The dreaded seats at passport control

So it would appear that if you want to reenter the UK on a visa that you paid £750 for after being away for less than 11 months they will make wait for 30 minutes while they see if this is possible. So I got to sit on the seats at passport control that you only see dodgy people/foreign language speakers sitting on. Only to be told that yes, in fact I could enter the UK on my old visa. Damn straight! Did I mention the £750 I paid for it?!

giffgaff

And it would appear that my SIM card wasn’t working so I went all old school and called Kim from a payphone by the luggage carousel. I think she found it amusing when I said that I was calling from a payphone. Thank goodness I’d kept the phonecard that Karen gave me upon leaving work last year!

The long trip to Holloway Road

Thanks to the flight being delayed by an hour I already knew that I had to take a taxi from Baker Street (after hopping an easybus). So I managed to flag a taxi down and get him to take me to Kim’s street. We drove the full length of the street before he said that this was the end of the street. And?! Why didn’t he drop me off at 36?! So back around we went and he tried to convince me that she lived in a block of flats. I was pretty sure this wasn’t right but got out anyway and proceeded to wake up some lady in flat 36. Then I loaded up with my 34kg of stuff and lumped myself back down the full length of the street. Kim actually found me dragging my sorry ass down the footpath. The noise of the taxi doubling back (about three times) alerted her to my arrival. I hope the taxi driver felt super bad. He felt bad enough to go and look for 36 but not bad enough to pick me up again. Pah.

And in case you were wondering what 34kg – aka 58% of my body weight – of luggage looks like on me:

Adopted home

I knew that I missed living in London but I didn’t quite expect that coming back would be like coming home again. Everything is familiar, prices don’t shock me… I just feel comfortable here. How bad is that?! Especially given that I’m not coming back to live.

My first day in Kuala Lumpur was largely spent waiting to check into the hostel. While I was doing that the most logical thing to do seemed to be get something to eat. That’s when I stumbled upon the roti canai place just at the back of BB Plaza. It was RM1/£0.20/$0.40NZD a piece so you can guess where I went for breakfast every day until I left KL?! The only thing I regret: not finding this place when I was here last year!

Sidebar: Kris loved taking his perv lens out with him (the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8) and it caught the attention of one of the guys at the roti canai place. The second Kris told him how much it cost he looked like he was about to faint and walked off with a “that white dude be crazy” look on his face.

And this was the view across from the roti canai place:

Chicken wings

Around the corner from our hostel – this is the great thing about staying in the middle of town – were a few food stalls. One that smelt particularly tasty was the chicken wing stall. So two days in a row we went and got delicious BBQ chicken wings. The first time we got them we didn’t realise they’d be so darn hot…

Hong Kong dim sum

The thing I didn’t realise about going out for yum cha in Malaysia was that most places serve Halal food as a standard. And yum cha without pork isn’t really yum cha at all. Thankfully we found a place (just around the corner from the hostel) that did non-Halal dim sum. It wasn’t the best I’ve had but it was pretty darn cheap at approximately RM3-4/£0.60-0.80/$1.20-1.60NZD a plate!

Fresh fruit juice

When I go out for meals I don’t usually order drinks but in Asia I make the exception. With all the fresh fruit juices around I can’t not order at least one per meal. Watermelon… honeydew… starfruit… Starfruit is one of my faves as it isn’t too sweet. It kind of tastes like a dirty apple. I’m not really selling it to you, am I?

General food yumminess

The thing I appreciate most about growing up speaking a little bit of Cantonese is that when you read the English versions of menus you aren’t put off by names of dishes such as “radish cake”. Even though I can’t read the Chinese characters I can still ask if what I think I’m ordering is what I’m actually going to get. So without further ado, folks, here we have radish cake…

And for good measure there is Penang char kway teow:

And Hokkein mee:

The one thing we didn’t try was the frog porridge.

I tried looking for a t-shirt but none were quite right. Not like I have enough room in my bags anyway. Pah.

How young do I look?

We went to KLSentral station and got the commuter train out to Batu Caves. I went up to the counter to purchase the tickets which were RM1 each. When we returned the tickets were RM2 each. I had a look at the fare chart and it would appear that I was charged the kiddie price. So apparently I look young, even in Asia.

Monkeys

Right at the entrance to the caves people were feeding monkeys. Now, I’m not in favour of feeding wild animals because they come to expect it etc but it sure did make for some great photos.

