Kuala Lumpur was the beginning of my solo trip. I was abandoning Rachel (or she I. I know not) at the Krabi airport as she flew off en circuitous route to Hawaii and I hopped into Malaysia for just under a week of rock climbing. Although, to say I was fully on my own would be disingenuous as I had a significant amount of help and a host awaiting my arrival in this new country. Through various connections, my dad met a guy by the name of Edwin Goh who took him rock climbing during a short oray to Malaysia in the middle of a business trip. Edwin, who I would now consider a good friend of both my dad and I, offered to take me climbing while I was in his neck of the woods as well as host me at his place. I eagerly took him up on these offers and booked myself a flight to Malaysia. Thus, I cannot say I was truly on my own upon arriving in country. However, while I may not have been “on my own” I was alone for the first night since Edwin couldn’t host me until the second and beyond.
I spent the first night at my hostel after a long and confusing walk through the city trying to find the place. After taking a train to the city center, I walked out into the hot sticky streets, marveling at the cleanliness, greenery, and general order of things when compared to the last big city I had inhabited – Bangkok was one giant dustbin when held in contrast. My musings were interrupted abruptly when a small Asian girl called out to me from the sidewalk nearby. I went over to her as she smiled and waved a pamphlet at me. As she dove into her prepared monologue, it was made clear she was a Greenpeace volunteer working to raise awareness about plastic pollution and the predicament global plastic consumption had forced Malaysia into. Malaysia is one of the countries that has become a trash dump for westerners. Basically, western countries have so much garbage they don’t know where to put it, so they ship it off to poorer countries and pay them to take care of it. However, these poor countries don’t have environmental regulations of the sort we western countries have implemented, thus, the trash shipped to places like Malaysia often simply ends up in waterways or incinerated into noxious chemicals that permeate all of our air. I thanked the activist for the work she was doing, and mentioned I had volunteered with Surfrider to help work toward a solution on the U.S end.
After one night alone at my hostel in the city, I made my way via rail and foot power to another part of the city where my dad’s friend and my host for the time being would pick me up. I was growing used to being the only white person in a crowd of Asians at this point, however, my appearance as a somewhat rugged (read disheveled) backpacker made me feel like a sore thumb as I packed myself into the train. Fortunately for me, a couple women graciously moved themselves to a less comfortable position by the door in order to give me enough room to set my bag on the ground, I thanked them as best I could through the language barrier and sat back to enjoy the sardine-like squish of humanity in the train car. I emerged from the journey no worse for the wear despite the close quarters and hiked my bag up a couple flights of stairs to the pick up point where at I would meet Edwin. He arrived maybe ten minutes later with his daughter and whisked me off to dinner. I was already stoked to have him as a host because I was quite hungry at this point and more than happy to grab some food. Over dinner, he informed me that, once he attended to taking his daughter to school in the mornings, we would head off to spend the better part of the day at various climbing crags. I thought this sounded like a brilliant plan so I told him as such and my Malaysian climbing adventure began in earnest.
I will share the details of my time climbing in a separate post for I fear one post for KL may risk running on to monotony or alternatively lacking in elegant detail. I will, however, share a brief overview of other happenings during my great time with Edwin. We climbed a lot and the time we spent off the rock was typically spent eating or resting. I got to meet his in-laws when we visited them for dinner two of the nights. The family is Chinese and introduced me to some foods typical of their diet which I found to be quite delicious. They were very welcoming, warm people despite a heavy language barrier between all of us except Edwin and his daughter and I thanked them many times as best I could for their hospitality. I was anxious at first, attempting to eat with people from an entirely different culture – in their own house no less – as meals tend to have various, subtle cultural rituals surrounding them. Nevertheless, I was relieved to find the family to be extremely gracious and relaxed about any sort of meal related traditions, furthermore, they appeared happy to simply extend their excellent hospitality to me just as Edwin had, and for that I am continually grateful. Other than joining the family for food, we mostly found time only to sleep. Obviously, there were less notable things that happened in between rock, food, and sleep but basically that was the routine. Edwin shared a vast amount of insight into the structure and culture of Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia in general during our drives to the crag which was pretty cool and I also visited the Batu Caves temple which was teeming with tourists, pigeons, and devious monkeys yet still worth the ascent (and descent) of 272 steps leading to the hindu temple nestled in a stunning cave.
When all was said and done, I was a tad bit bummed to be leaving Kuala Lumpur and Edwin. The climbing was a blast (more to come on that), the food was good, my host (whom I now consider a good friend) was stellar, and I had grown to appreciate the city and the life it housed more than anticipated. Nevertheless, it was time to depart on the next leg of my SE Asia journey; I was Bali bound.
