Sunday - 4/9/06 - Learning my way around

Happy Birthday Deena !!!!

After my tour yesterday I was beat, so I grabbed a nap, then went out to supper. I went roaming to Butik Bintang (one more big shopping/dining area) and found a nice little native restaurant call The Outback Steakhouse for dinner. They had an interesting dish call Alice Springs Chicken that was tasty and not overly spicy, as some things here tend to be. Okay - Okay - I decided to wimp out and eat American last night. I'll make up for it tonite, with a real native Malaysia cultural show/buffet. The Outback was not serving some of their normal steaks, as there is some current ban on beef imports from Australia and the USA.

After dinner I did more roaming in Butik Bintang, mainly finding closed shops and lots of asian food stalls. They are a bit repetitive, but I really enjoy seeing (and smelling) all the different variations of asian food. I've sample several little things (like octypus balls at the Mid-Valley mall yesterday) and so far so good. I'll be going back to this area, both for the food and for some of the shopping that was closed already when I got there. They have 1 whole 6 level shopping mall that is supposedly just electronics stores. Oh boy - my kinda place.

There are small motorcycles everywhere and the left-handed driving will look strange for quite a while yet, I'm sure. I keep seeing cars that don't have a driver. The drivers here are mostly really good, I guess. Cars seem to continually sharing the same lane and skimming right past each others' fenders, but so far I haven't seen any impacts.

While the tour I took yesterday was on the outskirts of town (pewter, batik, Batu Cave), today's (9AM seemed early) was all in the city. I was in a similar mini-van as yesterday, with a guy from Saudi Arabia and 2 couples from Poland (1 couple now lives in Sweden). Our sites today included several shopping districts, various consulates, ethnic corners of town and stops at the King's Palace (picture above), Independence Square (where the British signed over the Malaysian indepence in 1957), the worlds largest butterfly garden, a leather outlet (waste of time, force feeding shopping on us) and another Batik shop/demonstration. All in all the one yesterday was better, but it all helps with getting a handle on where things are in this town.

Well enough for now - I'll do more in a day or 2. For the Kansas_Boyds Yahoo group members, I'm putting a few pictures out there for your viewing.

bye all