277 steps

It’s 277 steps to get to the caves. It sounded like a lot but it went pretty quickly. There wasn’t actually much to the caves once you got up there but there was a temple inside that was gathering a bit of a crowd.

On the way back down we saw the saddest baby screaming his lungs out. I don’t think he was too happy being covered in all that powder.

Essentially the trip was a bit “we came, we saw, we went and found some aircon”.

Ladies only

One interesting thing I did learn was that the middle carriage of the commuter trains are designated for women only.

Also, indecent behaviour is prohibited on trains. This sign suggests that this behaviour includes kissing. Well it’s about time PDAs were prohibited!

You forgot your flash drive, you forgot your flash drive

Today I booked my overnight train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. I decided not to stay in Singapore overnight which means I don’t need to pay for a hostel and, more importantly, I get to try out a sleeper train (added bonus: in Asia).

Now there is a weird payment system whereby they charge you the face value of the ticket in the local currency. So if I took the train from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore it would cost me RM46. But as I’m taking the train from Singapore it was going to cost me $46SGD (about RM114)! Thanks to the good people at seat61.com I managed to buy my ticket for RM80. A saving of about £5 but still, that’ll buy me a few meals once I get there!

When the planets align

It’s very rare that I actually manage to meet up with people while abroad. Usually it’s me travelling to far flung places to meet other people. But this time I have a partner in crime. Kris has decided to leave London around the same time as I leave NZ and is going to meet me in KL. I’m SO looking forward to hanging out and running around with my camera buddy again. It’s been a while since I’ve had some proper photo geekery outings so I’m über excited!

Only 10 more days of work left… not that anyone’s counting…

From toggle.co.nz

Images via DQ Company

Here’s a photo I took on my iPhone as I was leaving work yesterday. I used my bus ride home to play around with it in PictureShow.

I’m gonna miss Wellington.

Saturday morning was spent getting up early and packing up the remainder of my stuff in my tiny studio flat ready to take to Jo’s. Then I met Jo to watch her get her hair done and then we ventured to a place I have wanted to go to since 2004: Pizza Pomodoro

The pizza was delicious and the music was awesome. It sounded like they were playing Italian radio and there was an amazing song that was sung in Italian but in the style of Mexican rap. How much do I heart that?!

Pizza was followed by coffee/hot chocolate at Cubita accompanied by lots of chatting – is there any other way? Then it was time to pick up a few things from the flat and drive Jo out to the Hutt and tag along with her to a potluck dinner.

It was almost pointless sleeping on Saturday as we had to be up at 3am to head to the airport. So an hour and a half of sleep later and we were on the road in the dark. I said goodybe to Jo, Jarrad and Rendy for five weeks and went back to my flat to move the rest of my stuff out. Can you imagine, moving at 4am. Argh.

Sunday was spent napping a little, doing freelance work, heading into town to do more freelance work and going back to my flat for a final two hours of moving and cleaning. The place was was cleaner than when I moved in!

During my second freelance work I even managed to get a parking ticket… boo.

Back to the office to check emails and order Domino’s (because who has time to eat let alone cook?!). Swing by Domino’s to pick up what turned out to be very average pizzas and back to my new home for more freelance work.

I think I deserve a serious PHEW!

Saturday night me, mum and dad went to Deano’s for dinner. You can’t go wrong with a steak!

Sunday we went to GMK for yummy half-priced food thanks to my GrabOne vouchers. The rest of Sunday was spent researching our Chinese names, South America and waterproof cameras.

Monday I went to see Gon Gon and stayed an chatted his ear off about South America, Canada, monkeys and jumping off boats in Vietnam.

Loaded up with all of Rhys’ snowboard gear (including a snowboard) and some of my own I took the bus back to Wellington and lugged all the gear up the full length of Cuba and then some.

Queen’s Birthday weekend 2011: done

Asian Guy: Are you Chinese?
Me: Yes.
AG: I got told about you.
Me: Okay…
AG leans in closer: *something mumbled that I can’t understand or hear*
Me: What?
AG: I’m speaking Chinese to you.
Me: What kind of Chinese?
AG: Mandarin.
Me: I only speak Cantonese.

A bit more to-ing and fro-ing and we get to this point:

AG: So how long have you worked at the company?
Me: I don’t work there. I did a week of work there.
AG: Oh. So you’re not a Java developer?
Ne: No.
AG: Oh. I think I have the wrong person.

Even Asian people get other Asian people mixed up. So lacist.