Asian Extravaganza, Night 10: Kuala Lumpur

OK, so I'm terribly behind on blogging about my trip (I mean for god's sake I've been back for 2 weeks already :P), but I'm determined to get it done. For my own sake, if not all of yours. =D Also, I've decided that I should be chronicling the trip using a night index, versus a day index. That's because we would often be in multiple places during the day, but of course only one place at night. So I'm going to kick off the renaissance of my Asia-trip-blog with our night in KL.

So. After hiking Kinabalu, we were headed for Kuala Lumpur, also known as KL by both locals and foreigners. KL is the largest city in Malaysia and is sort of a rival of Singapore. Where Singapore is straight-laced and clean, KL is chaotic and dirty. But really only in the sense of their personalities, because despite a few rats and some garbage, KL wasn't at all a hellhole. =D

We got in at night, probly around 8pm, and cabbed over to our hotel from the airport. We checked into Number 8, a chic little guesthouse within walking distance of a lot of the swankier hotels and hotspots. I jumped in the shower and sort of got ditched by the other 3 (we lost Luis and Jen on this leg, and it was down to me, Dan, and the Kellys). I was very irritated with the other 3 for various reasons, and initially refused to go to dinner with them in lieu of staying in and browsing the web on the downstairs PCs. But King harrassed me into coming out, so I did. We grabbed dinner at a thai street market stall.... street markets are really the way to eat in Malaysia. They're really just giant open air food courts, but with a pretty wide array of SE Asian choices, and overall the food is cheap and good.

I wasn't hungry, so I just had some Thai iced tea, and then decided to confront them with my annoyances. I usually don't like confronting people with that stuff... For a decade now I've labored under the assumption that confrontation with friends rarely solves anything and usually just pushes people apart (based on a series of experiences I'd had in HS/college), so I usually just keep my issues to myself and end up drifting apart from my friends. But I didn't want to do that for the rest of the trip, plus I love these 3 and I want to do many more such trips with them in the future. So I talked, and they talked, and we sorted everything out. The root of the problem was in some cases some uncommunicated expectations that were going unmet, and thus were cheesing everyone off. So we communicated them and promised to be vigilant about that stuff in the future... and you know what? Here we are 2 weeks after the trip and we didn't have a single additional problem, and we all loved the rest of it. So it looks like maybe my old philosophy isn't such a good one after all. Life lesson! zomg!!!

Anyways. At the end of the meal, Dan says "oh, shit, is that an urble running out of the kitchen?!" (if you'll recall, urble is our term for urban squirrel, or rat/mouse/whatever). So we all look over and not only is ONE running out, but so are 2 others!! Hahahahahaha. And the staff seemed nonplussed. So I suppose it was good I didn't eat there. hehehehe.

After that we headed over to the Night Market, which is this huge street market where you can buy everything under the sun, most of it designer. ;) But alas, it was closed. :( And we tried to get pics of Petronas Towers (the poser skyscrapers that ARE NOT taller than the Sears Tower; ask me and I'll rant to you why), but they weren't lit any more (they look awesome when lit... check out this pic of them!). So after wandering a bit more and seeing more urbles, we decided that since we'd been up since like 3am that morning and were exhausted from our hike, we should get to sleep. So we did!

We got up the next morning and had breakfast... but let me first share with you HOW FUCKING SORE WE WERE. OH. MY. GOD. It was so bad. SOOOOOOOOOOOO bad. We seriously couldn't go down a single stair without crying. We were very very slow carrying our shit down those stairs, I'll tell you that. It was so hard. Our poor legs.... And this was all four of us. And note that we're all triathletes to a degree (some more than others), and some of us have done marathons, and Dan of course biked 5000 miles from SF to DC. So we're not out of shape. But seriously. OUUUUUCCCCH. The great part is that every day we hoped it would get better. And every day.... it really didn't. :'(

After breakfast we headed out to see the sights before our afternoon flight to Vietnam (whirlwind tour of KL!). We ended up hitting the Night Market, which was strangely open during the day (because of the holiday Eid, which is the end of Ramadan!). So we shopped. Some watches were purchased, some t-shirts... I may have gotten a Manchester United jersey with AIG on the front purely for the hilarity of it all. And yes, I was keeping up diligently with the total meltdown happening back in the US. =D We also hit up a mall where we did some more shopping, AND GOT OUR FEET CARPED!!!

What the hell does that mean, you ask. Well. You may have heard of this foot-spa thing where you basically submerge your feet in a pool filled with little carp, who proceed to eat the fuck out of the dead skin. For just a couple bucks you could do that for 15 mins, so we did!! And it was HILARIOUS. I mean, it tickled like hell, and was almost unbearable. But over time you sort of adjust and then accept your fate. =D But overall it was a lot of fun and totally worth it. If you ever get the chance to try it, do it. It's too fun to miss out on.

That was really about it for KL... it was a short trip... I wish we'd had more time. But I enjoyed the Night Market and the street food, and loved the carping. From there, we flew to Hanoi in Vietnam...!