Category: General

We have had very delicious Indian food twice in the past two days.  It’s different than Indian food that you get in the US, which is almost entirely northern Indian.  (We of course had no idea until we got here that there was much of a difference.)  So we haven’t had any chicken tikka masala, lamb vindaloo, mulligatawny soup, palak paneer, naan, or anything like that.  Instead, Saturday night we had a bread-y dinner, and last night we had a rice-y dinner.  The bread-y dinner featured all sorts of different breads–chapati, paper dosa, and others that we can no longer remember–served with curried lentils and a coconut-y sauce.  Very spicy and good, but thinner than the type of Indian food that we are used to.  Some of the breads were fried, some seemed to have been griddled or grilled, and at least one rice cake bread seems to have been steamed.  Last night we had banana leaf food.  We’re not sure if this is a method of eating particular to this restaurant, to Malaysia, or if this is something that you could find in southern India or Sri Lanka too.  No matter, it was awesome.  You get a big banana leaf, and then guys start coming by with all sorts of things.  We had a big pile of rice, some cucumber/yogurt salad, sauteed cabbage, deep fried yummy vegetable bits, pickle, dal, fish curry, chicken curry, and salted fried chili peppers.  This all came with the standard package.  Then we added a chili chicken, some other kind of chicken, and some mutton.  Mmmm, mutton!  It was really really good.  For all you can eat, with two drinks each, the total came to $6.  You can’t beat that.

Saturday night we went out with our friend, a Malaysian guy, and his friend visiting from Singapore to a party hosted by the online newspaper Malaysiakini, which means Malaysia Right Now or Contemporary Malaysia.  It is known for being relatively independent from the regime here, and has a big following among the Anwar Ibrahim crowd.  (We’ll have to discuss Anwar Ibrahim some other time, but suffice it to say he was the old dictator Mahathir’s number 2 henchman until he had the gall to gainsay Mahathir’s policy choices, at which time he was sacked and placed in jail for six years for sodomy.  As long as you’re making up charges, you might as well have fun with it.)  For all of you who have been to a crowded college party, you know how hot and smoky such gatherings can be.  From our experiences, this takes the cake.  It was on the fifth floor of some industrial/artist space with one ceiling fan and probably a hundred people squeezed into a small room.  This group represented the free spirits, hippies, and the anti-establishment crowd.  Lots of dreadlocks and two guys playing experimental rock on their guitars.  We stayed for two beers and then hightailed it out of there.

Instead of going home, we went to an “Irish Bar” called, yes, Finnegan’s.  For a mere US$7 plus 15% service charge, you can have a fairly decent Beamish Stout and the always tasty Strongbow Extra Dry Cider.  Were it not for the prices and the overabundance of Westerners jamming to a terrible DJ, this could be fun.  Well, it was a nice time anyway.

You can now look at our first pictures from KL and our last pictures from Jakarta.

Starting tomorrow, free high-speed internet access at our friends’ apartment will be done.  Hopefully we’ll figure out how to have it installed in our new apartment two floors up, but if not, we’ll try to find a good internet cafe from which to continue our ramblings.

We went out last night with the Fulbright students that live in our towers, and had dinner in a well-known area called Bukit Bintang (Star Hill) that has lots of fancy Western establishments there.  Well, not really fancy, unless you think that Borders, Starbucks, and KFC are fancy.  It was actually quite amazing to walk through the area.  You honestly could not tell that you were not in some section of Los Angeles, except for there were relatively fewer Caucasians walking around.  But, if you turn off the main drag, you realize that you are in Asia.  In this area especially there are a lot of Chinese food stalls, markets, and shops…again, off the main drag.  We ventured down a pretty big side street called Jalan Alor which is known for its abundance of Chinese seafood stalls with names like "Fatt Lock Chinese Fish" and "Chim Lee’s Happy Corner."  The clientele was 75% Chinese Malaysian, and 25% Western tourists.  We picked a stall and sat down, and for about MYR 120 (about 35 bucks) had dinner for five with plenty of left overs.  We had grilled sting ray and grilled chicken fish, which were both excellent.  The Lemon Chicken was also quite good, as were the fried unidentified leafy greens.  We did not try the shrimp, but the others did.  Unbelievably, we have had no negative digestive reactions to the food (knock on wood).  Our digestive systems seem to have calmed down considerably since we arrived in KL.

On our way back we passed by a very funny scene.  There was some guy with a motorbike parked on the sidewalk, and this motorbike was just covered with cats.  They were all sleeping peacefully, and a bunch of them were teeny tiny kittens–we should mention that the motorbike was turned on, and there was a stereo playing, and there were about fifteen tourists crowded around it. It was really cute.  We were worried that there would not be any cats here, but our fears have been unfounded, and they even look healthy.  The apartment that we believe we will be living in is down the hall from our realtor, and she has two big cats with bells.  Maybe they can replace Tika Splotch, who in turn was replacing Voltron.

We ventured yesterday around the big malls in search of grocery stores, and found several.  They seem to be a little cleaner and more sanitary than the ones in Jakarta, so that’s good.  We even found banana leaves.  In Indonesia, you simply cannot buy non-halal food in the supermarkets.  Basically, that means no pork or pig products.  In Malaysia, you can–lots of Chinese, remember–but the non-halal section of the butcher is in its own special room, and there were no Malays working there whatsoever.  It was staffed with Indians, who would probably prefer not to work in the regular butcher section, which is full of beef.  Predictable, but funny.

There is just something about malls in Malaysia and Indonesia.  They can’t build enough of them.  They are huge, filled with people, and crammed with Western fast food establishments.  In the Mid-Valley Megamall that we explored yesterday, we found Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, San Francisco Coffee, Dunkin Donuts, Auntie Anne’s, KFC, McDonald’s, Chili’s, Friday’s (Cinnabon and Burger King were in evidence at another mall).  They also had an Ace Hardware, because Ace is the Place, even in Malaysia.  One of the Fulbright students, who studies fast food in Malaysia, claimed that there are 380 KFCs in Malaysia alone.