well after much dilly dallying around about the place we have
arrived in Kuala Lumpur. melbourne was cool, but somehow anticlimatic
because it felt like we returning home rather than leaving on an
expedition. we spent a few days cruising the old favourite bars and
cafes, and catching up with the octane posse, who are not so much
making coffee now, as roasting it... pretty fun looking operation based
at the old Kitchen cafe in Flemington, the name of the company being
'the social roasting company', kinda crossed between peoples and
havana, with coffee being delivered by a maximum panniered out beast of
a bike. pretty damn sweet. so after living with lissas old workmate ali
and her husband ian in their high tech warehouse mansion of a house for
half a week (and pissing off their neighbours with some drunken 1am
shadow) we relocated to the familiar bolt hole of joes garage to ride
out the remaining few days.
singapore next, one more rung down the ladder into the abyss of
heat and filth... still not too hot or filthy, but definately cheaper
than aus or nz... thinking the highlight was a street burger place
called ramly burger or something similar, where they cook a whole bunch
of egg on a hotplate, spread out thin, then chuck the meat in that,
fold the egg over it and cover in sauce. this way they make about 12
burgers at once on the same hotplate. kinda burger king like result,
but it doesnt give you the shits, tastes a bit better (if you ignore
the red looking meat in the middle, think it was coloured to look like
that), and your money isnt siphoned out of your pocket and into some
bottomless corporate coffer. the crapest thing about sing i think was
the crappy guesthouse that we booked for the first few nights which was
pretty much a cell with air con, no windows, and 4 bunks, and no common
area. but fuck it, we werent there to make friends, and it was cheap
enough. singapore zoo was also awesome, most of the animals looked
about as fed up with the heat as us, but there was a night safari where
the cats all came to life, and started prowling around. most impressive
was the leopard i think, who was pacing about distractedly, right by
the glass. huge beast, and im pretty sure he wanted to kill everyone. i
could see it in his eyes. the fishing cats were also awesome, although
they didnt catch any fish while we were there. they knew they were just
for show, but they played their part convincingly.
massive drama at the airport leaving melbourne. we got there 2
hours early for our domestic flight due to a thankfully over zealous
mok, and our massively rushed departure from nz. we waited at the front
of the line for half an hour at check in while some tards fucked around
in front of us, then were told by the smug airline girl that she
couldnt give us our tickets to singapore as we didnt have a flight
booked out of the country. we eventually wheedled more info out of her,
and discovered that we could leave by train, and could book tickets
online at the hilton across the road. massive rush with all our bags to
get to the hilton, use the internet, booked tickets and went to the
counter to pay. i got out all my silver coins to pay for our 15 minutes
of internet and 1 printed page... 8 dollars... "excuse me? are you
shitting me?" the girl says yeah... its expensive... the hilton... then
"actually forget about it, cause its a FUCKIN RIP OFF!!" haha. good to
see some humanity at last.
so we caught the train from sing to KL, pretty comfortable ride on
an air con train, much better than crappy jetstar. we traveled through
oil palms and a whole lot of cool rainforest. the train had open doors
for much of the way, good for taking photos out of and watching the
country flash past. when we got to KL we bought taxi coupons and piled
into 2 cabs. our guy didnt speak english, didnt know the guesthouse
that we pointed him to, and was too old to see or too uneducated to
read our map... asia at last :) he managed to get us to chinatown after
passing a police roadblock and hastily putting on his seatbelt, and we
found our way from there. we went to a beatles bar last night that
plays only the beatles, which was really cool for a while but started
to get on my nerves when their songs started repeating. and they
played yellow submarine. fuck. that song is the reason that i hated the
beatles for something like 10 years, because i thought all their songs were all
like that... should never have let that bongo guy get anywhere near the
fuckin microphone. they also didnt play most of the white album, but
all vitriol aside, it was an awesome bar, really comfortable, and they
brought around a hookah pipe for 40 ringit which is about 12 dollars or
something. prolly tourist prices, but still a good idea...
