Revisiting Kuala Lumpur

Hello from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and truly one of my favorite cities in Asia.  I came here last February for an extended visa run and this trip has allowed me to explore the city and its surrounding sights a little more.  Primarily when I think of KL though, I think of delicious and cheap Indian food.  After spending my Thanksgiving evening in-flight, as soon as I checked in to my guesthouse here last Thursday, I dropped off my backpack and headed across the street for a 1 am dinner of Masala Thosai.  Delicious.

I came to Malaysia to meet up with my good friend and former co-volunteer in Indonesia, Katie.  I flew in from Jakarta, she from Siem Reap, and we both met at a bus station in South KL to catch a three hour bus up to the Cameron Highlands for a weekend of relaxation, hiking, tea drinking, strawberry picking, cool air, and views of rolling green hills and tea plantations that so sharply contrasted with my last three months in Jakarta.  I will post photos when I get back to Jakarta!

We came back to KL Sunday night for Katie to participate in her VIA conference- I just found out mine will be in Bali in January!  Being here has been interesting to see fellow volunteers that I last saw during our training in Chiang Mai a year and a half ago, and who are coming from working in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar.  While they are at conference and after I submitted my Indonesian visa application to the Embassy here, I have had time to wander the streets of Chinatown, Little India, go running in the park below the Petronas Towers, and visit an amazing Hindu Temple set in some caves just north of the city.  I continue to marvel at the vibrant diversity you can see on the streets of KL at any moment, but would have to look much deeper to find in Indonesia.  Signs here come in four languages, Tamil, Chinese, English and Malay, so that while I know my Bahasa Indonesia can get me by when speaking with a Malay person, Chinese and Indians here usually just want to speak English with me.  I was amazed yesterday, when going out with co-vols how many of our combined languages came of use.  Katie made everyone a little curious as she skyped back home to Cambodia in Khmer, I spoke Malay with the cab driver to get to the Tamil/Malay movie we went to see, one friend chatted up a group of visiting Vietnamese teachers in his fluent Vietnamese, and afterwards at a Chinese restaurant another friend figured out our orders.  I just wish that when we were debating outside a Burmese restaurant that one of the Myanmar volunteers had been there to decipher the menu...

So it is exciting to see so many people come together, especially now that we have each been working in our posts for over a year and have experienced so much.  Getting such a diverse group of people together in a multi-cultural city has made the experience even more interesting.  I am even more excited now to be heading to Cambodia tomorrow to see Katie's life in Battambang and then to see the temples of Angkor Wat and run the Angkor Wat 10K Race on my birthday on Sunday!