Malaysia, 19 July bis 26 July 2023
Kuala Lumpur
Our visa in Vietnam is about to expire again and we have to leave the country. Unfortunately, we have to fly on our way to Indonesia. Most flight connections have a change in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As we have not yet been to Malaysia, we have made a one-week stopover. We actually wanted to see two or three cities during this week, but things turned out differently in the end.
On 19 July, we make our way to the airport in Hanoi in the morning. On the way to the airport, we meet two Indonesians from Jakarta (Indonesia) with whom we strike up a conversation. We spend the whole hour bus journey to the airport chatting. The two of them are totally cool. Then the stress begins. I hate flying. Every time I fly, I'm afraid of missing the plane. But everything goes well. We take off an hour late and land in Kuala Lumpur at 9 pm in the evening.
Couchsurfing
Occasionally we try to make contacts via the "couchsurfing" platform or find people to sleep with. Apart from the fact that it's cheaper, it's cool to get in touch with locals or people who live here. Of course we chat to lots of other people and learn a lot, but the people who live in a place can give you a completely different insight into a country. Do you remember Sue from Hanoi, Vietnam? We also got to know her through couchsurfing.
We came to Belle & Laurence through couchsurfing. They have a guest room in which we were allowed to sleep. Karli and I have learnt that it is more difficult to find a place to sleep as a couple, but they are happy to accommodate couples. Belle comes from Malaysia, her ancestors are Chinese and Laurence comes from England.
We had originally asked for two nights. In the end we stayed 5 nights. Laurence and Belle were simply amazing. I can't find the right words. We felt at home from day one.
Laurence explains why the two of them are happy to have guests from Couchsurfing: "One of the best parts of travelling is meeting other people. So if we invite travellers via Couchsurfing to our place we can meet other travellers without travelling."
Translated into German: "one of the best things about travelling is getting to know other people. When we invite people to our home through couchsurfing, we get to know other travellers without having to travel."
Every evening we did something great with Belle and Laurence. One evening we went to the city centre together and had a delicious meal, the next evening we went to the cinema together, then we went to a night market together and had a great games evening where we played "Settlers of Catan". We also had lots of interesting conversations.
The two of them have a little poodle called Binbin. Karli and I loved playing with the little princess. She knew exactly how to wrap you round her finger.
Belle and Laurence's flat was really great. Our jaws dropped when we arrived. Such a beautiful flat and tastefully furnished. And there was a dishwasher! Wooo the first time I've seen a dishwasher in 6 months. And then we were even allowed to use it! And we were also very happy about the coffee we were allowed to make every day with the great coffee machine.
Belle and Laurence worked regularly during the day. Karli and I did two things in the meantime: either we looked around Kuala Lumpur on our own or we used the time in the flat to do some computer work. We produced a lot of video footage on our motorbike tour - it really needs to be reduced. We are also very far behind with our blog - 2 months behind again. And Karli has also started translating all the posts into English: Whilst travelling, we keep meeting other great people who want to read our blog, but of course don't speak German, only English at best. All things that take up a lot of time. We would actually have to spend at least two days a week focussing on the PC to work through all of this. In this respect, the two days in Kuala Lumpur were just a drop in the ocean.
Culture, religion and other exciting facts about Malaysia
On our two "free" days, we visited the city centre and a mosque.
Three large, very different cultural groups live here in Malaysia. Malaysian, Chinese and Indian. Malaysians generally belong to Islam. Belle and Laurence recommended a visit to the Federal Territory Mosque to get an impression of Malaysian culture. This mosque is one of the main mosques in Kuala and everyone is allowed to visit it with an escort. Appropriate clothing is provided at the entrance. (If you want to know what I look like in a hijab, check out the photo album. As always, the link to the photo album is at the very end of this post). Everyone also gets a private guide. Aselina, shows us the mosque and tells us all sorts of things about mosques and Islam for two hours. She herself studied data management. She is super friendly and open-minded. In Western cultures, people (including me) have a very one-sided view of Islam, so I find it very enriching to gain a different insight into the religion. I also ask her a few awkward questions about Islam, her answer to which I find funny "it's not the code (= the Koran) that's the problem, it's the implementation".
As already mentioned, there are people of Malaysian, Chinese and Indian descent in Malaysia. Belle and Laurence say that the interaction between the cultures is very different from ours. The races live their culture independently of each other. Your identity card shows which race you belong to. Each group has its own culture and its own life. Belle and Laurence tell us that this works well. Laurence finds living together more pleasant than in England. In Europe there is often this "melting together". You are expected to adapt to the main culture. Here there isn't this social pressure to conform to the majority. The cultures and ethnicities are equal and no one has to bow to the other. It works differently than here and certainly has other advantages and disadvantages. I find that quite exciting.
