Getting there is half the fun

arrrr, Malaysia, the land of pirates

Today Samson, Lisa and myself went across the causeway into Johor Bahru for the day to go shopping! We walked around the city for a while before hitting the malls. JB is quite a contrast from sterile Singapore. It is a lot dirtier and more chaos like, what a true asian city should feel like, and I like it!

It seems like everything there is pirated, and they are not afraid to admit it. There are still many legit name brand chains where you can buy the real deal for about the same inflated price as back home. But the more interesting ones are the regular clothing stores that carry "name brands". They sure fooled me a few times into thinking I was getting a screaming deal but when I asked them if it was a fake they just replied with "yes, it imitation" and a friendly smile! This is definitely not like in Italy, where Pisa's 'affrican traders' assure you that the 10 Euro Rolexes they are selling are indeed authentic. So I ended up buying a bunch of shirts and some shoes. I picked up some decent looking DCs for about $25cdn!! The first ones I tried on I actually broke when I pulled on the lace, but there was no way in hell I was going to pay for them! I also got some pirated DVDs for about $2 each! It's amazing the lengths they go to make the DVDs look real. I got a War of the Worlds DVD and it's still in theatres. The case and menu look real, and it is complete with subtitles and sound options, but the thing still looks like a cam! They also had a movie that I guess wasn't released in North America...."American Pie 4", which looked like a cheesy porno.

Posted by Evan at 7:14 AM