Back in Malaysia

To answer Carboman's questions, my trip to the backwater countries mentioned recently are all business trips.

I came back to Malaysia on Saturday and am glad to be able to eat the delicious food in Malaysia again. Here you can walk into any restaurant or food stall and pretty much everything is good to eat. Even when you order foreign cuisine like Italian or Arabic, you can expect something good Not so over there in Tu*****tan.

Before I continue let me write a bit more about what I had over there since my last post.

Ordered margarita pizza (tomato and cheese) from the Italian restaurant at Nissa hotel. What arrived on my table was a thin bread with an equally thin layer of melted cheese. At the outer rim of the pizza, the "chef" had splashed a thin layer of tomato sauce. There were no slices of tomatoes, onion or green pepper. Does this thing deserve to be called a pizza?

The next day, I went to Yimpas shopping centre. My aim was to sample the local Turkmen food at the food court. I ordered rice, 2 pieces of fried fish in batter and some green beans. What I ended eating was the fish. The rice was a big soggy and the green beans cold and lifeless. So much for the local cuisine.

On running, last Saturday I ran in Asghabat. The area I ran had a lot of government buildings. As usual there were the assorted police and soldiers standing around every 200 to 300m. The park where I ran was beautiful although there were not many trees. But I don't mind running around the flowers.

In the park, there were many fountains so I ran a loop around several of them. There was a man selling ice-cream from a cart. The park was quite deserted with only half a dozen people sitting on benches. A large number of workers were doing some maintenance on the plant , watering them etc.

At the my current pathetic state of fitness, I only managed to run about 3 km. On the way back the hotel, as I was crossing the road I stepped on the divider which was planted with grass. I overheard someone shouting in a intelligible language. I turned and saw some soldiers shouting and waving. I did not what they said but I guessed it something to do with me stepping on the grass. I ignored their shouts and continued walking. Want to chase me ? Go ahead.

I still have trouble with my right knee. I don't think I will be able to run any races this year.