I was having dinner at the Indochina Riverside Towers near my Da Nang hotel and enjoying my meal when I thought of how safe I felt in Vietnam. Because of the crazy traffic with thousands of motorcyclists zipping past from all directions, crossing a road can be pretty daunting at first. You can lament the blatant flaunting of traffic rules but you gotta credit the motorists for not speeding and slowing down to allow pedestrians to cross. And you won’t come across any illegal motorbike racing either.
I thought too of how safe I felt walking alone at night, something which regrettably I don’t really feel in KL. I didn’t feel like someone was going to snatch my bag or pickpocket me (both of which I’ve had unfortunate experiences with in KL). I didn’t feel like I was being stalked or that it was dangerous to be walking all alone in the dark, despite me sticking out like a sore thumb where they could easily mark me as a foreigner (and had they thought of attacking any foreigner, it would be very easy for them to get away with it because it’d be more difficult to trace down a foreign tourist who could be missing without a trace for some time before their absence is noticed). Sadly, with the recent murder of the millionaire cosmetic owner/founder, the Klang Valley has seemed even less safe.
Funny isn’t it that I feel safer in a foreign country where I don’t even speak the local lingo and where some of the locals speak hardly any English? And not just in Vietnam; I arrived in Prague and Barcelona at almost midnight on my first visits to those cities– all alone and without knowing the local language. And yet, I’d never felt any less safe.
It just feels wrong and weird and strange that I feel it safer anywhere else than here. But that’s how I feel. You sure won’t see me walking out alone at night here like I did in Japan or Italy.
RIP Sosilawati et al.
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It was a North London derby for the Carling Cup third round with Nasri scoring a double from the penalty spot. Wenger who was in stands dedicated the victory to Jack Chester, who was the figurehead of the Teenage Cancer Trust charity last year. Go here for the top ten things we can learn from this and here for the match report.
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