Kuala Lumpur: Want to Get Away?

Gosh, do I ever.  It’s been a rough year for me with a death in the family and all that being an executor of an estate entails.  It’s coming up on a the one year anniversary of my Mother’s death and I’ve overseen the distribution of house and property in the way that my Mother wished.  Seattle is cold, wet and dark this time of year.  Escape beckons.

Kuala Lumpur is more than 8000 miles from Seattle.  In flying here I easily lapped myself at more than 30 hours of being awake.  But it’s a world away and that’s what I wanted and what I really need.  To crawl the streets of a steamy tropical metropolis just north of the equator.  To stuff my face with fragrant, creamy durian.  To relax when the withering sun saps my strength. 

There’s fresh durian (but unlike Thailand there's none in the supermarkets) and I’m also eating durian ice cream.  But temps are in the sticky 90’s, the food is great, our hotel has the pool in the middle of their bar which is a great escape from the steamy streets and having the sun rock down out of the sky and beat down on my poor balding head.  To hear the Muslim call to prayer as the morning sun lights up the Petronas Towers on the way to our roti breakfast.

Kuala Lumpur - Life Near the Equator

First a word about life near the equator. Kuala Lumpur is hot. It’s humid too and the heat just rocks down out of the sky. And each afternoon isn’t complete without a tropical downpour. But life near the equator also means that day and night are roughly of equal lengths. The sun sets at 7:30 PM and dawn hasn’t broken until nearly 7:30 AM. It’s a constant that I could get used to. KL is big, it's loud and it's kinda Muslim. Here and there women in black burkas Muslim. Commercials on TV condemning Israeli aggression Muslim. But the supermarkets have booze and canned pork from China and there’s no call to prayer five times a day from the few minarets I’ve seen so I guess Malaysia isn’t strict theocratic Muslim even though Islam is the official Malaysian state religion. Fewer beggars on the street than in Bangkok or in China but there's no doubt that this is the 3rd world. The Dorsett hotel is no great shakes. They want $10 US for an Internet connection and I see no trace yet of the promised free municipal wifi that's supposedly up and running. I walked into our room for the first time and immediately stepped on la cucaracha and heard the toilet leaking. I washed my hands and the sink leaked onto the floor and onto my shoes. This inspired Eleanor into her role of whipping the servants into shape and we got another room quick. The hotel is in what’s known locally as the Golden Triangle. It has gigantic concrete hell of shopping malls with lots of fast food franchises. Papa Johns, Beard Papa, Kenny Rogers Roasters, Carl’s Junior. Had dinner in a Chinese restaurant where one of the dinner candidates was eating a fellow dinner offering that was on his back in their aquarium holding tank. At least I've managed to find and consume the King of Fruits.

Bangkok: Eating Durian

 

The refrigerator in my hotel room in Bangkok smells like durian. What does durian, sometimes called “stinky fruit”, smell like? A delicious and exotic tropical fruit? Or, "pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock"?

The durian was in the refrigerator in my hotel room for just a few hours. I bought over Eleanor’s objection and brought it back to the hotel for desert. Eleanor knows durian and religiously avoids the stuff. She won’t eat it because she can’t get close to it without gagging. The durian was good, smooth, exotic but more fragrant, complex and flavorful than I recall from my last trip to Bangkok. But I noticed the distinctive acid smell again when I opened the door to my hotel room and it’s in the fridge, maybe forever. The hotel has my credit card number. For those that can’t bear the odor or the spikes of the durian I bought this, durian in a handy sausage pack.