Bear, Diah and Pasha

Do You Want Flies With That?

Posted on the May 28th, 2009 under Life by Papa Bear

Do You Want Fries With That?

That would be one of the most asked questions at some fast food restaurants but that would not be the case if you are buying something to eat at the Machap rest area. Over there, the question would be: “Do you want flies with that?”

If you are travelling between Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru on the NSE, you would not miss a rest area called the Machap R&R. Last week, while driving back from Johor Bahru to Shah Alam, we had the “luxury” of stopping over for a short break at this rest area . From the car, everything looked great as the rest area was recently renovated by PLUS.

They Are Everywhere!

However, once I stepped out of the car and went to one of the stalls there, I was greeted by hundreds of flies. While the few hundred of them were doing the welcome to rest area Machap song, there were few thousands other flies were busy “promoting” the food and goods for sale to travellers… What a sight!

I went to the upper portion of the rest area. The automatic escalator was impressive and once I reached the top floor, I saw the whole eating place was sealed by glass walls. I thought that was a noble idea to ensure that the flies stay out while people are eating inside…

Let’s Do Some Maths

Well, it did not really 100% work as there were thousands of flies queueing up on the glass walls and doors waiting to enter the area. Imagine this:

1000 flies waiting to enter the eating area. If one person open the glass door to enter, and1% of the flies would take the opportunity to sneak in. There would be 10 flies per person. If 100 people went in, there would be about 1000 flies and each person that goes in must come out and that would mean at least 2000 flies in there…

They Can See You

With that, you can imagine that whatever you order in there, flies are complimentary… Not bad for a free source of protein ha! At the same time, you would get to experience a scenario that is normally common in some sci-fi movies and in this case, you would be trapped in a glass enclosure surrounded by thousands of flies staring with their compound eyes… Would you still eat there? Some people did but no way for me…

Blame It On The Chickens

I talked to one of the sellers there and I was told that there are some chicken farms nearby and things would get extremely bad during the rainy seasons and there was no way to get rid of the flies…

Luckily my son was asleep and therefore, he stayed in the car with my wife… If not he would have a freaking time chasing after the flies and my wife would have been having a busy time wiping his hands and feet shoes…

So, the next time when you drive on the NSE, look out for Machap rest area and stop to look at the wonder of the flies.

P/S:

There was a fly in our car a day after we came back and looking at the size, it must have followed us back from Machap…

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