The Good, The Bad and The Weird: Part 3

 

The Good, The Bad and The Weird: 3

Haven't done one of these for a while so I thought I'd throw one out there...

The Good:

Cars - or more specifically, our car. Yes, we bought a car. We put money into a depreciating asset - go us! 

Actually that is part of the good bit about buying a car here. Now initially the rumour was that cars were cripplingly expensive and generally poor quality. Malaysian cars in particular seemed to have a poor reputation - kind of like Skoda in the 90s in the UK. However, just like Skoda, these stereotypes simply don't hold true, at least not now. 

Those of you who know a bit about cars are probably raising at least one skeptical eyebrow at this point and it's understandable. Neither of these brands had a much success in the European market and their reputations were pretty much well deserved when they first arrived, but remember when Kia and Hyundai first arrived? Well they were pretty much treated the same way and now no-one bats an eyelid at them.

The main reason we bought a car was the level of depreciation here is far lower than in the UK and it's much cheaper to buy a car outright and sell it when you leave than it is to rent one - in fact it's about 3-5 times cheaper depending on the car and the rental terms.

Also we got a really quite good car! I'm not going to review it, well not here at least, but suffice to say it's fine (actually quite nice) and got a lot of safety kit on it (that's why we got it). The safety thing was a real consideration because as relaxed as everyone seems to be about the chaos on the roads, it's still chaos - relaxed chaos, but chaos nonetheless. 

The final point was that buying a new local car was in fact cheaper than buying a second hand imported model - Malaysia taxes foreign cars at a frightening level and subsidises it's two national car manufacturers.

This is in fact the make, model and colour we bought - A Perodua Ativa Advance. 

The Bad

Bananas - yes, that's right bananas. Or to be precise, these bananas...

These are red bananas, apparently. Clearly this is not the case. These are bad bananas. Very bad bananas. 

Now it could be we just got a duff batch of what is, in most normal cases, a wonderfruit, but I suspect not. This particular bunch arrived from a reputable grocer and appeared fairly standard fare.

The bananas have the density and texture of a wooden chair leg.

Now, initially we assumed that they needed to ripen - a logical conclusion given that a yellow banana is not great when still greenish in hue. These bast*&^s refused to change in any way, shape or form! Days on the counter top - nothing. A week in the fridge - no alteration. I'll say this for them - they have a hell of a shelf life, but mostly because they're inedible.

When we eventually broke through their armoured shell we tried roasting them ( I say we, I left that job to Nicola, at this point I was having nothing to do with them). We thought that maybe they're like plantain or something like that. No. No, cooking made no difference except now the banana in question was warm and inedible. 

What kind of banana needs a knife to peel it? Really, it took a knife - what's that about.

We did actually get to try some of the flesh - the interior retains wood like qualities, although more like balsa wood or cork rather than a hardwood, so that's better? The taste is like stale bread.

These shall be consigned to the 'never again' list unless someone can tell me where we went wrong!

The Weird

I've told a few people about this already and they mostly just act with incredulity and rightly so. This entry is liquid in bags.

Not like a saline drip or even a capri sun style drink. No this is putting liquids directly into plastic bags. 

This is common practice here and I just can't work out why.

You get coffee in a bag. Not coffee beans, grounds or powder (although they do put those in bags), but actual liquid coffee. In a bag. With a straw.

Why? 

This can't end well.

Apparently it's mostly a sweet iced coffee. So that's okay then? No, no it is not. 

And don't even get me started about the people on mopeds drinking this stuff whilst driving in traffic!

But wait! It's not just coffee.

Here we have what was a very lovely tofu (don't laugh at the vegetarians, it's not nice) curry with some rice. The liquid curry part is in the bag and the rice is in the Tupperware style box... weird.