A Malaysian Doubleheader

Hello and xin chào!

A few weeks ago, lured by round trip flights for under US$100, I headed to Malaysia's bustling capital, Kuala Lumpur, and an erstwhile British hill station known as the Cameron Highlands. This post is a two-for-one deal—I didn't do much in the Cameron Highlands besides take in the pretty views of tea plantations and bask in the blessedly cool mountain weather, so it doesn't really need its own post. First, though, Kuala Lumpur (called KL by residents and visitors alike).

Now the center of a metropolitan area of nearly 7.5 million people, Kuala Lumpur was founded in the 1850s as a trading post for nearby tin mines, and it remained a small town well into the 1890s. It shares much of its history with Penang and Singapore: 19th- and 20th-century British colonization and contemporaneous immigration from southern China and, to a lesser extent, southern India. Today, the city's population is roughly 45 percent Malay, 43 percent Chinese, and 10 percent Indian. Though KL is certainly not as developed as Singapore, its infrastructure is remarkably comprehensive, particularly given how dirt cheap it was to use. To get around, I primarily used the elevated metro system—composed of three LRT lines, one MRT line, and one monorail line—and most of my rides were less than 50 cents.

The view from a metro station—the Petronas Twin Towers are on the right.

After clearing an hour-long immigration queue at KLIA, the sprawling airport way beyond the city's outskirts, I took a non-stop train into the city center that covered the 35-mile distance in about half an hour. I then had some incredible Indian food for a meal that wasn't quite lunch or dinner and took a nice little nap at my hostel. For my first evening, I headed to the KLCC area, an upscale development from the late '90s. In addition to malls, hotels, and skyscrapers, it's home to the iconic Petronas Twin Towers.

Petronas Twin Towers at night.

Since it was a Sunday night, the well-manicured park at the base of the towers (KLCC Park) was filled with people walking around and sitting by the artificial lake. Every hour, there was a small synchronized light show using the fountains in the lake. It was a really lovely atmosphere, perfect for relaxing and gazing up at the Petronas Twin Towers—which were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004 and remain the world's tallest twin towers.

(Turn the sound on to hear the last prayer call of the day from a nearby mosque.)

After about an hour and a half chilling in the park—and a few minutes before I was planning to leave—a local man sat down next to me and proceeded to talk to me for a solid 45 minutes. Of course. His name was Vijay, and the next day was going to be his 30th birthday. Somehow he ended up telling me about his tumultuous childhood with an abusive father how he no longer talks to anyone in his family. He also told me about the racism he experiences as a dark-skinned Malaysian Indian: "The Chinese are so racist, and the Malays get help from the government. No one wants to help the Indians." I'll touch on this more later, but since the 1970s, Malaysia has practiced an increasingly controversial policy of affirmative action for Malays and other indigenous peoples. It was interesting—and obviously sad—to hear about these tensions I didn't realize existed.

Eventually I signaled to Vijay that it was time for me to go, and then he asked where I was going. Turns out he was heading to the same LRT stop as me, so he asked if he could join. While he had been talking to me, I noticed something childish about the way he talked and interacted with me, and while waiting on the LRT platform he even patted my belly. He had to go up to a service counter instead of a machine to get his ticket, and I noticed that the concession fares are pretty much only for seniors, students, and the disabled. It all clicked, and then I felt even worse for him—given how both disability and mental health are extremely stigmatized in Asia, his relationship with his family became a lot clearer. He kept trying to make plans with me for his birthday the following day, but I did my best to politely decline. Once we made it to our destination station, we parted ways. All night he kept saying how nice I was, so I can only hope that I at least made him happy while listening to him.

Street scene near my hostel.

After another delicious Indian meal and a good night's sleep at my super nice, design-y hostel, it was time to start pounding the KL pavement. I wandered from my hostel into the city's historic heart, Chinatown.

A creatively painted building in Chinatown.

Outside the art deco Central Market.

Eventually I found my way to lunch at a typical kopitiam, more or less a hybrid of a coffee shop and a food court. Surrounding the perimeter of the seating area are 5-6 open-air hawker stalls, each selling no more than a few items. If you're not ordering your meal for takeaway, you can go sit in the shared seating area, but you have to buy a drink from an extensive menu of coffees and teas. For about 50 cents, I got a lemon iced tea so I could sit down and enjoy my $2 char kway teow (one of my favorite dishes when I visited Singapore in April).

The kopitiam where I had lunch.

