The Basics

 The Landing, Bathroom #2, Our Bedroom, 3rd Bedroom

Housekeeping

One of the reasons I needed to stay alert the first day here was to familiarize myself with the house and the routine since our hosts were leaving early the next morning.

Though we’ve cared for this family’s cat before, that was another country, another house, and another cat.  

A cardinal rule with us is to care for the family’s home and pets exactly as they asked us to do.  Here, for instance, the trash goes out to the can in the little concrete enclosure built into the wall by the gate every day so we don’t get roaches or ants and it is picked up every couple of days. Zhou-Zhou will show her thoughts about a too-dirty litter box by using another spot for her needs.  Easy-peasy.

Zhou-Zhou getting friendly

Safety and Security

 Our back door/gate.  Quadruple locks.

Our back door is a big steel door with two slide-bolts combined with an inner iron gate with a lock and a padlock.  Our front gate to the courtyard is padlocked and the landlord has told us we should keep it locked even in the daytime, because “not everyone has the same standards.”  

A glimpse of our neighborhood over the courtyard wall

And we live in an “upscale gated community” with a security post at the entrance.  But maybe he's cautious because there are so many workmen around rehabbing some of the apartments into not just nice, but luxurious, living quarters.

Frankly, though, we have seen no evidence that there’s any reason to be concerned about our safety and security here.  I walked the neighborhood at night two nights ago.  Folks were out in their courtyards, and some were also taking walks.  

 On a tree a several houses away

My biggest fear is that one of the monitor lizards is going to jump out in front of me as I walk by some shrubbery and scare the daylights out of me.  

Why, Yes, You Will, Eat American Fast Food Here

McDonald's and I loved every bite

One of the great pleasures of Malaysia, we are told (and we believe), is the food. 

 

Trouble is, we don’t know enough about it to order it.

 

That didn’t bother us much before we got here, because everyone knows that there are Chinese restaurants everywhere, right?  Lots of vegetables, seafood, rice.  And there are – there’s a huge ethnic Chinese population here.  But what if that dish that looks and smells so good has chicken feet as one of its main ingredients?

I did my research and I’ve made a list of some of the top recommended dishes with ingredients we both should like and we’re now carrying that around with us.  We do have a plan to begin eating in nice restaurants where we can try some of the dishes at their best. Then, when we know what we like, a whole new world of food awaits us.

But at dinner time we are often in train stations where only fast food is available (both Malaysian and American) is available.  And when you’re tired and hungry (or you just don’t want to go home and cook), KFC, McDonald’s, and Subway look more than alright.  Oh, and Domino’s is great here.

By the way, a Big Mac in Malaysia tastes just like a Big Mac back home, and it tasted the same in China, too.  And KFC does a much better job with chicken here than they do most often at home – cooked just right.  

 Food Stall in Chinatown

Much tasty food in almost endless variety is available from hawker’s stalls.  Every guide book says it’s safe, and good, and get over your squeamishness.  However, I trust my gut on this (pun intended), and in the first few days that we were here, observed that food was cooked and set out in open stalls in the hot sun for who knew how long?  We weren’t ready for that.

Then we picked up a newspaper with the front page ablaze with “Must We Stomach This?” The main article detailed how Malaysians are all too casual about food contamination, and that, even if they saw rats or cockroaches at the stalls, they tended to continue to patronize the places because the food was tasty and cheap (actually most food here is cheap).  

But the deciding blow came when we read about a student at one of the universities here who died the week before, after eating food from a stall where rat urine had contaminated the food.  The disease is called Rat Urine Fever.  That sealed it for us.

Ok, we might eat something from one of the stalls in the Central Market, where we can watch every step of the preparation, but it’s going to take a while for us to work up to even that.