Malaysia

Here are some pictures from the Malaysia part of our adventure.

We left home on Wednesday night around 6 and drove up to LAX. Our plane left at 11:30 pm. We had a layover in Taipei for two hours. Fortunately, we had passes to the VIP lounge. It makes a huge difference to have someplace quiet with free food and internet in which to pass the time.

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur airport at 3:00 pm on FRIDAY. Good old international dateline! Needless to say, we were tired, but were able to pull it together to go to the Pole Position tour group dinner that night.

We met lots of Aussies and Brits (and a Scot or two). They were really nice, fun people. Jeremy Burgess, Valentino Rossi's crew chief, was the guest of honor and talked and answered questions for a long time. This group really knows their GP, so the questions were all relevant and interesting.

On the way back to the hotel, one of our group passed out (still not completely sure why) and hit his head, sustaining a nasty laceration on his scalp. Rowdy volunteered his EMT skills in the bus, then we both checked him out as best we could and bandaged him up when we got back to the hotel. He made a good recovery.

Our hotel was actually in Putrajaya, the seat of the national government in Malaysia. All around us were beautiful parks, federal buildings and housing for government workers. Malaysia has the goal of becoming a first world country by 2020, so they are spending a lot of money on infrastructure. Things are clean and well-ordered, but they need to hire better city planners. Our tour guide told us that there is just one shopping center for 20,000 people in Putrajaya. People have to travel into KL to do their grocery shopping.

The weather was hot and steamy, very much like Austin or Charleston. The rain held off until just before the MotoGP final. Fortunately, it was a short storm, and the race started pretty-much on time.

Vale was on pole, but he took it slow into the first corner and Casey Stoner took off. It was Stoner-Pedrosa-Rossi, thanks to Andrea Dovizioso's crash and a poor grid position by Jorge Lorenzo. Rossi easy won the Championship, so there was much celebration. We weren't in a good position to see the podium, other than on the minijumbotron, but we were close enough to see and smell the champagne as Vale rained it down onto his supporters.

As we waited for our departure to the airport on Monday, we took a walk through the garden next to the hotel. There was nobody there, but there are so many "don'ts" that maybe people just can't be bothered. Or maybe it isn't located near enough to a residential area to make it worthwhile for the average Malaysian to visit.