Kuala Lumpur and the start of a new leg of the journey

Pre-trip self-portrait

Actually no; this one will be my official pre-trip portrait.

June 28, 2011

After managing about an hour of sleep, Lise drove me the hour and a half to Orly airport in the early morning darkness. Rain soaked the roads and we drove right into an impressive thunderstorm, making me wonder if my flight might be delayed.

It wasn’t, and I easily made it onto my Air Asia budget flight to Kuala Lumpur. I had to constantly remind myself of how much money I had saved through the thirteen hour flight. For someone who refuses to buy anything on an airplane, this was as close as I could get to concentration camp conditions. “You want peanuts? Three Euros! Water? Two Euros! Hahaha!” Luckily, I had brought with me a couple sandwiches, but to my dismay, before they took meal orders, they announced that no outside food was permitted to be eaten on the flight. I had to sneak my rations when nobody else was looking. It was like the capitalist of Khmer Rouge work camps in which I had to sneak my food because I hadn’t paid for it instead of because all food is to be communal. In the dry cabin, I finished my liter of water I had filled in the airport bathroom far too early, and nearly broke down and bought their obscenely overpriced water. But I remained strong, yet parched.

We flew over some mountains. Here they are.

Thank you Air Asia, for your wonderful service!

Just as we took off half a day before, we landed in an intense thunderstorm. For the last hour of the flight my eyes were glued on the window, watching the lightning burst through the darkness around us. On the bus into town, as the sky developed into morning, the lighting and rain continued as a mirror image of my morning drive to the airport half a day earlier. It made me feel like I really hadn’t traveled so far.

I was in and out of sleep in fits on the bus, as I felt I had been for the previous 24 hours in the plane, the waiting area, and in bed in France. In a daze between dozes, I caught a glimpse of the Petronas Towers, formerly the world’s tallest buildings, bursting out of the skyline in the morning’s orange haze, and I started to get that tingle of excitement for whatever it was that was about to come. Arriving in the city tossed me back into awareness and, despite the myth of jet lag, I hit the ground running.

The lightrail into town was obscenely clean and orderly. Everyone stood in line quietly as they waited for the train But wait, isn’t this public transport? Isn’t this Asia? Shouldn’t it be a free for all struggle as in other places in the region? Shouldn’t the train be grimy and graffitied as in most public transport? There were signs everywhere with illustrations of all the things that you were not permitted to do. Eating, drinking, smoking, spitting, begging, selling things, and more that seemed either incredibly obscure or too obvious to bother mentioning. Malaysia was already throwing me for a loop.

As soon as I got off, I rushed past the Lightrail station’s McDonald’s and Burger King and KFC, hurried across the street and ducked into the first humble-looking eating establishment. I looked helplessly at the food on display and the menu, of which I only recognized a few of the south Indian dishes. The guy looked at me blankly. He didn’t understand my questions, but then again, my speech probably didn’t make much sense anyway. I saw something I recognized as one of the more popular dishes for Malaysian breakfast. “Umm…Roti Cannai?” He understood and motioned for me to sit down. The place was dirty by Malaysian standards, but it made me feel comfortable. I was dirty too.

Within minutes he arrived with a hot, puffy, flat bread, a small dish of yellow curry, and a cup of spoons and forks. I sneered at what appeared to be him accommodating the westerner with western eating utensils. Please sir, I thought, I know how to eat Indian food. I dug in with my right hand, tearing apart the tender bread and sliding it into the sauce. The moment it hit my lips, I gave a little squeal of excitement, then looked around hoping nobody had heard. This was the best curry. I don’t know how they did it, but the flavors were so rich, so intense, it made me realize this would be a good day, nay, a good trip.

This is where you eat.

Halfway through, I noticed the people around me were not using their hands, but were opting for the spoon and fork. Even though these were Indian Malaysians eating a south Indian dish, they were not using their hands. I would eventually realize that almost all dishes in Malaysia are eaten with this, seemingly bizarre, choice of utensils. It wasn’t as fun, but I switched my approach to avoid looking like a slob.

