Kuala Lumpur

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Afternoon fans,



Arrived in KL yesterday as planned. RealGap were up to their usual standards, having not informed the coordinators here of my flight time, or the guesthouse that I'd be arriving on this day. After all, they've only had the information for four months, so you can't really expect them to have bothered phoning people yet. That would be too much to ask. So I had to make my own way here. Still, it's a lovely little place, and KL is yet again a different environment altogether.

Bangkok is every inch the bustling city, dirty, seedy, filled with tourists and the occasional patch of beauty, and the rest of Thailand is filled with ancient ruins and temples, mingling with modern towns; while the Akha villages are basic and forged from bamboo, and Singapore is everything you'd expect from a gleaming 21st century metropolis, right down to the conveyor belts in buildings to save walking, and the youngsters playing with paraboxes. Kuala Lumpur is a strange mixed-up place; driving in it seemed as if someone had simply dumped a housing estate in the middle of a jungle. The city proper contains elegant spires and commercial office blocks, but amongst them, grubby hawker patches and run-down tenements. There's no boundary, modern, traditional and rural seem jumbled up together.

I haven't had the chance to explore much, but the local area is filled with food stalls and bars, so I'm well-fed and watered. Already met a few people from the projects, but we're all going different ways. However, at least I know where I'm zoo-ing. Tomorrow I'm off to Zoo Taiping, the oldest in Malaysia. Catch up when I can.

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