Just behind the Culture Park

I brought some black-and-white film back from Penang, which has been challenging the local developers because who uses film any more? And B&W - I think one shop I went into was surprised to discover that there was such a thing as B&W film. Eventually I asked someone at work to find out where I could get it developed, because no-one in the shops around my district seemed to have an clue. She returned a few days to say there was a shop behind the culture park which sold B&W film - seemed a fair bet they could develop it. Where's the culture park? I asked. Near Shamian. OK, well in fact now you mention it, I remember seeing it on the map when I was visiting Shamian, so no problems.

In fact, I was quite happy to have an excuse to head back to Shamian because it's a cheerful place, so I leapt on a train Saturday and set off for : "Yellow Sands" subway. Did I make the obligatory sarky remarks about vanished glories last time I blogged on Shamian?


Anyway, this is the vision from the pedestrian overpass between the subway station and Shamian. I'm thinking the last time the sands were yellow here was at least 300+ years ago.

However, I did find some yellow...









Of course there are things you expect to see in China, which are what people call "the real China" but is actually just one particular memorialised part of it. Annoyingly, no matter how much I editorialise in my mind about this, I am still very pleased so see a man on a bicycle carrying bananas. Perhaps it's the aesthetics of it all - they were VERY yellow.






Note, Shamian, another couple falling prey to the evil wedding photographer.

it took a little bit of map & compass reading to find the culture park, because Guangzhou's road system is 3 dimensional and it isn't completely clear from the maps which roads go under or over which other roads.

But on the way there I observed that I was in the garment district - another garment district, not the one in the north near the old railway station.


Actually, no bundles in this shot...

This picture should give you an idea - the bundles are packages of clothes from the wholesalers, typically 2 or 3 items in a range of sizes. If your shop needs more than one bundle, then someone will be trolleying it (centre) to you. And if you aren't in the business of selling clothes here, then you're in the business of wearing them (girls, left & right). And this is a quiet spot of the road where I could pause to get the camera out.




One entrance to the market

The hub of all this is a market, I guess mainly wholesale, but I'm sure possible to do retail as well.

The place is surrounded by wrapped bundles of clothes, in piles, unattended but labelled, waiting for either delivery or collection. I am sure it all works, but it's hard to believe looking at it.

The market is surrounded on 3 sides by the fashion business, and on the 4th - Culture Park. Hmm. So behind Culture Park is a fashion district. And somewhere in this fashion district is a shop that sells B&W film. What's your guess - is the only non-clothing shop in the district going to stand out or be invisible?

I was fairly confident it would be the latter, but nothing daunted, map & compass in hand, I set out to scour the area semi-systematically. I found every conceivable button, braiding, tassel, elastic, banding, coat hanger, mannequin, fastener, bead, beading, sequin shop. Not just shops, streets of shops. Let's say, at least 50 button shops - and I must have missed some. I found a lot of restaurants all jam-packed. I found people selling polystyrene boxes of food prepared in their kitchen - food that in some cases looked better than at least one of my local restaurants - I found people drinking beer from teacups. I didn't find a film developer. Apart from that small defect, it is a really buzzy part of town.

Beats any terrace windows in Newtown

And, not without architectural charm either.

By this stage I'd moved so far away from the culture park that I'd pretty much given up on finding film shops. But I was having a good time exploring, and crucially, I wasn't lost, so I thought I'd just keep zig-zagging my way North until the subway appeared or my feet gave up the ghost.

Abruptly - as in, cross one street - I found that I was in the printing district. if you wanted to start a design business here, you could sit in the street on a couple of milk crates with a laptop & a customer. When you had the design ready you could go & buy the paper, get the papershop to deliver it to the printer next door, who could pop around the corner to get the ink, or if required, buy a new machine for a new process. Naturally, if there were any problems, spare parts, electricians and engineers are at hand. This is another whole district devoted to one industry: in fact mainly driven by the advertising printing for all the clothing shops next suburb South. Mind you, I'm not completely sure about the economics of all this. There were an awful lot of people asleep in their shopfronts.

Equally suddenly, I turned a corner into the toy district. And about 200 metres along the main road, that turned into the homewares district.

And then a cathedral. I almost didn't see it because it was impossible that it should be there. you could have videotaped me for a paradigmatic image of "double-take". It's just there. Not a single foreshadowing sign for tourists or dislocated worshippers. However, I guess this is how a mediaeval city worked - districts organised by crafts and a cathedral in an attention grabbing location. Not that I want to imply that Guangzhou is mediaeval, more that patterns of urban geography are repetitive and re-emergent. I wonder how much of the patterning here is organic and how much planned?