Since the tables are all communal and it was quite crowded, an older Malaysian Chinese man sat down across from me and—you'll never guess—decided to start chatting with me. (Malaysia's multiethnic population and colonial British past means that in urban areas almost everyone speaks English, many of them fluently.) Turns out this place, which I only found because I happened to pass it while walking around, was highly regarded, and he was quite eager to tell me about KL and Malaysia. He was a retired engineer who worked on national infrastructure projects, and I remarked at how well developed Malaysia's infrastructure has become. This is where the hitherto pleasant conversation took a turn.

In response, he lamented that Malaysia's infrastructure is being mismanaged and poorly maintained due to rampant corruption. Okay, seems fair, I thought. "But the Malays! They're so lazy and don't want to work. They expect the government to do everything for them!" I was speechless. He then went on to accuse them of having multiple wives and consequently tons of children due to their religion (Islam). He was not speaking very quietly when he said all this, so at this point I was worried someone would overhear and chaos would ensue. Aside from the disconcertingly blatant racism, it was fascinating to hear yet another expression of the ethnic tensions in what I thought was a pretty harmonious society.

Chinatown street scene.

After the lovely-turned-discomfiting lunch, I needed to do some quick research into all this Malay resentment. As I mentioned, when the British ruled Malaysia, immigration surged: while rural areas remained predominantly Malay, the cities swelled with a Chinese merchant class and Indian indentured laborers serving the British Empire. By the time Malaysia gained independence from Britain in 1957, many of the Indians returned to India, leaving the country primarily divided between the urban, wealthy Chinese and rural, poor Malays. Despite being the majority of the population in Malaysia, the Malays and other indigenous ethnic groups—together called Bumiputras—held only 2.4 percent of the country's wealth.

After widespread political and ethnic strife in the 1960s, the government introduced a wide-ranging set of affirmative action policies for the Bumiputras called the New Economic Policy. Even as a large Malay urban middle class has been built, most of the policies—intended to only be temporary—remain in place, with growing controversy. Among other things, there are preferential quotas for Bumiputras at universities and in government jobs, restrictions on non-Bumiputra business ownership and stockholding, and a 7 percent discount on any new construction housing for Bumiputras. Quite frankly, I'm not sure where I stand on it—the issue certainly resembles debates going on back in the U.S. but carries vastly different power dynamics and demographic implications.

The entrance to the Petaling Street market.

As all of this swirled around my head, I passed through the heart of Chinatown, Petaling Street and its notorious market of counterfeit goods.

A shop selling "Fendi" bags on Petaling Street.

Next, I was planning on catching a commuter train out to the famed Batu Caves on the outskirts of the city. The next train wasn't going to be leaving for nearly two hours, so I decided I'd pay a quick visit to the Islamic Arts Museum.

Under one of the domes at the Islamic Arts Museum.

The air conditioning was cold, and the collection was pretty interesting, with beautiful Qurans, calligraphy, and textiles. It was a nice diversion before catching my train—a 30-minute commuter rail ride that cost less than a dollar and took me from Islam to Hinduism. 

At the entrance to the Batu Caves.

About a five-minute walk from the eponymous train station, the Batu Caves are reached by climbing nearly 300 steps up into a mountain. In the caves, there is a Hindu temple as well as several shrines, and at the base stands a 140-foot-tall statue of Murugan, the Hindu god of war.

A macaque hanging out atop the temple at the base of the stairs.

Perhaps as famous as the caves themselves, hordes of macaques (a close relative of the baboon) scamper all up and down the colorful staircase and even on the temples themselves. They are notorious for how aggressively they steal food and drink from the flocks of tourists scaling the stairs.

A perfectly timed photo, if I do say so myself.

Thanks to the monkeys, partially full bottles of water would frequently start tumbling down the steep stairs. One actually started grabbing my 1.5-liter bottle from me, but I yanked it back.

Looking toward the caves' entrance from above the main temple.

The caves themselves, meanwhile, were incredible. They were huge and gave meaning to the word cavernous. There was one main temple in the first and largest cave, at which some sort of ceremony was happening just as I made it up the stairs.

(Make sure to turn your sound on.)

No idea what it was for/about, but it sure was cool to witness, particularly given the spectacular surroundings. I spent a while meandering around and taking it all in before heading back down the stairs through the throngs of macaques.

If you look closely, you can see a baby monkey underneath the arm of its mother.

On the way down, I captured the pièce de résistance of my monkey shots. Then, I caught the caught a train back into the city. It was around 5:30pm when I got to the LRT stop near my hostel, and even though it was definitely too early to have dinner, my small-ish portion of char kway teow earlier had not been quite enough.

