Heart Of Darkness: May 2012

Packing at home

After spending a few days with my mother in England Dave & I left from Heathrow for our Malaysian adventure. The flight turned out to be one of the best ever. We had a full row to ourselves so we could opt to stretch out for the 14 hr journey. Plus the food was actually pretty darned good I must say (for airline food that is).

Kuala Lumpur Airport was pretty snazzy & gave us a good first impression. We got something like the KLIA Ekspres to KL Sentral where we transferred for the LRT (subway). It took us to Masjid Jamak where we transferred for Plaza Rakyat.

We were pretty knackered once we exited the station to a stifling dripping heat. We stood around trying to locate ourselves to no avail & resorted to asking directions. Finally we mounted a comparatively quiet hill & arrived at our humble destination-The YWCA of Kuala Lumpur. A sweet elderly lady had been waiting for us & knew who we were as we shuffled into an extremely neat vestibule. She took our details as both of us dripped sweat onto the sign in book, my glasses literally steaming up with moisture. It was actually rather embarrassing & we remarked upon the heat. She did say that it had been, in fact, a very hot day. She showed us up to a very kind of “nunnish” room. Nice & bare with two simple iron beds, a dresser & wardrobe & two hugely welcome oscillating fans on a table. Days later we came to realize these fans really were not enough to penetrate the ongoing humidity which was only broken briefly by a short downpour one night. Other than that we had to resort to numerous cold showers to keep down our body temperatures. We decided that whenever possible go AC in this country. We thought we were more resilient but I guess not!

Having been here now for 3 days we’re doing all we can to fit in the sites mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. As usual, Dave is completely brilliant in having a good idea of routes to take each day. The only mode of transport we haven’t yet experienced here is the bus. People keep telling us not to use it for some reason. (Something to do with it just being rather crap I think). The monorail takes a while (waiting time), the subway is great & so are the various over ground trains. Mostly they are either new or in great condition. And the whole experience of traveling around the city on elevated transport gives one the feeling of being in a rather futuristic city. The buildings are what I’m most impressed at. They are utterly tremendous and make me wonder why New York isn’t as experimental as KL. They just go absolutely crazy with the designs of their high rises. Often these buildings are filled with nothing more than vast shopping malls where people seem to spend many hours escaping the heat. The malls are crazy too, sometimes housing whole theme parks and adventure rides. A lot of the streets and plazas are named after New York City streets etc, which is rather surprising. Though I guess there are so many copies of copies & fake this & that here one shouldn’t really be surprised.

Austere Christian accommodation

Our first nights in KL were spent in this very modest non AC YWCA

stylish welcome office at the YWCA

Jacket worn backwards whilst riding-A common site in Malaysia (many answers given for this including "protection from evil spirits entering through wind force)!

one of our first meals in a food hall-was to become our staple

I have my own fashion line in the enormous Times Square shopping Mall in KL
The biggest Mall in Malaysia

There is a fantastic mix of the old and new which also gives it something of a Blade Runner vibe. The kids are cool & the elderly seem somewhat traditional. There is a vast mix of cultures, but so far it seems that they don’t mix with each other too well. At least this is the impression so far from people we've met in KL .

Anyway-We're looking forward to our submersion into the Borneo jungle in a couple of days, even though we have a ton still to soak up here. However, we'll be back here at the end of the trip so we’ll get more done then.