Anyway, the day's mission was to develop a film and by now it was pushing 3 o'clock. As it happens, I found the 2nd hand camera district a while back - which curiously shares its suburb with the fabric markets, the one fashion component I hadn't seen all day. To further demonstrate the estrangement between the fabric markets & the clothes markets, it's not even a close walk. And the tailors in the fabric district are slowly shifting over from clothes to curtains for the new apartment buildings. Howsomesoever, it seemed like a fair bet that where there were 2nd hand cameras, there would be a B&W film developer. And so there was. I wonder how the pictures will turn out? That's an emotion you don't get with a digital camera...

The Cameron Highlands

Tea plantation auditioning for an advertisement

To be fair (although to whom I'm not sure) there isn't much difference between the Cameron Highlands and any overdeveloped touristy vaguely mountainous area - say the Dandenongs (or Blue Mountains, whatever). True, the Dandenongs doesn't have tea plantations, which is to their disadvantage, because a tea plantation is very nice to look at - just as nice as all those ads on television whose art directors got there before me. But, the Cameron Highlands, just like the Dandenongs, does have lashings of devonshire tea. Those Devons - they just went everywhere.

Nice, isn't it.

It's also true that the Dandenongs don't have a wide range of Indian, Malayasian and Chinese food - but then, the Cameron Highlands doesn't have any overpriced hippie arts and crafts. Of course, they do have arts and crafts, and probably it was overpriced, but it did seem ridiculously cheap and some of it was really quite ... nice. We resisted the temptation to buy though, because it wasn't self carrying.

The really big attraction of the Highlands "the hills" is of course that the temperature differential between it and the coast is so great. Likewise the humidity differential. I spent 3 days going around saying "I'm so cold" - but the sucker prices were out on the jumpers rather than the gewgaws so I wasn't going to buy one. For sure I don't need it in Guangzhou. Actually, half of my jumpers in Sydney were bought in the gift shop at Tullamarine when I arrived in Melbourne from Sydney having forgotten precisely what "cold" means in Melburnian dialect. They don't get much wear because by the time I need them again I've forgotten that I own them, and have to buy another on arrival.

Be that as it may, I was quite happy to be cold - the temperature is actually around 22, so it's not actually life-threatening, but after GZ and KL, 22 and low humidity is paradise. We stayed in a gi-normous B&B/guesthouse/hotel which was very nice - a bit damp, but otherwise impeccably maintained and/or painted. We walked downhill to a tea plantation - it didn't look so far on the map, but so much for the tourist map - it was a seriously long way and it was seriously downhill. That wasn't bad in itself of course, but the walk back seemed a bit intimidating. However, we found the local electrician repairing the wiring at Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, and he was happy to give us a lift back. Keen golfer, plays off single figures - apparently the local golf course is the cheapest in Malaysia. Very nice of him - although if we'd known his shortcut, we could have reduced the distance by about 2/3! Still a steep climb though.

I bullied Liz into having Chinese food for dinner, and it was OK, but it seemed pretty clear that Indian was the go, judging from the crowds on the boardwalk & the sheer number of Indian places, so we had Indian for breakfast the next day. In Australia the most common Indian bread is naan (which you can get in Malaysia too) but in Malaysia roti is the signature Indian bread. And while you can get roti in Australia, Malaysian roti is an art-form. In Tamah Rata, the artform reaches its greatest heights - cue bad puns from the peanut gallery. It comes in cones, in strips, in pancakes, in mounds, folded, with curry, with fruit, with whatever you like pretty much. And if you have ever been amazed by a guy making pizza by tossing dough around like a Frisbee, roti is made the same way, only the dough is a millimetre thin by the time the cook puts it onto his hotplate. It is unbelievable - speaking as a moderately skilled dough-maker. We managed about 6 different kinds in the three days - but I think my favourite is the one with curry sauce. Even for breakfast, this is excellent. (My diet didn't fare too well in Malaysia)

View from look out - note imminent arrival of rain

We went for a pleasant little walk on Day 2 to a pleasant little waterfall & a rickety, rot-infested look out for a view over the whole valley which was impressive (making due allowances for the holiday accommodation) with the rain clouds sweeping in. Inspired by this we planned to do 2 walks on day 3 - the shortest one in the morning, and then a quick visit to a strawberry farm in the PM.

