Our trip started off with a 7 hour-ish flight to Kuala Lumpur from Brisbane International. The flight was great and we were looked after well by the flight attendants. Just remember that alcoholic beverages are free on international flights so ensure you build a great rapport with those that can hook you up with a few beer cans at once. By the end of the flight I was nicknamed ‘happy hour’ by the crew.

We were quite happy to hear we had arrived at Kuala Lumpur. The airport is great because there are signs everywhere. If you get lost in Kuala Lumpur airport then you’re probably one of those people who can’t follow recipes, ikea instructions, treasure maps etc. and should probably not travel alone.

The first thing I noticed about Australia (which Malaysia was lacking) is the warm welcomes and friendly conversations you get with airport staff. In Malaysia, the help desk lady looked as if she was mad at us for asking her a question…. I was a bit dumbfounded by the whole thing. The guy who let us into the country death stared us the whole time he was checking our passports and then waved us through the gates without saying a word. He thought he was a police officer or head of a Malaysian scooter gang or something. He also didn’t do his job right as he didn’t give us back our departure cards to keep. WHATADOUCHE.

Once out of the airport things were a bit better. We made our way to the city which is about 45 minutes away from the airport. Along the way, the drive is fairly scenic with various buildings which are worthy of snapshots:
This seems to be a stadium of some sort. Not sure what it is but it is very patriotic with the flags. I think it looks nice.

I find KOK MOTOR very reliable.

Then there was the Colosseum! It’s strange that they don’t put these on the KL brochures.

But let’s not forget the Petronas twin towers. The tallest twins in the world and what used to be the tallest building in the world before Taipei 101.

Finally we got to our hotel where I found out that Malaysia has no etiquette for queues, door opening or elevators. I have never been so agitated by people in my life. At one point we were waiting at the hotel counter and about to be served when a guy tried to stand in front of us and get served first. I had to physically grab the back of his collar and pull him backwards. He must have thought “how rude of me to do that” to which all I can say is “When in Rome, be an arsehole like everyone else (or something like that)”.

A trip to the China town markets totally made up for the rudeness. This place has stalls upon stalls of knock-off merchandise. Each stall varies but for the most part the quality of the gear is quite amazing. The knock-off Rolex watches are scratch proof and work on perpetual motion (no need for batteries). Needless to say we bought a few of these. They sell at roughly 100MYR which is around $30AU:

Issmeister just wanted to be involved. He has a poo legitimate Casio on.

I also bought lots of clothing. The Issmeister got into this bargaining battle with one stall and he ended up getting 2 Lacoste polos for 30MYR which is about $5AU a shirt. Usually the acceptable price is 2 for 40MYR. I bought lots of polos and many beer t-shirts. I also bought handbags for gift giving. Make sure you don’t get ripped off with a low quality bag. You can get high quality bags for about 110MYR but a lot of stalls try and sell the crap ones for about the same price. Go to a larger stall. They usually have both good and bad quality. Just ask for the good quality stuff which comes with a larger price tag.

I got really sick during our stay in Malaysia and spent quite a few days in the hotel room. I only recovered a few hours before the flight to the Maldives. I caught some kind of China town market flu which gave me instant fever. I was quite lucky as they would have caught me under the thermal cameras and sent me into quarantine if I was still sick at the airport; totally ruining my holiday. I was still able to do a little bit more shopping though….

This is the pavilion shopping centre. It is quite massive. The other massive shopping centre in Malaysia is the Mid Valley Megamall. Both are great places to shop but if you walk down the street on the right of the Pavilion there is a huge line of designer stores. It’s a yuppie street but quite impressive.

Speaking of impressive:

Yes! You are looking at a McDonald’s delivery scooter. Have you ever wanted a quarter pounder at midnight but couldn’t be bothered making your way over to Maccas? Of course you have! Australia really needs to get their act together and get some McDelivery Scooters!

Another thing that impressed me about McDonald’s in KL is the prices of their meals (note that the airport McDonald’s is more expensive). I bought a large spicy McChicken burger meal (which was 6/10 on the spice metre and rocked) for 9.60MYR which is about $3AU. They also sell Ribena and Milo on tap.

Our time in Malaysia was kind of at an end. We had another day in Malaysia after our time in Maldives and Sri Lanka on the way back home but we had pretty much done all the shopping we needed to already.

Oh… and this is pretty funny:

This is a street sign they have near BB shopping centre. It’s a packed street full of people trying to aggressively get you to enter their store or massage parlour. The sign warns of purse snatchers. We should get a bogan warning sign at the Logan Hyperdome.

