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June 1st 2007

Published: June 1st 2007

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Kevin's balcony

priceless view

1 - 8 June -- Kuala Lumpur

After our daring escape from Tioman, we caught the ferry and the bus up to KL, the bustling capital city of Malaysia. We met up with Kevin, a wonderful friend of mine from my study abroad days in Aix-en-Provence, who graciously hosted us for a week in his beautiful apartment in downtown KL. I hadn't seen Kevin since the morning of 11 September when he was visiting me in New York, and I left on an early morning flight to LA... We had lots to catch up on.

Kevin took us out on the town for some cheap and dirty local food, which was a welcome break from the Thalis of India and overpriced western food of Singapore. We headed out later to a bar called Havanita, as Kevin explained it was essential to see the young Chinese kids all decked out and dancing to salsa and hip hop. It truly was a sight.

KL is a beautiful city, with bright lights, fast cars and a melting pot of cultures, from Chinatown markets to Little India chaos and Bollywood music blaring from every shop. It was great to enjoy being

Towers at Night

in a big city and seeing the twin Petronas Towers was oddly nostalgic to New York, since they're a bit of an amalgamation of the WTC towers and the Chrystler building. Kevin's balcony looked out directly over the Petronas Towers (the tallest twin towers in the world)and KL tower, which is shaped like a lotus flower, so every day we were lucky enough to enjoy a priceless view.

One of the best parts about the trip, though, was catching up on each others' lives and enjoying an extremely lovely, clean apartment and feeling like we were at home. I certainly am not complaining about being on the road, but you miss having a comfortable bed, a living room and a kitchen. I actually got a bit obsessed with doing the dishes because it was so nice to have a sink. With dishwashing liquid. And a huge refrigerator. Sounds crazy, I know.

Kris and I spent a day hiking around the KL Bird Sanctuary, which is the largest open sanctuary in the world and is home to over 200 species of birds including Malaysian hornbills, parrots, egrets as well as land birds such as flamingos, emus and ostritch. The

Sky High

The Petronas Towers

bird show was a disappointment, a circus-like dog and pony act with parrots riding bicycles and doing arithmetic problems, so we gave that a miss and headed to the Orchid Garden and Hibiscus Gardens up the hill. These were beautifully landscaped parks highlighting a vast diversity in floral life native to Malaysia.

We also took a trip up to KL tower to the observation deck to see the view. An amazing phenomenon of KL is the dramatic thunder and lightening storms that roll in every day from about 4-6pm, sweeping the clear blue sky with fat, heavy clouds, apopolyptic booms of thunder and shocking bolts and pillars of lightening streaking through the sky. It was a little bizarre being up on the 22nd floor of a telecommunications tower, the fifth tallest in the world, to observe the storm, but the view was amazing.

After a week of city life, video games, swimming in the buildings luxury infinity pool and 24 hours hot water showers, we hopped on a plane to Borneo, East Malaysia, to check out the world's last untouched rainforest and top-notch dive sites. Now that we had a bag full of clean clothes and a week's