There is a Buddhist monastery in the hills, and it's only a kilometer off the road. Just so you know, it takes 3-4 hours to walk that kilometer. Longer if it rains - which it will, because it does every day around noon. We did eventually arrive at the monastery, wetter than I have ever been in my adult life (because being in wet clothes is muche wetter than being under a shower) where a very nice nun gave us an umbrella - for free! thus raising my estimate of Buddhist monks about 1000% because in general they are a predatory lot with the mandatory exorbitant donation - well the ones around Shanghai & Guangzhou are. In Guangzhou locals have frantically waved at me to advise me NOT to give money to a begging monk - so my view is not isolated. On the other hand we have a monk in one of our schools and I feel a bit sorry for him because in 6 months he doesn't appear to making much progress. Maybe what goes around comes around in the ripping-off business.

One reason for jungle trekking

Anyway, it was nice of the nun. It was quite an interesting monastery - it is one of 3 in Malaysia named after the Ming navigator who allegedly discovered America (Zheng He, but I can't remember his Hakka or his Cantonese name, which is the temple name). It seems to be a kind of Pirate Buddha; it was certainly a very interesting temple with a couple of artifacts I hadn't seen before. (I think the camera must have got wet, because I can't find the pictures) It must be doing pretty well financially because it was big new and shiny, while the guidebook suggests that there has been a temple there for quite a few decades.

We cancelled our plan for a second walk.

Next morning we tried to make a quick dash to a strawberry farm, but somehow we missed it and ended up taking a tour of a small Muslim community - not so visible in the Highlands as elsewhere. We ended up with a back of semi-dried strawberries for the bus trip back to KL. I have to say that I have never found dried fruits to match up to raisins and dried apricots. You'd think that dried strawberries would be fantastic, what could be better than intense strawberry flavour?, but they just don't work. The sugar overpowers the flavour.

Ipoh

We could certainly have spent more time in Penang, but I had been recommended to the Cameron Highlands - cool, they said, with tea plantations, so since it was on our way back to KL, we headed off by ferry and bus.

Personally I prefer trains to buses, and train stations to bus stations. However, Liz' navigational skills and instincts for the way things work got us to the bus depot in the mainland part of Penang - the ferry between the island and the mainland was free!

According to the guidebook there were cheaper bus fare to be had, but no-one I found was in a haggling mood. Nor particularly was I & it is hard to care cantankerously about less than $1. The number of people involved in the fare was fairly large - the shill, the man who wrote out the ticket and took the money, the person who had to be spoken to to confirm the existence of vacant seats, the person who took the tickets, the bus driver, and the sleeping bus driver. 6 people, to split my 12 ringgits - to say nothing of the petrol & maintenance costs. There were maybe 20 people on the bus, which makes three rounds trips a day between Ipoh & Penang. I guess, multiplying it all out, that's 120 ringgits a day each on average (assuming no costs). Actually that's OK - they could spend about 1/3 of it on overhead and it is a reasonable business. I don't know what rents are like if you are local, but you can certainly eat for less than 10 ringgits a day, so 80 (2/3 of the aforementioned 120) is probably manageable. Not luxury, but plausible. And some of the people (the ticket selling & collecting operation) is possibly/plausibly working for more than one bus line.

The bus ride to Ipoh was unremarkable - the vegetation in Malaysia, to my eye at least, is a monochrome tropical green, certainly from a bus window travelling at speed. Ipoh, when we arrived, was a fairly unremarkable place. Except for the food: in 20 minutes walk from the hotel down one street and back we saw about 5 restaurants that looked fantastic. The one we ate in was, and it seemed no different to the others. Penang gets a big rap for food, and the food in Penang was excellent, but my feeling is that Ipoh might mount a pretty fair competition. Another thing Ipoh has in common with Penang is the terrace houses; but ultimately the lack of an ocean is hard to overlook.

The hotel we stayed in was hosting a British food exhibition, or so the advertising claimed. It was not clear how or where, although the coffee shop (the coffee was vile, so that was quite British) did have an absolutely magnificent looking apple pie. But it looked like the same untouched pie at 3 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 7 o'clock and 9 o'clock the next morning - so I'm not sure how long it had been hanging around.

