Malaysia (January 2007)

Intro: Genting Highlands and Bentong: While I was in Singapore, Noreen came up with a great proposal of going for a trip to visit her family in Malaysia, so she pushed me on a bus at Friday night without any luggage with only my passport not even knowing what was the trip about : after around 3 hours I started to feel very cold and I realized we were going up to 3000 mts “hills”! I was not used anymore to those temperatures as i had lived on a tropical island for 7 months. When we reached destination at around 4 o’clock am I didn’t know where the hell I was…outside was all dark and foggy…I was literally freezing , I didn’t even remember how was the sensation of feeling so cold …I just wanted to go back and forget about the trip…we walked through a corridor that brought us to an immense palace containing hundreds of shopping malls , casinos , theme park , hotels etc. Fortunately later on , in one of the casinos, we found a Milo hot chocolate machine that was free for all clients then I took advantage of it having many cups of hot chocolate till I got drunk and hot ! Once i wormed up the fun began! Noreen’s parents are professional gamblers and they were visiting the place every weekend. They are a very special couple , funny , easy going and they made me laugh a lot ! They share the same hobby as mine which is to take away every free gadget from the places. We collected hundreds of pens and pencils , sugars , tea bags, tissues, soap , toothbrush, and a lot more. They are amazing, I would love to have relatives like that…We spent there few days and we really had fun, we played all kind of games and the bowling was great ! I also found a coin-op car racing simulation of “the fast and the furious” which was hectic! One time I’ve entered in a shop were I had free taste of dry fruit until I got stomach hake, but was fun. In Noreen’s family everyone was so kind with me that I felt very welcomed and comfortable. We went down to their hometown , Bentong and I saw the amazing vintage car of Noreen’s father: he owns the vehicle since 1975 taking a perfect care of it to the point that I was tried to leave him some money to book the car in advance in case he’ll decide to sell it one day