Kuala Lumpur

Day 18-20, August 3-5, 2008 (No Malaria)

Oh, the highs and lows that are Kuala Lumpur. The highs are the city and its people. KL is really an amazing city and nothing like what I expected. The lows are my accommodations while in KL. Let me explain…

On a recommendation, I booked a room at a hostel called the Green Hut right in the heart of KL. It’s a great location and the whole city is within walking distance. When I arrived, I thought that is was everything a hostel should be: great lobby with backpackers getting to know each other, small breakfast buffet for the weary traveler, and a friendly staff. They even had an outdoor balcony where people could congregate to share their adventures abroad. So far, so good, right?

The illusion that I had of the travelers paradise quickly evaporated once I saw my room. I’ll attach a picture and just say that it smelled worse than it looked. Luckily, or maybe unfortunately, my nostrils got used to the odor after a while so I could focus on the filth around me. My room reminded me of a prison cell complete with bars on the window. It doesn’t end there.

After getting over the shock of the room, I decide to get out and see the city (more on that later), have a great day, and then return to my room to endure the remaining waking moments I had left until I could drift off into a well needed sleep. The only problem is that when I get back to my room, it more resemble a cave than a room. There were bed bugs everywhere. Seriously, I took some napkins and started a bed bug genocide and they just kept coming. I was going to sit down and try to type some for the blog but, like and advancing army, the bed bug onslaught was relentless. At one point, I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. I would either have to get a new room or get a new hostel (which is when I learned my lesson, pay by the day - not all at once). The staff WAS accommodating. They had a room that opened up and said that it was much better. Also, they told me that the hostel was fumigated once a month and it was occurring the next day so the bugs shouldn’t be a problem after that no matter in which room I was. So at 2 AM on Sunday night, I entered my new room. It is smaller, slightly cleaner, no window, bad AC, smelled better though, and LESS bugs. Yes, the new room still had bugs but a manageable amount to kill. Instead of a prison cell though, it was more like solitary confinement. I was wondering how the rest of the weary travelers in the hostel were faring and then realized that they were probably all in the lobby earlier to escape their own versions of hell unfolding in their rooms.

So Monday comes: fumigation day. The night before, due to my issues, one of the staff had shown me a small sign they had taped by the stairs:


The sign was so well hidden, nobody in the entire place was aware of the fumigation or the instructions that went along with it. I was up early on Monday and trying to clarify exactly what the staff wanted me to do with my luggage for the day while pest control was there. As I was speaking to them and the other guests were rising and shining (and itching, I’m sure), they over heard bits of my conversation. I had people coming up to me with a myriad of questions:

“What do we do with our stuff?”
“I just checked in, do I have to get my stuff out of the room already?”
“So I have to be out of here until at least 4?”

I am sure that when the fumigation started, there were still people in bed chocking and sputtering blissfully unaware until that moment that they would be in the middle of a giant bug bomb. Luckily, I was gone by then.

I arrived back to me new, less-bug, better smelling room that evening to find it now smelling worse and with a few new friends on the wall to let me know that the fumigation had been a totally futile effort. Thankfully, my “bug-killing” skills are keeping me ahead of their “human-biting” skills.

I decided that, albeit not the best situation, there are people that have to live like this every day and I could endure a few nights. Maybe it’ll be good for me somehow. I have no clue how…but maybe?

Oh, I have just one last thing about the hostel that I actually just noticed today. In the lobby, they have a set of clocks showing the time in various cities around the world. Can anybody tell me what’s wrong with this picture (for starters, I’ll give a hint…New York is exactly 12 hours behind Kuala Lumpur).

Despite my 18th century living conditions, I have very much enjoyed Kuala Lumpur. It is a little more expensive than I anticipated but has a charm and culture for a big city that I think even Singapore lacked. I had been told that KL was dirty and dangerous but I haven’t experienced that side of the city at all. I have found KL to be extremely friendly, welcoming, relatively clean (except for the aforementioned room), easy to navigate, and modern. I only have three days here plus one before I go to Thailand at the end of the week and think that I could have spent a few more here.

