There’s no poker content in this post.

This is the first time back in Kuala Lumpur for over a year for me, and it’s definitely a nice change of pace from Beijing. Different foods, different language, different climate. Malaysia is a ethnically versatile country, with - and I confess that I cheated and used the CIA factbook to look this up - being split between Malay (50%), Chinese (24%), Indigenous (11%), Indian (7.1%) and others (7.8%). I don’t know what the difference is between Malay and Indigenous here, but that’s what it says. But what I’m getting at, either way, is that because it’s a country with a inhomogenous population that was up until 50 years ago ruled by the British, English is a very common language here, spoken even between the locals themselves. This, of course, is not the case in China, where my only way of communicating was with gestures (pointing at a map or a business card showing the address I want to get to, or a menu), a few VERY select Mandarin phrases (”gong bao ji ding!”) or noises (”moo!” = I want beef!).

So it’s easy to get around here, easy to order and the people are nice. It’s too hot though, but the buildings are nicely airconditioned so that’s not as much of a problem as it could be.

We left Linköping Monday morning at 8, by train to Copenhagen, then from there we flew to Bangkok. Their new airport - opened a few months ago - is a lot nicer than the old one, but has the same basic problem: The distances you have to walk to get from one place to another. Since I travelled with a coworker on crutches, that gets even worse. The issue of walking from one gate to another wasn’t at all as big as the one with the very drunken and obnoxious Norwegian that sat by the window in my row onboard the 8 hour flight. He got very loud when the staff told him he couldn’t get another drink. Apparently he had worked at Scandinavian Airlines for 25 years (that became 35 years later on in the night when he perhaps felt that 25 wasn’t an impressive enough number) and how dared they tell him that he couldn’t have another drink. I was also - as was most of the other passengers onboard - unwillingly informed that he had paid 12,000 norwegian crowns for the ticket, that he wasn’t a tourist and that he didn’t drink coffee, but tea. Earl grey tea.

I have a hard enough time to fall asleep on flights without having to try to phase out guys like him. Anyway.

The final flight over to KL was on time, and none of all the things that can go wrong when travelling went wrong, so I’m grateful for that. We got to the hotel by cab at about 1pm, had a shower, and then we were on our way to the office. We both fell asleep in the 40 minute cab ride, a feat that was repeated on the way back to the hotel at night. Power naps! After getting back, we went out from the hotel determined to find a shabby local restaurant. In my experience you can get the best food at those places, but presumably it’s also the kind of places where you might end up getting the worst food. Yesterday’s attempt was more of a miss than a hit, unfortunately, but we were hungry enough that we didn’t care so much. Besides, it’s difficult to mess up Tandoori chicken with naan bread completely so even though it didn’t taste delicious, it was certainly good enough to live off of.

I’d post pictures, but I haven’t taken any. I didn’t bring a camera either, so if I get any pictures uploaded at all, it will be ones taken with my cell phone.