Anyway…we packed our bags and headed to the Maldives for a very short overnight trip. The plan was to stay there for a few days but my mum wanted a bit more time with her family over in Sri Lanka, so we had to sacrifice beautiful weather and nice beaches for bad weather and smelly alleys.

We ended up having no records of our stay in the Maldives. We arrived in the beautiful Malé where I was as drunk as a fruit bat that found a barrel of fermenting fruit hooch and drank it all. We were drinking whenever we felt bored so the wait at the airport and the fact that this old school 1970s plane they put us on had no personal TVs made me drink my boredom away. The flight was roughly 4 hours and I could tell this plane was from the 70s because the fuselage smelt like old people and it had flamboyant wallpaper. I figured someone else would take photos but alas the rest of the group started feeling sick and started vomiting. All I remember is reading a ‘Welcome to Malé’ sign and that’s about it. Mum says it was beautiful and she doesn’t even like water so it really must have been a lovely place.

We then got on the plane and headed over to Sri Lanka.

There were marines holding Uzis and army guys holding AK-47s around every corner. We were just about to walk out of the airport when a customs officer came running at us telling us to stop and get rid of our remote control helicopter which we bought in Malaysia. We were like whaaaattt? Hell nahhh bitch! But apparently these things can be used as spy gear so we were forced to dump it at the airport. I didn’t really want to get shot over a toy helicopter so we let it go (besides we could buy another on the way back home).

We thought… wow this defence minister is a bit paranoid… and then we experienced the billions of check points we had to go through to get into Colombo. It’s ridiculous! Every 5 minutes you would be asked to pull over and show your ID (in our case our passports). 4 or 5 army officers would hold AK-47s at the front and sides of the vehicles. If they found something suspicious they would just go nuts and shoot the crap out of the vehicle killing anything inside. They would sometimes search the van for any Tamils that we may be smuggling and waste about 5 minutes of our lives at each stop. In order to travel about 12km it would take around 1 hour. A bit stressful to say the least but don’t let this deter you. Sri Lanka is still worth the visit.

One of the many things I love about Sri Lanka is the food. If you like rice, curry and all the spices you will love it too. In fact you can find very similar food in both Malaysia and Sri Lanka. The general rule is – The more traditional the food, the cheaper it is and the tastier it is. Here is a packet of Lamprais in Sri Lanka. It is served on banana leaves and contains chicken curry, rice, and other sambols which go together well:

A meal like this would cost about 150Rps which is about $1.50AU (depending on where you get it). A food court in a shopping centre would probably sell the same thing for about $2.50AU.

If you take a drive away from Colombo, you will notice the congestion and pollution fades away into the distance and you will realise just how beautiful and untouched the island is. My favourite place of serenity was the Kandalama Hotel. It is a hotel ingeniously built in a rock face. The hotel walls make use of the rock that surrounds it. One of the nicest hotels I have ever seen. Here is the view from its eating area:

At night the hotel room window provides remarkable views of wildlife which frolic around both close by and in the distance. Elephants never cease to be majestic.

We took a trip to the Pinnawala Elephant orphanage. A lot of these elephants were victims of the lengthy war in the country. Some were missing feet, others lost their parents and were brought up by mahouts but all the elephants at the orphanage looked alive and healthy.

The elephants bath in water which is located directly below a hotel restaurant. Here we had a few beers and watched the elephants. It’s a spectacular view that will be rare to clone in a single life time:

The drinks are incredibly cheap. A tally of Carlsberg beer costs $2.50AU at restaurant prices. I started to like Sri Lanka a whole lot more…

Despite things being cheap, I found myself spending a lot of money in Sri Lanka. The country is taking a few good strides in the right direction but its current state is quite eye opening. Whenever I saw a cleaner or a driver I was curious to ask their wage. Their stories would have me throwing money at them.
In Sri Lanka people get paid monthly. A driver, if he works 30 days straight will get $150AU for his efforts. As a driver you are expected to sleep in the van if there is no accommodation for you with the party you are driving. You are required to sit and wait until the party you are driving has finished doing what they are doing. You are pretty much on call 24/7.

A house cleaner gets $4 for a full day’s work. If he takes a break within his monthly pay schedule, he will earn only $3 a day. To give you an idea of how cheap labour is: I couldn’t find an automatically opening door with a sensor. There is no value in investing in such equipment when all you need is a person paid with chips and tips to open doors. The most saddening part of the Sri Lankan economy is that even though wages are so low, grocery shopping at the supermarket is only slightly cheaper than the Australian Coles. How does a person earning $4 a day afford $40 worth of groceries in a week? Especially when they get paid monthly?

