KL Airport is really big so then I had to do a hike to get my backpack and find the aerobus to the city center’s main hub Sentral (only 10 RM, which is 2,50 EURO, for about 50 min ride). I continued to the station Bukit Bintang by monorail. The backpack was really heavy and it was sooo hot. I was so glad when I found the hostel Sunshine Bedz in the square of Bukit Bintang (the equivalent of NYC’s Time Square, with lots of video screens and big malls all around). I noticed that Malaysia has left-side traffic.
After relaxing a bit I went out to check out the IT mall where I would meet my colleague Wing the next day. I had a 2 RM meal at a really bad looking street café in a kind of tunnel. An Indian guy cooked some spicy noodles for me and I noticed people looking at me like “WTF are you doing in this bad café” – but I liked the food and I must really say that I am drawn to street cafés. I prefer them to a tourist café any time. The night I spent with saving all my files to a hard disk to be save when giving up the laptop.
In the next morning while booking more nights with the hostel I was shot at by a shitty kid sitting at the reception (the kid of the owner I learned later). He pointed his plastic machine gun at me and then shot a fat plastic bolt at my face. I told him off of course and out came the words “it wasn’t me”. Yeah, because there were so many other people there with guns. But I had to laugh about it a couple of minutes later. At 11 am I met up with Wing, my colleague who is Malaysian and lives in KL. We met in the Low Fat (actually Low Yat) Mall and we checked out the laptop repair place and went out to eat at a famous British chicken place (Nando’s), went through one of the malls and drank a kopi ping (coffee with milk and ice). Kopi-O would be coffee with no milk and ping is ice. I added rose syrup to mine: delicious! After this I bought myself a handbag because Wing insisted that a rucksack in Malaysia, esp. KL, would be downright dangerous and the handbag had to be worn at the front. I found the bag at an Indian shop on the street. The label on it said 170 RM. I got it for 37 after a wild discussion and stating that was looking for something ugly and cheap.
I organized myself some bus tickets to Melaka for later and went on to the famous Petronas Towers (KLCC). I arrived according to plan when it was getting dark to see them alight and then took a walk along one of the A/C-cooled walkways. It was a little hard to locate but fortunately there were a lot of big hotels mentioned on my map so I could navigate between them. Because my hostel is located next to Ain Arabia, the Arab quarter, I got myself a delicious falafel burger and relaxed at the hostel. KL is one big hot pot with freezer malls all over the place. I really don’t get why every room, metro or mall has to be cooled down from 35 to 15°C. You have to take a shawl or light jacket with you everywhere you go or you’ll risk a cold.
Next morning I had to change the room. The new one had no window but at least that made it impossible for the video screens outside to light up the room at night. Today was reserved for the Batu Caves, just a little outside of town (with its own metro station). Many Indians were visiting the place and we all had to climb 272 steep steps to reach the main cave. A huge statue of the god Murugan was standing in front of the cave and as high as the many steps leading toward it. A couple of curious and noisy macaque apes were running around the stairs and inside the cave and fought about food leftovers.
I was also hungry and had a banana leaf meal at one of the Indian restaurants at the bottom of the stairs. You basically get a real banana leaf and they put all kinds of sauces, rice and vegetable-mixes onto the leaf, accompanied by a bit of Indian dry bread. After this trip I had to rest again as I am still not used to the high temperatures in Malaysia. At around 6 pm I went to Sentral by monorail and met Wing, her Mum and her friend for dinner. We drove by car to a restaurant called Coco Steamboat, where you can have Chinese style hot pots (the steamboat) with basic soups to choose from (fish head or pork/vegetable were two of the options) and then you ordered a lot of side dishes to cook in the pot. Wing and I shared a Tiger beer and we all had a lot of fun and a nice conversation. After that we went to a night market (where I was the only non-Malaysian). I bought a cable for my iphone, a durian ice-cream and a bubble tea and then we headed off to the rich quarter Bangsar to eat at a typical (street-food like) Mamak pub (Mamak is a cultural mixture of Malay and Indian). We had something I think was called tissue bread, a very thin bread with sugar on it which was served as a pyramid.
The next morning I checked out and left my backpack at the hostel. Instead of that I had packed some of my stuff into the bag we had bought earlier in Vietnam. Before leaving I washed my clothes at Hello Laundry (took just 45 min) around the corner and then took a taxi to TBS station, which was the bus station for all busses going south. It cost around 32 RM (8 EUR), but was a lot faster than taking several metros to get there.
When reaching Melaka Sentral bus station I found out that the ticket seller had told a downright lie to me when assuring me the bus would drop everyone off at the city center. I was really angry about that but couldn’t help it anyway, so I had to take an extra bus to the city center (n° 17). They told me to get out at the Dutch square which I of course didn’t recognize, but luckily the guy next to me pointed it out. So I got off the bus and was greeted by a red square with an old fashioned clock tower and a tiny wind mill. Melaka had been ruled for some time by the Dutch trading there a long time ago.
