Four and thirty five.

Parting Malaysia thoughts in a moment...But first...by landing in Yogyakarta this afternoon I am below that magical line on the planet where water goes the wrong way in the toilet for the fourth time. Also, Indonesia is the 35th country that I have visited.

Malaysia was awesome and I'm way stoked that I added it to this trip. After finishing the Annapurna circuit a few days early and doing some research I made the trade of the island of Sumatra for a day in KL and a week in Malaysia Borneo.
The people of Malaysia are incredibly friendly and warm. It was an awesome place to visit and I really only scratched the surface of this place.

*the food. Oh my god the food. Nepalese food was not bad. Rice and lentil soup can be very tasty. And the influence of Indian spices...quite nice. But Malaysian food is on another level. Hawker stalls are amazing. They just set up street restaurants around 6 pm and turn an entire city block into a block party of cheap but awesome food. Unless I was being fed as a part of my accommodation...I ate at a hawker steal for dinner.
*Malaysia is made up of three regions. The peninsula, Sabah, and Sarawak. The latter two on Borneo. Oddly, you have to clear customs and immigration when traveling between them and the visa situation for foreigners is different in Sarawak than it is in the other two.
*the number of crying babies here is out of control. I don't know if I just didn't see any through some statistical anomaly while in Nepal for 3 weeks or something, but on every bus and in every plane and at every restaurant in Malaysia there were multiple crying babies. It felt abnormal.
*traffic here was still very aggressive, but it very much followed rules and order.
*I didn't see a single working crosswalk signal. Even in Kuala Lumpur. There were signals and buttons...But they were never switched on. Ever.
*did I mention the food?

Other random thoughts...
*air Asia is as advertised. It is the Ryan air of Asia. You have to pay a fee to check in with a human being. You have to pay for water on the flight. One nice casual touch...flight attendants wear jeans.
*the low cost terminal at KUL is pretty janky. And boarding there was hilarious. You line up at your gate. They check your boarding pass and turn you loose onto the tarmac with two or three other flights at the same time. So three plane loads of people and a walkway to a bunch of planes...with no info boards or signs trekking you which plane is yours. Clusterfuck doesn't even begin to describe it.
*in the US if you are flying and there are some very high cloud tops, the plane will often navigate around them. By very high I mean like 50k feet or higher. In Asia...They go right through the damn clouds and don't even think about turning on the fasten seat belt sign. I'm kinda scared to think about the turbulence that would have to exist to get that light back on. Probably has to snap a wing off or something.