Mind you, having spent a ridiculous amount of time in Starbucks in China & Malaysia (internet access guaranteed), it's wrong to ridicule British coffee. American coffee is far, far worse.
We planned to catch an early bus out of Ipoh, but when we got to the bus depot, there wasn't one, so we went to the other bus depot, where there wasn't one either, so we went to a Buddhist cave temple while we waited. There are in fact two temples, one on either side of this lump of rock - probably an interesting place of a geologist, Ipoh, I would guess it is in the crater of a very antique volcano.





It was a very quiet and peaceful place - and very damp.

I tried to buy the temple shop's stock of photographs of the statues, because they had a number I haven't seen before in other temples, and it was too dark for the camera (and my ability to use a flash without generating glare is limited).





Most of them were wadded together in solid blocks and stuck together with mould. It was not very clear how old the temple(s) are - if it was China cave temples go back to around about the BCE into the CE (CE 67 first recorded Buddhist temple in China), but this one seems rather modern. It might possibly go back 100 years, and the bulk of it looks like it goes back about 30 years.






Compared to the temples in KL and Penang, it was very pristine (a polite way of saying not very used).


But still, almost a storybook place for a temple, none the less.

Penang - Tourists

This is a view of a very Fitzroy/Newtown bit of Georgetown, from the hotel window. The streets are wider, and the cooking smells are more pervasive and not at all trendy, plus the whole place is a little battered - the tropical climate is hard on buildings.




This is the entrance hall to Cheong Fatt Tze's favourite house - he sounds like Penang's answer to one of the great English colonial rogues. Born poor but respectable (family of school teachers) he ran away to Java, married a rich man's daughter while still a water-carrier (guess he had great charm) and parlayed the inheritance into a massive trading fortune and considerable influence and respectability.

This is a very traditional rich trader's house - not dissimilar to the Chen family mansion in Guangzhou, although significantly smaller. I don't really have the photographic technique to capture the features I like about these kinds of houses - internal courtyards, huge amounts of natural light, timber and paper construction (he used Scottish iron too), the constant cool breeze generated by the architecture without help from fans.

They say it's his favourite house because his favourite wives were housed here - but I gather he had a house and wives in most of the trading cities in South East Asia, and how they know his favourite was here, I don't know. He certainly wasn't their favourite - his heirs lost all the money and pretty much trashed the place before it was bought for preservation by a private trust.

It's now an upmarket B&B - about $50 AUD per night. Well worth it if you are in the neighbourhood.

That's the outside - it's very blue. I'm not sure if the wrought iron is clearly visible, but it's the same pattern you can see in any inner city in Australia. There was a film being shot there while we visited, so I couldn't get around to a lot of the front garden.

Other European features are the wooden shutters and french windows.





The old protestant cemetery is really about as picturesque as cemeteries get. Moss, dappled light on aged marble, people living in the mausoleums, syringes and old beer bottles on the paths.

But cool and pleasant, for all that. Trees, nature's answer to the lack of outside air conditioning.






These two stones tell a probably not uncommon story - Harriet Scott died on May 21, 1864 at the age of 25, two weeks after giving birth to twins, John and Harriet on May 7th.

John Jr. only survived 5 months, and his sister 16 months.

Penang - Dragon Boats

Going round the corner - not an easy task for a dragon boat, they don't bend.














The team in full flight














In the marshalling yards before the last race.











Competitors between races - this is the Japanese team. The character on the back of their uniforms is very sylised version of "dragon".











Unloading and loading the boats - this is why regattas usually run late. This one was no different.










The team in our tent, getting riding instructions for the next race.













Real spectators.

Malaysia - Penang

So on Tuesday we flew to Penang - Air Asia must be the world's cheapest carrier, it cost around $25 for a 1 hour flight. Certainly no frills, but who really cares if they have a reserved seat or not? The dragon boat championships were held at a dam - which in all fairness wasn't completely adequate to the task of hosting 4000+ people in comfort, especially given the temperature and humidity - on the north cost, well inland a bit & up a hill, obviously. The problem with the venue was the dust - there wasn't really any grass coverage, so the feel of the regatta wasn't that comfortable. Having said that, I don't go to a lot of regattas, but I guess most of them involve sitting around all day doing not much except waiting for the next race in 35 degree heat. So probably for the paddlers themselves it was situation normal.

Paddling is like athletics - you spend 10 hours waiting for about 5 minutes of competition.

(Me reduced to taking pictures of myself). On the left behind me is the Chinese Taipei tent; on the right the Dubai.)

Anyway, I think Liz' team did well. No spectacular results but they did manage to win one of their minor finals - after being rammed by a competitor.


