Back to the Big City,
Malaysia
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
We woke up and were showered and caffeinated (with incredibly hot coffee, served boiling hot just like we'd been warned, and they don't double cup like Starbucks does so be careful!) and ready to check out by eleven. The original plan for the day was to go to an elephant sanctuary that was a couple hours outside of KL, but I didn't hear back from the reserve in time to get their email that said they were going to pick us up at 9am at a hotel in KL. (I'd emailed them twice asking which hotel, but they never specified...I wonder how that would have worked even if we'd planned on going to the reserve). I was a little bummed initially because that was really the only thing I'd wanted to do while in Malaysia, other than visiting a drug rehab center in Penang, but I decided I'd give up the drug rehab if I could ride the elephants, and we did have an orphanage visit scheduled for the last day. Plus, I'd get to see a lot more of Malaysia than just the island, so after debating for about three weeks whether to go to KL and the beach resort on Langkawi with everyone or just stay, I decided to go because of the elephants. But...no elephants. However, I was excited to get to spend time in KL, so that made it worth it. It was a big city, more like Chicago than anywhere else I'd say. It was clean and not as fast-paced as New York, but people were still moving. I've never seen so many motorcycles on one street in my life, either. It was also nice to be back in a city with skyscrapers and large commercial buildings, clean sidewalks and landscape, construction sites, cross-walks and traffic that stopped behind the white lines. It didn't have a distinct smell, though. New York has that steam pipe smell, and Vegas hits you with smog and pollution as soon as you walk outside of the airport, but KL didn't smell at all. It was just humid. Hot and humid. We wanted to go to the KL tower and heard it was only a fifteen-minute walk down the main street by our hotel and then a couple blocks over, so we did it and by the time we got there, I felt like I'd been laying out by the pool, sweating in the direct sunlight all afternoon. Most places have fans though, which is nice. We waited, each of us taking turns standing in front of the fan, while we waited for the shuttle to take us to the entrance to the tower. The bellman had told us there was a restaurant at the top of the tower we could eat at, but we'd needed to make reservations so we camped out at a deli by the elevators for nearly two hours while we ate. The process of eating here is quite different and sometimes frustrating if you're at all impatient. The thing to remember for the future is that plan on arriving at least forty-five minutes before you get really hungry, and if you're starving by then order something like fries or onion rings because the food takes awhile to prepare, and it comes out when it's ready. Your big group usually won't be served all together. So as some of us had smoothies some ate their main meals, and then our main meals came and the appetizers the first group had ordered came out, and forget seeing the bottled water you ordered until the end of the meal. But we had fun. I kept reminding myself that it's not how much you get done in a day, but appreciating the way different cultures do things, like eat. When we were finally finished, we hit a couple souvenir shops and stopped in the bathroom before going up to the tower. I told Lauren that now, instead of when you were little kids fighting over who had to use the toilet that hadn't been flushed, now it's deciding who gets to use the modern-style toilet and who has to squat over the hole. If either of us were Indian, we'd be fighting over who gets to squat. Becca told us a story from the airport in India, of an elderly woman who kept walking out of one stall and into another one, then back out and into another, for a good ten minutes before going into one and relieving herself on the floor. She got so nervous because she didn't know how to use the modern toilets, didn't understand what she was supposed to do, that she dismissed the idea altogether and just squatted over the floor like she'd spent her whole life doing. It's so interesting, because that's all we use so I don't understand how you couldn't not know what to do, but then thinking about someone who has never used one before, it makes sense that they could get confused and panic. But anyway, we made our way up to the tower, about the height of the Stratosphere and very similar to the Space Needle in its construction. We walked around the observation deck taking pictures for a little while, but the day was so overcast that I didn't get very many good ones. On the way down we met a couple from India commented on Lauren's Taj Mahal shirt. We explained that we were students and had just been there the week before, and we learned they were from Bombay. Such a small world. We got out of the elevator and decided to walk through the rain forest surrounding the tower to get back to the main street. It was a hike down in the humidity, but we had fun and bouncing on the drawbridges and running around the exercise area set up in the middle of the hike. It was like a rain forest version of Central Park in the city, which we all really enjoyed. Towards the very end of the hike down we came upon a shop where a man was standing outside offering free tea, so we went inside and had some. Honestly, none of us really felt like drinking hot tea because we were already so hot, but he'd invited us in and we didn't want to be rude. He and his partner were pretty much the witch doctors of Malaysia, offering different teas from different branches