Deepvalai, the festival of lights…
…is making our time in Malaysia significantly more difficult!
Now I’m not at all suggesting that Hindu’s, Sikhs and Jains should re-arrange their important festival so it doesn’t mean Lauren and I cannot get the bus we wanted from Melaka to Singapore, but, well, I mean, they could at least consider it.
From a purely ignorant, outsider’s point of view, the festival does look like a lot of fun, t’other night in Kuala Lumpur there was a big fireworks show to celebrate it’s coming and last night in Melaka there was a street performance, stage and all, with Indian people singing traditional songs through a P.A. system. According to my limited knowledge (wikipedia anyone?) the festival marks the triumph of good over evil, so that’s always something worth celebrating for sure. I’m also not 100% sure if they are related to the festival or not, but there are a lot of very intricate patterns of coloured rice on the ground in the malls, making beautiful and elaborate images on the floor, which are then cordoned off. I’ll try and get photo of one up asap.
Of course, because of the festival, a lot of Indians are moving around the country, particularly towards K.L. and over the boarder to Singapore, meaning that hostel prices have rocketed and most modes of public transport are full.
Luckily, our guesthuose owner came to our rescue. We are staying at the Kancil guesthouse, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED it’s shared bathrooms and stuff, but the people that own the place cannot do enough for you. The guy who runs it managed to sort me and Lauren out for a bus a day earlier than we had wanted (the day we wanted was full) but that was only through his own persistence of phoning the company and dogging them to ring him back. Good stuff.
Last night went out for a drink or seven, me a friendly New Zelander called Ben as well as bumping into a girl from Slovenia (who for the life of me I can’t remember her name, sorry!) we were all having a nice old time.
Sadly this was not to last. Two girls from the bus down from K.L. recognised us and came over. They were alright, but they brought with them a man who was, well, the type of man who talked about football very aggressively, told me about guns, and bragged about the fights he’d had. I was stuck with this buffoon while he told me about the merits of the M16 to the SA80 rifle. More than once I had to hold both hands up in the universal symbol of ‘calm down you idiot’ as he got himself increasingly worked up that he couldn’t remember Wayne Rooney’s, goal stats/the name of the tripod-mounted light machine gun/ any form of interesting social grace. I asked him if he was in the military, due to the guns and all.
‘I’m in the R.A.F, fixing planes,’ he said. Hmm…
Bearing in mind we have met a few ex-military while being away (including an ex-Marines Captain- he has 100% killed baddies and not once did he brag, not once) this guy was more than a joke, name dropping places like Iraq and Afghanistan in a so overly nonchalant way that I wanted to feign anaphalactic shock to get rid of him. It was easy to see why the girls took refuge when they saw us. I mean, jeeze.
Lauren, Ben and I returned to the guesthouse and had one more drink before going to bed. I woke up this morning with a very sore head. (I’m a poet and I …)
Tags: Malaysia, Melaka, Travel
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