Oct 2006

Some of you at home have mocked me for having what I have termed my "Internet travel buddies". Surely, you all thought it wouldn't be long until I showed up on Dateline NBC trying to explain why I had chosen to arrive at the home of a thirteen year old girl with a bottle of champagne, some fuzzy handcuffs, a skinny mustache and some smooth talk'in.

Kidding aside, having arrived in Kuala Lumpur and having been greeted at the train station by a guy I previously only knew as user name Hien, I instantly knew this Internet invention was a good thing.

"The wire is on fire!" zzzzzzppp. Power off. This is what just went down here at my hostel on Borneo. I'll be damned, she was right. The wire from the washing machine, was in fact, on fire. And she did in fact cut the power.

Man, I love this stuff.

Anyway, back to good old Hien the Internet buddy. To quote Billy Madison, "man, am I glad I called that guy. After a marathon of travel that took me from Denver to LA, to Taipei and finally to Kuala Lumpur; I arrived at one of the cleanest, most user friendly airports I've ever had the pleasure of passing through. Beat the hell out of LAX, I can tell you that. That said, I had no idea what to do with myself in KL.

Lucky for me, Hien and his cousin Jennifer met me at KL Sentral, which is where a super fast train whizzes you to from the airport.

Since I fear another "wire is fire" moment here, I'm not going to get into too much detail, but suffice it to say, my two days in KL were activity filled from the moment I arrived, to the moment I almost missed my plane to Borneo because Hien was doing his best to track down a Durrian for me to try before I left. Oh yeah, a durrian is apparently a fruit, the smell of which most Westerners seemingly compare to old socks, but Hien assured me the SE Asians love it. But I digress.

Although, we did way too much sightseeing to adequately describe it here, what I think I found the most intersesting in my first two days in Malaysia was learning about the three primary ethnic groups who live in KL. And we saw them all, as well as where they worship. Malaysia, though not a Muslim State, is a deeply Muslim country and the influence is everywhere. I'm also here during Ramadan, which has been quite interesting to watch as they "break fast" when the sun sets each day.

The second main group living in KL are the Indians. Each morning, Hien would arrive at my hostel and we would eat breakfast at the Indian restaurant down below. Apparently, corn flakes and coffee are not a big hit in India, so each morning I ate some interesting variety of a pancake with curry sauce. Quite good, actually.

And the third main group living in KL, are the Chinese. Hien was kind enough to take me to several Chinese Buddhist temples and I think these experiences were among the highlights for me.

Since I'm realizing that even I wouldn't be reading down this far, I'm going to leave it at that. But a big thank you goes out from me to Hien and Jennifer. You made my stay in KL exceptional and extremely memorable.