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Trip Start Mar 10, 2007
1
96
153
Trip End ??? ??, 2007


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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Here in Penang i met Leona, a German girl who had recently been to India, was planning to go to Sumatra soon. Leona was a very nice girl and and we went for Indian breakfast and exchanged information about the countries we had been to respectively, her telling me a lot of valuable things about India. I thought after being in Malaysia, with its large Indian population, i now knew a few things about Indian food, however this breakfast told me i still have a lot to learn. Based on recommendation, i tried a masala Dosai, a thinnish bread stuffed with curried potato. This was served on a banana leaf which you then spooned various sauces onto and dipped your bread into them. Delicious. Leona had what is called ottapaum, a more doughy bread. The foods here fascinated me )no surprise there), none more so than idly, what i thought was a cross between dumplings and Indian breads, which you eat with curry. This morning, with the food and Leona's stories, really got me excited about India, and ripping into our food )me not so professionally, I'm left handed for gods sake!) we had a great morning.
         Met up again later with the old guy who lives at our hostel for a 'rendezvous' in a posh new coffee shop cum study hall. This 'old guy' is a bit of an enigma at the hostel, as he doesn't really talk to anyone and no one seems to know much about him. It seems however that Leona has managed to penetrate his defences and open him up, and he is actually a very nice guy. He has recently fled from Zimbabwe and has nothing but about 150 pounds, so for the moment he is living on about 2 pounds a day. He was an interesting guy to talk to, though as you may expect, some of his views i felt were a little outdated and stereotypical, but he is 70 so from my experience this is sometimes more common in older generations )obviously different generations are gonna have different opinions).
         After dinner at the Indian place again )vegetable ottapaum for me, much better than the dosai) i got into a Ben greed mode, aka Saturday lunch at the slough Chinese mode, and went on a food hunt, having some Chinese desserts before the famous Malaysian dessert of ABC, similar to the cendol i mentioned before but a more lavish affair, with fruit and ice cream included. Where i found this was at a free all day Malaysian music festival i stumbled across. 'Happy Saturday' showcased some truly terrible Malay rock bands 'wailing' on their guitars. Many of these guys could play their instruments, but evidently none of them could write a decent tune, so i ate my ABC whilst my ears were subjected to this terrible noise. The evening got worse as the headlining act was foreign; a western system of a down covers band. Sorry, make that a very very bad western system of a down covers band. Now in my opinion system of a down have such a unique, twisted style and Serj has a very strong voice, so i would never attempt to cover one of their songs, let along a whole set. Personally i also feel that these guys would have been wise to follow my advice also, as this was not a good set! The Malaysians seemed to agree with me too.
      Next day i left on a ridiculously slow bus to KL.
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