So I just arrived in the AIESEC Malaysia office in Petaling Jaya after spending a few action-packed days in Singapore. It's good to be in an AIESEC environment again, its familiarity and comfort are something I always look forward to when I travel. Here we have a group of hard-working and utterly silent individuals. They work in a room around the same size as the meeting room in the Aussie MC Office and there are 6-8 of them working in here at any 1 time. Not much room hey.

Seeing as this is the first I've had a chance to get onto a computer, let alone the internet, since arriving in SIngapore I'll try to pack in as much as I can before I get booted off or get bored typing.

Overall, my opinion of Singapore has greatly improved since the first time I visited. My first impressions were of a boring, sterile country where individual creativity was stifled along with freedom of speech and political opinion. Shows what a difference good tour guides can make! I now see Singapore as a modern metropolis that is an absolute melting pot of cultures and backrgounds, there is plenty of excitement there if you know where to find it.

I arrived on Monday via Singapore Airlines flight SQ228 (that's the 5pm weekday one... my favourite) at around 9:35pm Sing time. I was greeted at the airport by Joachim and Joyce (happily displaying an A4 placard with my name and position on it, nice... felt just like a business man!)

That night I went and dumped my things at Abby's, where I was staying, a lovely condo near Dhoby Gaut MRT station. After that we went for some absolutely delicious Indian food just around the corner and then wandered around the area and got home at around 1am.

I was quite impressed by Abby's horror stories of working hours from 8am to 10pm every day but they were later eclipsed by her investment banker roommate who managed to come home at like 2.30am. Damn.

The next day I went around central Singapore for a little bit, along the Singapore river, and had a look at The Fullerton and The Asian Civilisations Museum which were both nice. I was accosted by a random Buddhist monk who thought that by the mere fact that he was Buddhist and I was Western that would imply some sort of divine respect on my part and involve some sort of transaction... he was mistaken.

After that we went to Johor with Joachim's dad (who is a cool guy and looks a bit like Jackie Chan, although Joyce doesn't believe me). That was my first time in Malaysia (and my first time in Malaysia's "parking lot" aka. the motorway). The main thing that struck me was that the place is a lot more ramshackle than Singapore, certainly not developed, it is both very green and very dirty. There are people everywhere and they all stare at you... ha. We went to a good restaurant and ate some nice food and then hung around some plaza doing some shopping. Did I mention things are cheap? Man... three months supply of contact lenses is like RM60... thats like A$25! I picked up some greenish/hazel contacts and some mushroom crisps and moseyed on out of there.
Overall JB reminds me a lot of Shenzhen (the bordertown between HK and Mainland China). It's got the same gateway type feel to it where the bordertown serves largely as a depot for illegal activities for the residents of Singapore/HK and many of the more enterprising locals take advantage of this by begging, touting and whoring to their richer neighbours. While Shenzhen was a lot more hardcore (ie. 12 begging women with their babies in their arms running after you across the causeway and touts throwing themselves at you yelling "sexy DVDs, sexy DVDs for you") JB definitely had a similar feel to it.

After that we met up with Heidi along Orchard Rd, shopped at Topman, and had some food at a place called "Food Republic" which was freaking awesome. I had kopi but soon along came an Indian man and sold us some papadums and then along came a Chinese woman and sold some prawn dumplings from a dim sum trolley... right at our table! Amazing! The place is like a food court cum yum cha restaurant... great idea!

After that I shopped around with Heidi for a while and went to Chinatown for dinner, had a terrible Kuay Teow (how unlucky we must've been to have terrible food in Chinatown... the place is *teeming* with great food). During this time, Heidi kept me entertained with her flashes of blonde and complete lack of understanding of our surroundings (despite living in Singapore for like 13 years). Such flashes of brilliance as "I think we're in Chinatown..." (after we got out of Chinatown MRT station and have been talking about going to Chinatown for the last 15 minutes) and various random about turns... Meanwhile, I got a strong reprieve from the staring because all the guys in the nightmarket were staring at Heidi and various parts of her anatomy... dirty... but now I understand what she means when she says that they stand out when they go out in Malaysia...

After the bad food we went back to Orchard to meet Thomas for coffee, had a good chat about his relationship/work issues. Feel sorry for the kid, he really doesn't like Singapore or Accenture. Went home after that for a good chat with Abby.

Then this morning I met Joachim and Joyce for breakfast at the hawker centre near the condo, overdosed on chili, and then taxi'd it to the airport. At the airport I realised that I left my glasses at Abby's, d'oh, and will have to get them FedExed/DHLed, double d'oh.

Since then I've been on planes and trains and am now in KL. Btw, Changi is huge and KLIA is damn nice with lots of glass and things. KL itself seems a lot more spread out than Singapore with lots of highways and expressways and roads but very little walking to be done betrween places, or so it seems. I guess I'll find out if this is true later. The place seems to have malls everywhere, angry-looking Malays staring at me and plenty of Indian men with impressive moustaches.

Peace out for now y'all,
Alex