It's not a question of curry...

Well hello there, as you can probably tell by the flag, or maybe you can't as it looks similar to the last one, we are now in Malaysia. We crossed over the border yesterday to Melaka (or Melacca depending on your spelling) which is/was a very important port city on the west coast which has been conquered by the Portuguese, Dutch and of course the English at various stages throughout it's history. It's still bleeding hot, before you ask, but we seem to be coping with it ok and only need to stop for a drink every hour. There's an old fort and palace that we visited today and hopefully I'll post some pictures within the next few days.

So on to the subject of food. Anyone reading this who knows us will know that we are both partial to the odd curry be it Thai, Indian, Chinese. Michelle can stomach even hotter curries than me which is a bit embarrassing really but hey ho. Now being in Asia it's not a question of whether you're going to eat curry (when I say curry I'm really referring to anything that's mildly spicy really, I know that's a bit of a culinary stereotype but as I've said before it's my blog and I'll write what I want to!). Sorry where was I, yes it's not a question of whether you're going to eat curry (I actually typed that out again I should have cut and paste) it's at what time of the day you are going to eat your FIRST curry and then how many subsequent meals that day will consist of the stuff. Do you skip breakfast and have an early lunch of curry? Do you have curry for breakfast but of a sufficient portion to last you through to teatime? Do you go for the triple whammy and have breakfast, dinner and tea (breakfast, lunch and dinner for all the southerners) of curry and then spend the rest of the evening in the W.C. Incidentally we bought 20 (twenty!) packs of tissues earlier from the chemist as none of toilets here have toilet paper in. Plus if they do they are the toilet of the squat variety and you have to take your shoes off when you go. That's not some religious rule it's just that your ankles end up getting covered in ..... anyway that's enough of that!!

Talking of food we made a bit of a food faux pas yesterday. Michelle ordered a bit of a curry medley and it's served on banana leaves in this particular restaurant. You don't get knives, forks and eat with your hand(s), specifically your right hand as the other one is used for doing the business in the toilet if you don't have twenty packs of tissues; seriously it is. So there we were eating away with our right hands when the waiter bought over a little silver cup of water. Now being thirsty I started to drink it and after a while Michelle had a few sips too. Strange I thought why he didn't bring one each. What we can only guess today, after both having crippling stomach cramps for about an hour yesterday, is that the water is used for washing your fingers in. Obviously the water would have come out of the tap rather than from a bottle of drinking water so God only knows what sort of parasitic filth was in it. Still we're all right today and even went back to the same restaurant tonight so it can't have been that bad. We didn't drink the water today though!!

We're off to Kualar Lumpur, the capital, tomorrow so will probably be away early as it's only two hours from here and we can spend most of the day sightseeing and eating. The south of Malaysia is predominantly Muslim and so there are quite a few Mosques around. In fact, there's one about what sounds like 10 feet away from our room, as this morning the "Call to Prayer" aka "Early Morning Alarm call" blasted out at 5am. It's actually a recorded voice these days but in the old days the head of the Mosque I presume would climb the tower or Minaret as it's called, next to the Mosque and start wailing at the top of his voice. God knows (or should that be Allah knows) who they've got to record this wailing as it sounds like a cross between Barry White and Roadrunner, it really is awful, the last thing you need at 5am that's for sure.

So that's me, I better stop now as it's getting late here,

See you Soon,