What is Different In Kuala Lumpur

Wow! Nearly the end of February and we have been living and working in Kuala Lumpur for two months.
Doesn't time fly? So this week I have been asking myself, what is different about living in KL?

Actually I could fill the page with a list of things I have noticed so far. Instead I think I will just focus on some of the things that have more impact on our day to day lives.

Have you wondered what it would be like if you couldn't drink the water from your taps?

Today I am enjoying a cool glass of water. This is something that most New Zealanders take for granted. Water in NZ flows from the tap and is safe to drink. In Singapore we would turn on the tap and pour water into a water jug and place it to cool in the fridge. Here we have been told not to drink the water from the taps.
At work when you turn on the taps the water is often brown and smells. In our condo it is usually clear but smells strongly of chlorine. We were boiling it and placing it into the fridge, plus buying water regularly at work.

This week we have found a better solution, a water dispencer. It stands in the kitchen, we had to pay a deposit which was around 200 RM. And we also had to buy 5x18 litre bottles of water. When we want clean drinking water we just push switch and out it comes. We can have cold and we can have hot so we can make a cup of tea out of it. When we are on our last bottle we just make a phone call and the next 5 bottles will appear at our door. The bottles cost around 7.50 RB. That is less than $4.00 NZ for each bottle.

When we were home in December we paid about that for a small bottle of water from the conveniece stores. Isn't it funny when good water is freely available in NZ it is also very expensive in NZ. In othe parts of the world where it is not so freely available through the taps it is so much cheaper.

Now that we are not boiling water and carting it home in our backpacks, I am noticing for the last two days I have not had a headache when I woke up. I guess we are now drinking enough water.

It is important to have drinking water and to keep hydrated particularly over here where it is so humid.