There is still the closest exchange between Chinese and Indians. People whose parents are Chinese and Indian are referred to as "chindians". A creation of the English words "Chinese" and "Indians".
Karli and I noticed the people in Malaysia in a positive way. It happened to us a few times that we were standing somewhere in the metro and didn't know where to go and then someone approached us and offered to help. And everyone here speaks English! That's awesome! In Vietnam and Laos, we were used to the fact that only one in 10 people could actually speak a few words of English.
Durian - the famous disgusting fruit in Asia
One evening we are in the city centre with Belle and Laurence. There's durian at a street stall. I had definitely planned to try durian in Asia at some point. The fruit is famous and infamous among visitors to Asia because it is generally not palatable to the European palate. Adjectives such as "inedible" and "disgusting" are regularly used in this context. It is even forbidden to take durians on the Singapore metro. Karli and I definitely want to try it once. Without further ado, I buy two pieces. We get two plastic gloves with the purchase - so that the odour doesn't stick to our fingers.
I can't really describe the flavour, but it's less disgusting than I imagined. Personally, I found that durian smells worse than it tastes. But I had enough after two bites. Karli sees the whole thing a little differently - watch the video and enjoy the expressions on Karli's face, it's just a bit of a throwaway! The rest of the evening we had to burp from time to time, which brought the full flavour back up every time.
But Asia also has very tasty fruit. The countries here are a paradise for tropical fruit. Bananas, mangoes and passion fruit all taste completely different here than at home. They simply taste different and somehow even more flavoursome. The fruits don't need to be shipped across the oceans for a long time and can therefore be harvested when they are already ripe. There are also fruits that we don't even recognise in Europe. Or have you ever heard of snake fruit, cinnamon apples and rambutan? Every now and then we try something new, but we have to be careful because neither of us can tolerate fructose. But we have already tried the following fruits.
Rambutan and longan look completely different, but both have a very similar flavour to lychees. I think they're both really, really tasty.
In the same way, mangosteen (or mangosteen) is just a treat. Contrary to what the name suggests, the fruit has nothing to do with the mango. In terms of shape, size and colour, mangosteen is similar to a garlic bulb: lots of white slivers. However, there is a pink-coloured, fairly thick skin all around. The flesh is white and tastes sweet, mild and slightly sour.
Cinnamon apples look like a round pine cone. On DonDet I was given one as a gift by our host, they are quite rare to find anywhere. Very tasty, but I can't describe the flavour. Very sweet and very, very tasty.
The snake fruit (also known as salak fruit) is so called because the skin of the fruit looks like a snake's skin. But it didn't taste so good to me.
Jackfruit look just like durian at first glance. A jackfruit is bigger than a football, egg-shaped and has a funny surface. When you open it, there are lots of small yellow fruits inside, each containing a seed. In terms of flavour, we found the fruit very similar to jelly babies. Others described them as a mixture of banana and pineapple with a hint of vanilla.
Other fruits that are grown here in Asia are passion fruit, coconut, dragon fruit, pineapple, mango, guava, papaya, banana, Java apple, sapodilla and Thai orange. If your thirst for knowledge is not yet quenched, you can find out more about fruit in Asia here https://thaifreu.de/essen/thailand-fruechte-obst/
Hostels
We also spent the last two nights in Kuala Lumpur, but no longer with Belle and Laurence. Firstly, Karli and I each wanted two more days to ourselves. Secondly, because we're both already incubating tonsillitis again and don't want to accidentally infect them. The time we spent with them was really nice. We could talk to them about so many things and got an insight into their lives. I hope we see them again.
But that's right, Karli and I each booked a different hostel. I chose a hostel in a tower block on the 33rd floor with an amazing view. With a roof terrace and pool. My bed was 30cm away from the window, then it was 100 metres down. In Bangkok, we once went to a bar with a roof terrace on top of a tower block, but we paid €60 for a few drinks. And we could only sit there for an hour or two. Here I was able to enjoy the view from my bed all night and paid just €15 for it.
But Karli also had a very cool hostel. Karli is happy to tell you a bit about his accommodation: "I chose a hostel that stands out because it hardly has any windows. We've stayed in a few hostels with capsules, but this one was different. They are usually small rooms made of boards with a curtain or something similar. Here they are futuristic capsules with integrated air conditioning and various lighting. The whole hostel has a futuristic look. The corridors are decorated with various space-themed motifs. The slide inside the hostel is unfortunately broken. There are also robots that guide you to your room if necessary or show you where the toilets are. You can also borrow jumpsuits that are modelled on the suits worn in space travel.
