Our planning for this was quite non-chalant, and to make a long story short, we had to stay in the Malaysian capital which is on the mainland peninsula rather than the island, for a couple days. Admittedly I knew little to nothing about this country before we visited, but it turned out to be quite interesting. It was almost a culture shock coming from India as we stepped off the plane and into perhaps the most sparkling airport I've ever seen, and it was downright chilly from the A/C and the relative emptiness - where are the people! We caught the 150km/hr super smooth bullet train into town and in 100 degree weather with 100% humidity we lugged our annoyingly heavy bags on our sticky sweaty backs to Hotel Heritage, a lovely old British colonial/Islamic hybrid inside the old central train station. We walked into the lobby which is also a restaurant/bar full of character, retro style, and on this day a film set as well! So over the next couple days we saw the shooting of scenes about 1950s Malaysia with a storyline revolving around the national independence movement. For a guy who grew up around L.A. and once snuck onto the set of Baywatch as the "back-up camera technician", it was refreshing to meet movie-makers who were so normal, humble, and even inviting - they let me take pictures while they were filming! None of the shots came out well, though.
The hotel manager was a witty and gregarious ethnic Chinese woman whom I pestered with questions about the country - all Madhavi and I knew was from the guide book, which basically said that this is a Muslim country with a large Chinese and a smaller Indian minority. Amy Chua, in her interesting book "World on Fire", described how ethnic Chinese essentially own most of Southeast Asia, so I just crudely asked (with Madhavi appropriately shaking her head): "Do the Chinese own everything here?"..."Basically yes, but there were riots in 1969 so since then the Malays have special advantages in business, university, home loans, so they're doing better now."..."How do people get along?"..."Good now, no problems since the riots"..."What language do you speak at home?"..."Mandarin, but everyone also speaks Malay and many Chinese and Indians have been here for generations".
As we drove around town in taxis, we were struck by how prosperous this place looked, with shiny office towers and wide clean boulevards. All the cab drivers attributed Malaysia's wealth to "oil", but it turns out that's not really the major player. They basically produce industrial products like hard drives and cars and unfortunately they also log a lot of primary jungle and replace it with palm oil plantations.
However it happened, it is so reassuring to see a Muslim country that has created a pretty diverse economy, relative ethnic harmony, and even something resembling a real democracy. We noticed that there did actually appear to be some mixing of the three major ethnicities in social groups, and many of the Chinese and Indians were born here and consider themselves Malaysian.
On our first day, we went to a lame market before having decent Indian-Malay food and watching some street musicians. On the second day we spent 2 hours getting our Visa card rejected from multiple ATMs and yelling at Visa customer service on the phone - but at least all the banks had A/C. We went to the country's biggest mosque, the Masjid Jamek, which had an open design and beautiful gardens, and a poor Madhavi Dandu who was being cooked medium rare in the chador that she had to don for the visit. We saw the Malaysia history museum, which had very cool old beige-brown maps of Asia from centuries ago and a nice explanation of Malaysia's primacy (sitting between two opposing monsoons in the Straits of Malacca) as a stopping point in international trade between China, India, Persia, and the Arabs, and good exhibits on the arrival of Islam via Sufi missionaries in the 15th century and the devastation of Japanese occupation during WWII.
Of course we had to check out the Petronas Towers building, which was pretty awesome architecturally, though the super high-end mall on the inside (four floors of Gucci, Zegna, you get the point)
was a bit overwhelming. We swung to other side of town to a gorgeous orchid garden, where Madhavi took the camera from me to get some shots specifically for her close friend Kiran. Then we ascended the 1400 ft Menara communications tower, where we got foggy views and a fancy audio tour but where we also saw two contributions from Esfehan, Iran, KL's sister city: one beautiful tiled half-dome and one technically impressive though overly sparkly cut-glass mirror dome, both on the ground level.We then headed to the Arabic district for excellent chai and sheesha - oh what a nice reminder of Cairo! Just outside this district we happened upon an Iranian restaurant - wow, I had never seen Iran so well represented in a city other than L.A.! The khoresh and kababs were pretty good, though I was a bit frustrated than none of the waiters knew what "tahdig" was - I even wrote a request for the chef but I don't think he ever got it. We discovered a very hip and sexy outdoor lounge, but we felt tired and un-sexy and just kept walking.
Overall I liked KL, probably more than did Madhavi. But now it was off to Borneo, our real destination.
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