Malaysian Adventure: Life in KL

I can remember reading the book "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" to my own children and to students at school. There is one quote I remember Lucy making as she describes Narnia. She says that in Narnia it is 'always winter but never Christmas'. I feel it is kind of like that here only it is 'always summer but never holidays'. Oh well we have a week off 2 weeks from now.
I thought I tell about a couple of everyday adventures here. Last Thursday I got a flat tire. I changed the tire and then got directions to a place to get it fixed right away. We pulled into this little area with a bunch of shops. I parked in this marked parking spot on the street and right way a couple of guys came up to me and indicated I couldn't park there because it was the place where they did their car washing business. It didn't look like there was anywhere else to park so I asked how much was it to wash my car as it was a little dirty. RM13 was the response (about $4). For this they wash the outside and vacuum it throughout, even including the trunk. They pointed to another spot for me to go as I was in the vacuum area so I drove over to it only to be told I couldn't park there because there were about 5 cars in front of me. Maureen, of course, is laughing the whole time and starts chatting up all the guys I was trying to butt in front of. We found out it took about 45 minutes to get you car washed once they get to it because they are so thorough. The tire shop guy eventually took care of my parking problem. He fixed the tire and checked things over for the grand total of RM5 ($1.75).

Saturday morning we thought we head to one of the local malls to get some groceries and hit up Ikea for more stuff. I dropped Maureen off in front of Ikea and I went to park next door at Tesco to pick up the groceries. We knew Saturday afternoon was bad but thought we might beat the throngs. Wrong!! I drove around the parking lot for about 40 minutes to find a spot. I wanted to leave and look for another parking area but I had no idea where one was. When I finally did get into the store it was wall to wall with people. I fought through the lines to grab what I had on the list and then proceeded to wait for 30 minutes to get through the till. I met up with Maureen just outside of Ikea. She had run into one of the teachers at the school and was having a relaxing lunch.

Saturday night we went for a sail fish and chicken fish dinner. Both of them were very tasty. I have no idea what the real name is for chicken fish but it is very meaty and does taste a bit like chicken. We just had to get over the idea that the eye socket was located about where the dorsel fin would be in salmon. The restaurant was downtown. The street was crowded with restaurants that spilled out on to it. The fish we ate were either swimming around in tanks or laid out on ice. There were about 25 of us from the school there. We met a bar near the school and then grabbed a brace of taxis to take us downtown. It was lots of fun especially when the live eel come out. Tradition is that all the new teachers have to kiss it. After dinner we headed to a club. There were some teachers from the International School of Kuala Lumpur playing in a band so we went to dance for a bit. While we were wandering there my mentor teacher talked me into trying durian(I think that is what is called) It is this big bumpy fruit. It smells horrible and you just eat the pulp around the seeds. My breath is just getting back to normal but my sore throat is gone. Apparently the local saying is 'when the durians go down the sarongs go up.' One of joys of the whole experience is using the local toilets. I've added a photo for you to see.