KL

Hello from Kuala Lumpur!
We are enjoying a quiet day (we managed to do most of the sights on foot yesterday, it's just nice to be able to walk everywhere in a capital city!) and spending a bit of time on the internet, in the air-con, away from the suffocating heat outside. I was even able to proof read a few of the recent entries and rid them of typing and spelling mistakes as well as make a few bits more precise. I'll be relying on you to tell me what I have missed!
KL is an interesting mix of old and new (colonial buildings and skyscrapers), religious and secular (temples and mosques, and McDonalds...), organisation and chaos (modern infrastructures and little roadside stalls in Chinatown selling food and fake designer items). Malaysia as a whole seems to be defined by its multicultural and diversified identity.
One of the most obvious examples of this is in the food you can find : Malay, Chinese, Indian, Western? Anything you fancy you can find on the streets of malaysia. The day before yesterday we were eating Nasi Lemak ( breakfast dish of rice, fried egg, spicy anchovy sauce, green beans and peanuts), and yesterday we had Chinese chicken-rice for lunch and roti (indian flatbread filled with meat, veg or sweets) in the evening. Malay dishes seem to always have chilli (a lot of it!), grilled anchovies and peanuts in them. I also tasted Laksa, a fish soup with thick noodles, which tatstes (and looks) like "an estuary at low tide", as our Lonely planet suggested. It wasn't bad though, spicy and unusual, but tasty. we also tried some local desserts, such as Cendol : a pile of shaved ice tooped with coconut milk, sweetened pea flour noodles (yes, they are green), sweetcorn, red kidney beans and jelly cubes that tatsed of licorice ; and ABC : shaved ice, rose syrup, green noodles, sweetcorn, jellies and tapioca. Sounds disgusting? It was actually very refreshing! In Thailand and Malaysia they seem to use sweetcorn, peas and kidney beans as sweets.
Chinese New Year wasn't quite the standstill we had expected in KL. A few shops are closed and our host gave us some drinks and oranges for the occasion, and this morning there were some people dressed up in a big dragon suit dancing in the street, but apart from that it's just business as usual.
Yesterday we visited the national museum, which didn't really give us much information about colonial times or modern day politics in Malaysia... All that we know is that "merdeka" (independance) was declared in 1957 (the British had Malaysia, India and Burma, leaving Thailand as a "buffer" between the British and French Indochina to the East), but it is unclear when and why the Chinese and Indian people emigrated to Malaysia.
Today Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy with a difference : the King here is elected (how democratically though we don't know)
One thing we have noticed though is how friendly and helpful everyone is. If you refuse the offer of a taxi they reply "thank you, have a nice day"! We couldn't believe it!!
In three days we are flying to Australia, so we will be making our way to Singapore stopping off in Melaka, a city further South with Portuguese and Dutch influences. We are not planning on spending any time in Singapore, as it is a bit above our budget...