the afternoon. The country was once British ruled and therefore, they drive on the left hand side of the street like in Hong Kong. Otherwise, it is quite the large melting pot of cultures. The majority of the population are 'Malay' and by nature approximately 60% of the people are Muslim. This is the first predominately Muslim country I have ever been to! The rest of the population is Chinese (mostly Buddhist) and Indian (mostly Hindu) so it is very diverse. Everyone speaks at least four languages including Malay, English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. Malay has a different script, but some of the words sound the same. By far, this is the most, best English speaking place I have visited in Asia yet.Being a big blond American gal, I was at little nervous about going to a Muslim country at first...On the flight over, there were only a few alarming things....the first was when the flight attendants announced they would be coming through the cabin spraying us for diseases and if we wanted to, we could cover our noses and mouths! Yup, that is what they did, with Lysol size canisters. No one else seemed phased by this, so I played it cool. Second, was the announcement as we were about to land, kindly letting the passengers know that they have strict rules and practice corporal punishment in the country where we were about to enter. Niiiiiice. Back to the whole Muslim thing, I have made some very cool discoveries which I am proud to report.
First off, on the ceiling of my hotel room, spacing out before going to bed, I noticed this black and gold triangle thing. No clue what it was, I thought maybe someone put a sticker up there or something. I had to change rooms mid week because Tony joined me (also traveling on business, but we got to spend the weekend, how convenient...) and I was in a single bed at first and needed to upgrade to a king, so in my new room, I again looked up and there it was on the ceiling, but now it was
pointing in another direction. The sleuth in me finally figured it out....It is an arrow, pointing toward "Kaaba" (which is conveniently written on the arrow but I had no clue what it meant) the city where Mecca is, the direction they must face for their five daily prayers. Also, I had a product launch in a brand new hotel just outside of the city and amongst all the typical 'ballrooms' and conference rooms, there were prayer rooms with slippers outside for you to change shoes and easily go in for your Allah fix. The men and women are not allowed to pray together, so there are rooms for each gender. Non-Muslims aren't allowed inside and I didn't want to disrespect them by snapping a wild photo, so you will just have to take my word for it...Pretty cool huh?My first day out visiting customers we stopped for lunch at a roadside cafe for some Indian grub. We sat outside at a picnic table and a dude came over and plopped a banana leaf in front of me. I figured it was to act as a 'place mat' which would soon be followed by napkins, silverware, etc. Nope. Out of no where, other guys kept coming by, plopping different types of curries, rice, veggies and sauces onto my banana leaf....all of which I was meant to eat with my hands. Out comes the Purell hand sanitizer! It was very delicious, and very messy : )
Oh, and I discovered a new delicious fruit called 'jackfruit'. It is apparently this huge green prickly thing but once you peel it and take out the many pits, it looks like a shriveled up apricot and tastes mighty fine. Mine was from a buffet so they had already done most of the work.
Tony arrived on Thursday evening and we went out for some delicious malay food with a coworker of ours who is a native. My favorite thing was the fish head curry - here is a picture of the deliciousness.
Friday was a tough day for me. I had to travel to see a customer for five hours in the car all the way down to the southern most city in Malaysia, bordering Singapore. The drive was very pretty, there were acres and acres of palm trees lining the highway. My poor sales guy was falling asleep at the wheel (and I was freaking out because he was driving at 150 KM / hr = 100 miles / hr!!!) so we had to stop at a rest stop where he downed two red bulls....Then the fun came...We put in his Real McCoy CD. Don't laugh! It was so much fun, I secretly downloaded it off of ITunes when I got back into town. Highly recommend it. O La O La Aaaaayyyy.
Other than that, the trip kinda sucked. The air conditioner died half way through and due to flight scheduling, I wound up not being able to get back into KL until after midnight. Tony and I pretended that we were going out on the town when I got back, but he was sleeping and I was 
exhausted, plus we are old you know, so we just crashed.
After then monkeys we headed over to the Central market where Tony and I picked up various silk malay shirts and dresses (for me). We then walked all the way across town to
the 'Rodeo Drive' of KL, the Bintang strip. There are ten malls all along the same block right near the monorail. Tony picked up a shirt for that evening because he forgot his cuff links for the one he brought with him. After our long walk, we headed back to the hotel to rest up for dinner. We headed out to a place called Top Hat. We shared their famous appetizers, little 'top hats' filled with veggies, almost like an open face spring roll. Tony had a malay fab sampler and I had a mixed seafood and noodle soup. We shared a bottle of Tyrrells Shiraz (our obsession since our trip to Australia!) and ate with a view of the famous Petronas twin towers, now the second tallest twin towers in the world. They are quite magnificent.After dinner and since we were so lame the night before,
we headed down to P Ramlee street to check out the action. It is a whole strip two blocks long of all types of bars and clubs. We settled on a place called Rum Jungle because they had a great band and were singing everything from hip hop to rock music. We made friends with some malay boys who were sitting near us at the bar and they made Tony snort a shot of sambuca up his nose! Ouch! He said it didn't burn too badly, it was really funny to watch, I guess that is just how they roll. The bartenders did all these flaming bar fire eating tricks, it was a very fun night and we rolled home well after 2.The next day we walked down to this beautiful park filled with all different sections. They had waterfalls, turtles and amazing flowers. There were all these nice families who came to hang out there and spend their Sunday in the outdoors with the kids. We took lots of great pictures here, but here's one for your viewing enjoyment.
After the park we headed back to our hotel for a quick bite before Tony had to leave to fly out to Hong Kong while I split for India! More on that soon....Till next time, I MISS YOU & LOVE YOU!
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