Go do gado (Jakarta, Indonesia, etc)

Apa kabar

Allow me to let you in on the 2 actionpacked weeks since my last letter.
So, I went to Jakarta, Indonesia and was quite disappointed that I couldn't get to any islands. They are too far by road (including Bali ofcourse:(
I just took a shuttle to town and spent time in a freakin mall. Indonesia does not seem so traveler's friendly. Traffic is madness, roads are dirty and the place is HEAVILY polluted. Quite the opposite of Malaysia. Something like India and Bangkok. I ate Gado-gado till it came out of my ears, hahaha (a salad style Indonesian dish with cold potato, bean sprouts, egg and LOTS of peanut sauce - i had this for dinner, breakfast, lunch and dinner again)

I held half a million bucks in my hand, lol. Not worth much, coz 11000 rupiah is worth 1 dollar..

The Indonesians on our flight are mostly the maids of the Muslims. They are quite shy, no English and seem to all know each other and they have this funny habit of not finishing whatever liquid they've ordered, be it water or juice.

The hotel we stayed in was next to a lake, it was peaceful and green and I spent some time at the swimming pool. That's it.


Then back home, I stuck my nose into my assignment workbooks to study for my business class upgrade. After a long week of stress, hard work and doing the corporate office hours thing, I received my certificate. We were the 'special guests' at the ceremony hall.

Currently I am in Cape Town, after swapping my last flight for off days and gave Pookie a surprise visit, and the day after my arrival I went for Lasik eye surgery. I have perfect eye sight now;-) What an amazing experience!


Hope you are all doing fantastically.

Lots of love
A

MaLayLekker (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

Selamat Sejahtera

I've just stepped into my apartment a few hours ago from Kuala Lumpur and am jotting this down, as I'm leaving again for Indonesia tonight.
We had 2 days in KL, but I spent one curled up in bed with period pains unfortunately:( In the evening the girls dragged me out for some shopping at an Asian mall and Malaysian food and big coconuts (the coconuts in KL are tasteless, taste like water, although they are huge and full of lots of juice - not recommended)

The Petronas Twin Towers are really spectacular..



The next day, we went on a private tour to Templer Park, which is apparently the oldest rainforest in the world (according to the tour agents). It was a nice drive, the weather was a type of 'perfect' I don't think I've experienced. There were beautiful waterfalls and pools and because it was Sunday, a lot of people were braaiing and swimming. There were monkeys everywhere. (no, real ones), hehe. Then we went to the Batu Caves. These caves are massive and takes you a few hundred steps just to get up there. The inside is filled with Hindu temples. Well, the whole sight is actually a Hindu happening. So, it was busy and buzzing.



The flight was awesome. Malaysians seem well-mannered, not demanding and very friendly. KL is clean, traffic runs smooth and things aren't expensive. A crewmember and I feasted on some streetvendor openfood, supercheap, living in the moment and praying for our health of the next day. That's about the only daring thing I did on this trip - beside walking around at the Batu temples with a big yellow-and-red dot on my forehead from the 'blessings' I got from one of the Indians:). It was overall a good trip, hard flight to get - but I got my London/Gatwick swapped for it, whoohoo! Also, tonight's Indonesia was a swap for Shanghai.

I thought I shall also share that the last few days of my reserve month (which I survived!), I went for a beeeg party - yes, I got also drrrrrunk (for a change), wildly, just to get pulled out for a London/Heathrow flight after 4 hours sleep. I was still spinning and slapping myself in the face. Could've lost my job if they did one of those random drug/alcohol tests on me, heehee. But hey, in these 'grown-up' years, it's nice to be irresponsible once in a whiiiiile (sorrie ma).

Hope you had a laugh
Missing you all, missing home, missing the ones scattered all over the world

Mmmwah
A