DIY Kuala Lumpur
And so it was a weekend of firsts: my first ever sleeper train ride; my first night in a backpackers' hostel; my first holiday planned and executed all by myself. Perhaps a little stranger was that it also was my first time in Kuala Lumpur proper. Before I left, I kept telling people I hadn't been there in ten years, which was my way of saving myself the trouble of dealing with "you mean you haven't?" questions.
It was the perfect escape--close to home, cheap, not particularly exotic but still different enough to warrant experiencing. The real reason I was there, though, was to catch Muse in concert, having missed them when they played at Fort Canning in January--but well, why not have a little merger with my country's erstwhile hinterland while at it?
My two days there were a haze of gargantuan malls (Berjaya Times Square: ten flippin' storeys!); a maze of light rail, monorail and intercity trains; a grid of scorching sidewalks, and a blur of tourist traps which I was more than happy to embrace in the name of hanging loose and letting go. I experienced the claustrophobia of a room with two beds, a table, a dim bulb and no windows. I had my best, cheapest foot massage ever (60 minutes for RM35, that's less that SGD15.50 folks!). I ate some really oily food. I collected my concert ticket from a nice, sincere, complete stranger I met online. I went on some thrill rides at an indoor (yes, indoor) amusement park alone, but stopped short of the testicle-shrinking, haemorrhoid-curing roller coaster which curled too close to fellow shoppers for comfort.
And when the hour arrived, I moshed with the craziest of Malaysians, elbowing my way from the RM113 section to the RM233 section of the stadium, screaming every word of every song I knew, having a litre of sweat squashed out of me, fending off slamdancers and the flailing limbs of bodysurfers until I reached the front of the stage where people were screaming "Air! Air!" (which, interestingly, is pronounced as 'eye-er' and means "water" in Bahasa Melayu).
Two hours later, with only a change of t-shirt, cruising at over 80 km/h down the dark North-South highway in a coach set up like an commercial plane (in-drive entertainment, supper), I could only lean back with a small sense of triumph. Some people can't understand why I'd travel anywhere alone; with such quick and cheap thrills to be had, why not?
It was the perfect escape--close to home, cheap, not particularly exotic but still different enough to warrant experiencing. The real reason I was there, though, was to catch Muse in concert, having missed them when they played at Fort Canning in January--but well, why not have a little merger with my country's erstwhile hinterland while at it?
My two days there were a haze of gargantuan malls (Berjaya Times Square: ten flippin' storeys!); a maze of light rail, monorail and intercity trains; a grid of scorching sidewalks, and a blur of tourist traps which I was more than happy to embrace in the name of hanging loose and letting go. I experienced the claustrophobia of a room with two beds, a table, a dim bulb and no windows. I had my best, cheapest foot massage ever (60 minutes for RM35, that's less that SGD15.50 folks!). I ate some really oily food. I collected my concert ticket from a nice, sincere, complete stranger I met online. I went on some thrill rides at an indoor (yes, indoor) amusement park alone, but stopped short of the testicle-shrinking, haemorrhoid-curing roller coaster which curled too close to fellow shoppers for comfort.
And when the hour arrived, I moshed with the craziest of Malaysians, elbowing my way from the RM113 section to the RM233 section of the stadium, screaming every word of every song I knew, having a litre of sweat squashed out of me, fending off slamdancers and the flailing limbs of bodysurfers until I reached the front of the stage where people were screaming "Air! Air!" (which, interestingly, is pronounced as 'eye-er' and means "water" in Bahasa Melayu).
Two hours later, with only a change of t-shirt, cruising at over 80 km/h down the dark North-South highway in a coach set up like an commercial plane (in-drive entertainment, supper), I could only lean back with a small sense of triumph. Some people can't understand why I'd travel anywhere alone; with such quick and cheap thrills to be had, why not?
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