My impulsively bought mee goreng back at my hostel.

I spotted a food truck selling mee goreng right after stepping onto the street and knew some spicy noodles were just what I needed. (When I brought it back to the hostel, I found that I was correct.) For a dollar, I got a freshly fried container of the dish, a version of which I had first tried in Penang in March. I didn't really know what was in there besides noodles fried in a curried soy sauce, green chilis, and crispy scallions. It was so, so spicy but so, so delicious.

After a nap that lasted a little too long, I finished off the day by visiting a rooftop bar with a perfect view of the Petronas Twin Towers, but inexplicably I didn't take any pictures. One good night's sleep later, I walked a few minutes from my hostel to the KL Forest Eco Park, a section of tropical rainforest right in the city center.

Along the canopy walk in the KL Forest Eco Park.

In addition to some hokey museums and the KL Tower—a Space Needle-style communications tower with a revolving restaurant and observation deck at the top—the main attraction at the park is its canopy walk. It was free, and the concept was really cool, but admittedly I was a little disappointed at how short it was, as well as how little there was to look at. After a good 20 minutes walking around, I headed back to get some Indian food near my hostel.

Street art near my hostel depicting rural Malaysia.

After lunch, I headed off to a hip café to read my book for a while—and again I inexplicably did not take any pictures. Luckily I made it inside just as an afternoon downpour was beginning, which then pounded on the metal roof of the café. It was pretty cool to experience from inside, especially while the café's massive, high-quality speakers and turntables played jazz.

Masjid Jamek as seen from a bridge over the Klang River.

Next came a visit to Masjid Jamek, one of the oldest mosques in KL. Built in 1909—and designed by an English architect, oddly enough—it's located at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak Rivers, the site where KL is believed to have been first settled. The grounds were remarkably beautiful and, more than anything else, peaceful. I probably spent a solid 45 minutes here taking it all in.

Someone resting in the main prayer hall.

As with the mosque I visited in Singapore, the main indoor prayer hall was quite spare. In fact, the outdoor prayer halls were much larger, and many people were taking naps there in the afternoon heat. (Non-Muslims were only allowed to enter a portion of the main indoor prayer hall and nowhere else.)

Nap time at Masjid Jamek's outdoor prayer hall.

The best part of the whole complex, however, was wandering in the lush, atmospheric gardens behind the prayer halls (to the left of the domes in the first picture of the mosque). Marble-tiled fountains bubbled amid tropical plants, with the Gombak River in the background.

The Malaysian flag is visible on a skyscraper rising above the gardens.

Masjid Jamek seen from the gardens in the rear.

Even in the heat and humidity (which was bad, but not quite as bad as Hanoi's been for the past two months), I was perfectly comfortable while I relaxed by the fountains. There was also a nice view of the Sultan Abdul Samad Building across the adjacent Gombak River.

The Sultan Abdul Samad Building seen from the Masjid Jamek gardens.

The Sultan Abdul Samad Building was completed in 1897 to house the British colonial administration in what was then called Malaya, and until the 2000s, it housed independent Malaysia's highest courts. I headed across the river there to see it more closely after I left the mosque. 

(I should add that on my way out I was of course accosted by an incredibly nice Malaysian man who started speaking French to me, found out I was American, told me I looked like a French Muslim, gave me a surprisingly non-pushy pitch for Islam, then wished me peace. It was all very pleasant if rather bewildering.)

Flowers in front of the Sultan Abdul Samad Building.

I ended up just walking around the outer banks of the Gombak and Klang Rivers' confluence around Masjid Jamek. One side was lined colonial-era buildings and flowering trees, and the other abutted some modern, tall-but-not-skyscraper-tall buildings of Chinatown. After my stroll, I boarded the LRT to visit the bustling Bukit Bintang area.

Street art in Bukit Bintang.

I wandered among the high-end shopping malls that were just as glitzy and bustling as any urban shopping district back in the US. After a quick stop at my shopping guilty pleasure, Uniqlo, I went off to find the Jalan Alor night market. I made a wrong turn, however, and stumbled upon these two alleys that were totally covered in street art, which was pretty cool.

Curry mee at Jalan Alor.

Eventually, I made it to Jalan Alor, an entire street that closes every evening and becomes packed with hawker stalls. My dish of choice? Curry mee. It's pretty much what it sounds like: noodles and curry. The curry was Thai-style, so it had a broth-like consistency. I'm pretty sure it was coconut milk-based, and as far as I could tell, it also had chicken, cockles, and fried tofu. Like pretty much everything else I ate on this trip, it was delicious.

