Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 20:35:09 -0800 (PST) From: colin roald Subject: malaysia
So I guess I've only been in Malaysia two days -- it feels like much longer. Am in Penang now, my third city. I spent a couple hours in grimy Johor Bahru before boarding the train to Kuala Lumpur, then 22 hours there, then a night train up to Penang, which got in a little before 7 am.
Johor Bahru was dirty and poor-looking, or at least it seemed that way after Singapore. There are some almost shocking contrasts -- a big shiny modern mall that wouldn't look out of place anywhere in North America (except for the menu in the food court) sharing a block with abandoned shells of buildings. Boarded-up old buildings ready for demolition seem to be a common feature of all the places I've been on this trip -- signs of *really* rapid development -- but in Johor Bahru they weren't boarded up. They were just gutted, and some looked to be inhabited by squatters.
It's possible my impressions of the place are too harsh -- I was only there a few hours, and during heavy rain at that. Also, I'm picking up the idea that the downtown cores of Malaysian cities are the homes of the harshest contrasts. Singapore's suburbs, for one, were uniformly tidy in a way that its city centre definitely is not, and the impressions I collected from the train give me the idea that Kuala Lumpur may be same way. Certainly the outlying regions are much more recently constructed products of prosperity. Am going to have to make a point to get out of the downtown regions to make sure I get a fair impression of places.
Yeesh, I'm rambling, and haven't even got to KL or Penang. Somehow I had the idea that KL would be a boring place -- a sterile modern capital whose most famous sight is the twin Petronas Towers (which are, thanks to some creative accounting, officially the tallest buildings in the world. But they're only 88 storeys, while the Sears Tower has 110, and somehow they just don't convey the impression of immensity I got from the Sears Tower. They are undeniably beautiful buildings, though.) But Kuala Lumpur turns out to be quite an interesting city of neighbourhoods. I stayed in Chinatown in a hotel above the night market, ate Chinese and Malay and Indian and Nyonya (Straits Chinese) and Hainanese (south Chinese) food, had a beer in the planter's bar of the colonial Coliseum Hotel, and had dinner in a dark lacquered wood teahouse that was a Chinese guildhall in the 30's. And I find I can eat quite a lot of fish soup if it's stewed with enough coconut milk, chilies, and fresh lime juice.
Malay hustlers are much more polite than Moroccan ones, but I am pretty sure I've now met a few. My guidebook warns, "When in KL beware of scammers and flim-flam artists. One of the more common scams involves getting travellers to visit private homes where they are lured into rigged card games," which is a pretty succinct description of what happened, or tried to -- I turned them down before they got any of my money on the table. Am surprised, though, at the kind of people involved -- the "niece" and "nephew" who first started chatting with me seemed like such open, friendly, guileless people -- not stylish, not trendy, kind of chubby. The guy introduced himself as "Jello", even.
Penang seems much smaller than I expected, a sleepy touristy provincial capital. Somehow I had the idea it was the second-largest city in Malaysia, though I can't find the reference now, but if it is, there must be a lot of it hidden somewhere I haven't seen yet. Until now I'd seen relatively few backpackers on the streets in Malaysia, but here there are hundreds of them.
Am going to stay here a couple nights, then continue on to Phuket.
c. -- colin | opportunity calls from a payphone, bruno. you never roald | get a chance to call it back. (christopher baldwin)