After wandering around in the rain for a few hours looking for the cheapest place to stay, I settled for the Lee Mun Guesthouse. Looking back on it now, this must be one of the dirtiest places in Malaysia. The walls were cardboard and the mattresses were infested with bedbugs. By my third day my body was covered with embarrassingly large bites. I shared a room with an Algerian French guy who had been traveling for about six months. His English was pretty impressive considering he started learning English in Southeast Asia. With my six months of learning French in Africa, we spoke in a mix of the two languages. He told the surly Chinese managers of the place about my bedbug problem. Within minutes, one of them came into the room bare-chested and started scolding me for not telling him about the bedbugs. I could barely understand him at first and thought I had done something wrong. But no, he just wanted to switch me to a different room while he got the mattress “serviced”. Either way, the bed bugs were not what I feared most about the place. Although it was my first experience with them, I have heard travelers complaining about the bugs for years, and just figured the little monsters had finally called my number. No, my real fear about the place was the Indian lady boys (or more PC, “Hijra”) that hung around outside and used the place as a brothel. The first time I exited the guesthouse, a large one was standing right around the corner blocking my path and before I knew it, he was in my face saying, with a heavy Indian accent, “Hey big boy! You want some SEX.” The way he said it with the heavy emphasis on “sex”, nearly shouting the word, would have been comedic if it had not terrified me so much. I was speechless and ducked under his arm and hustled down the street. Still it was better than the next cheapest option. A cliché backpacker’s hangout with a bunch of slow-moving hippies who looked like they hadn’t seen the light of day in weeks, man. When I went their to check the prices of the beds, the Indian manager found it a more pressing matter to offer me weed before even showing me the dorms. In a country that has the death penalty for trafficking marijuana, and can imprison you for not turning in someone that you are with that has it, I would rather take my chances staying at a ladyboy brothel with bedbugs.

The Lee Mun guesthouse seemed like an anomaly in Kuala Lumpur. It would have taken deeper searching than I did to find other signs of the cities grime. It was clean, orderly and there were very few signs of poverty. All of my time was spent running errands things I needed for the trip. This led me to all sorts of markets and malls. Chow Kit market for a blue tarp, the Little India Market for headphones, Chinatown’s night market for a knife, etc. The weirdest part, though, was finding a snorkel. People said I should go to the malls for that. This led me into the kind of environment that makes me uncomfortable back in America: malls. In Malaysia, though, where malls are far more upscale, extravagant and large I could just treat this as a new cultural experience. One of them, I found out later, was Southeast Asia’s largest mall, no small feat. Another was located at the foot of the Petronas Towers. Rich people from all over the world were congregated here for shopping adventures. Big Aussie dudes in tanktops and shorts rubbed shoulders at the food court with Arab women in full-face veils. It could have been an airport if it wasn’t so fancy, and the people were in such good spirits. I only got in on the action and got a neoprene case for my Macbook, now decrepit after so many months of traveling. It took me going to the annual Scuba Convention of Malaysia to find a snorkel though. Although the malls seemed like a waste of time, they were an experience that showed me something about upperclass Malaysia, and even upperclass PLANET EARTH.

Rollercoaster and theme park...in a mall!

Giant hand...in a theme park...in a mall!!!

Southeast Asia's largest mall.

I had a little more than a week to kill before Lise arrived in Singapore, but I couldn’t spend more than a few days in Kuala Lumpur as there are other things to accomplish in life. I could have spent more time in Kuala Lumpur just eating. It is difficult to get a bad meal in this country. Basically there are three food genres in the country: Malay, Indian and Chinese. I found the Chinese to be the least interesting, partly because of the lack of spice, although I would allow someone to challenge me on that statement because I might not have tried everything. Laksa, one of the country’s famous dishes is like pho with balls. Literally, it frequently includes fish balls (like a meatball but made with fish I guess. Rice noodles in a curry broth with an assortment of tofu, cockles, maybe some animal parts, plus an array of condiments like chili paste, lime and fish sauce. It’s the kind of dish that makes me curse the Malaysians for not having more war or poverty, leading to mass immigration to places like Seattle, where they would open cheap restaurants for their countrymen and me. That is an awful thing to say, but I am really sad that after leaving Malaysia, getting Malaysian food will be so hard to get.