Welcome to Kuala Lumpur (Day 3)

I woke up on the train, just outside of Kuala Lumpur feeling well-rested, but a bit disoriented. I got off the train and wandered around until I found the cab cue. Malaysia was not nearly as English-friendly as Singapore had been, but it was okay. I thought I knew about scary cab rides from childhood experienced in NY and my many trips to Mexico, but Malaysia was something different. The crosswalk shows a person running rapidly, which I thought was funny until my driver began to accelerate toward a pedestrian and they had to run out of the way. I made it to my next guesthouse where it appeared everyone was still sleeping. The main guy that worked the front looked like a Malaysian Joey Ramone. If you have ever been a fan of the Ramones, you know that Joey was a weird looking guy. He dated a family friend for a while, so I met him before. He was a tall guy, weird teeth, awkward looking. At a Knicks game that they went to he was repeatedly mistaken for Howard Stern. Anyhow, this guy looked like that, but Malaysian, but spoke English with a British accent. In any case, he was very nice and invited me in to wait for my sister. She showed up about a half hour later in cab from the airport. We were both pretty exhausted, so we washed up and went to grab some quick food. I had, what else, Roast duck and char siu pork. My sister had some chinese seafood soup that was very light, but still flavorful. We then went back to the guesthouse for a nap.
After napping for a bit, we headed out to find some Islamic Arts museum. We got a little lost on the MRT and ended up in a very poor Indian neighborhood. Unfortunately, just as I was about to snap a pic of this large housing project, it began to downpour on us.

We ran for shelter and found ourselves in Little India. All of the sights, sounds and smells were amazing. It was similar to Little India in Singapore, but a little more real and gritty. Still, there were many clothing and jewelery stores and many Malaysians around. In fact, right in the Little India area is a huge mosque that they would not allow us to visit because we missed the visiting hour for that day. We met a short and very talkative Malay man who told us to meet him back there the next day for an "authentic Malay dinner for a small fee." We weren't interested, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. He seemed very friendly, but we figured he had an angle, so decided to stay clear of him in the future. So, we headed on to Chinatown. The entrance to Chinatown was nice and open with a big overarching gate that seemed very inviting.

However, inside was a chaotic mess of vendors screaming and fighting for attention. What started as two rows of vendors lining either side of the street became a narrow little tunnel that was way too small for my tall self to fit through the deeper and deeper we made it in.

Actually, there were two parallel tunnels, covered with tarps with occasional breaks in every few blocks. We made it out to the other end and found this

We headed back through the other tunnel to get back to a Malay street vendor we had seen near the entrance. The reason? because I saw how quickly they were pumping out chicken and beef satays.

they also had a large assortment of foods that just looked amazing. At this point, we put all thoughts of what is sanitary aside in order to enjoy the most authentic cuisine available.

The flavors of this dish for example were amazing. And we paid about $2 each for a ton of food including this.

It was amazing, curry and chicken, lamb, spicy sour, rich and lots of Satay! We found a new hostel right near all of the action and decided to move the next day. We continued to walk around and saw this artwork, which we found fitting for Malaysia, but wished we had in the US.

We finally started to feel tired and began to head back. On the way, we found this street food fair that occurred each night and was only one block from our guesthouse.

We stopped and had a few beers before returning to the guesthouse and just talked. Although it is not a dry country, Malaysia discourages alcohol consumption by charging about as much as we do here for alcohol, so keep this in mind if you are planning to party in Malaysia. Not the best party environment. We went back to the guesthouse and used the free internet for a while. Later that night I ran out for a quick bite and found this great Malay/Indian place and got some chicken and some lamb.

You can almost see the flavors here, There was some spicy, some sweet, some curry, very rich, just amazing and for less than $4, this was a steal. We decided to get some rest and get an early start on the next day.