Outside the airport
After a very long 17 hours, I finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
These flights took longer than my flights to Africa because I didn’t have David Herrmann as company (you should have come along!). I have been looking at the pictures from summer 2010 and the crazy adventures that I had in Istanbul and Africa made me think of so many things that would have slipped my mind if I didn’t have those photos. I’m already regretting not keeping my African journal up to date, having only written very minimally about those two months.
Long nostalgic story short, I’m going to improve on my previous feeble efforts at a journal, or die trying if the Muay Thai doesn’t kill me first.
I stepped out of the plane with a girl from France (Toulouse to be exact, more on that later), and we went to meet her good friend, also from Toulouse, with whom she was going to spend a week eating exotic foods in Penang. We grabbed some spicy food at the airport’s food court, and they really surprised me! Europeans are well known to be rather shy when it comes to adding chilli to their meals, but not them. My friend was complaining that her food wasn’t spicy enough, while I, a seasoned spicy food dude, was scrambling to get soy milk to ease the burn!
They were also more excited than me to step out into the humid nature of Malaysia, and what better place to do it than outside the airport? We got out of the sliding doors, and this view greeted us, together with 100% humidity and 30 degrees. Despite the overcast skies, it hasn’t been raining much this monsoon season, or so we’ve heard.
Breathing in the thick, humid air, gazing out at the lushness of the tropical forest and wearing only a thin shirt, I had begun my trip to a region that knows no winter or coldness, outside of the ridiculous chill of air conditioning. Now the winter depression has almost left me. All I need is to wake up in the morning, go for a swim in the pool right outside my door, head to the beach 5 minutes away to grab breakfast (and flip flops, boardshorts, other beach equipment), and I will be a new man. I’ll be…. The Man of Eternal Summer! At least for the time that I’m here, I can escape the reality of annoying exams and bad weather. My motivation’s been shot the past two months, and I hope that this trip will set my head straight for the coming semester.
Anyway, back to the girl from Toulouse, I can’t believe how things turn out! I just met Marie, a girl from Toulouse, and suddenly I meet these two girls from exactly the same place! Okay, they’re actually from Albi, which is a small town close to Toulouse, but still, what a coincidence!
But that’s not all! So I had a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket, and I had to take a one hour bus ride to the resort. Throughout the entire bus journey, there were two french guys beside me playing euro-techno-synth disco music from some speakers. They couldn’t speak English, but they were amazingly funny with that music on.
Thai Bus driver: “Where are you going?”
French dudes: “Patong Soup Inn”
Thai: “What is that?”
French dudes: “Patong Soup Inn”
Confusion, and Thai guy figures out what they are saying.
Thai: ”Do you mean Kata or Patong”
French dudes: “My english not good, take us anywhere, it will be correct.”
I can’t capture the humour of the situation, but yeah. Anyway, I got to my resort, walked in, crossed the pool to get to my room, and the only group of people chilling by the pool were ….french! They were shouting something after me, but I couldn’t understand them.
What are the odds? Is it really a coincidence? Is it just me seeing non-existent patterns?
Anyway, I’ll take this chance to do a shout-out to my french friends: Marie and Julie, love you girls!
To my french canadian friends: Stay warm!
To my francophone rwandan friends: Amahoro!
