In chinese shops you must always pay when you are served. At a buffet you take your plate to the cashier, who arbitrarily assesses the value. Mostly based how many different things you have. If you take a huge pile of one item on your rice it can be very cheap, but take a tiny bit of of many things and it can get expensive.

At Malay and Indian shops you pay when you leave. If it is a buffet style then a staffperson comes around to valuate your meal. If they are busy or just slack, they may not get to you before you have eaten all the evidence. Then you must try and explain what you had. Most Malaysians speak excellent English, but describing what you had, well look at the selection above.

Malaysia is famous for its "Hawker Stalls". These can be mobile stalls, booths along a wide spot in the road or several renting space in a chinese shophouse. Sorry no photos of these... next trip.

With hawker stalls, the ethnicity of the vendor governs the payment method as described above. But in the case of the chinese shophouse scenario, the house sells the drinks, which of course must be paid for when served. But if your meal is from a malay stall, you must remember to pay before you leave.

One of my favourite meals when in Georgetown, Penang is tandoori chicken and garlic naan. This evening I was trying a new place, a small Pakistani shop up behind the police station. It had been raining heavily and some streets were flooded.

Many shops in Asia have no front wall/door when they are open. A metal mesh barrier or roll shutter is shut when the shop is closed. So there was nothing to stop an unwanted guest from visiting the establishment.

I am sorry I was not able to get photos of the event as it is common to eat with your hand in Malaysia, so mine was covered in tandoori sauce.

Anyway, all of a sudden there was a commotion at the front of the shop. A 1.5 meter long monitor lizard was skittering along the floor. It could not grasp the tile floor with its feet/claws so was essentially swimming across the floor in a very random and wild manner. No doubt alarmed at being in such an alien environment.

All the Pakistani patrons ran out of the shop. Exclaiming and gesticulating in the way south Asians are prone to do when excited. It came straight for me, I raised my feet up off the floor and it went right under my chair. The poor beast swam for cover under some stainless steel food counters. The staff were frantic. Some shouting what I do not know. Others down on the floor trying to spot where it was. This went on for some ten minutes or so and by then a crowd had formed outside trying to see what the commotion was all about.

In my opinion the thing to do was get everyone out of the way, so it was not surrounded, giving it an escape route, then poke it with a broom. It would take the escape route provided. But it was not my place to tell the locals how to deal with the situation.

Eventually it started trashing about, alarming the staff down on the floor, who got up and ran. This opened an exit and it came out from under the equipment and under me again on the way back out to the street.

It was decided that it had been driven up out of the sewers by the previous heavy rain that caused the (open) storm drains to flood.