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Kuala Lumpur’s Diversity I’ve just finished a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. I’ll be returning here later in my trip, but then I’ll probably be resting more, and not doing as much. So I thought I would describe Kuala Lumpur now, while it’s all new and fresh.
I like Kuala Lumpur, even though it’s not immediately likeable. It’s a funny Southeast Asian city. It’s not as clean or ultra-nice as Singapore. Nor is it as crazy and wide-open as Bangkok (or Phnom Penh or Saigon or Hanoi). It’s also not huge, a million and a half people. It feels pretty manageable, and alive, and interesting. It’s got plenty of Asian excitement, but not too much.
Kuala Lumpur’s Diversity I also like how diverse KL is. I think it’s the most diverse city I’ve ever been in. New York is diverse, especially in sections (Queens), but KL feels more diverse. KL seems about tri-racial – divided into thirds among Chinese, Indian, and Malay. There are probably more Malays, but the diversity is everywhere. There are shops, restaurants, and places of worship that are unique to each of the three cultures, and then also
Gopuram, or Tower
South Indian temple - this tower is covered with brighly colored statues of Indian gods. Malaysia has become this rich stew of all three cultures mixed together. All of this shows up most obviously in KL’s food and KL’s religions.
Kuala Lumpur’s Food KL’s food is fabulous. I think Malaysian food might be my favorite, mostly because it’s so diverse. There is great Chinese food, great Indian food (especially South Indian food), and great Malay food. Plus every other kind of food you could think of, as in many big cities.
My favorite Malaysian dish is laksa, which is a coconut milk curry soup. There are 15 different kinds of laksas; it is made differently all over Malaysia (with a unique one in Singapore too). I ate laksa my first night here. It was coconut milk soup with Chinese egg noodles, tofu, shrimp, chicken, and some shredded vegetables of some sort. It was fabulous, maybe the best one I’ve ever eaten. I was too jetlagged to take a picture; I’ll do take a laksa picture another time.
I also ate some great chicken rice at a Malaysian “coffee shop.” Chicken rice is a plain-but-delicious dish from Hainan, in Southern China. It has taken root all over Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. It’s
Chicken and Rice
From the Malaysian "coffee shop" eaten everywhere. As you can see from the picture, it’s chicken and rice. And a bit of chili sauce and some plain soup. A Malaysian “coffee shop” is really a little hawker center or food court. There are 5-6 little stalls selling different foods that they cook fresh for you. You go around and look at what you want, place your order, sit down, and they bring it to you. There’s a drinks stall too. It’s all open to the air, as you can see from the photos.
For breakfast this morning I ate roti canai (roti chan-ie) and teh tarik. Roti canai is a roti, which is a thin Indian bread dish, sort of like filo dough in Greek food. It’s served with different kinds of dhal (lentils) and curry sauce. It’s mildly spicy. I ate it at what’s called a mamak restaurant, which are all over KL. These are restaurants that serve a bit of everything – Indian food, Malay food, and Chinese food. They do it all fast, cheaply, and well. You can see this mamak restaurant in the photos; I also took a picture of the friendly roti man.
For second breakfast I had
nasi lemak, a traditional Malay breakfast. I actually wasn’t planning on having second breakfast, but then I wandered by “Grandma’s Coffee Shop,” and there was a lady out front selling nasi lemak, and lots of people eating it. So I got some. Nasi lemak is rice and egg and Malay curry / chili sauce. I got a piece of chicken too. It was good, much spicier than the Indian food. Malay food is quite spicy.
I didn’t eat Chinese food, although there’s lots around to eat. Chinese food is sort of bland compared to Indian and Malay food.
With all of this food diversity, I thought it was funny that the longest lines I saw were at KFC. I went in at lunch time yesterday to get some much-needed AC and a large Mountain Dew (yes!), and it seemed like half of KL was in KFC. Malays, Chinese, Indians, and some Africans and Arab-looking folks too.
Kuala Lumpur’s Places of Worship I’ve been going into temples a lot, because I think they’re interesting. The three major ones I visited were a South Indian temple, a Chinese temple, and a mosque. All three were interesting. They were
Under the Mercy Trees
A novel by our friend Heather Newton, in a Japanese bookstore in Kuala Lumpur. It's the one between the green one and the black one. all fairly active, with folks praying in the various ways that folks pray. All of them are open to the air, but covered, and usually have a marble or stone floor, so they feel cool in the August-in-Raleigh heat of KL. I would just go in them and hang out, and cool off, and watch what’s going on, and wander around.
A Snitch of Western North Carolina in Kuala Lumpur Yesterday I spent most of the day in temples and mosques, and wandering the very Asian parts of KL. By “Asian” I mean interesting and chaotic. After a while, in the super-wet heat, all the grittiness gets to be too much. Yesterday it was 3 pm, and I was lost, and I was totally sopping with sweat, and I was walking down a very nondescript 8-lane road, and I saw a Monorail stop. KL has a monorail running through its center, and I remembered that the monorail goes to KL’s nicest mall. I didn’t come here to go to malls, but this is a really, really nice mall, with really, really potent AC. So I hopped on the monorail.
The mall is called Suria KLLC, and it’s
underneath the Petronas Towers, a skyscraper built by Petronas, Malaysia’s oil company. When it was built, it was the largest building in the world. It’s quite a building (as the photos show), and Suria KLCC is quite a mall.
As I wandered around the mall, I saw a great bookstore called Kinokuniya. It’s a Japanese chain, with stores all over Asia (and a few in the US). I went in, just to browse, and I thought of looking for
Under the Mercy Trees, a recently published novel by our friend (and famous international author) Heather Newton. I took a look in the general fiction section, and there it was. It’s a great book, about a gay man who returns from NYC to Western NC when his brother disappears, and tries to make whatever peace he can with his past there. It was funny (and exciting) to see the book in a Japanese bookstore in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s a small world, literally. Probably there’s a niche now in Malaysia for books about middle-aged gay men in the mountains of NC, thanks to Heather.
A Snitch of Olde England in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia is a former British colony.
Colonial KL
This is the main colonial building that the British built. They styled it to look like India, which is what they knew. The historic colonial center of KL is a bunch of pseudo-Indian buildings that the British built around a cricket pitch. The Malaysians call the cricket field “Freedom Square,” because that’s where they officially became independent from the British. I went and visited the area. It was funny that they British centered their new city on a cricket pitch. In preparation for going to India, I had watched a 2-hour special on the history of the Cricket World Cup. India is nuts over cricket; I thought I should brush up. Anyway, the British are / were just plain nuts. There was a cricket field, lined with mock Tudor half-timbered buildings on one side, and all of these odd (but gorgeous) kind-of Indian / Moghul buildings. It looked like something that was a parody of Britishness, like an amusement park or something. I guess it helped them feel at home. It was all quite charming.
Tomorrow I fly to South India. That will be interesting….
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May
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hooray for you
This is a great blog. I especially love all the pictures. Your camera is working great!!!! Thanks for working on it. Keep on having fun.