Penang itself - well Georgetown in particular was where we spent most of our time - is great.




It's a little hard to put the finger on why (I hope it's not just colonial nostalgia) but it seems like a very laidback and pleasant place.







A Hindu temple...about 100 meters from,,,












....a Chinese temple.







It has the same multicultural feel as KL; possible fewer Muslims and more Buddhists, but you still wake up in the morning to the sound of the adhan.


I like the adhan, partly because it seems like a very overt symbol of a community. True, it's not my community, but what are the public symbols of my community? I wouldn't have a clue. As an expat, there is one because you look different, but back home I couldn't even define a community that I felt strongly part of. Let alone one that reminds me of its existence five times a day. Still, following through from that, I'm not sure that I would want to be reminded of something five times a day. It might come to seem like nagging. Being inside something and viewing it from outside are really unrelated knowledges.

I also like the chant - I have always liked plainsong, and it's nice to hear a different scale now and then.

Malaysia KL the first

It's been a bit hectic recently, but anyway, I'm back in Guangzhou after 2 weeks in Malaysia. I like Malaysia, very interesting place. I met Liz in KL. It was possibly the least stressful arrival anywhere, ever maybe. The airline sold us bus tickets, so I avoided the taxi drivers. Not all the Malaysian taxi drivers are thieves - but none of them lack understanding of the value of information in a market economy. The bus trip is 9 ringgits, roughly $3.50. There IS an 8 ringgit bus as well, but I don't feel particularly ripped off. The bus was easy to find (another airport miracle) and drops you off at Sentral - which isn't particularly central, in a geographical sense BUT it is the hub of the entire public transport system. Which is pretty complex - there seem to be at least 5 rail operators to say nothing of innumerable public & private buses. Sentral actually deals with the taxis for you - you buy a ticket from a booth so you get a preset price. And a reasonable price, since even when you pre-pay the drivers use the meter so you can see what is happening. That isn't always good! But in the first instance it was, and that proved useful when haggling over taxi fares later.

I'm not sure if I have any pictures of the Grand Central Hotel - one of those excellent hotels that has fallen on hard times but still manages to run a good if faded service. Fabulous deco ceiling & chandelier in the lobby. Carpet probably not updated since about the same time.

There is a lot of fantastic food in KL, in fact in Malaysia in general, and there is really no need to pay more than 12 ringgits ($4) for a fantastic meal. In fact we ate plenty for around 5 or 6 ringgits and every Indian restaurant has something for about RM1.50 if you are not super hungry. The strange thing is the beer is more expensive than the food, by some margin - we had two bottles of beer the first night & they were more than half the cost of the meal (for four people). Maybe as an Islamic state, Malaysia feels taxing beer is a virtuous thing to do.

Monday was the tourist day for us before flying to Penang for the dragon boat championships. We started with a walk to the elevated railway through the early morning red light district (according to the Lonely Planet - their Asian reviewer really doesn't like Asia) which was (unsurprisingly) pretty quiet.
The elevated railway (there are two, I think) was a really good way to see a lot of stuff quickly because if runs in a semicircle from the North West to the South West. You quickly see mosque - Buddhist temple - cathedral - mosque - Hindu temple - Buddhist temple - cathedral - mosque, which give you a pretty fair idea that Malaysia might be a tricky place to govern. I suspect recalcitrance is not an optional extra for their politicians. You also see modern building, colonial buildings, building of unknown provenance and lots of terrace housing. Bits of KL could be mistaken for Newtown (more true of Georgetown in Penang). A very popular strategy for the locals is a business on the ground floor and a house on the 1st & 2nd floor. Not just in KL, we saw the same thing all over Penang & also in Ipoh and Talan Rata (of which more later).

Fortunately for me Liz is a wizard with a map, but unfortunately for us the KL roads department is a wizard at creating uncrossable roads. Fortunately for all of us (Liz and I were travelling with Sergio & Kathryn, two other paddlers) Sergio doesn't understand what uncrossable means.

The elevated railway dropped us off at Sentral, but crossing the road behind Sentral - which was essential to actually get anywhere from Sentral on foot - only takes you as far as a carpark. Eventually the carpark takes you to the lobby of a 5 start hotel which you can stride through in a "we own this place" kind of way, and that takes you to the edge of a four leaf clover 8-lane highway exit, on the other side of which you can see the national Museum - our notional destination.