I went to find Jalan Jalan hostel in a small street in China town. I immediately fell in love with the building and its garden. Though my room wasn’t that big or either decorated, the house looked so original, a bit run-down, the reception and rest area very welcoming and the shower and toilets were located in the garden in “fresh air”. There were even sinks with mirrors outside in the garden.
The owner was very nice and helpful and I learned that every night there were people from the two hostels he owned gathering together to have dinner or a drink. I hung up the mosquito net (which was literally of NO use, the same as using anti-mosquito spray. I guess the insects were just laughing at my efforts and when I left Melaka after two days I had at least 20 stings more.
I had lunch at a very neat looking Western café which was named OLA – and okay okay, I admit, I had some spaghetti bolognese, but it was sooo excellent. I just could tell from the look of the place that the food had to be good. After that I came to talk for 2 hours to an artist in his shop and later I learned that he also did the reception at my hostel, so we came across each other many times. I bought a few of his sketches of Melaka and send them home by mail. I hope they will arrive safely.
This evening the group went to a restaurant which specialized in stingray (fish). As I don’t eat fish I had some Nasi Goreng instead. After that Isaf, a Moroccan-Spanish lady, and I walked all around Chinatown and on the banks of the river until we stopped and had a drink at a cool bar at the river. We talked a lot and time passed quickly.
Next morning I had a breakfast at Ola’s and then I endured the Free Walking Tour in unbearable heat. Actually I was a bit tired so maybe that is why I had a bit of trouble standing all the information given by the tour guide. But it was very informative and we saw a lot walking around. Naturally I took a lot of pictures and enjoyed when there was a bench for me to sit down.
As lunch I had some fruits (pine apple, papaya and banana) before walking off again with Isaf and Spanish Vanessa to the Sultan’s Palace (which is a wooden made replica of the original palace). Many costumes, weapons and even some legends of royal life from Melaka’s former times were on display. And then suddenly it started to rain..no! – it was pouring down like hell. And it didn’t stop for 2 or 3 hours. As the museum closed at 5 pm we had to leave in the heavy rain and got very wet. So as we originally had planned on having dinner together we just postponed it to have a chance to dry up a bit.
At 7 pm there were a bunch of people heading out to a place at Little India. They all had banana leaf and I had Chicken Madras. I had imagined something cut up in neat pieces but of course I was greeted by a bowl of boney leftovers in a very spicy sauce. It was okay, but next time I will have something without meat as I don’t like knawing on the bones using my hands. After dinner we hung out again at the river bar until quite late.
In the morning I had a breakfast date with Isaf, who was still asleep when I came to the other hostel building but who woke up when she heard me saying Good Morning to someone else. I just made myself a coffee and we headed off to the same Indian café from the other night to have a roti pisang (banana pancake). I was so hungry and had to travel later that I had two and a Malaysian tea with milk – very delicious. We went into an Indian shop which sold lots of Indian-style jewellery and other items and I bought myself 3 tiny tubes of Henna. William the artist had described to me how to make henna tattoos, so I wanted to try it myself. Isaf and me returned to the hostel, said our goodbyes and I gathered my things and left for the bus stop. The bus n° 17 was quite late and instead of taking 15 minutes to bus Sentral station, it made a huge round all around the city center and took over 50 minutes, which made me miss my already booked bus. But I kept my calm and just headed off to get on the next buses, as I knew there were plenty leaving for KL. Our bus was even quite empty. On the city bus I had picked up a guy from Taiwan/US, who finally followed me straight to the hostel in KL, because he didn’t know how to move around in KL and was looking for a hostel/hotel. It felt a little like being followed by a dog.
On the bus there were also a mother and daughter from New Zealand, who gave me some useful tips for renting a car and travelling in general in NZ. There were heading off to Europe to do something similar than Tina and me here. Finally, James, the elderly guy from US/Taiwan, and me arrived at the hostel and I checked into my last dorm and could even claim the same lower bunk. It felt a bit like returning home. The staff greeted me accordingly and welcomed me back.
My first task now was to check if my laptop had been repaired and to get it back. And YES it worked! I am just hoping that this will be permanent. It’s always running hot and I guess that that might have been the problem in the first place and that the hot part had actually bbq-ed the broken part of the motherboard my colleague had built in before my trip. (This is actually my company’s laptop so I wouldn’t mind that much but of course I am also using it for booking and emailing etc, so I would miss it a lot if it broke down completely.) The first thing I did was to copy all of my files from the external hard-drive and copy recently made photos – saving my files is my first priority! Then I had a little skype chat with my mum (calling didn’t work, it felt like we’re stuck on the moon), so we started writing instead.
After that I had dinner with a girl from my dorm, Layla, and we checked out a Vietnamese touristy street restaurant. The food was not good (my bun bo hue was mediocre and there was a cow’s foot floating in it, which was disgusting. But the waiter noticed, took the foot away and gave me some normal meat instead. The Vietnamese ice coffee I had afterwards was just splendid as always! The price was actually 4x the original Vietnamese price. Talk about scamming the tourists! Below our hostel is a small drugstore I shopped through afterwards as I wanted to grab the opportunity to get some more or less cheap products before getting to Australia. And I wasn’t sure if Bali had them at all, as I will be travelling smaller towns there.
