ObaMalaysia

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We have moved quickly from a peaceful island life to a frenetic city one. Two days ago, we enjoyed our last breakfast in Bali, which entailed us getting out of our bed, moving to our balcony, and calling down our orders, only to have the hotel manager bring our plates up to us for our private consumption. How things have changed! We flew to Kuala Lumpur on Saturday night, arriving tired, disoriented, and definitely missing clean island air.

We are staying in a concrete honeycomb of a hotel in KL's Chinatown district, a hub of life and activity and a place where we've finallly gotten our nerve up to try honest-to-goodness street food. After checking in, we walked the streets of Chinatown, searching for a streetside restaurant with a menu with enough English lettering to be able guess what we were ordering. The atmosphere was fascinating - jammed and bustling, in the evening the streets of Chinatown fill with roadside carts that act as kitchens for the twenty or thirty tables of diners tucked into the sidewalk and buildings behind them. We quickly ordered a couple of beers to cut through the unbelievable evening smog and humidity, and tucked into the most amazing Chinese meal we've ever had. Refreshed (and sweaty), we ventured out that evening to investigate one of KL's famous night markets, in interesting neighborhood affair beneath the glittering and graceful Petronas Towers.

Now oriented, we woke up the next day to explore more of Malaysia, and decided to take a two-hour bus ride to the town of Malacca, an extremely interesting city, more because of its place in history than what it offers today. Located at the hub of the Indian-Chinese spice trade, Malacca traded hands over and over throughout history, from European to Asian rulers, resulting in a blend of colonial and traditional architecture and culture. We strolled through the old Dutch administration building, past monuments to Queen Victoria, the ruins of a hilltop church, and past the mosques, Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines of the old town.

For us, this mix of culture is the most remarkable thing about Malaysia. Rather than having a distinct cultural identity, the people of Malaysia are comprised of Chinese, Indians, native Malay, European, and peninsular Asian traditions, and every combination thereof. Morever, although the country is mostly Muslim, there are large Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian populations. This mix of culture is a constant source of conversation and controversy here, and both of us find that we are somewhat more confused about Malaysians' identity than we were when we arrived. Any given restaurant is full of headscarves and miniskirts, and teenagers in conservative dress openly engage in very unconservative behavior--as they would anywhere else in the world. To us, it seems both extremely integrated and very segregated, and the time we have here is not nearly enough to even begin to grasp the implications of this complexity. Malaysians' obsession with cultural identity has also been evident of Malaysian opinions of America and American politics.

Political conversations abroad, we both feel, require such delicacy that we tend to be very cautious about them. It's impossible to guess the context of another person's comment or question, just as it is impossible to assume your own opinions will be understood with the subtleties you intend. But returning to the bus station in Malacca, we found ourselves engaged in an amusing and vibrant conversation with our cab driver. He was fascinated by the fact that Obama might actually win the presidential election and the role that race currently plays in US politics. Slavery, he explained, is still too recent in America, and an Obama victory will not be tolerated (at least, not peacefully) by the racist undercurrent that must still exist. We answered with what must now be outdated poll numbers, and let him do most of the talking.

Obama seems to be a rather large presence here, in fact, as we have seen his face pop up all over KL in unrelated advertising and the mainstream press. People are excited about him, and it's fun to observe.

Last night, we spent time walking through KL's colonial and Little India districts, and this morning (after a breakfast that we had to go downstairs to eat!) we are headed out to see "new" Malaysia, the downtown financial district, surrounding the Petronas Towers, before we hop our flight to Vietnam.

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