Chez K.L. (by Amy)
As I am sure most of you have read, some of our travels included a trek across the longitude of Thailand in a sleeper train. Well, after our experience of spending 8 hours breathing in exhaust, developing head-aches from the constant slamming of the nearby train-car-door, and trying to drown out the interim happiness expressed by the numerous drunkards aboard the train, it was easy for us to make the decision to fly into Kuala Lumpur from Krabi as we continued our journey south to Malaysia.
Just trying to sort ourselves out and get used to the new menu that K.L. (Kuala Lumpur) had to offer took us a week. The menu included: deep fried pigeon – which was accompanied by a photo of an actual whole pigeon deep-fried, as though it was plucked from the sky and thrown directly into the vat of grease -, frog porridge – this actually comes highly recommended to us now from a good friend-, several nights spent ‘sleeping’ above a bar to the blatant beats of Michael Jackson, eating chicken and rice from the sketchiest little restaurant ever, and tasting the most horrid naturally occurring herbaceous matter on Earth: the durian fruit.
The Chinese night market had a lot to offer in the way of frog-porridge and deep fried street birds, but after being recently sick in Raylay beach, I tried to be more cautious of the things I slammed down my gullet, sticking mostly to noodle or rice dishes slathered with vegetables. One day however, Nolan and I were making our way to ‘Little India’ when we were caught in a monsoonal downpour. It was near lunch, we were both hungry, and we were near a little cafe run by two very elderly Chinese people. I am not sure how long the chicken sat under the glass counter, or how long the cucumber had been crawled on by ants, but I did know that the iced coffee’s ice came from a water-source we as tourists are not advised to drink. We ate the chicken and rice, pushed aside the ants and asked to take the coffee away with us. The little old lady poured our cold coffees into one bag, and inserted a straw. We went away smiling, the old lady was smiling, and we were smiling still when we pitched the ‘to-go drink’ in the nearest garbage just around the corner as we continued our journey.
We never did find ‘Little India’, but we did stumble upon the Chinese Marketplace (different from the night market of late-night snacks). After wandering through the giant maze of stalls full with shining belt-buckles, pseudo Loui Vuitton wallets, socer jerseys, watches, sandals, clocks, coffee beans, more soccer jerseys, handbags, etc…we needed something to eat. Luckily for us, along with the numerous stalls selling useless counterfeit junk, there were also a number of fruit stands. This is where Nolan and I decided we should try the durian fruit. Durian fruit is very popular in South East Asia, and as far as fruit goes, quite expensive. There are a lot of people who just love the stuff! Well, we tried it and these are Nolan’s exact words on the matter, “If someone ate a bunch of boiled eggs, and then farted on a onion, and then the onion went bad, it would taste exactly like durian.” I found the taste to be sulfurous: not a quality I look for when eating fruit.
Alas, the menu of K.L. did not consist of only grotesque mains; we had our fair share of dessert too. Itching to climb again soon since our fantastic time at the beaches of Railay, we “googled” climbing gyms in Kuala Lumpur. Luckily for us, we happened upon a place called Camp 5. After a 5 minute walk to the metro station, a 15 minute metro ride to the bus station, and a 1.5 hour bus ride, we finally made it to Utama mall. Breathing a sigh of relief, as we finally made it to our intended destination and not somewhere outside the city as we truly beleived we were headed, we scoured the shopping centre for the climbing gym. Once again, this took much longer than we had anticipated and by the time we showed up to Camp 5 huffing and puffing, it was 9pm. The gym did not close until 11pm, but we had a bus to catch at 10:30pm…should we even bother trying to climb? Of course! We spent so much time trying to get to Camp 5, and we were so stressed out from our journey, that we had to climb.
And climb we did! We had so much fun at this amazing climbing gym, and the staff there were so awesome, that we made the long haul to Camp 5 the very next day…we just made sure that we left our hostel a little bit earlier.
