainted!! Aaaaahhhhhhhh! I hate this! Needless to say that by the time we reached Penang I was in a truly foul mood. We dropped Kian Kok and Michael off at their house and headed back to the apartment. I was so insanely glad to be back! As we entered the apartment I noticed something on the ground by the door. We often have little geckos that come into the apartment. This thing ran into the apartment instead of out the door like geckos usually do. Uh oh. It was hiding in the computer cables on the floor and made a clicking sound when it moved. It was no gecko, it was a cockroach!! Eeew! This was the absolute last thing we wanted to deal with! I got a bowl from the kitchen with the idea of trapping it and flinging it outside. Phil wanted to just squish it. We should have gone with his plan. Phil stood by the computer to scare the cockroach out of the cables so I could trap it. We didn’t think about the computer case being open, though. Our processor had been over heating so we took off the side so it could cool better. As soon as Phil tried to move the cockroach it ran inside the computer case! Crap! We banged on the case trying to scare it out but with no luck. Then we turned the computer off and put it on it’s side to try to find the cockroach. Somehow it managed to climb up into the cables and we couldn’t find it. Phil was really worried that it was going to short out something. I was being less than useful. In my attempt to scare the thing out of hiding I was shaking the cables around and managed to unplug the cord that connects the hard drive to the motherboard. Go me! Since reconnecting the cord means reaching way into the computer Phil put on my dishwashing gloves to protect himself from the cockroach. The thing still hadn’t come out of hiding so we put the side back on the computer and hoped that it would die and that it wouldn’t lay eggs in the case. For a week or two after that we heard some scratching. We still haven’t heard or seen the cockroach. I guess we will have to look for him at some point. The perfect end to an insane weekend!

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Photos

Us after a round
Badminton isn't a physically taxing sport, we are just sweaty from the heat!

The park surrounding Petronas Towers
This is a really nice park with running trails and playgrounds.

View from bridge I
This is the view from the bridge between the towers, 41 floors up!

View down from the bridge
This is the side of the towers that isn't surrounded by the mall. Look at that intersection! The big yellow X is to remind people not to stop there, yeah right. The traffic isn't bad at 9:30am, but in a few hours it will be bumper to bumper.

The park
This is the park on the other side of the towers

The park II
Another view of the park and the roof of the mall that surrounds the towers.

Building detail
One of the things I loved about the towers was the detailed exterior. Ooooh pretty.

KL Tower
This is the KL Tower. Unfortunately you can't see the people on top that are about to jump off.

Smoggy view I
mmmmmm, breathe that fresh air!

Smoggy view I
You can just see the Petronas Towers, though it's from the side so they almost look like one.

Lobby
Here in the lobby of KL Tower is a great example of Islamic art.

My kind of jungle
If only all jungles were made of rum.

Fast food overpass
The view from KFC over the freeway. Pretty cool, just like an ordinary overpass but built up with stores and fast food instead of a road. This was on the way home from KL.

Wet market at the rest stop
The toll highway doesn't go through towns like highways do in the US, so rest stops usually contain restaurants, wet markets, hawker stalls and gas stations. Very convenient!

Gecko hangout
Geckos on the KFC sign.

Comments

[Kian Kok]

Hehehe
OMG....I didn't know that I'm one of the cast in your blog. Good write up!