Malaysia, Truly Asia

That's the annoyingly catchy tagline to an advertising campaign that is on TV all the time.

But what the hell, we thought, as long as we are living in Asia we better visit the one place that bills itself as 'Truly' Asia. Most of the places and folks around these parts, it seems, are merely pretenders, acting as if they have some sort of claim of Asianness. The Malaysian Tourism Authority, thankfully, is here to let us in on the scam and call us to Asia's true bosom.

Anyway, to Kuala Lumpur we went, to meet up with our friends Michael (Jakarta) and Mary Beth (Chengdu...that's in China...city of 14 million...consult an atlas...just East of Tibet).

KL's most distinct visual feature is, of course, the Petronas Towers. They are pretty cool, especially at night, and they featured heavily in our time in the city as there is a nice mall at the base of the buildings that we spent considerable time at.

We figured the best way to really get into the culture of the country was to visit Esprit, Haagen Dazs and Chili's (no, we didn't go to Esprit or Chili's, but we could have, which was a nice change from Vientiane and it's sickening lack of mass market theme restaurants and clothing chains).

Perspective: Me flat on my back (Malaysians wondering what the idiot foreigner was thinking). Katherine's shirt didn't quite measure up to her expanding belly.

The Mandarin Oriental was next door to the towers (and the blessed Suria KLCC Mall). As such, our KL universe was relatively small. It consisted mainly of the hotel, the hotel pool, the park that fronts the hotel and mall, and the mall. We justified our lack of exploration by saying, rightly, that the weekend was primarily about seeing Mary Beth and Micheal before they leave our beloved region.

MB leaves Chengdu for training in DC in about 2 weeks. Micheal leaves Jakarta for DC in about 6 weeks. Then they head next April to Bogota, so we'll be sitting in Kiev, separated by an ocean, pining for our friends.

So quality time in the pool, which had a great view of the park and surrounding city (but sadly, no towers). As I took this photo, the call to prayer was being broadcast from the nearby mosque (you can see the dome just above the trees).


The mall. We actually didn't spend too much time there, but popped in a bunch of times to buy snacks, books (Kinokinuya is a great Asian bookstore chain, if not a little expensive, but I picked up a really depressing Charles Bukowski book, Factotum, that is now a movie starring Matt Dillon and a depressing but funny Nick Hornby book, A Long Way Down), ice cream, and allergy medicine.

The last bit was just for me. I was running low before we left, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was about 25-35% cheaper in KL than Laos, and cheaper than Thailand too. So I went to a couple pharmacies where the conversations were along the lines of;

"Do you have any Telfast?"
"Yes, how much would you like?"
"How much do you have? And do you have Flixonase?"
"Yes, how much would you like?"
"How much do you have?"

So I bought out two pharmacies worth of my allergy medicine. It will keep me in good stead as the rainy season continues and I battle mold like the puffer-dependent warrior that I am.

Anyway, the mall.


We did manage to avoid going to a movie. We were primed for a movie, if one was deemed worthy. Snakes on a Plane was the best option timewise and whatnot.

We took a pass on it. It would have taken away from our pool time.