En route to Australia, I had to spend one night in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. One more stamp on the passport, although I don’t know that one night deserves it. Fortunately, my friend from Elephant Nature Park/Vietnam, Vici, was also in KL at that time. So we met up and did what most people do when they come to KL: We went shopping.
KL is a big commercial city. It is basically one giant mall with some hotels and skyscrapers thrown in the mix. Many huge Asian companies operate out of KL and it looks like nothing more than a huge, overly developed city. As I said before, people come here to shop for every type of material good you can imagine. As for me, I really needed a pair of shoes that weren’t sneakers or sandals, which was all I had in my backpack. So Vici and I spent at least two hours in a mall, shoe shopping. Actually it was more like shoe-searching because NO stores carried my size. (Of course they didn’t! They don’t even carry my size in the States, and this is Asia, where every human is way smaller! What was I thinking?) I would walk into a store, look around at the various shoe styles, find a pair that I liked and ask, “Do you have this in a 43?” If it was a woman’s shoe, the sales clerk would balk at me and just shake his head. So I started to simplify things by just walking straight into a store and, without looking around, asking the clerk if they had ANY shoe in a size 43. “No, no, no, no, no, no…” every time, like a skipping record. Finally, we found a store that had one pair in my size and I bought them, but I’m pretty sure it’s a man’s shoe, or at least a unisex shoe. But they’re cute, I swear. They look like Tom’s.
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After our shoeventure, we went to grab some dinner. The menu was entirely in Malaysian so we didn’t know what we were ordering and we each ordered two full meals. The waiter didn’t even try to stop us. Whatever… it was delicious and we ate it all. Nom nom nom.
Finally, we went to the Petronas Towers, the tallest twin towers in the world. At one point, they were the tallest buildings in the world at 88-stories tall. You can buy a ticket and go to the top of them for what is probably a pretty breathtaking view of KL, but Vici and I arrived about 30 minutes after the towers had closed so we had to be content with viewing them from the ground outside. They are very sparkly at night.
On a total sidenote, it seems like Malaysians eat tons of corn. See below:
In a convenience store
Corn as an ice cream topping… Chocolate chip or corn kernels? Which do you go for?
That was it for my Malaysian experience. Clearly I can make no judgment on Malaysia after just one night in one city, but I don’t think I’d be interested in spending much more time in KL. It’s just a big ol’ city overflowing with commerce, and since I’m not really into that kind of thing, it didn’t spark my interest. One night in KL was enough for me.
The World Is My Boyfriend 