To Malaysia!

The first step of our plan for world domination is successful. We have reached Malaysia. 

The trip was relatively uneventful, if you are me. If you are Yvonne it was the most dangerous ride at the carnie on bad acid. When we hit turbulence that wouldn’t even rock the gin in my gin and tonic, she drew her coat up over her lip because she was, “trying not to scream.”  I’ve seen tougher 2 year olds.

The night before, of course, she played her traditional game when we have to take a plane-trip – the let us not sleep or prepare game, for it is always better to wake up exhausted, with things left to do (or undone, to be fair), and haul ass to the airport.

Yvonne Hides in Jackets

Selfie and Yvonne hides in Jacket

Which was remarkably crowded. We spent about 40 minutes in line at Asia Air and then longer than usual through security and customs. But we got there about 20 minutes before boarding, which is good enough, and we were in a row of three seats with one seat empty, which is always good.  Air Asia has attempted to monetize pretty much everything imaginable and I was amused to see, later as I thumbed through their “air catalog” that if there are two empty seats next to you, for only 20 Ringgit (a local currency based on mussel-shells, and the overseas funds that Malaysians accrue by selling their less attractive children into slavery), on is allowed to ‘buy’ those seats. LOL… I wonder how they enforce that one.

I slept on and off for the first three hours of the flight as I was tir… did I mention that at some point in the night I woke up and Yvonne was applying hot compresses to me? Because in summer in Korea that’s what a fellow needs? I thought it might have been a fever dream, yet there, in the morning, was a large yellow bowl full of water and a compress. It would take three psychiatrists, a forensic scientist and three sticks of dynamite to figure out what switch flips in Yvonne’s brain on the night before we travel, but that switch, it is a dire one.

I got through Korean customs without getting my all-important “blank” passport page stamped. It turns out that if we are to go to Jakarta I have to have one blank page in my passport (and it can’t, for some obscure reason, be any of the last four pages in the passport). As it happens, my career as a world famous expert on Korean literature, in concert with my unspoken job of international playboy, means that I only do have that one page. So at each stop here I will have to stop the nice person at the immigration desk and ask them to NOT stamp page 24 of my passport.

One down, two to go.

Except of course we got to Kuala Lumpur and discovered we had misplaced a decimal when converting IDR to dollars, so won't be going to Jakarta at all. Instead, we are booked for Penang, which looks old school and lovely, and is MUCH cheaper.

Tomorrow we meet an old friend in Kuala Lumpur.