Malaysia – Malacca & Kuala Lumpur

You’d have thought that we would have learnt by now not to antagonise Asian bus drivers. However, walking on to a blasting rendition of Asian Celine Dion followed by Asian Axel Rose at about the same sound level as a small space rocket left Phoebe to ask him to turn it down slightly. What followed was what I can only relate to the petulant tantrum of a child who has had his annoying squeaky toy removed. He kept telling us to shush and directed the air conditioning vents towards us, plunging us rapidly into a two hour ice age. “Why did you endure another 3 hours of public transport misery dear Alec & Phoebe?”, I hear you scream. We felt we needed to escape the confusion that is KL and go to a small town on the outskirts called Malacca and until teleportation is available at a budget cost, I will have to endure such delights as pissy bus drivers for the foreseeable future.

KL Petronas Towers – They had to cheap out as the oil industry has plummeted recently of course.

Malacca is a town which has red buildings in it, affordable shops and about one street’s worth of activities to do. Consequently, we spent two hours walking at which point we bought Star Wars Uno and retreated to a quiet cafe. Tempting as a Pokemon, Little Kitty and Spiderman themed trishaw driven by a wizened old man with as many teeth as I have arms seemed, we passed. This ended up being a lucky escape as we soon saw some unamused tourists being ridden around in these stupid things while Crazy Frog blared out at you like an annoying siren. Malacca in itself was actually quite nice though, wearing it’s colonial buildings like a cape and not really doing much else to make it seem attractive – after the ten other 4d art museums we had declined, we sure as hell weren’t going to break a tradition on that front.

Malacca – evidence that if you just paint your city red, there’s no real need to do much more.

Despite my last rendezvous with a street art woman going pretty badly, I was willing to take another shot at making love work. She seemed mildly infatuated by me.

Three wheeled menaces.

We got back and spent the other few days in Kuala Lumpur doing city things. For those still reading – Why? – I will list what else we did. We had a cut-price burger at an American franchise called Johnny Rockets where the poor waiters had the same look about them as most of the inhabitants of Battersea Dog Home: they all had to yell hey in the same monotone voice regardless of what they were doing when we walked in, the poor waiter had to draw our jam-ketchup hybrid into little smiley faces on our trays (incidentally his face was that of thunder as if daring us to talk to him about the situation), and, a personal favourite, was at 1pm on the dot, they all had to go and dance (burgers on the grill apparently being burnt to a raisin) to Earth, Wind and Fire – September. On our final night, I donned the one shirt which had been festering in the bottom of my rotting backpack since the start of the trip (I was told this was a romantic evening). We went on top of a helipad where we had a couple of cocktails (nursed expertly for a solid two hours) and enjoyed our final view of Kuala Lumpur.

Making sure we get that Instagram friendly picture! #didweevengoiftheresnophoto!? #artsy

Stupid couples photo that I seem to constantly have to smile for grumble grumble.

Cheers. Will try and give it another 4 weeks before posting again!

Alec+Phoebe