I teach a bunch of classes at Google. This time Google asked me to teach a week long Machine Learning bootcamp in Kuala Lumpur. I had done a road trip in Malaysia before so I was really excited to go there and re-live some of those moments, albeit without the awesome group of friends I was traveling with last time. Although never did I expect every day of this trip to be filled with adventure.

So it started off by renting a car at KLIA. I was tired after a layover in Tokyo on the halloween weekend and I was looking forward to crashing as soon as I reach my hotel (maybe not crashing, sleeping. Let’s not say crashing). Ok, so being used to driving in US by now, my understanding was that you stop, when someone else has the right of the way, makes sense? The car behind me did not expect me to stop (because my car was bigger than the scooter which had the right of the way) so no prizes for guessing that I got rear-ended. The driver of the car apologized, and he settled by paying cash to the car rental company. I took pictures of the cars and everything and left).

In a rush to get to the hotel, I did not wait to buy a sim card at the airport (my Verizon plan doesn’t have international roaming) and turns out my GPS almost stopped working. I probably had the worst experience with GPS ever this time at the airport and my drives to hotels would turn into 45+min drive on first two days, until I bought a sim card.

The class itself was fun, but busy. I was staying at Marriott Putrayajaya, which supposedly had one of the best pools around, but it wasn’t until the 5 day at the time of check out that I requested a late check out so that I could check out the pool.

While returning the car, the car company denied they were about this. The same person who is in this picture said she is not aware about any reported incident until I showed her her own pictures when she said “oh that accident, ok no problem sir”! Thank you Europcar! This is why I said take as many pictures as you can if you are ever in a car crash.

So this is how a short, but memorable trip ended. For the first time I’m really excited about a trip ending because as I finish writing this, I pack my laptop at the Malaysia airlines lounge to board a flight to India for Diwali. Nothing beats the feeling of meeting two of my high school best friends after 2 long years. Can’t wait to board this plane now.