Walking from the bus station to our hostel in Kuala Lumpur, we passed plenty of abandoned shops and litter on the street, and I instantly knew we had left Singapore’s halo of perfection. Arriving too early to check-in, we dumped our backpacks in the hostel’s office, grabbed a map, and decided to wander our way to Old City KL to visit some of the free museums.
It was a longer walk than anticipated that involved many confusing streets, dead-end sidewalks, limited crosswalks, and random, unfinished construction sites. Finally, after plenty of detours and turnarounds, we found the Police Museum, one of the free options. We arrived about 12:45ish and no surprise really, the museum was closed from 12-2:30. Deciding to stick around the area and come back, we wandered past a bird park and ended up at a little Orchid garden on top of a hill. From there, we could hear the afternoon prayer being sung from the National Mosque at the bottom of the hill below us.
This was one of the coolest moments for me as it came as a sudden realization of the completely different culture we had just landed in. Thailand is dominantly Buddhist and Singapore has a large array of religious backgrounds, but Malaysia’s official religion is Islam, and I’d never spent time in a Muslim-dominated society before. I had (ignorantly and subconsciously) thought that Malaysia would be a lot like Thailand up until this moment. It was beautiful listening to the prayer being projected through the entire city and really made me stop for a moment and think about how different this place was going to be.
Unfortunately, thanks to the half-marathon of walking we had done in Singapore the day before, and because I only had room to bring one pair of shoes (Chacos) since I was traveling with nothing but a small backpack for the next two weeks, my feet were absolutely killing me. So, I was very content just sitting in the park for awhile, listening to the prayer and waiting for 2:30 to roll around. It was about this time when I stood up and realized I could feel the breeze in an area that should’ve been well-covered by my pants. I looked and sure enough, my pants were ripped horizontally across my butt. I have no clue when or how it happened other than these pants being super lightweight and cheap. Luckily, Gabby had a lightweight scarf along that I could tie around my waist to cover my booty from the rest of the world. I looked a little like Aladdin but at least I wasn’t walking around flashing all of KL.
As we waited outside the police museum for it to open back up, I was surprised how many people stopped to talk to us to say hi or ask us where we were from. People in Thailand are shyer when it comes to randomly approaching strangers; they also don’t use English as much, either because they aren’t comfortable with it or just because they just simply don’t. Every person that talked to us said, “Rain is coming!” (Ignorantly, again) We just shrugged off the warning, because we figured an afternoon rain shower wouldn’t last long, and we were so hot we didn’t really mind getting a little wet.
Finally, the museum was reopened and I have to say, it was a bit anti-climatic. Maybe it was my tired feet, maybe it was my hungry stomach, maybe it was just the somewhat poorly translated poster boards about the Malaysian police services, but I was just about ready to go from the moment we walked in the door. But, in coherence with our bad timing for the whole day, when we left the museum not long after, it was pouring.
Lesson: If the locals tell you “Rain is coming!” Don’t ever assume they’re just being silly and you’ll be fine — Get to where you want to stay for the next few hours!
Clare, being a person who can pull fun game ideas out of nowhere whenever the time is necessary, had the idea to play Heads Up while we waited for the rain to subside. It passed the time well, but I was starting to get really hangry (Note: not a spelling error. I was so hungry that I was angry.) When we finally felt the rain had died down a bit, we decided to just go for it and find a place with a roof and food – that’s all we needed. Of course, it started pouring again as soon as we left. We ducked into the first restaurant we saw about a half mile down the hill. It took us until we were seated and drying our faces to realize the entire menu was in Malay and the entire restaurant was filled with middle-aged Malaysian men. Our waiter helped us order something familiar on the menu, chicken fried rice. And I’ll be damned, that was the BEST chicken fried rice I’ve ever had. Waiting (again) on the rain to stop, we played a few more games. They mainly consisted of — hey, can we figure out a dessert that begins with every letter of the alphabet? What about countries? – but once again, it passed the time well.
After a short rest at the hostel, we decided to join another hostel down the road to go out to get street food and bar hop a little bit. I had some pretty yummy dim sum and drank a couple pretty terrible imported beers then headed to bed fairly early. Traveling is tiring.
Our hostel room was two bunk beds, and we were only traveling with the three of us, so I wasn’t surprised to see we had a new roommate once we got back. I was surprised, however, to see her asleep, shirtless, without a sheet covering her. Luckily, she had her back turned to the door so all I really saw was long, black hair and some tight spandex. It wasn’t until the morning, when I said to Gabby, “So how about the naked lady in our room? Bold move, huh?” that I even considered that she might have been a he. Gabby looked at me with confusion and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m pretty sure our roommate is a dude.”
She was right. It was just a nice dude with some really long, beautiful hair. I need to stop expecting the expected and begin assuming the opposite.
The next morning, we made a plan to go see the Batu Caves. At first, when we arrived at the little market at the base of the hills, I was super overwhelmed by the crowds of people, loud music, and overpowering smells of incense mixed with curries. But looking up at the climb ahead of us and taking in the greatness of it all calmed me down. As we walked up the hill, I was amazed to see all the cultures, people, religions, places, and practices that were represented on those 272 concrete steps.
I had no cell reception outside of Thailand, so I had no way to look up what the ceremonies people were practicing were at the time, but the most common ritual I saw was people dressed in vibrant yellow walking up the stairs carrying pots of milk on top of their heads. I later learned this was Tamil community (predominantly Hindus) beginning to celebrate the festival of Thaipusam, which officially started only three days after we visited. It felt so incredible getting to witness all the different people interacting with this location in their own ways, from the people making and selling food at the bottom to the tourists selfie-sticking with monkeys to those practicing their religious rituals in the cave — everyone found their own way to appreciate what was around them, and I guess (for once) the people ended up being what I appreciated around me most.
Deciding to head back, we bought our train ticket and luckily, found the train already at the station! We ran to catch it only to find that, no matter how full it got, it wouldn’t be leaving for another 40 minutes. Of course, we didn’t score a seat. Have I mentioned yet how much my feet were killing me in Kuala Lumpur? We also hadn’t eaten anything in a long while, and we all were feeling the hanger coming back from the day before. You can imagine our frustration when, after 40 minutes of waiting for the overcrowded, hot train to leave, we also missed our stop to get off and had to wait for another train going the opposite direction to take us one stop back. It was a long afternoon.
After an Indian meal at a restaurant near the train station, I was feeling energized again. We decided to make the long walk across the city to see the Petronas Towers.
After, we went to check out a place called the Helibar, a bar located on an old helicopter pad at the top of a tall building. We got there for happy hour and got lucky enough to score a reserved table with a great view where we met two other travelers.
Knowing we needed to walk all the way back across town anyway, we decided to check out one more fun bar along the way. This one was called PS150, and I had read that it was a really cool speakeasy in Chinatown that was disguised behind a fake toyshop. The “toyshop” ended up being just a small booth with some old-timey toys in it, but PS150 still had a really cool, hidden vibe to it, and you had to be led through a couple of doors and dimly-lit hallways to enter the bar area way in the back. These were probably two of the most interesting bars I will ever have the chance to go to.
After a quick stop at KFC on the way back to our hostel, we called it in pretty early once again. One of the nice things about being a budget backpacker is if you hit up all the bars at happy hour, you pay a lot less and still get a good night’s sleep – what could be better! In the morning we planned on leaving for the Cameron Highlands as early as possible, so we were eager to sleep as much as possible
Mckenzie Lena Halling 