Kuala Lumpur, or KL for short, is a metropolitan area of over 7 million people and the capitol of Malaysia. Malaysia gained independence from the British in 1957 and is celebrating its 51 year of independence this August 31st. Like most of Malaysia, it is inhabited mainly by Malay Muslims, Indians, and Chinese. To me, it seems like the races get along pretty well throughout the entire country. KL seems to be going through a energetic revitalization after declining throughout the 70’s and 80’s with many restaurants, clubs, and shopping malls all being relatively new downtown.

In KL, I walked around a lot. For some of the more remote areas, I did a hop-on, hop-off bus tour for a day. The bus goes around the city and stops at around 20 places. There is commentary on the bus and then you can get off and see whatever you’d like during the day only to get back on the next bus that comes by. I prefer to walk a city but this is a big city and I am only here for a short time so it was a good way to go.

While in KL,

I did some bargain shopping in the Chinatown market. The guy next in the red shirt is making sugar cane juice, one of my new favorites…

…Ascended to the observation deck of the Petronas Twin Towers which were, until recently, the tallest buildings on Earth...

…had some interesting meals including “Grilled Stingray” (Sorry Cayman friends) and “Bak Kut Teh” which is, to my best guess, pig-part soup. I liked this but had a similar pig-part soup in Kuching called Khuy Chop which I prefered.

…and went to the Batu Caves outside of town. These were really incredible. They are a natural limestone cave formation about 8 miles from the city center.

One of the largest caves houses a Hindu temple and can be reached only after scaling 272 steep steps.

There are a ton of monkeys here and for the first time in SE Asia, I did not receive the “No Feed Monkey” speech. After thinking about all the monkey rules I had been given, I realized that not only do I look like the kind of person that would like to feed the monkeys; I am the kind of person that would like to feed the monkeys. The park rangers must be able to spot me a mile away. Encouraged by the lack of written or verbal warnings, my impulses got the better of me and I rolled the nearest monkey a piece of duku which is a small local fruit. He grabbed it and I watched him chow down.

I also quickly realized, as I was running from the half a monkey troop that was descending upon me, why the “No Feed Monkey” rule is so pervasive. I was telling my taxi driver about this and he was laughing saying how he once saw a monkey steal a camera from a little girl, bite it, realize that it wasn’t food, and then break it on the ground. No more feeding monkeys for me…maybe.

The other big attraction at the Batu Caves is the Dark Cave which is very creatively named. I took a two hour tour of the cave which is done with minimal lighting. Every place that my small headlamp illuminated was complete with bats, guano, cockroaches, water falls, stalactites, stalagmites, spiders, snails, and centipedes. It kind of reminded me of my room back at the hostel. This was my first time trekking around a cave and found it a very interesting experience. I would like to go back and do the four hour at some point where one really gets down and dirty.

I did have one very new experience to me; I got totally lost my first day here. I have become disoriented before in big cities before but never become as lost as I was on Sunday in KL. I had just left Chinatown and thought that I was headed the right direction. I was getting a little suspicious when nothing looked familiar to me but on one's first day in a big city, it is hard to remember everything one passes. When I finally decided that I needed to ask for help in finding my way home, I discovered one of the more unique Malaysian traits. Upon figuring out you are lost, everyone you talk to will try to give directions regardless if they understand you or have no clue which way you really have to go. I don't know if it is an overblown sense of hospitality that they don't want any visitor to feel lost or an overblown sense of pride that they wouldn't know every nook of their town but either way, it made for an interesting walk home.

Tomorrow, the end of my third week away, I am off to Cambodia. This is one of the destinations that I have been looking forward to most. I hope that it lives up to my expectations.

Again, thanks for all of the emails, comments, and questions. Please keep them coming. I am going to try to find a few minutes over the next few days to answer questions to which I have not had a chance to get. So if I haven't got back to you yet, sorry. I will try soon.

David