After a not-so-good night's sleep on the overnight train, Mable and I reached Kuala Lumpur at 6:30am Tuesday morning. We were staying in the Corona Inn Motel, and were looking forward to checking in and sleeping for a couple more hours before getting ready and heading out. Unfortunately, all the rooms were full and we couldn't check in until noon. So we got ready in the bathroom, kept our luggage at the hotel, and left for a day of sightseeing, tired and cranky. We thought the overnight train would be a good idea, since it's a bit cheaper than a flight, and we would save one night's worth of a hotel. But in hindsight, one night of hotel only cost us $15 USD/person, and we also found out that there's actually a faster and cheaper bus from Singapore. So I wouldn't recommend the overnight train, it's expensive, old, and definitely not worth it.Since we were out and about so early we thought we could go to the Petronas Towers skybridge, since they only give out a limited number of free tickets every morning. Unfortunately, again, they were already gone by the time we reached there at 9am. We decided to go to the KL Tower instead, where, even though it was a little hazy, we were able to get a good view of the entire city. After going back to the hotel and finally sleeping and showering, we set out again, this time refreshed and a little less cranky.
Whereas Singapore is probably the cleanest and most expensive city in Asia, Malaysia definitely reminded us that we were in a third world country. The subway system is very confusing and inefficient, and there are not nearly as many laws as Singapore. Malaysia's make-up is very similar to Singapore, with Malay, Chinese and Indian making up the majority of the population. However, it definitely has much more personality and cultural identity than Singapore. Even though Islam is the national religion, there are numerous Hindu and Buddhist influences, visible in almost everything. Again, most of the Indians in Malaysia are from South India and speak Tamil, so I still couldn't communicate with them. But most people understood Mandarin, so Mable was able to communicate with the locals pretty easily. We visited the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, a beautiful Hindu temple, which was still impressive even though it was under construction (is October construction season?).
Our next stop was the famous Central Market, where we haggled our butts off and got fish foot therapy, which was one of the most interesting sensations I have ever felt. Fish foot therapy is popular in many part of Asia, and you basically put your feet in a pool of fish that come and nibble at the dead skin on your feet, leaving your feet clean and smooth. They don't have teeth so it doesn't hurt, but it tickles like ALL HELL. It probably took me 5 minutes to actually get my feet into the water, after kicking the fish away squeamishly. Even after my feet were finally in the water I had to take deep breaths to keep myself from laughing. And apparently I have a lot of dead skin on my feet because all the fish were on my feet, even though there were 2 other people with their feet in the pool! But yes, my feet are now soft and smooth :)The food was definitely my favorite part of Malaysia. That night for dinner we had Malaysia's signature dishes, seafood spring rolls, coconut rice and Nyonya chicken (mixture of Chinese and Malay). We then walked around Little India where we stopped at a hawker stall to have a dosa (Mable's first dosa!) It was so good, and I loved the different influences of food in Malaysia.
After dinner we went to check out Kuala Lumpur's nightlife, which is definitely much more lively than Singapore. We started at a couple bars, and then went to Zouk, Malaysia's most popular club. Zouk is famous for its international dj's, and the music was poppin! After watching some really good b-boys from all over the world, we danced our butts off the rest of the night. People don't party that long in KL, most people don't go out until 12ish, and everything closes at 3am. But people do party hard.
The next day we woke up somewhat on time to visit Masjid Jamek, a beautiful mosque. Even though we weren't allowed inside the prayer room, we had to cover our arms, legs and head to walk around the outside of the mosque. After that we walked around Petaling Street (KL's fake market, which I'm pretty sure imports everything from Shenzhen, China), and grabbed lunch in a little restaurant famous for its clay pot noodles. It started raining so we quickly visited Merdeka Square, where Malaysia declared its independence, and then walked around the numerous shopping malls in the Golden Triangle area until the rain stopped. That night we had an amazing dinner at the Jalan Alor street market. Mable had frog congee (I consider myself daring, but frog just doesn't appeal to me!), and we shared fried ginger fish, oyster pancakes, hot and spicy clams, and shrimp paste vegetables. Everything was cheap and delicious. We didn't stay out too late on our last night since we had to leave early the next morning for our flight, but someone recommended checking out Beach Club, which was supposedly good on Wednesday nights. It probably took us a good 20 minutes to realize that it was actually a hooker bar. At first we were surprised that girls were so dressed up for a Wednesday night. Then we wondered why most of the girls were dressed so skanky. Finally, when we saw a good number of these women approaching old white men, we realized where we were. We left when we realized that we were the only non-working women in the entire bar.
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