After 3 1/2 weeks in Malaysia, we thought it might be interesting to write down a few impressions.
It's raining, man!
Since we are living in London for quite a while now and the Brits love talking about the weather, we have to start this post with impressions of this important topic. The weather is mostly as we expected it to be, but not as predictable as we thought. Warm, usually around 32°C, very humid, with heavy rains and fierce thunderstorms in between, mostly in the afternoons. Rain and thunderstorms are very welcomed here, bringing a bit of cooler air. Of course, when the sun comes out again after the rain, it gets more humid than it was before, at least until all the rain water has evaporated. If, on a given day, there has not been a thunderstorm until 4pm, we start longing for one, especially when it is really hot and sunny. But neverthless, we cope unexpectedly well!
Da hood
The university guys rented an appartment for us. It is on the 11th floor of a 23-storey block, in a complex with 4 other blocks like ours. Recently built, not all appartments in the other blocks seem fully equipped or rented out yet. It is an enclave for foreigners here. We are probably the ones with the longest way home, most people here are from the Middle East or other Asian countries. We already met a very nice Iranian guy, who is here with his family, and a Japanese couple. And some others we don't know where they are from. People are nice, we tend to meet them on the 7th floor. The 7th floor is quite sociable, meaning there is internet access, snooker tables, the pools, the launderette and the childrens' playground.
We like our appartment, finding one like that in Frankfurt for little D. next year would be superb. But this will probably not happen, and surely not for 360€ a month. ;-)
The only thing that left us startled a bit in the beginning was that there was NOTHING in the flat when we moved in except for the furniture. No bed covers, no bed linen, no towels, no glass, no spoon, no telephone. That is OK for someone who moves in for longer, but we will stay only for 2 months. Anyway, stuff is quite cheap here and we have a shopping center in 5min walking distance, so we went on a shopping spree right away.
After half a day, we moved in with all the necessary stuff. And it is cosy now, especially during the thunderstorms. ;-)
Meal deal
A highlight in Malaysia is the food. It took us a few days to figure out what halal means. Most of the restaurants have a little sign, saying their food is halal. Halal food is basically the food a Muslim is allowed to eat according to his beliefs. It means of course no pork, no alcohol and no blood. Not too bad for us, too, since little D. became allergic to pork recently. :-(
We love the Malay and the Thai food, the Vietnamese and the Japanese food here. Luckily, we live close to the shopping center which houses a lot of restaurants. That comes in very handy! There are not so many places which offer Malay food. Probably, the residents want to eat something special when going out for dinner and not the stuff they get at home. What we miss so far is a Malay restaurant where you eat with your fingers. We were really looking forward to this. According to our guide book, this should be the waypeople here eat. Well, not around our place, but we will find such a restaurant. We mostly use fork and spoon (knives are very rare), and occasionally chopsticks. Surprisingly, the latter are much less common than we thought. A meal for two including drinks and service in a decent restaurant comes at 40-70 Ringgit, i.e., 7-12 GBP.
Our shopping center is so urban that it has a Delifrance café. They do very good coffee and "Stückchen" (German for small pieces of sweet pastry)!! (Better than in London actually - that is, ignoring Paul!)
They come in all shapes and (small) sizes
Malaysia is an interesting country with a mix of races and religions. A bit more than 50% of the people here are Muslim Malay, 23% are Chinese, 11% are Indian and the rest are non-Muslim Malay and people with other South-East Asian roots. We were a bit surprised how dominant Islam is in public life. If you don't know the figures you could easily suspect that more than 70% are Muslim. The mix of people is interesting: you see all kind of different people when walking around a bit. The men simply dress as they like, there is not too much difference to Europe, but some tendency to wear loud shirts and, on the other hand, some Muslim attire, of course. The women are more remarkable. You occasionally see Muslim women with this whole-body-coverd-black-veil, accompanied by a (presumably) Muslim husband in shorts, muscle shirt, sandals and cool sunglasses. (Remember, 32°C). Then there are a majority of Muslim women with scarves and the traditional shapeless, but very colourful dresses, then the younger women with jeans and modern long sleeved shirts and scarf, finally the ones without scarves. This is also reflected in the shops. You have shops for clothes to sew at home, many shops for scarves and those shapeless dresses, and then many, many ultra hip shops for younger people. And a lot of shops with very sexy, very short dresses. We haven't seen anyone wearing this. But no one would wear these dresses in daytime anyway. Many young Chinese women are dressed in a sexy way, showing a lot of skin (but they very well can, all very slender!). Of course, there are also the business type of women in suits. This should give some impression of the mix here.
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