I’ve spent the past week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a training course. That was great but not what this post is about.

This post is about one of the nights.

A group of us decided to go for a walk with the aim of shopping at a local market. We left the hotel and before we had even reached the corner, one of our group yelled “he’s snatched my bag!” Two guys on a moped had taken it from her and scooted around the corner.

We walked back to the hotel so she could cancel her credit cards, notify the police and see what she should do about her passport. The hotel staff were helpful and escorted her to the police station and arranged transport for her to go to the embassy the following day.

The really impressive thing to me was that she’d scanned her passport and her Korean Alien Card (she is Dutch and working in Korea) into the shared drive at her work, her home and to her husband. I will be doing this myself on Monday though with my HK ID card rather than the Korean one (given I don’t have one of those). As a result of her planning, she was able to get replacements within one day.

A smaller group decided to try our luck the second time. We ventured out with nothing but some cash in our pockets. We ended up at the Central Markets where the shopping was pretty good. My bargaining skills came in handy and are being fine-tuned with every negotiation. I’m actually starting to enjoy it. After some shopping, we needed to eat so wandered up a small mall-like area that was lined with food stores / restaurants on one side and knock-off shops (and probably some originals) on the other.

Many of the restaurants had tables on the path and there were a few stores that displayed their goods that way too. Quite suddenly, it seemed like a lot of those with food or watch carts were wheeling them up the road and making a lot of noise. We soon saw what the fuss was about as a large group of police appeared and seemed to be confiscating tables, goods and even some chairs.

As it turns out, they give the shops about 3 minutes to get all their gear off the pathways otherwise it’s confiscated. It apparently stems from the new parliament wanting to crack down on corruption. The police were allocated different patrol areas with the expectation that they wouldn’t have relationships / arrangements with those in their new area.

This particular confiscation exercise was then designed by the police as a reminder to the store owners of what they can do and supposedly, within a few weeks, there would be arrangements between both groups of people so nothing would be confiscated next time. In the meantime, the store owners keep ‘lookouts’ stationed at both ends of the road so they receive advanced warning.

It was an exciting evening and a reminder that these kinds of things do happen. I had flashbacks to my Guiding / Scouting days as the motto flashed through my head – “Be Prepared”.

* Thanks to NWA for the title to this post.