Trip home from KL....

I've heard a lot about how corrupt the Malaysian police are, people getting out of sticky situations by "buying them a drink" or whatever else. Last night I experienced it for myself!

We were on our way home from KL (after Ally's fashion debut!!!). Our friend, Arthur, was driving and I was very grateful that we got caught out with him around. Basically, we were stopped at a road block on the highway. Clearly, we were targeted because we're so obviously foreigners. Cars speeding past the block were always full of locals.

So, they asked us step out and provide ID. We gave them our Australian drivers license but it didn't suffice, they needed our passports. Now, for some reason that is still unclear to us here, when we first arrived in Malaysia the university required that we hand in our passports so they could be sent off to get our VISAs. We were told that the process could take anywhere between 6-10 weeks...that's right - we've been without our passports since we arrived. They did give us an "official" photocopy that we were told to carry around with us. Thankfully, Ally and I were particularly organised and were carrying these bits of paper with us (it is really VERY amazing and quite lucky!). Still, it wasn't enough for Mr Policeman.

Now this is where it gets interesting...he refused to talk to Ally and myself (who were apparently causing the problem) but took Arthur aside. He took down his details and were having a nice long chat. Ally eventually had enough, went over and asked him to give us an official fine or just let us go and for some reason, he did.

What Arthur told us later was that the policeman said that there was an "easier way to take care of the situation", unless Arthur wanted us to be locked up until we could provide our passports (which, theoretically, could have been another few weeks!). Ally interrupted just in time and I guess the policeman was just frustrated with us "tourists" and knew that he could make more elsewhere. The following car that was stopped was full of caucasian girls...

An interesting experience!!!