Malaysia is cheap. It’s cheap, slightly nasty at times, yet amazing. I write this while sipping freshly squeezed orange juice (so far so good on the digestive front) after just devouring a huge serve of Mee Goreng, in quite a fancy garden café (they are playing SClub7 – that’s fancy right?) in the CBD. In any Australian city, I would pay at least $15 for the food, and $7 for the drinks. In KL, I am looking at $2.20 for the food, and the drinks will set me back about $1.30. $3.50 and I am full, feeling a million bucks, and ready to take on Bukit Bintang (the touristy shopping district) for the afternoon!
Obviously this is not the first time I have realized how cheap everything is. The shuttle from the airport (about 70km’s from the dodgy budget terminal) was 8RM, or just over $2 for those playing at home. That includes the return tomorrow! The bus to the CBD this morning, which took about 35 minutes in good traffic, was 1RM, or approx. 30 cents, and the price of petrol, which outrages the locals, is subsidized by the government to a whopping 1.90RM (50c/ltr). At that price, I would have saved $2000 driving to Mt Barker and back last year!
After my day of sightseeing, and a trip to the local Tesco (SO CHEAP!), I went out to dinner last night with 4 locals guys, all approaching 30. Their age was no issue, except they all looked about 4 years younger than me - and I was sporting many more natural highlights than all of them combined! We ate in a tent, on plastic chairs, directly behind Istana Budaya (The National Theatre). This is NOT where tourists normally eat! The tent was quite a big, semi-permanent structure, seating probably 150 people, decorated with pictures of all sorts of weird and wonderful dishes, and complete with a large projector screen playing live soccer to an audience who appeared to have no interest in the game whatsoever. There were stray cats running around our feet, street vendors selling everything from kids toys to what I hope were chicken satays, and what must have been the meeting of the local pirated DVD street sellers association - with much talk, and bustling activity around the latest arrival of illegal DVD’s to be sold on to trashy Australian tourists!
I had no choice in what I ate – the 4 guys insisted I get the house specialty, breaking the bank at 4RM for a large serve ($1.25ish), and reassuringly also ordered by two of the others. The food was great! I didn’t catch the name, and can only describe it as Pud Thai noodles in a fairly spicy, creamy sauce, with vegetables, a fried egg, chicken and prawns – including shell, heads, legs, guts, you name it, I ate it! We then ordered a platter of beef and chicken satays, served with cucumber, onion, and peanut sauce, and washed the whole lot down with a glass of cold, stretched milk tea (on local ice – eek!), and a glass of hot water with barley (no doubt local water too!). Great food, great company, excellent bi-lingual conversation, and an experience I will never forget. Total price for 4 people. 38RM = $10.
Malaysia is amazing!
So i hear the bird is still the word.
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