I went to Kuala Lumpur for a short three-day break over the weekend. Amazingly enough, despite the lack of activities in the city, I was happy. It felt so good to be away from stifling Singapore, in spite of the danger that was lurking around every comment because, after all, I am a rather well-to-do foreigner, despite being able to pass off as a Malaysian while in shopping malls.

I saw quite a few amusing and interesting things while I was there. I only wish I had my camera to capture all of those moments. Instead, I'll have to recount them for you here and rely on your imagination to bring them to life.

• Extremely poor planning (sign spotted in Chinese restaurant in Berjaya Times Square): "Vacancy: All Positions"
• The RM2.00 "premier toilet" on the Ground Floor of Suria KLCC. "Non-paying toilets on other floors," the sign proclaimed.
• A suspiciously high concentration of rather... shall we say, limp-wristed staff working in Zang Toi's West 57th Street Cafes.
• Outback Steakhouse near Plaza Low Yat with a sign stating that its proprietor is Santana.
• The street portrait artist with examples of his work including Osama Bin Laden and Prince Charles ("Two of the most heinous figures in the world," said my British friend) .
  

One of my favourite sights has got to be the green traffic man. Some of KL's traffic lights, instead of having the usual blinking green man that's a signal for you to hurry up and cross the road, have got the blinking and running green man. And this is no ordinary green man. Rather, he wears a hat and is walking rather funkily across the road, before he starts sprinting (i.e. the light starts blinking).

While the coach ride up was rather uneventful, the return leg, was fraught with delays. Everything that could have delayed the coach short of it breaking down happened. An incredibly incosiderate passenger held up the coach for 30 minutes which resulted in the coach being not so ahead of schedule that another coach couldn't transfer passengers to them at Yong Peng (another 40 minute wait). Then, at the Singapore immigration checkpoint, the clan of 10 Romanians/Bulgarians brought down their considerable luggage to be cleared through customs, only to return to the coach over an hour later with their bags looking rather depleted. This resulted in our alighting at the final destination at 10.30 pm, a full two hours later than we had anticipated. Suffice it to say that my butt was very sore from having sat down for so long.