During this last trip to Kuala Lumpur, we elected to rent a car instead of relying on taxis to get around. Having to drive there was inevitable, so I felt there wasn't a need to put it off, plus we thought it might be more convenient. However, I did buy a Garmin nuvi 770 along with the Garmin Malaysia map before we left the States. Here's some of the things we learned from our experience

• Your rental car won't likely be new. The one we got was a Proton Perdana with 118k km on it. The Proton is a Malaysian car manufacturer, and is the reason why cars by other manufacturers imported into Malaysia are stuck with 100% duty, as the government tries to grow its business. The trunk didn't close very well well and it took us a couple of times to figure out how to stop the car alarm from going off. Worst of all, the cigarette lighter didn't work, so the GPS that we thought was plugged in quit working on us halfway to Bangi, where we will be working while we are in Malaysia. It was a good thing this happened during a Monday test drive before the Tuesday drive that was for the important meeting. We discovered a place to get Garmin supplies in the Megamall, by the way, as we needed some way to charge up the GPS after this unfortunate discovery.


• Tunai means "change" at the toll booth--that's the cash line you should be in if you don't have one of those automatic payment things for the tolls.


• The SMART tunnel is your friend--it avoids a heck of a lot of traffic no matter if you're going to or from KL and the time of day.


• The highways make no sense. Don't even try to understand them.


• Signage on the highways is related to other highways you can go to, not the one you are currently on. If you don't know the highway you're on, this can be very confusing.


• That said, the GPS is your best friend. Trust the GPS on the highway routes.


• However, the GPS isn't very knowledgeable about addresses (at least with the current Garmin Malaysia map); once you get close to where you are going, shut off the GPS and start looking around. For example, we couldn't get our office location to show up using the address function on the GPS and had to use the Internet to determine its Lat/Long coordinates (which actually worked great).


• Jalan means street--you don't need to enter that into the GPS.


• The highways have both names and numbers, but you'll rarely see them used consistently. You'll have to learn them independently. In this way, KL is very much like LA.


• The scooters and bikes are like gnats. Unfortunately, you can't swat them.


• If you haven't bought your Malaysian map for your GPS, don't. There's a free one you can add to it that people here swear by. One of our PETRONAS colleagues sent us the link for the community created Malaysia GPS maps, which we tested on Friday and works better than the Garmin map.


• It is no worse than driving in New York City. For some of you, that statement will be comforting. For others, that will scare you.


• Having a rental car is better than the cabs in the sense that it does free you to go whenever and wherever you need to. Parking is available, if always for a little bit of change (RM1 and up).


• The tolls are small change, but constant. Getting a Touch and Go (an electronic card that you load with money) is probably the best thing--you can get one of those by visiting a service booth that is at the left of some toll plazas.


• Yes, there are traffic jams. However, we learned that the recent 40% increase in gas prices (Malaysia removed a government subsidy that had kept prices lower than market rate overnight about a month ago) has already had an effect on reducing the cars on the road. When the average salary in the region is less than US$20k a year, doubling the cost of gas is true cause for people to change their habits, as well as complain loudly. We'll see if the government holds the line on this or if the subsidy will return because of certain campaign promises from out-of-office politicians.

Overall, driving on the opposite side of the road (similar to England) is fairly easy to get used to, although I kept turning on the windshield wipers instead of getting the turn signal as I expected. I'm sure there's much more I'll be reporting on this area in the future.