I wrote two recent posts about little things in America that I particularly enjoyed this past trip: parking lots & free water in restaurants.

As I returned to Malaysia a couple days ago, I immediately was hit with an example of a great little thing about Malaysia: car mechanics.

I’ve never had a great car mechanic until I moved to Malaysia, but I sure had a bunch of nightmare experiences in America. It seemed that every time I needed to take my car to the shop in America, I couldn’t get it back until I paid a $400 or $500 ransom for some technical little nob or switch or tire or hose or belt or some other made up piece of nonsense. Remember the time I put $500 new shocks on the car. I couldn’t even tell the difference. Remember the time I had the car toed only to find out only the battery was dead. Remember the time that we spent all of our Honeymoon money on putting new tires on?  Remember the time the coolant leaked out and there was hissing and whining from both my vehicle and my mouth when the bill came.

But in Malaysia, my mechanic experiences have been so much better. Here’s what happened when I returned home to my car in Penang, which hadn’t been used for 6 weeks. I couldn’t get it started. I hopped on my motorbike and went down over the hill to my mechanic who lives nearby. I told him I had a problem starting the car. He says, okay, I’ll be right over to take a look. That’s right, Malaysian mechanics make house calls. About fifteen minutes later, one of his workers showed up, jumped the car, checked out a few things, gave me a few instructions and left. I was only $4 poorer when I got his bill.

This is typical with experiences that I’ve had with a variety of mechanics. Many times I’ve dropped off the car, they drive me to work, and then will drop off the car to me when it’s finished. Really!

This is a wonderful perk of living in Malaysia. Mechanics, that even if they are ripping you off, you don’t mind because it’s still 1000 times cheaper than it would be in America.

So to all those Malaysian mechanics out there who treat their customers right, thank you. It’s definitely a great little thing about living in Malaysia.