Fundamentally Not Fun

Another thing that isn't exactly ideal is that I seemed to have caught up with the wet season. It had rained for more than a week, and it certainly didn't stop while I was there. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, as this part of the country is really conservative, and demands of its visitors that they wear long trousers. If not, you risk being spat at. So, properly clothed I went for a walk. There is a huge and very varied food market in the middle of the city. There must have been hundreds of different kinds of seafood for sale, each with its own smell. Altogether this added up to an incredible atmosphere. There's also the Sultan museum, the state mosque, a square with something looking like an Arab moon rocket in the middle, McDonalds, houses on the river and a bank.

I especially liked the bank, because this was my first real chance to practice my newly acquired knowledge of the Malaysian language. Everybody smiled at me and ooh-ed and aah-ed at me trying to say "Good day" and counting to five hundred. The woman in front of me in the line didn't sign her withdrawal slip, she used her thumb-print. Anyway, BSM is the only bank in town accepting VISA withdrawals.

The kite-makers in this part of the country supposedly are the best, but I never got to meet them since the roads to the kite-maker district were all flooded. I had also wanted to go to the Taman Negara national park, but that one was gone with the rain as well. Having seen everything in town, that lead me back to the guesthouse. It's amazing how each guesthouse in South-East Asia has its own middle-aged, male American, who sits in the kitchen and tells the most incredible stories about his travels throughout the last 30 years and to what places in Thailand you ought to visit to anyone who can be bothered to listen to them. Desperate Generation X wannabe's, or something.

There are no discotheques, bars or clubs in Kota Bahru, since drinking alcohol in public is strictly banned. There are no bookshops selling books in English. Oh, and the best thing: This was the first place where I wasn't awoken by the cock-a-doodle-doo's every sunrise. Instead, I was awoken by the muezzin calling from the minaret for the morning prayer, well before sunrise. Kota Bahru didn't use to be like this, the strict muslim rules were introduced fairly recently. Just a few years ago they had Pantai Cinta Berahi, "The Beach for Passionate Love-making" here. It has now changed to Pantai Cahoya, "The Moonlight Beach". The heavy rain may very well be God's punishment of these people for their religious fanatism.

Because of the weather, I left the 12 ringgit/night room, ants, rats and mosquito-size holes in the walls complimentary, and left for Kuala Lumpur. Hmmm... "Kuala Lumpur"... Have a taste of the name. It's one of those places that are exotic just because of what they are called. But when you arrive there, it's basically just another city. Or... Not JUST another city. It's a very special city, striving to be biggest and best in all conceivable ways, just 50 ringgit by train from Kota Bahru. The trip was nice enough, except for the noisy videos that made it impossible to sleep (this was an over-night train!), and the Malaysian passengers who came up to me and took my picture all the time. The train was scheduled to arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 6:30am, but I had been told it would never ever get there before at least a couple of hours later. It came as a disappointment that we actually arrived at 4:30am, as there's NOTHING to see or do in the middle of the night in Asian cities. No hostels were open either, so this meant that I spent my first hours in Kuala Lumpur walking around downtown, without seeing anyone at all, almost like a ghost town, except normally ghost towns don't have skyscrapers.

KL definitely has skyscrapers. They even had just about finished putting up the highest building in the world. I also found another Guinness book of World Record candidate: The dirtiest place to stay in the world, namely KL City Lodge. Being very central at 10 ringgit per night there had to be at least one catch. It's more a cheap place to stay for people with no money than it is a lodge. Two other ones, Backpacker Traveller Inn and Traveller's Moon Lodge, not too far away, should be a better pick for most backpackers.

The oriental feeling starts at the train station, which has several tall, beautiful towers with a lot of ornaments. A lot of the official buildings in KL has this architecture as well. There's even a HUGE skyscraper with oriental patterns covering the sides. At a more anthropological level, the people behave very different from city people other places. I witnessed a shoplifter being caught red-handed, so to speak, and that certainly made me decide to be very careful about not doing anything wrong in this city. The street changed from being a rather quiet one into being pure hell, with everyone yelling and running after the shoplifter. They quickly got him, brought him to the ground and started hitting and kicking the man, unleashing centuries of anger, it seemed. Afterwards, the owner of the shop picked up the remains of the thief and took them to the police station to have them arrested and thrown in jail, presumably.

It started raining heavily as I walked past the US Embassy, so I fought my way through the visa line and gave the huge, armed guard my passport, so that I could be allowed into the embassy library. I was hoping to catch up on what was happening in the world, but most of the papers were about two years old. The newest one I could find was New York Times of June 9, 1996. Luckily it stopped raining fairly quickly.

On my way back to the hostel I found the Jade Museum. It's nice if you're into jade carvings, but not worth the entrance fee. They do have one huge jade stone, supposedly worth 300 million British pounds, but somehow I doubt they'll be able to sell it to anyone. Anyway, that chunk of jade was just another "biggest in the world" thing, and fit nicely in with the rest of Kuala Lumpur. I also found the world's largest Iwo Jima-monument look-alike, near Lake Gardens, a very nice park. It is their national monument, and since their flag is very much like the US one, it took me a while to figure out what it was doing there.

It is a worthwhile daytrip out of Kuala Lumpur to visit the Batu Caves. This is one of the major holy places to the hindus in Malaysia, with a very Indian atmosphere. Well, to be honest, to me it felt more like a very Indiana Jones-like atmosphere. It is situated in a huge cave with lots of strange rock formations, two large openings where daylight lazily enters, hundreds of rabid-looking monkeys run betweem your legs, looking for things to eat, and there are many Indians who seem to be very much into masochism, but really are just performing miracles from God, basically by using pointy things to perforate themselves and enduring the pain. Apart from the social circus, the caves themselves are quite the attraction.

There's also an "art gallery" in one of the caves. The admission is 1 ringgit, and, I guess, worth it, although it is nothing special. In short it's a small pond with fish that are happy to eat any bread, fruit or children that are offered to them, some turtles that are annoyed by the fish who mistakes the turtles for food all the time, two deer, some birds too heavy with bread inside to fly over the fence and the cave with sculptures depicting what some gods did here a long time ago to make the place holy. You can get here by taking an air-conditioned bus from downtown for 90 sen, or the less luxurious option at 60 sen.

The only bad thing about Kuala Lumpur to me was that one of the guys in the dorm stole my sandals. I guess he needed them more than me anyway, so that didn't really make me angry. I just packed all my other stuff and took the 6,75 ringgit bus to Malacca for a few relaxing days before another Big City-experience.