malaysia time

well i am now in malaysia, had a shocking flight, no sleep or anything, felt fully wrecked...but was the best landing ever, i hardly even felt the plane touch the ground. beautiful. Had to wait at the airport for about about 10 minutes for my mate to come, in that time i got asked about 50 times whether i wanted to use their taxi. I asked a guy where a payphone was and he tried to sell me a 20 buck phone card, but i saw right through it and made a call for 10 cents, bargain. The family im staying with live about 45 mins from the airport, the highways are really good, but the driving is not, people just drift from lane to lane, and im still yet to see anyone use their indicator and then theres the motorbikes, when approaching a traffic jam, everyone just stands on the brakes at the last minute, but the guys on the motos just speed up and rip through the middle of the cars, unbelieveable. The driving is crazy, but they are all the same so it seems to balance out and there arnt many serious crashes, there arnt many courteousy waves either, for that matter. The food over here is obviously different, totally weird for me, but im willing to have go as an experience; as eating is such a bit part of the malay culture. At home for brekkie i would be tucking into a bowl of weet-bix. This morning i had steamed rice, with marinated baby squid/octopus and sundried small fish (kind of like guppies)... so that was interesting, but living with a malay family you do everything as they would, and really experience their way of life, which is cool. Last night i met up with another girl i met in america and we went up the mentura(?) tower, looks like the centrepoint in sydney, Its the 4th highest of its kind in the world, went up to the observation deck and had a pretty good look over kuala lumpar at night. Then went out for dinner at like 11pm with some more friends...they eat dinner really late over here. and today, everyone was working, so i caught the train into the city centre by myself, just cruising around and looking at the petronas twin towers, the tallest buildings in the world, so they say, i didnt reckon they looked that tall, and as i was taking a photo these 2 other boys walked over about to do the same, and i said "bloody tourists everywhere over here", and had a bit of a laugh, turns out there were from brisbane, and they're catching the same plane as me to london, so that was cool as. So we all caught a taxi to the chinatown markets, the home of imatation stuff...like all the big brands. In australia homeless people carry their clothes in a garbage bag, here they carry their stuff in a fake gucci or prada bag. Awesome place for seeing weird stuff and having a bit of a haggle, one of the boys bought a rado watch for 30 bucks (after bargaining down from $210,nice),he was having a bit of a champion moment, when 10 steps away from the stall, trying to adjust the strap, it completely snapped off. Funny stuff, we gave him heaps. The people go to great lengths over here to sell you their stuff, and prove that it is genuine, like burning the leather goods with a lighter to prove its not plastic. mmm. interesting. heaps of funny stuff going on. we're thinking about renting a car tomorrow and trying our luck in peak hour traffic, but im thinking that is not wise, so we'll probably stick to the good old trains for now. Anyways having a great time over, enjoying the experience-pretty hot, mega high humidity, and all the shops and trains and that, have the air con fully cranked...so you go from boiling to freezing. So having a pretty top time over here at the moment, but will be really stoked after clearing customs and settling in london. But for the moment ill be in malaysia for 2 more days, ill enjoy that, then see how we go in england. Hope all is well where ever you are. keep smilin :) andyb