Weekend in KL

We had a pretty exciting start to our weekend up in KL. I went with Pastry, and 2 other girl friends. Unfortunately, getting Pastry out of his place was an adventure in itself. His phone was turned off and security was tight. After pleading with the higher powers (aka the cleaners), I managed to get into his place and rouse him out of bed. Obviously he had a good night in!!!

In any case, we started the drive up to KL at about 8am. A third into the journey, I got stopped for speeding by the Malaysian police. They wanted 'kopi money' (aka bribes) and my friend tried to bargain it down, but he was pretty insistent. RM50 was the 'going rate' for Singaporean cars after all. When I handed him the money, he took it furtively. Bloody hypocrite - as if the other officers didn't know and weren't doing the same!!!

After paying the 'fine', I decided that I had a good right to speed - I'd paid for it after all!!! To make up time, I didn't make a pit stop and drove straight on. First time I'd ever done that. Made it to KL in 3.5 hours (about 140-150km/h)!

Most of the weekend was spent eating! We ate from one meal to the next. Nothing was spared. Bak Kut Teh (Pork Rib Soup), Cinnabuns (I used to walk all the way from my office on 31st & 9th to the 42nd Street bus station in NYC to get my Cinnabuns), Assam laksa, penang fried kway teow, and so on. It was fun introducing Pastry to all these dishes. Watching his reaction to Durian ice cream was simply too hilarious.

Of course I taught them how to play 'Chor Dai Di' or 'Big Two' after dinner. It was Pastry's introduction to this old card game and one of the girls had not played it before. For beginners, they seemed to know how to play pretty well. I think I got hustled.

Anyway - left the girls who claimed they were tired, and Pastry and I went out bar hopping. Started at Zouk, moved to Poppy's walked to 12SI and then back to Rum Jungle. Music wasn't bad but the strobe lights were terrible. Also, I guess it would have been better with more of us partying. In any case we stayed out late dancing and didn't get to sleep till 4am. And yes, that's all we did, though not for lack of trying. If I had a colour that weekend, it would be purple.

The next day, the girls let us sleep in and we decided to do a spot of shopping and then drive down to Melaka for tea before driving back to SG. Thought we'd give Pastry a little more to look at than shopping centres. The drive was another adventure. We'd missed the turning to Melaka, but made the next exit. At the toll booths, they told us we could drive to Melaka without turning back onto the highway and we thought - Okay, let's just take the 'small roads'. Unfortunately, they were not well sign-posted. What should have been a quick 20 minute drive turned out to be a 1.5 hour drive to get into Melaka. By this time, yours truly was pretty frustrated and well annoyed. I hate being lost and not knowing where to go especially when there was a 'plan' to follow. We had to stop and ask for directions 3 times and finally a kindly motorcyclist told us to follow him into the Pusat Bandaraya (City Centre).

By the time we got into Melaka, it was time for dinner. I introduced everyone to Ah Lau's, a famous Teochew restaurant and we had a really good dinner there (suckling pig, yam paste, steamed fish, oyster noodles). Unfortunately it was also expensive and being the end of the trip, we had run out of money. Another adventure to go grab some cash (the ATMs nearby didn't accept our cards!!!) but it all turned out okay in the end. Visited a couple more places and then it was time to head back to Singapore.

Driving back was slightly more stressful as it was dark, raining and there were idiots driving on the roads. But I managed to make it back within 2 hours and not get caught for speeding. Hah. That's cos I know where the speed traps were on the way back. They always set up in the same places, to 'get' the Singaporean drivers before they get home.

Reached home at midnight and was too tired to do anything but to flop on my bed and say goodbye to my last free weekend for the next 3 months.