What's That Smell?

“Malaysia truly Asia” is their slogan, but I think a better one is, “Why didn’t you live here for 5 years instead of Korea.” Hannah and I really enjoyed our short time in this country by packing basically everything into one day. By the end of the day, we had walked over 30,000 steps and had been all over the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. I’ll attempt to take you through our day.

It started at 7 AM with free breakfast on the hotel rooftop. After that, we took a taxi to the Batu Caves. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the history of it, but I was able to deduce that it is now used as an Hindu temple. I’m not sure if it was the statues all over the place or the guy with a ton of heads, but all in all it was pretty cool. It was also our first encounter with monkeys. I went into full-blown tourist mode and just took pictures of everything without any shame. A new fruit? Take a picture. A monkey! Take a picture. Hannah steps in monkey poop! Take a picture.

After the caves, we taxied back to the hotel and then walked to another Indian temple called Sri Mahamariamman. I began to realize that a lot of Hindu temples are the same. It kind of reminded me of going through a Disney ride with all of the figurines on the side. Thankfully, there was no music to accompany the tour. We were also surprised to find a Chinese temple right next to the Indian one. Turns out, we were right next to Chinatown, and who doesn’t love a good look around Chinatown.

Later on, we met up with Hannah’s friend who worked at Cedar Point. It was really nice to have someone show us around the city, and we were super grateful for it. We had a delicious lunch followed by a horrible dessert. If you have never heard of a durian, count yourself lucky. I really don’t know how to describe it. Personally, I don’t think English (or any other language for that matter) has the capable words. It took me most of the day before I realized that it had the same texture as America’s most disgusting fruit: the squash. But then I realized that whereas I only threw up upon ingesting squash, I only wanted to erase my memory after the taste durian. It's so bad that people are banned from riding public transport after eating it. Our hotel even had a sign saying no durians allowed. The worst part about it is that the smell and taste stay with you. Every time you burp, you wish you hadn’t.

After lunch, we went to the national mosque. This marks the first Islamic country that I’ve been to, and it was an experience/culture shock for sure. I’ve seen the traditional garb before, but not nearly as wide-spread as it is there. Apparently, there are 3 religions in the country. Those of Chinese decent are Buddhist, those of Indian decent are Hindu, and those of Malay decent are Muslim. I believe it’s even listed on your passport/documents. Sharia law is in effect if you are listed as Muslim, and we were told about some marriages that were forced on people because they were touching. Fortunately for us, the Muslim garb and culture are not enforced on non-Muslim people, so we could walk around the customary American shorts and t-shirt. We did, however, have to abide by a dress code when entering certain places. Luckily, they either gave us this or let us rent them.

At night, we went to the iconic Petronas Towers. You can’t go to Kuala Lumpur without making that a stop. They look very impressive at night all lit up, but we didn’t take a trip to the top because we were told it was definitely not worth it. Yeah, you’re really high, but there’s not much to look when you’re inside the best thing to look at.

Exhausted at the end of the day, we got back to the hotel and quickly passed out on the not-rock-hard non-Korean bed. The next day, we tried some new fruit (I have no idea what it was called) and headed out for the airport and our next stop: Cambodia!