Another Day in KL – October 28

I skipped the 27th. Nothing really happened – it was a pretty boring day with lots of work and not a lot of play.

Highlight of the 27th is this picture



Onto the 28th we go. There were two good parts of today – lunch and dinner. The guy I’m working with and some of his coworkers took me out for some “authentic Malaysian” food. The food was pretty good and I learned a ton. I think the next few paragraphs will be a regurgitation of what I learned.

Nobody in Malaysia speaks the native language, except for government workers. Everyone else mainly speaks Cantonese for the most par. It’s very common for a single sentence to include Malay / English / Cantonese in a big jumble of words. When speaking informally, there is basically no structure to the sentence and it’s more or less a jumble of words that everyone just interprets.

Everything is measured via the metric system minus housing. They measure housing in sq. ft. just like the US. For the most part housing costs are similar to the US as well inside the city, but more on par with Atlanta instead of NYC.

Alcohol is taxed 100%. Alcohol is priced ridiculously high – we’re talking hotel bar high. I was stupid enough to order a pint of Carlsberg at the end of the night and it was $14.66 USD. I about crapped my pants and then went straight to bed to cry.

There is one Malaysian car manufacturer – Proton. They basically make crappy cars but they sell well due to the ridiculous tax placed on imported cars. A brand new Honda Civic for instance cost about an additional 10k compared to what you’d buy it for in the US.

A college grad doing the same type of IT work that in the US that warrants about a 50-65k starting salary in Malaysia pulls in about 30k tops from what I could tell.

We eventually went back to the office and finally left about 8pm. These guys work long hours on a consistent basis – they’d fit in well back home.

Basically every single day in this part of the year’s forecast is scattered thunderstorms. It wasn’t until this night that I finally saw my first sprinkle of water that lasted about 10 minutes.

I was told that I need to head to Petaling street to check it out. When I arrived I was instantly in awe. I’ve never seen so many counterfeit items – watches, purses, dvds, clothes, wallets, etc. If it was something people wanted – it was here. I hadn’t had a beer in Malaysia and since there aren’t any local beers I wanted to at least have some Tiger while I was close by the HQ. I eyed a spot right on the main strip that seemed to have a decent menu selection and the beer special wasn’t bad. It was great to finally relax and have a beer and just watch the scenery. People were buying things left and right. I'd consider this the best time I had in Malaysia - it really wasn't as fun packed as I'd hoped - work kept getting in the way.

I hung out here for a while until I realized that I didn't have a lot of cash left and surely this place only took cash. I went and paid then made my way back to my hotel taking in the scenery. It truly was crazy.