So I could spend the nights like in the game "Space Engineer". In the game, you build spaceships to explore space. I also posted a video of the hostel in my gamer group and asked my friends which of them had built this spaceship. I also got some more information from the space engineer "Dargo": "🖖 Standard crew quarters on the Explorer Quantum i, if you wanted more space you should have booked on the 900I. Where are you going? Alpha Zentauri?😁"
Transport and urban planning
Let's move on to my favourite topic, traffic: here in Kuala Lumpur, people are crazy. Cars cars cars cars cars. Everything is car orientated. One road is wider than the next. Everything is driven by car. This may sound like a dream to some people. But here you can really see the downside of car-friendly urban planning: not just the exhaust fumes. As a pedestrian, you hardly have any quality of life if you are always walking next to 4-lane roads. The city centre is criss-crossed by roads and motorways. At least there are traffic lights, but you always have to wait for ages at them. It's so grey because of all the asphalt. We have been to many cities in Asia but I find Kuala Lumpur to be the most pedestrian-unfriendly city I have ever experienced.
One day I just went for a walk, just following my nose. I noticed that there were hardly any of the busy streets that we know from our European city centres. Although I was right in the centre, most of the time I walked through "dead" streets: streets that are somehow deserted, where there are either car parks, walls or something similar to the right and left. But there are also no other uses on the streets.
For example, at my hostel in the high-rise building on the 4th floor, the "arrival point" was a small square with the entrances to the buildings, a shop and with plants, a pond etc. The only entrance for pedestrians was the entrance to the underground car park. As a pedestrian, the only entrance was the entrance to the underground car park. Then we went through the underground car park to the 4th floor with the lift. By taxi, however, there was a ramp so that you could get out directly on the 4th floor.
The differences between the countries and cities here in Southeast Asia are immense. I hadn't expected that. A prime example of this is Hanoi, Vietnam, where we were last, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In Hanoi, the pavements and streets were used for so many purposes in parallel. Craftsmen use the pavement as an extension of their shop, restaurants have their tables here, small street vendors set up their stalls here. And everyone in Hanoi rides a scooter. The complete opposite here. It's crazy. Kuala Lumpur is much more modern and westernised. The country made a lot of money from oil very early on.
I always try not to judge the countries and cultures we get to know while travelling. However, Kuala Lumpur is a nightmare for any German city planner.
It's also a vicious circle. If pedestrians can't enjoy walking, then they drive to their destination. Many people drive to their destination, even if it's only a 15-minute walk. You drive to the park where you go for a walk. That creates more traffic and more congestion. And then more roads are built, which in turn has a negative impact on the quality of life for pedestrians.
Most people here live in terraced houses (without gardens) or in tower blocks with 30 to 40 storeys. The first 4 to 10 floors of the tower blocks are only occupied by cars. Many tower blocks have a lot to offer. There is usually a pool on the car park, as well as a gym and a communal room - all free for residents to use. Here you can hire barbecues and enjoy your evening after work.
Incidentally, none of the tower blocks have a fourth storey: in Chinese, 4 is an unlucky number because it sounds similar to the word "death" when pronounced. That's why the 4 is actually replaced everywhere by the number "3A".
We actually wanted to visit one or two other cities here in Malaysia in addition to Kuala Lumpur, but to be honest that was too exhausting for us. The longer we travel, the more we realise that we won't be able to do this so quickly.
We have also only seen Kuala Lumpur and can't say much about the rest of the country. The "federal states" in Malaysia have a very high degree of autonomy. Many rules and laws are decided at this level for the respective state. This means that a completely different set of rules may apply in a neighbouring state. As a tourist, we have heard that you don't notice much of this.
Last but not least, a funny story.
It's a bit crazy. People always want what they don't have. We often notice this here in Asia because the ideals are exactly the opposite of ours. In our culture, many people want to go to warm countries and get a tan. Here, the ideal image of women is to have light-coloured, preferably white skin. Or where we were talking about fruit earlier, here in Asia fruits that are totally normal for us, such as strawberries, are a sign of luxury.
The crowning glory for me is air conditioning. Here in Asia, air conditioning has the image of wealth and prosperity. That's why people like to be generous with the use of air conditioning. In the cinema in Kuala Lumpur, we had to take pullovers with us because the air conditioning is always set so cold that you freeze. For the people there, it's something special (and apparently somehow desirable) to simply freeze.
Our brain always wants what it doesn't have...
As always, the next post will follow next Thursday, this time from Lombok, Indonesia
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