Things claire hasn't done in KL yet

10:45pm Wednesday, Oct 24
Things Claire hasn't done yet in KL:
1) Sat on a sofa in her apartment
2) Used a single utensil in her apartment
3) paid more than A$1.50 for a meal!
4) bought an item of clothing
5) had a soursop smoothie
6) got homesick (I haven't had a chance!)
7) got drunk - but I'm not used to going out on Tuesday and Wednesday nights (not since Hippy Club Backpacker Nights anyway!)
8) got fat - this is Claire's tourist week but after that, deep fried stuff and desserts shall be cut back!
9) been caught in rain. I still don't believe it rains here but am carrying an umbrella religiously because I'm a play-it-safe-left-brainer.

Air con very fierce here. I tend to put ON my jacket when going INSIDE a restaurant - the opposite of what happens in Perth in winter. And instead of buying a glass of vodka, lime and soda at the bar, it seems the done thing is to buy the whole bottle! There seem to be lots of transvestites here (some of them utterly gorgeous!) and one of them blowdried my hair tonight at the hairdresser. He was quite pretty but was still wearing men's shoes ... which really doesn't bode well for Claire "Thorpedo" Wilhelm finding any footwear that fits.

This place is much less western than i expected. Every toilet I've seen has a bidet / hose thing???, often with signage asking people not to splash everywhere. KL is also much less dirty/smoggy than expected (only 3 million population... I think that means there must be a shop and a restaurant per capita!) I guess I thought it would be like London or Bangkok where you sneeze black soot every day. I chatted to as Malaysian Muslim girl today who said that Muslims here aren't supposed to have dogs as pets. I never knew that because there weren't any dogs in Hassi Messaoud camp (Algeria). They also aren't supposed to go to Genting Highlands Resort, which is the local casino / amusement park, i.e. KL's answer to Las Vegas. Incidentally, Tan Lim who built Genting and Burswood casinos died yesterday of old age. Although this is hardly important world news, it's a refreshing change from Ben Cousins, daylight savings, Rudd vs Howard and current affairs programs about the woman who wanted to have 10 kids all by different fathers...*sigh*