Malaysia Impressions

In this segment, I'll post about some things I noticed or found interesting during my stay in Malaysia.

• Love the Indian food, but probably had a little too much. Don't worry, I had regular bowel movement 97% of the time.
  
  
• Although Malay is the official language in Malaysia, English is abundant and spoken by everyone.
  
  
• Most taxi drivers are fairly friendly and talkative, and you can learn a lot about a place by talking to its people.
  
  
• Catching a cab requires a bit of knowledge and patience if you don't want to be taken for a ride, figuratively speaking. More than half of the cabs will not use the meter and will charge you twice the meter price to get to your destination. How and where you hail a taxi will also determine whether you can use the meter. If you're in a crowded area, like the Puduraya bus station, getting a metered taxi is near impossible. I probably turned away 8 cabs wanting 15 RM for a 7 RM ride, before settling on a 10 RM price. But if you're in a rush or don't mind overpaying, go ahead with a vocal price. Taxi prices in KL are amongst the cheapest in all of Asia, and they're in the mist of a price hike (effective August 1), which should see rates increased 1.5x. Sounds like a lot, but considering cab prices have been fixed for 10 years, I guess cab drivers should feel guilty into trying to earn a little more.
  
  
• Just like with Singapore, the mix of Chinese, Indian, and Malay is interesting to me. They get along far more harmoniously than any 3 races in Canada.
  
  
• Overall, things are cheap here. Food in particular. You can have a decent meal for less than 10 ringgits.
  
  
• "Lah" seems like an ending word for Chinese, but its common for any Malaysian to tack it on at the end of a sentence. So you may see some tourist t-shirts like the ones below. Not completely unlike the Canadian "Eh".
  
  T-shirts Lah
  
• A lot of the foosball players I met are between the age of 18 and 24. They're much more like Canadian young adults than Taiwanese young adults (who I find to be too protected by their parents). Of course, there are still plenty of FOB-ish Chinese around Malaysia.
  
  
• I swapped my Panasonic LX-3 lens cap to a modified Ricoh LC-1 according to the instructions here, and I'm stoked it worked beautifully. Just awesome. But perhaps not something most point and shoot photographers can appreciate.
  
  
• Somehow Malaysia - both in KL and the Cameron Highlands - feels familiar. Maybe it feels a little too close to Taiwan. Or maybe I've traveled to too many Asian countries that few things are eye-openers anymore. Been there, done that.