A Day of exploring the KL (Day 4)

We woke up the next morning early, got some showers and moved our things to our new hostel in Chinatown. We left our things there and headed out in search of the Islamic Arts Museum, Round 2. Only this time it was in the deadly heat and humidity. We new we were on the right track when we saw this mosque off in the distance.

Eventually, after much roaming and running across some scary streets, we found it.

And we found the cleanest squat toilet I've ever seen. It was a surprise to find these things all over the place, I'd say about half the toilets in Malaysia were squat toilets.

I really wasn't feeling the whole museum thing, but my sister got some decent pics. She's the artist in the family, so it was probably more inspiring for her than it was for me. Afterward, we headed up to Little India for some lunch. We wandered down this street of food stalls, flower shops, and, what else, motor bikes.

Eventually, we found this little plaza of foods, but they were all Malay. But you know what they say, "When in Malaysia...". We got these delicious greens that were basically collard greens cooked in coconut milk with some great seasoning and some spice to it.

This was also very good, some kind of beef in this spicy red sauce. It was very, very delicious.

Since my sister is a vegetarian except for fish, we ordered this guy.

It was lightly battered and grilled whole, which freaked her out a little, but the meat was so tender and delicious. It was very flavorful and the cheeks were amazing. Didn't eat the eyes though.

We then ran into the talkative little Malaysian man that we had met the day before in the same area. He thought we were there to take him up on his offer, but we were not. He was short, thin, and looked somewhat Chinese, however, when we mentioned that we were staying in Chinatown, he flipped on us. He became very upset, saying "the Chinaman is an aggressive con-man who thinks he is no longer Chinese because he has moved to America." He then proclaimed that "the Chinaman is nothing more than a yellow baboon." The racial tension is very evident here in KL with the main groups being Malay, Chinese, and Indian. The Indians and Malaysians seemed to intermingle well, but apparently the bulk of the tension was between the Malay and the Chinese. This led to the race riots that occurred here during the late '60s.
We then wandered over to Pudaraya bus station to buy bus tickets up to Pulua Perhentian. This place is Hell! It was a pressure-cooker for the racial tension with members of different races working for different bus lines and trying to grab you as their customers. When a Malay man tried to snatch us from an Indian man, the Indian man began shoving the Malay man and yelling and, probably, cursing at him. They were all booked so we quickly escaped back to our hostel and watched Pirates of the Caribbean with a very international group. We went out walking around the Chinatown area that night, got some good street food like Satays and what not and then went back exhausted and got some rest.