There are wondrous things to see and do in Sri Lanka. I highly recommend leaving Colombo and staying at Kandalama Hotel and Sigirya Village Hotel. These hotels are definitely worthy of a honeymoon stay and the service at hotels is hard to beat in other parts of the world.

1. Play with a gun

I was so sad that I couldn’t get to play with a gun. This was the major thing I wanted to do but no matter how much money I flashed I couldn’t get a gun to my hand. Apparently they would lose their job if they let me play with their piece but I think I just didn’t have the right connections because my cousins have been able to play with guns in the past. It may have been easier during the war I guess? This is as close as I got:

2. Chase a monkey

3. Play cricket with street kids

4. Ride an elephant

I bought this elephant for $40

5. Give a poor person lots of money

I was initially going to give one person a lot of money but ended up giving away a lot of money to various people that told me sob stories. They need the money more than me anyway. I took a photo just for the purpose of completing my ‘to do’ list of the money I gave to our driver.

15,000Rps is around $150. I thought it was a nice figure considering the fact that he gets paid that amount for a month of work. He was highly appreciative.

6. Slap a cow on the arse

I had a failed attempt at slapping cows on the arse but promise you I was able to slap a buffalo on the arse. It took off in the opposite direction and it was quite hilarious. The cows are so skinny over there compared to the Aussie cows here. P.S My hair is oily because I had just gotten some weird body massage where they tried to break me in half after rubbing oil everywhere and told me to keep it on for a few hours. WEIRD!

7. Wear a stupid cap everywhere

8. Find a giant guava

I was hoping I’d find a larger one. Last time I was in Malaysia I found a guava that was the size of a rock melon. It was ridiculous. This one doesn’t compare but is still larger than the usual. I guess it just wasn’t the right time for the giant, mutated, rock melon guava.

9. Get drunk with a non-english speaker

This is Dinesh, our driver. He doesn’t speak a word of English. Well I taught him how to say sperm but that’s about it. We got along like a house on fire. He would listen to what I had to say and just smile. I got him really drunk on pina coladas. It was the first time he’s ever had a cocktail and loved it.

10. Ride a scooter in a hotel hall

We bought electric scooters in Malaysia for about $100 and decided to charge them up in the hotel room then take it for a spin at night. That was kind of fun. I kept banging into hotel room doors.

11. Buy a single cigarette

This is my single cigarette! I bought it for 19Rps which is about 19 cents. You basically just walk into a food store and go… 1 cigarette please. They pull it out of a packet and give it to you…. huh!

I thought, wow cigarettes are so cheap. I should start smoking…Why don’t I smoke?

And then I started acting pompous with my single cigarette and realised… that’s why I don’t smoke.

12. Bribe a cop

I was worried about this challenge. I didn’t know how I could get this done without looking like a total idiot and having a valid reason to bribe a cop but the challenge dropped in my lap (so to speak).

Our driver was charged with overtaking dangerously – a fine of 500Rps which is $5AU (haha). Later, on inspection of the driver’s license, the police officer found that he was driving a heavy vehicle without a heavy vehicle license. The driver had to stop driving and make his way to the police station to pay the fine. I walked in with him as I was paying for the fine. The cop that actually booked him took the money. I gave him an extra 500Rps and asked if our same driver could drive us to the van depot so we could get another driver (even though we kept the same driver because he was cool). The cop said yeah… so I said … can I also take a photo? And he was fine with it…after all I paid for it hehe!

The police over there actually get a commission for handing out a certain amount of fines. They are happy to take bribes.

13. Challenge a local at pool

It was close. We ran out of time. He was really good! I won the first game, he won the second, I won the 3^rd but we really needed to play to the best of 5.

14. Drink out of a jug

The jug is made out of pure glass (not plastic). It’s heavy and could do a lot of damage across someone’s face.

15. Eat something I’ve never had before

In Malaysia I ate some deer chilli dish. Apparently deer meat is eaten often in New Zealand but I have never had it before so I was keen on trying some. It tasted great! I don’t know if it was just the way it was prepared or the meat itself but I smashed the plate of deer meat. Recommend++

16. Drive a trishaw/tuktuk

These are actually quite hard to drive. They have scooter like gears. You have to turn the handle down to drop gears and turn it back towards you to hit a lower gear.  The clutch is sensitive and I found myself holding it down and just revving the juice out of the lawn-mower-like engine.

This ‘to do’ list brought some great memories on a trip that came with natural adventure and challenges. Why not try make a ‘to do’ list on your next trip abroad? I’m sure you’ll find it just as fun as I did!