Kuala Lumpur Skyline
Bukit Bintang Plaza, a block from where I stayed.With no camera to document my Kuala Lumpur experience, I grabbed some pictures off the net and figured I would write...
After spending two too many days staying in Kuta, the seedy heart of Bali, I bid farewell to Juan and Max and boarded the plane to Kuala Lumpur to renew my Indonesian visa. Gave myself 24 hours in Malaysia to find the Indonesian embassy and get a 60 day visa which didn't work out so well. Landed in the airport and with some help from the "Tourist Information" kiosk I found myself on a shuttle to downtown Kuala Lumpur, more specifically BB Plaza.
The airport is about one hour from the actual city. Mostly all I saw were huge palm tree plantations and chocolate brown rivers with almost no sign of development other than a few Southern California style suburban tract home outposts. This pretty much led me to believe that Kuala Lumpur was going to be a pretty mellow city, I was wrong.
It was raining HARD and it was night when the bus dumped me off at my destination. Huge billboards advertising everything and anything: Sony, Apple, Starbucks, Quicksilver, Outback Steakhouse, KFC, McDonalds. Huge modern skyscrapers toppling over the dilapidated buildings of the past, discotecs pumping the crappiest music into the streets, hawkers selling their goods on the side walks, local eateries side by side with all the chain restaurants from back home, kiosks in the street selling all kinds of strange foods including Durian fruit and crazy traffic with horns blaring winding through the middle of it all... it was sensory overload after just coming from an island I could walk around in two-hours with only three choices for transportation: walk, bicycle or horse.
I ran for shelter from the rain, only to be confronted by an old toothless hawker who tried to get me to get a massage. Said no to the massage, but then asked her if she knew a place where I could stay for the night. She said she did, and led me up three flights of stairs right to her massage parlor. I told her I didn't want a massage, just a room. She said "full body massage including here" and slapped my crotch with the back of her hand. At that point I noticed the quite attractive, tall and thin Malaysian woman in high heels and a mini skirt sitting in the lounge. Suddenly a massage wasn't sounding so bad... But I stayed persistent and told her I just wanted a place to stay. She stayed persistent as well and told me I needed to get a massage first and then she'll show me a place to stay. I thought about how I didn't want to go try and find a place by foot in the rain and also my curiosity for weird and new experiences got the best of me: I agreed to a half hour back massage only (the cheapest one). The massage was actually pretty decent and of a different style from the Balinese which was nice.
Afterward, I headed down the stairs and into the street again where the torrential rain had stopped and the toothless hawker came running up again to show me a cheap place to stay. Followed her as she walked bravely through the traffic past a busy local restaurant then through the make-shift night market and back into a seedy little place dubbed "Budget Inn." I was shown my room which had no windows, blinding supermarket style fluorescent lighting, pillows as hard as rocks, an eastern style toilet and was about as big as a walk-in closet. I took the room, not caring really about the quality, eager to explore the city. Walked in the room to drop off my backpack and realized that the toothless hawker was right behind me and now in my room. Knowing full well that I had refused to accept the crotch massage for another 50 Malaysian Ringit (about 17 dollars U.S.) after the mesuesse got done with my back, the hawker then proceeded to try and get me a prostitute to come straight to my room. When she finally realized that I truly wasn't interested she left and I hit the streets to find a stiff drink and something to eat. This turned out to be an adventure in itself.
Walking around, I realized that I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was surrounded by an interesting mixture of Arabians, Indians, and Malaysians. I was soon greeted by a semi-clean but obviously drunk and homeless man who wanted to know where i was from to which i responded "California" as i had done many times before. He looked a little taken back and responded, "No shit! Guess where I'm from." I couldn't pin his accent or look at all and gave up. "I'm Palestinian," he said. He then proceeded to tell me he used to live in the States but after 9/11 he had been locked up by Homeland Security for four years after he was determined to be a terrorist threat. The guy was obviously loony and I can't be sure he was telling the truth but there was a lot of detail to his story and I tried to imagine this fellow named Moses back in the states around 9/11 and i have to imagine he would have set off more than a few red flags. All this aside, he was a super friendly guy who was pretty damn interesting if not a little schizo. I asked him if he knew a good bar close by to get a drink. Fuck the bar he said, come with me to the 7/11 and we'll get a bottle of brandy. I was game and that's exactly what we did. He bought the brandy and I bought the strawberry flavored milk he wanted to mix it with and we proceeded to sit on the sidewalk out front and drink the concoction out of plastic cups. Watching the people go by, well dressed and super clean-cut Arabians who obviously had money to blow were on their way to the many various clubs and discos whose crappy electronic music was pumping into the street while local berka-wearing Malaysians tried to hawk them fake designer goods and happy massages. And here I was trying to see where I fit in this crazy place. I had left almost everything back at Sticky's other than the bare neccesitys since I didn't want to have to check-in or carry luggage just for a 24 hour trip to Malaysia. This meant that anything I couldn't bring on a plane I left behind. No razor, no shampoo, no deoderant. Not really a problem for 24 hours, but I had spent an extra night in Kuta to hang with Max and Juan before they left and all in all I have to admit I looked and smelled like shit and probably fit in better drinking strawberry milk and brandy with crazy Moses sitting on the sidewalk than anywhere else at that place and time, gypsy style. Moses sang songs, yelled and ridiculed pretty much anybody that walked by, told the most far-fetched stories and manged to inform me a bit about Kuala Lumpurs history as well. Three brandy and milks later, crazy Moses' bible came out and he got a little too crazy for my tastes so I bid him a farewell. He was pretty bummed, he was talking about wanting to show me the city and shit and how he "thought we were hanging man." But I insisted that I had to go and left him with the rest of the brandy.
After that, I needed some food. Hit up a popular local eatery whose tables and seats spilled out onto the sidewalk. Pretty much everything was on the menu here, the most expensive being shark fin soup. If you ever find yourself in Kuala Lumpur and are confronted with the choice of chicken or frog in your stir-fry, just get the chicken and say you ate the frog. They taste pretty much the same except the frog is way harder to eat off the tiny bones.
With dinner out of the way, I needed to find a bar. All I could see were huge chain restaurants and clubs with no sign of any establishments with original character. I spotted a local Malysian dude wearing a punk-rock Rancid t-shirt. Me and my friends loved listening to Rancid, surely if this guy was a fan on the otherside of the world we could talk and he could point me in the direction of a decent dive bar. Turns out he had no idea who the band was on his t-shirt and he pointed me in the direction of an Outback Steakhouse. We talked for a bit anyways and feeling tired from having barely slept the last week and defeated by the massive consumerism that surrounded me, I retreated to my matchbox sized room and tried to sleep and dream of the Gilis while shitty club music kept me from doing just that.