I haven't mentioned the weather yet. It isn't as bad as Guangzhou is the only good thing that can be said about it. Sane people wouldn't be trying to cross a major highway system in it. Still, that didn't stop us - Sergio noticed a couple of locals wending their way across unmarked paths and down afterthought stairways so we followed them (pausing regularly to let the traffic pass) and eventually arrived at the Museum. The museum was closed, because it was Monday. Never mind, we set off for the Observatory. Closed, due to it being Monday. Undaunted, we set off for the butterfly farm. It was a lot further than it appeared on the map, but it wasn't closed on Monday. On the way we had coffee at the coffee shop at the monument to Malaysia's first PM. The coffee shop wasn't closed, because all the monument employees need somewhere to meet and chat on Mondays, since the monument is closed.

The other thing we discovered on the way to the butterfly farm was the orchid garden - this is the fountain at the top. The orchids were stunning - possibly for the first time I saw why people go slightly mad about them, but I failed dismally to wotk out the macro function on the camera and all the pictures turned out blurry. Except this one.






The butterfly farm needs someone with more patience than me - it is very had to look at butterflies because they don't really stop to be looked at - or photographed.

I can see why people who claim to be butterfly lovers kill them, because you won't ever get much of a relationship going with a live butterfly. Of course, it might be nicer to wait until they die of natural causes some time in the next 48 hours, but for some reason people don't seem to do that.



For me the highlight of the butterfly farm was the turtle pond. Not that the pond seemed to interest them much, sunbaking was all the go. It looked like the two turtles on the left were objects of interest - the other turtles made occasional, and in some cases quite serious, albeit unsuccessful, attempts to join them - but I couldn't work out what the attraction was.

When I had a turtle, my book on turtle care said they shouldn't be left out in the sun, but obviously these ones hadn't read the book. Perhaps the Malaysian are breeding a special variety of self-cooking turtle? it's a mystery.

From the butterfly farm we caught a taxi to the Central markets - the driver wanted 25 ringgits, but we beat him down to 15, which looked faintly plausible looking at the map. And it might have been if he had gone by road, but he knew a shortcut through, yes, a carpark (a different one) which made me feel 3 ringgits was fairer. Mind you, that's less than the flagfall. Anyway, we wanted lunch and what can you do? It's just economics really.

The markets were OK, in fact a lot of stuff was OK++ but at the beginning of a trip it's not sensible to buy stuff. Furthermore, Liz' luggage couldn't possible have fitted into her bag so even if we had been feeling not sensible there wasn't really room to pack it. Given that it's a tourist - probably disrespectful to say mecca - hotspot, this probably was a fine plan A.

Following an excellent lunch - although it was extremely hard to persuade the waiter we didn't want the Western Menu - chosen largely at random from the wall because I haven't studied Malaysian and that menu didn't have pictures, we caught another train and a subway to the KL thing, the twin towers of the Petronas building.

They are part of a VERY SERIOUS MALL, which had the look and feel of one the luxuriously overstuffed Chinese malls PLUS luxury good whose brand names I had heard of. We could only just afford coffee and cake; OK a bit of an exaggeration but it certainly cost more than it would at any mall in Australia. The airconditioning was also better than at any mall in Australia. Luckily, malls aren't closed on Mondays, but the elevator to the top of the towers was.

I have a word of advice - arrive in KL on Monday night.

Although our hotel was a bit shabby it formed a sort of triangle with the World Trade Centre and an upmarket hotel/mall. We had a bit of a wander through that before dinner - 4 jewellery shops with guys carrying sawn-off shotguns sitting in a chair outside. KL's biggest business is money changing (one money changer every 4 shops) and none of them feel the need for sawn-off shotguns. I guess in a part of the world where to a degree your family jewellery is a significant part of your family wealth/investment strategy it makes sense. But it's a bit disconcerting.

More ordering from menus on a wall in an Indian restaurant absolutely packed with people. Again the beer was the most expensive feature of the meal, which was very good. It was sort of next to a river - I would have called it a drain, but I did see people fishing in it. I don't know how much longer they will be able to afford the rent, as it looks like someone is planning to gentrify the area. Although, now I think about it, it took about 30 years after Melbourne built the WTC before anyone got near gentrifying that part of town, so they may have a few years left.

Take a Malaysian dictionary though - although to a degree everyone in KL speaks some English, and the Indian community probably more than anyone else, they don't use the same translations into English of Indian food as we do in Sydney.

Tuesday we flew to Penang.