for men and women. Victor and Matt drank a different tea than us girls did, one that was good for their libido and to increase energy, while we sipped tea that is supposedly good for cleansing our bodies and lessening the severity of our menstrual cycles. And we were warned, men don't try the women's teas and vice versa because it would confuse our bodies. We were also offered pure coconut oil that's supposed to help you tone up and slim down if you take two tablespoons a day for seven months, revitalize your skin, and make your hair shiny. Well, I'm not sure if any of that was true but Katie and I sure had some sort of reaction to the tea. We spent the next half-hour bouncing around the streets of KL on our way to the twin towers. She and I laughed, giggled, skipped, held hands, sang, and twirled in the sidewalks. We put on quite a show for everyone sitting in traffic in the street, and it probably wasn't that good of an idea to draw that much attention to ourselves, but we were honestly a little bit buzzed from the tea. Lauren and Becca were normal, but we'd all had sips from the same pot, so maybe our bodies just responded to something in the roots differently or something. It was a little bit strange. We calmed down as soon as we got to the twin towers, though, from sheer awe. A beautiful park was spread out in front of it, and we had to run to cross all of the zigzagging lanes of traffic. We went inside to inquire about tickets, but they only sell a thousand tickets per day and we were too late. So we took pictures in the main foyer and went to the mall that was attached to it. Katie and Victor are the shoppers, so the remaining four split up and decided to go to the Central Market for shopping, rather than going to stores we could have gone to back home. The mall there was really so much like the Fashion Show at home, one you don't really want to walk in for fear of getting it dirty. I wanted to take pictures outside of the mall with a tower in the background, so Lauren and I walked out into a pavilion with a pond in the center and took pictures while Becca and Matt went to get us coffee and a Malaysia mug for me. The rain rolled in really quickly, and in a way I've never seen before. It had been cloudy all day so I expected it to rain, but while we were outside, for a good thirty seconds half of the pavilion got rained on before it started over the whole pavilion. Where Lauren and I were in relation to the Starbucks inside the mall, Becca and Matt got rained on for a while before Lauren and I did. And they were the biggest drops I've ever seen, like the hail of rain. And it didn't stop all afternoon. We had to get a cab for the two-minute ride to the hotel to pick up our bags from the bellman. It rained all through our adventure through the Central Market, which thankfully was indoors. It kept raining all through our train ride back to the airport, on which we met a lovely gentleman from New Zealand. We didn't officially meet him, but I recognized his accent because one of the professors on the ship is from New Zealand. And he did the same eyebrow raise that Simon does. We provided the most entertainment on the train ride, getting really into a game of Go Fish. We arrived at the airport at 6:30 and met Katie and Victor by the check-in counter, and were anxious to get something to eat. We'd hoped that perhaps the plane would be delayed because of the rain, giving us a little bit more time, but it wasn't. And we almost missed it, because when we purchased our tickets online the purchase didn't go through, so we had to go upstairs to try to figure it out. We'd received confirmation emails, but our names were nowhere in the system, so we had to buy new tickets. Luckily, our flight to Langkawi still had six open seats on it, so we snagged them and ran all the way to the gate, the farthest possible gate from the main lobby, and we arrived just as the last few people were boarding. We had an entire row so we got to sit together, and Lauren and I did the suggested airplane exercises in our seats to keep busy. That's why I love Lauren so much. She's usually thinking about doing those silly things like I am, so we'll usually do stuff like that together. We also watched the lightning storm from the plane, which we flew right by. I love lightning, and I love turbulence, but not turbulence caused by lightning the next cloud over. And right at that moment the captain came over the PA system and announced that we were preparing for landing, which terrified us for a few minutes, thinking it was for an emergency landing because we didn't realize the flight was going to be so short, but it really was just a short flight. We landed in the quiet little airport and caught a cab to our Sheraton hotel right on the beach, which reminded me of Hawaii. It felt like we'd done Manhattan earlier that day, and then Hawaii. We sat on couches and enjoyed lime juice and cold towels as they checked us in, and we were taken to our room by a rickety shuttle to throw our stuff in our rooms and make it to dinner at the restaurant on the property before it closed. I have to admit, I'm getting a little tired of Indian food. But we found some Chinese on the menu, and enjoyed some white wine before we went back to our rooms. It was so nice, after all of our traveling the past few days, to have a beach to relax near. Lauren and I had a slumber party in Matt and Rebecca's room, giving Katie and Victor one to themselves, and watched movies and giggled. I waited until midnight so I could buy a whole day of internet, caught up on some emailing and blogs, then gathered the extra pillows in the room and fell asleep out on the futon on our balcony, overlooking the beach. And to think, I was in school.