My view of a fruit stall while I was eating at Jalan Alor.

The next morning, I took a four-hour bus ride to the Cameron Highlands. The main bus station in KL was the cleanest, most organized bus station I've ever used. There was a centralized ticketing system with airline-style boarding passes for all bus operators. I was stunned. The first two hours took us about 100 miles north of the city on an interstate-style highway before we inexplicably changed buses to head up into the mountains. 

As soon as we set off in the second bus, dozens of mosquitoes came out of nowhere and seemed to just be floating around everyone's heads. No one else on the bus seemed particularly concerned about this, so I just kept on clapping my hands to kill them. Most of the other people around me hadn't even noticed them to begin with. Half an hour or so later, they were mostly gone. The bus' windows were all closed, and it was very well climate-controlled from the moment I got on. Beyond perplexing. Nearly two hours and only 35 miles later, we made it to the small tourist town of Tanah Rata.

One of the tea plantations I visited. This one was visible from the road leading up to Tanah Rata.

At an elevation of 5,000 feet, the Cameron Highlands began to be developed in the early 1930s as a hill station for British colonists to escape Malaysia's tropical heat, and nowadays it makes for an extremely popular weekend trip for urban Malaysians. Consequently, Tanah Rata had a tourist trap feel to it, but there were very few people since I had come in the middle of the week. At any rate, I had really only come for the weather: 75°F and sunny during the day, and 60°F at night. We haven't weather nearly that comfortable in Hanoi since March or April.

Marrybrown's Kapitan curry bowl.

After arriving, I rented a motorbike (and I may or may not have had to lie about the applicability of my Michigan driver's license to do so) to head out to the famous BOH tea plantation. On the way, I grabbed lunch at a Malaysian fast food chain called Marrybrown and got a delicious little curry bowl with rice, fried potato wedges, and popcorn chicken. It was kind of fun to see the American fast food-concept translated into a cuisine so totally different from its origins.

Looking toward the BOH visitor's center and café.

Winding my way through the mountains, I made it to the BOH plantation and its gorgeous visitor's center. I got to sit outside and enjoy some excellent lemon-lime iced tea and extremely mediocre cheesecake. The air was fresh, and the weather was, in a word, immaculate.

Panorama of the view at BOH Sungai Palas Estate. (Click for full-size!)

I sat there for an hour and a half, and I relished every minute of it. I also went on the brief self-guided factory tour—which had a suspiciously strict no photo policy. I suppose it wasn't all that interesting in and of itself, but the smell of processing hundreds of pounds of tea leaves was alternately wonderful and overpowering.

A Hindu temple near worker housing on the plantation.

For whatever reason, it didn't really register with me that it was called a plantation because the workers in the tea fields also lived on site in this relatively remote mountain location. The vast majority of the field workers are migrants from Sri Lanka and southern India who are subject to extremely restrictive contracts. None of this dawned on me until I realized that one of the buildings I passed on my way from the parking area to the visitor's center was a small primary school for the children of the workers. Given the widespread abuse of migrant laborers around the world, I still feel uneasy about patronizing two tea plantations during my visit.

Sunset seen from one of my guesthouse's balconies.

Eventually I went back to my guesthouse, constantly reminding myself to drive on the left side of the road by audibly humming "left left left…" ad nauseum. For the rest of the day, I sat outside on my guesthouse's balconies reading my book. Come nightfall, I switched to watching Netflix outside, and I got to wear a sweatshirt—I was ecstatic.

My plate of nasi lemak.

The next day passed in much the same fashion. For lunch, I had what is often called the Malaysian national dish, nasi lemak. It's basically rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaf with various accoutrements—usually some type of curry, sambal (sweet chili paste), cucmbers, peanuts, and a boiled egg. I forwent the egg and got chicken rendang, a curry I first tried in Singapore made with a coconut milk base and flavored with ginger, galangal, turmeric, lemongrass, garlic, and chili. It was wonderful.

Around 5pm, I caught a bus back to KL. I spent the night next to the main train station with the train to KLIA, where I had an early flight the next morning. I made it back to Hanoi in the early afternoon, took as much of a nap as I could, and then taught that evening. So ended my second trip to Malaysia. Check out more photos here!

Stay tuned for a post about my motorbike trip on the Hải Vân pass in Central Vietnam last week! I'm headed to Saigon next week, so hopefully I'll be able to finish it before then. (And  in four weeks, I'll be heading back to the US!)

Till next time,

Gray