Day 2 - In KL with Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles

Ganesh is the Hindu deity known as the Remover of Obstacles, recognisable by having an elephant's head. The groom Gan (properly known as Muraliganesh, aka Gunny) lived up to his namesake (both pictured left) by removing the normal obstacles facing the honky tourist and taking us down backstreets and up narrow staircases straight to the best Indian food, tea, saris, bling and phone credit (not strictly Indian but also very handy).

After a buffet breakfast in the hotel, I was starting to worry we weren't seeing the 'real' KL. But we were seeing a KL with a utopian range of breakfast options, so I wasn't all that worried.

Anyway, that was put to rest as Gan had offered to take us shopping for wedding clothes. Despite being days away from the world's largest wedding, Gan is being very generous with his time to play host to visitors. We walked a couple of Ks from our hotel to Little India and realised that the hotel air-con had fooled us into forgetting we were in the tropics (or sub-tropics... I'm not quite sure. Let's just say it was humid outside). Despite this, we were the only ones wearing shorts. It was Paris all over again (except this time we got smiles instead of looks of horror).

First stop was for some tea and sweets. Gan took us straight to the air-conditioned backroom. A good lesson - the cooking happens at the front of the shop, the air-conditioning happens at the back. At the bottom of the photo you can see the bright colours of the sweets. The tea was the 'unsweetened' version, and I can't even fathom what the sweenetened version would have been like.

Next we met up with Mel, another friend of the couple, and headed off to find some sarees to wear for the wedding ceremony and reception. As you can see from the photos, there is plenty of choice and what you see here is just a small portion of the shops - they are massive. It made me think the Australian government and retailers must have conspired to limit our choice of clothes.

After selecting our sarees, Gan then took us to a tailor, where we selected patterns for the saree blouses. Again, for a shop that consisted of two men sitting in a space less than 10sqm, they offered a huge choice.

Gan and Matt were possibly the world's two most patient men in the face of hours of shopping. Matt may even have managed to pick up some handsome Indian style suits.

Lunch was another special adventure, but I'll have to tell you about that later, as Gan is about to take us shopping again.