A car ride in Malaysia

So Lase is driving me away from the airport and I immediately notice one thing: Every tree is a palm tree. For many miles, all I saw was palm trees. Clear-cut hills and palms trees. Power lines on poles and palm trees. Crazy motos (more on those in blogs to come) and... palm trees. Back in the states, before I left, I had heard several times about people boycotting Malay palm oil because of what they do to the enviroment. Now I see why. The land is devastated by clearing, terracing and planting only palm trees for MANY kilometers. The US people are boycotting because the palm plantations are now wiping out rain forests to expand. But, even if it wasn't just because of the rainforest, I'd have to agree that they should plant palms in a more eviromentally friendly fashion.

I forget what words started it, but a little bit into the trip from the airport to Melaka, she says something like 'well, fine then, I won't talk.' I then say something like 'I can play that game too' and we have ourselves a little game of silence... at least 15mins of neither of us saying a word. That's easy for me, but Lase not talking? 8O I'd look at her, smile, check outthe palm trees, look at her again, take in more scenery, etc. I didn't think it was bad though. i was comfortable being with her. :) Anyway, I wanted to end the game and said soemthing. I flew to the other side of the world to see my girlfriend and I wasn't going to spend my time with her playing a game of silence.

Down the road, there was a resteraunt build across the highway :O i had thought of something like that before. It's rather logical, really... There's TONS of unused space over our nations highways. We have double-decker bridges near where i live and I've seen video of long higheays in California where highways are stacked up. So, i know there are ways to use the space. I just didn't expect to see it ever happen. Kudos to Msia for showing retail use of the space to me for the first time.

i also have to say the drivers in Msia are pretty crazy. Esp near my hotel where there's no lane lines. They just go from one side or middle of the road to another position whenever they want without signaling. We have that here, too, but they leave considerable space between cars when they do it. There, it was so close, I thought we'd get hit several times. Not only that, but the motorcycle drivers do it and do it more aggressively. Weaving between cars on what should be a lane line and driving around them at stop lights, etc. I thought they were asking to be killed. Here in the US, motorcycles obey the same rules as cars. If you're behind a car, you stay behind the car unless there's a lane to pass in. If there's two lanes and two cars side by side, you can't go between them. You have to wait til one car passes and follow behind it to pass the other car.

Anyway, thank you Lase for keeping me safe in all the hours we were on the road. <3 And I hope you stay safe in all the hours we're apart.