Next steps

Well I need to consolidate the experience of this pilot tour before the chilli world tour concept fades into the non urgent background.

Some of the lessons are obvious: but there's no harm in repeating,just to give me an action plan for next time maybe, in handy dot point form. There's also been a few suggestions already made by family and friends that I can sew into that list, and for which I'm grateful.

There are also some refinements at the technical end that might give this chilli tour more substance next time around. I imagine.

Actually I don't know, although I do imagine. Probably people reading the blog, were there still any, could make the suggestions. I need to add a kind of wiki dimension to encourage external guidance and advise on the run.I have resisted facebook in my life to date but I have a feeling that it would make sense to add a facebook dimension if I were to try to make the blog something more than me just talking, more or less, to myself.

The list so far:

• Research destination in concrete ways prior to departure
• Seek to make some contact with target population before departure
• Advise Aus consulate at destination and destination consulate in CBR.
• Read and act on advice as received through blog
• Seek out and absorb multiple perspectives on local culture - don't get distracted
• Implement facebook or other social media links to blog to encourage input
• Develop technical blogpacity in order to add links and interaction
• Follow other blogs

So Grette and I are in no immediate rush to do another leg of the tour. But some degree of planning can start now. Do we want to go to some where less equivocal about its Portuguese connection. Such as Mozambique, Goa or Brazil?  Or Portugal itself? Or perhaps another ex trade hotspot such as Zanzibar or Hoi An?

 If so, is there a community here in Australia I should look out for first?

Anyone got any links to culinary social histories they can forward, or Zanziban colleagues they can introduce me to?

Near the end

A few Ainslie chillies arrived at the NSW far south coast, 

end of journey?

Delicious chicken biryani on MHS 123

Main course and water, good;
dessert, salad, bread and chocolate.. not this time

This was probably the last meal of the Chilli World Tour 1.0 pilot journey. Since then in Sydney neither the won ton soup for lunch nor Monica's delicious Italian dinner  have included chillies in any noticeable way.

All that dinner on the aeroplane was too much for us in our state at the time but the biryani was fragrant and just what the doctor would have ordered.

Actually a few unrelated matters re difference to finish this tour blog I think. Speaking of doctors I suddenly found myself spending the equivalent of lots of Ringot on health. But I did get immediate access to a doctor, appropriate antibiotics and then cough mixture, so my fragile western body got well looked after. On the other hand, the traffic on the highway out of Sydney on Good Friday sure makes the traffic on Malaysia's expressways look light.

Art work

After afternoon tea, where we rejected all the cakes and ate cautious white bread sandwich fingers (no discernible chilli) Grette and managed to resist the enticing prospects of checking out Tiffany, Boss, Marks and Spencer's et al (we had bought shirts and bags from Jim Thompson at another exclusive shopping centre earlier in the day) in order to visit the contemporary art space run by the national oil company  Petronas.

Some great works from new academic designers and artists, backed up by quite a few weighty arguments by university leaders and the gallery patron arguing variously that art is or should be  a research discipline of facts and ideas, and that it has a socio-political responsibility to recast the ideas our life together. Throw into the mix the range of art explorations, often modern and innovative but linked to traditional life or culture, which appears to be strong at the toppish end of tourism... and the potential and value of art as the real forum for intercultural  connection - inside and between countries - looks really obvious.

A world wide chilli arts festival,live and on the internet,perhaps.

A tale from today

The plan was to walk across to the National Museum after checking in our luggage at Sentral Station. It's very close on the map. But no one knew how it could be done. We divined its location behind the Hilton and Meridian but the porter at the Hilton suggested a taxi. I got a bit argumentative and probably rolled my eyes. He said I could walk along the roads and it might take 30 minutes. We took a taxi, although the taxi driver and I chuckled at the 30 min estimate when we set off. Actually if we tried to walk Grette and I might still be there. Even the taxi had to drive in spirals for close to 10 mins to get there.

The museum is a good one. lots of detail on the various Malay kingdoms of the past thousand years, installations to recreate colonial times, detailed information on the Communist emergency ... My aunt Beryl was serving in the Army in Malaysia then I think.. and quite a lot about Government programs and progress on  sharing development and promoting  cultural harmony. As always the stuff on trade proved most interesting to me.

I'll insert a snippet of our lunch in the cafeteria when I can get the technology sorted.

That did get me thinking about being a pedestrian. So many people who work here come into the city by train and bus. And others live here anyway. But even new developments rarely allow for pedestrians who of course walk in the road which is a little hairy in Melaka but can be really hairy in KL.

The buildings here have really interested me: from the grand to domestic, ancient and modern. Even unit blocks and office towers are often inventive, meaningfully reference culture, history and religion, are a pleasure to look at and to be in. But getting in and out of those buildings must be perilous at times.

The buildings work for human beings but the ground around them, in the auto era, do not.

Moderate lunch at the cafeteria - yes, chilli

Towers in the mist from the KLIA Expres

We were caught in an exciting storm in 'little India',
this is the residue as we leave it behind

Rol food guide

Pascale in KL has asked for a rol-araunt point system reflecting on the food we've eaten but I can't really make sense of everything in that way.  I can say this:

• In Georgetown, Penang, fabulous tandoori chicken at an Indian takeaway and eat on the street establishment on the corner of Chulia and King, and on Lebuh Campbell fab dim sum at Tho Yuen, which two older women stopped to advise us is also famous for its rice. 
• In Melaka, the grand family Peranakan Restaurant across the road from the Hotel Puri, expresses the culinary tradition but is a little gentle with the ubiquitous brown sauce. 
•  Here in KL, under somewhat constrained circumstances, we ate at two great top 100 places, The Museum at the Islamic Arts Museum and Sao Nam in Tingkat Tong Shin.

I bought a guide to cooking hawker food at KLIA tonight so as to catch on some of the dishes we missed.