Friday Prayers and Friendliness...

Had my last day of wandering Kuala Lumpur yesterday, and felt more comfortable than any day yet in Asia. Basically I set out to do and see all the things that I was too anxious or lazy for the day before.

I started out wandering little india in hopes of some good food for lunch, but arrived just as most of the bazaar was shutting down for friday prayers. Little India borders the Masjid Jamek mosque in central K.L and the streets outside were turned into spaces to pray - I didn't get a good shot of it, but there was an office building across the street where the elevators and lobby were stopped dead so people could lay out their prayer rugs. Also, I was taking most of the shots while trying to hide my camera as I had a totally unreasonable fear that they might not like me taking pictures of them kneeling in prayer... anyways,

I kept wandering along until finally I decided to stop, as much from fatigue as anything, at a hawker stall for indian food - result, probably some of the best curry i've had and awesome roti canai (flatbreads) - price RM1.40 - yeah, that's about 40 cents. Also tried some local fruit drink of some kind, which i was pretty sure at the time would give me some tropical disease... I felt kind of wierd for a while, but I survived the local food from the humblest of vendors with little to no GI distress...

I headed back to the petronas towers to see if I could get a ticket for the observation deck, but ended up settling for a movie ticket to see Dragon Squad, the latest ridiculous Hong-Kong police film. It was kind of cool, within the space of about 20 minutes while waiting for the movie to start I got into conversations with 3 of the locals and even got invited back to meet this one woman's family for dinner. It was kind of strange, but I think my conclusion was that Malaysians are just really friendly (I know what the cynical would say about going back to meet some strange woman's family in an unknown part of the city, but she was with her brother at the time) I got offered a place to stay anytime i'm in Sabah (in Malaysian Borneo, next to the highest mountain there) and I think I ended up promising to help the brother find work in Canada - but hey, it was cool to actually meet some of the locals and have a conversation that wasn't about being irish, drinking, or finding the best teen prostitutes in Thailand.

Also had the guy behind the counter at the juice place notice my "by a thread" t-shirt and got into a long conversation about metal, emo, etc. Turns out he had seen them, or thought he had, at Metalcore, and he introduced me to some Malaysian Hardcore band his friend was in that was touring in Europe at the time. I was actually disappointed by the time I had to see the movie as it meant breaking off my conversations, but it was nice to feel a little more at home - the usual experience with locals is the tourist trade where they quite clearly just want your money...

Anyways, hope that doesn't sound too pretentious, and I'm off to the cameron highlands today, where you can have a cup of tea that's just been cut off the bush!

Ok, maybe i'm the only one who's excited, until next time,

Chris