Leaving already? Goodbye KL (Day 5)

The next day we got up early and planned to head to the bus station to book an alternate route to the Pulua Perhentian for the weekend. While I waited for my sister, I talked to the lady that worked at the front desk of the hostel. She said she was from Jakarta, Indonesia, but that he husband lived in KL working as an airplane mechanic. She spends about a month twice a year there visiting, which sounded like a very difficult lifestyle to me. After we got to the bus station we found out that all of the tickets to the islands had been booked, so our only recourse was to go to the train station and book the 12 hr. ride to Khota Baru. While we were out it started pouring rain, so we stopped by this little alley covered with tarps for some tea.

It was relatively dry in here, but the tea wasn't great. It was alright though, it kept us warm and dry.

While under here, we saw a NYC sized rat that could easily have been a small cat run by and this old Chinese woman, without batting an eye, booted this thing in the ribs and sent it flying and then scurrying away...amazing!!!

I picked up some Malay food for the road from my favorite street spot near the Chinatown gate and we were off to the train station. Our train was late so I got down to business while we waited. MMMMM!!!!

Well, not really sure what this was, but it was that same spicy, coconutty, curried-ish chicken, but the girl threw in an egg this time and some delicious greens in coconut milk. I'll miss you KL. The train was crowded and we were the only non-Malays on it. I guess Kota Bahru is not a popular destination for tourists. This one clearly working class, poorer guy kept playing this horrible American 80s glam rock type ballad on his cell phone over and over again at volumes that the entire car could here. Very uncomfortable sleep as we crept through the jungle at about 30 MPH.

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.

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.