June 10, 2001 Sunday - Kuala Lumpur to Sabak Bernam
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| Shahril at a typical Malaysian food stall |
I took the bus to Sabak Bernam and 2.5 hours later, I arrived at his hometown. Shahril picked me up on his 150cc motorcycle and we rode to his parents' house.
We first went to a small restaurant and had some food. It was a Malaysian type of food where you can have a plate of rice along with a large variety of friend and curried seafood and vegetables. To eat it, one is suppose to take a little bit of each type of food, mix it together with their hands in the rice and eat it with the hands. I used a fork.
I was looking warily at some of the food, which attracted some amused looks from some of the locals. Shahril told me that it's a Malaysian custom to pay for food for guests. I didn't want to argue with him but I still don't like it. We left on his motorcycle after that.
Right away, I knew I made the right decision when I felt the thrill to be on a motorcycle again. His mom, dad, and grandma came out to greet me, as did his youngest sister. They served some soft drink and some fried fish chips, which tasted pretty nice. It felt a little weird to be an unexpected last minute guest, but they were really great about it.
I was finally able to hook up my computer to the Internet and downloaded / uploaded my emails. Apparently, Internet access is heavily subsidized by the government because they wanted the Malaysian people to have high technical standards. It only costs RM$0.90 an hour, which works out to be US$0.25.
His family went to pray while he slept. Apparently, they pray 5 times per day. I did some last minute unexpected work for Dun & Bradstreet. It was the first time I did any sort of real work since I started traveling. His family left after that - going to school to get things ready for the next day. His mom heads the kitchen at the local elementary school so they have to manage meal preparation for more than 1000 kids.
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| Sunset over the rice paddies |
Shahril took me to the coast on his motorcycle after he woke up. We passed through awesome side roads fringed by tall elegant coconut palms and stout lush oil palm forests. There were many banana trees scattered throughout the forests also. Small old Asian houses were the only things that break up the foliage.
The beach wasn't too impressive though - it was fairly muddy - white mud. However, there were some huge mudskippers at least 8 inches long at the mouth of a stream. We saw a very small kitten there - we assumed that somebody left it behind because we didn't see any large cats around.
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| Little kitten stranded by the beach |
I hate having dilemmas like that where I'm torn between two beliefs. One was to take the kitten with me and bring it closer to town where it would have a chance to survive by scavenging garbage and other things. But to do that, I would also increase the risk of native critters getting eaten by the cat.
We ended up leaving it there, letting nature take its course. It was on my mind for a while after we left. We headed to his aunt's house after that and as we got closed to it, the landscape changed a little bit to huge open fields of rice paddies.
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| Shahril's aunt, uncle, and cousin enjoying a laugh |
At his aunt's house, Shahril prayed with them for a while, while I sat and took it all in. It was interesting to observe different religious prayers. We left for his younger sister's house after that and showed up unexpectedly. She served us some iced Nescafe's, which is very popular in this country, along with some freshly fried donuts.
They chatted for a while and tried to talk to me a little bit before we headed out to dinner. The husband is a policeman who is in charge of the district, but he looked very young - probably younger than me. They were a fun jolly couple and you can tell that they really enjoyed each other's company by watching them.
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| Shahril's sister and hubby |
The husband is a kidder who was constantly cracking jokes and making rude remarks, which in turn made Shahril's sister giggle and grab his ears, twisting them. We went to a Chinese seafood restaurant and they ordered a bunch of plates for everyone to share.
After dinner, I tried to pay for the dinner by telling the waitress in Mandarin that she should only take the money from me. Shahril's sister saw this and sternly talked to the waitress and the waitress ended up only taking her money. We headed back to the house after that and home.
Shahril chatted with his friends on his computer for a while, which included each of the friends singing into the computer for all to hear. I was really interesting to watch how technology is influencing other cultures and changing the ways people interact with each other.
All in all, it was a very nice experience to be able to live with a Malaysian family for a few days to have a small peek into their lives. I would've never experience it had I kept to my introvert self.
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