Easing into South East Asia
May 12, 2007
After a day in Singapore and a few more in Kuala Lumpur, I’m ready to give you the next informative dose.
Singapore was as I was told it would be. Tropical, developed and with little else to do aside from shopping. I was only there for a day. I went to the Botanical gardens with a self-proclaimed playboy (who’s in Asia for the ladies and in an attempt to “get it out of his system” before returning to the States) and then got a little drunk and had dinner with some English boys before taking a night train to Malaysia, where I’ve been learning a lot and having a jolly good old time.
I’m staying at my friend Shon’s house in Kuala Lumpur. I’m actually staying with his dad and hanging out with his friends, as he’s in Toronto at the moment and is consequently unable to be my very own personal tour guide. But I’m still getting a really great local view of the city, hearing what the locals bitch about and getting a more under the surface idea of how things are here. Oh, and eating a lot. It’s what they do here.
KL is a fascinating city. Having come here knowing fractionally less than nothing about this city and country, after just two days here, I have had a really good dose of history and culture (and food!). KL was established by the British when tin was discovered here. While city planning was clearly not a high priority for the British in the early days, KL has developed into one of the most prosperous cities in SE Asia. It’s got the second tallest building in the world (was tallest until China beat it last year). There are lots of other enormous glass skyscrapers reflecting the lush greenery of this tropical metropolis, and then also a number of colonial buildings and mosques and hindu temples around. Really beautiful.
The ethnic make-up of the place is crazy. There are Malays (muslim), Chinese (Buddhist/Tao/Christian), Indians (Hindus mostly from the South) and a small number of ex-pats. That means that there are people speaking Malay, Chinese (in various dialects), Tamil and English. It’s been interesting trying to keep up with the people I’ve been hanging out with (and considering that most people speak some of all or most, it really does get confusing.) Because it’s a Muslim country, Malaysia is really very conservative, and there are a lot of rigid laws and censorship, although everyone is free to practice their own faiths. Kissing and sex scenes are censored out of movies on the big screen. Kids all wear the same uniforms regardless of which school they go to, but the Muslim girls wear head coverings and long dresses and all of the other girls wear pinafores. It’s really quite something to look at.
I was a proper tourist a couple of days ago and did the hop-on hop-off bus tour. KL towers, a craft centre with beautiful batiks and other art, china town with the same array of sunglasses, clothes and pirate cds (and yelling vendors), and finally the eye of Malaysia (like the eye of London) — a giant ferris wheel that has been set up this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Malaysia’s nationhood. Food involved chinese things (I have no names here) and then indian on banana leaves rather than plates for dinner. Late night after bar eats at the mamma (which is the equivalent of a diner but all of the food is asian style). Malaysia really is all about food.
Yesterday I went to an amazing hindu temple in a cave in a mountain on the outskirts of the city and learned a lot about Hinduism and the Malaysian government and issues with Singapore from Vignesh, a good friend of Shon’s. That prefaced an evening of clubbing, which is all about bottle service here, about half the price of going out in Canda, and turned out to be really fun once I had a good quantity of tequila and vodka in me.
I’m going to leave it here. Sorry if it’s a bit more of a summary and not delving into the intricacies that much. It must be the heat getting to my brain.
I’m a little confused about my movements over the next little while but I think I’m going to Borneo for a week. Should prove exciting.
