Wet Market Pictures

As promised:

Indoor Ecosystems

The thing about living in the tropics is, you have to accept that you can't keep the local wildlife entirely out of the house. Back in Calgary, the worst we'd get would be a couple of spiders here, a couple of centipedes there. Nothing too outrageous.

We've got this family of lizards living in and around the flourescent lights all over the house. They come out to feed on the mosquitos at night so we can't really complain:

These little bitty ants are everywhere. They've taken a personal interest in my disposable razor for some reason:

This wasp nest is situated right above my bed:

Wet Markets and Manskirts

The morning started out with a quick trip to the neighbourhood wet market for some nasi lemak and a couple of curry puffs - two things I haven't enjoyed in ages. They are just as good as I remembered. The added bonus was that I got an opportunity to pick up a new set of pajamas while I was there (I absent mindedly left mine at home). For RM$11 (about $3.50 CAD), I got myself a nice Indian made sarong (I call it a manskirt) to lounge around in. It's kosher for guys to wear them here. Really.

I always get a kick out of this place because, unlike pasar seni (central market) in Kuala Lumpur, it's not one of those heavily touristed areas, corrupted by souvenir stands and the like. The ground floor has a side full of hawker stalls where you'll see groups old men sitting around drinking tea, reading their newspapers and catching up on the latest gossip. Along the other side lies the wet market itself, where they sell all sort of meat (live or recently alive) and coconuts. I actually found the smell of the coconuts more offensive than that of the livestock. The second floor houses a number of fruit vendors, stalls selling knock off clothing and handbags and snack shops/news vendors. I'm not sure what's in the third floor - I hope it's just as interesting as the first two. I'll have to bring my camera the next time I'm up here (hopefully for tomorrow's breakfast).

MH 0095

I'm glad I don't take flights like this on a regular basis. All in, 32 hours on the road gets a little old after a while. I hope you will agree with me though, that it was a necessary evil.

My problem with flying is that I've watched too many Discovery channel flight disaster specials. As the flight begins takeoff, my imagination takes over. It may say flight number MH0095 on my ticket but in my mind, it reads "ill fated flight number MH0095."

Irrational, I know.

The flight itself went rather swimmingly thanks to Malaysian Airlines' new in flight entertainment system. Movies on demand really makes a long flight more bearable. I'm quite partial to games of Shanghai and pretty flight attendants too.

I arrived safely in Petaling Jaya a couple of hours ago. There's a bed with my name written all over it.