Next morning I woke up quite early to get onto the hop-on hop-off bus in KL to see all the major attractions I had ignored before. I was obviously a very early bird because when I got off the bus at 9 am at the Central Market, it was still closed. So it spent one hour to find an ATM and sip an excellent Kopi Ping behind the market. Then I entered the old market hall to find a huge collection of souvenirs and a fish spa. I was the first customer of the day and had a very long look at the fish in the 2 pools. They were extraordinairy large.. I had done fish spa-ing earlier when the fish were not bigger than my small finger, but these were fat and a lot more as I expected. I finally decided to go for the adventure but didn’t dare to put my feet were they were ALL waiting for me. So I went around the corner of the pool and did it there. Naturally they noticed anyway and the swarm came towards me and started nibbling my feet. I tried to control myself and tried not to scream, but I couldn’t help it. They were everywhere and the sucking was almost unbearable. The shop owner told me: only one minute, miss, then you get used to it. It took me five minutes.
Then I opened my eyes and looked at them enjoying their feast. They particularly liked a spot on my big toe which had been open a few days earlier because of mosquito scratching and they liked to eat off the old skin. I had to move the toe once in a while to stop them from getting the spot to open again or so it felt. After 15 minutes (for 3 EUR) I had to leave and made a little walking trip to the famous Merdeka square, where there are lots of old oriental style buildings. In front of one there was a double police guard on horseback who had to hold hands with tourists taking photos. I was laughing at that as I thought this was even worse than posing with the British guards at Buckingham palace. Because I couldn’t find the hop-on bus stop I walked back through the heat to the market hall, bought a durian crepe and hop on there. The bus took us through the green belt and then to the National Mosque which is a very modern but still oriental style building with a main roof looking like a blue-green umbrella. Unfortunately it was not opened for the tourists for several hours, so I couldn’t visit, but I went to the Museum of Islamic Arts just nearby. I found another modern but traditional building with about 20 models of the worlds’ most famous mosques, beautifully created. There was also a collection of ancient Qurans with handmade golden pages with handwritten words and a collection of pottery, weapons and tiles. I especially loved the oriental tiles. They are so colourful and specially shaped (sometimes as stars, sometimes as hexagons or quadrats).
After almost finishing the museum I noticed a strange smell around me. It was the second durian crepe…so I got rid of it quickly. Durian fruits are known to smell if not badly but very strongly. After a quick snack outside and hopping onto the bus again it took us through the rest of the city, along Petronas Towers again and then to Bukit Bintang where I lived, so I got off, took a small rest and at 7 pm stood to wait at Sentral station to meet Wing and her friend again who took me out for eating. This time we drove to a typical Malay place with street food and we shared some very special stuff. I remember oyster with egg (no oyster for me), crab (I tried it – it was okay..), pork and tofu soup, a kind of drinkable cold soup which was sweet but had a small hardboiled egg in it, a sort of ice-cream made of mostly chopped ice-cubes with nuts inside and a fruity taste and we had some wine Wing had brought from home, because the bottle was already open. They also got some sweets for me to try: green and coco jelly sweet and a white dough sweet rolled in coco flocks with nuts inside (delicious!)
After this we looked for a dessert café where I had a mango dessert which was also fantastic! On my next travel in Malaysia I have to explore the dessert culture even further. Finally we drove around a little and stopped at a neighbourhood outgoing-zone with lots of bars and cafés surrounding a small artificial lake. Wing told me that the people living here would just take their small kids, put on their slippers (some even come in pyjama-style clothing) and have a drink in one of the bars. We also had that. I explained that in German we have a very strange expression to signal that someone has to use the toilet. You would just say: I am going for king tigers. She was a bit confused but found it also funny. The best thing was that there was a sign at the end of the bar (so in the direction of the toilets) that showed a tiger beer ad (with a tiger next to it). We laughed as I pointed it out. At about 1 am they dropped me off at the hostel and we said our goodbyes.
The next morning I wanted to work a little so I had to get up early, get ready and do some work, which took me some time. At around noon I wanted to leave for Sentral to take the Aero bus to KLIA2, so I got into a little stress, because I had to organize some lunch for myself, change all my resting Ringgit into Indonesian Rupee, finalize my packing and sending the email to my colleague, which took over ten minutes. But I got ready in time and left for the monorail station. My backpack was becoming a lot heavier and so I am sure I will send another package home in Indonesia to get rid of some stuff. It’s maybe not so reliable but it is cheaper than sending from Australia. I am now sitting in the airplane to Bali (Air Asia flying) and I hope we will not be stroke by thunder. I am not afraid of flying but the three incidents involving Malaysian airlines (Mal.Airlines and Air Asia) is concerning me a tiny little bit. It is not so much the company with which I am flying (although the Malaysian captains have been almost crash landing on the runway so far), but I know that this route is known to have turbulences and sometimes rough weather. But so far it is looking good and the sun is shining above the clouds.
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