Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

1/4/2005, Malaysia trip day 9: Melaka, Kuala Lumpur - shopping, departure

No pictures today.  It was mainly a shopping day.  I bought souvenirs for my mom and my co-workers.  Durian candy, cookies, dried guava, a shirt, some medicinal oil.  I also bought a bunch of clothes for myself.  Slacks, dress shirts, short sleeve shirts, tennis shoes, black slip-on work shoes, black slippers.  I spent up most of our remaining Malaysian currency.

I really wanted to send my mom a bunch of stuff from Malaysia.  It proved to be rather difficult.  The main problem was that food is difficult to send to the US now because of a new law requiring very detailed prior notification be given to the FDA before sending any amount of any food product into the US.  So, food is mostly out.  Besides food, there's not much that is both Malaysian and truly Malaysian.  Basically, there are two categories of stuff.  There's western stuff which you find anywhere and everywhere.  Normal clothes and gadgets you could find easily in the US.  And, there's souvenirs which probably have little connection to Malaysia.  I think they're just designed to look vaguely Asian.  They look really cheap.  It's obvious they came from a stupid souvenir shop.  But, I eventually found my mom a shirt and some medicinal oil.

Before we got on the plane home, I told Akemi the plane would crash and we'd all die if we didn't get some ice cream before we got on.  So, we bought a Haagen Dazs bar and a cup of Haagen Dazs for about 27 Malaysian ringits total (≈$7.50, ≈¥750).  That's very expensive by Malaysian standards, even for Haagen Dazs, even for airport food.  But, as I said, our lives depended on it.

Our plane left Kuala Lumpur (the capital of Malaysia) at 11:55 PM and landed in Japan's Kansai Airport around 7:00 AM the next day.  Something like that.

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