On the down: Being unMalaysian
Merkeda spirit sure is in the air! After taking Elenie all over KL, even *I* feel patriotic and adequately Malaysian now. Paklah is gonna be soooooo proud of me. I even went to see the Tugu Negara (I bet hardly any of you have been to see it!)
So let's see, we begin at the beginning.
Our first port of call was the Twin Towers, barefly 2 hours after Eleni had touched down (after 17 hours of flying). Of course lah what... Twin Towers are soooooooooooooooooo our biggest proudest achievement. And you know, everytime I take someone to see it, I feel so damn super proud to be Malaysian. Mahathir was a bit of a dude, eh?
Shame about the shitty grey sky. But it's still so prettteeeeee! We even walked around the park to get a proper view of it from EveryWhere. And hey, that park would be quite nice too if not for all the screaming kids and the park's notorious reputation for being full of horny, gross people having sex.
Eleni was fascinated by how green KL was, which I hadn't even noticed. Like, trees? They're a big deal? Really? All holiday, she kept taking pictures of green things, even when we were stuck in a traffic jam on way to town.
And here, for all you NON-Malaysian Malaysians who haven't been to see the Tugu Negara (tsk!), here's a photo of it for you (I'm allowed to say this now that I have been to say it, although if I'm really honest, I don't think I would ever have gone if not for Eleni)
Trivia: The sculpture was made by an American and I swear swear swear the soldiers look totally like American GI Joes (is it totally unpatriotic to say that?) so it's quite appropriate that All-American Eleni is taking a picture with them instead of me.
Oh dear, I've gone well off track.
at a temple,
in front of this ENORMOUS statue of a god?!
Well, Hindus believe in karma too, so there.
Anyway, Eleni had to hop across to the touristy shops across the way to buy those really super cheap RM5 blue and white slippers that like everybody in Malaysia has had to wear at some point in their life.
I said, "Well, at least you get an authentic Malaysian experience," but it didn't make her feel better. Man, she was pissed!
Also, while at the temple, some random Indian guy had come up to Eleni to ask if he could take a photo with her. Like hello, have you never seen a matsalleh before? Maybe it was the blond hair, that made her look like she stepped out of a hans christian anderson story book. This would be the first of many other photo requests. Gee, so all you need is blonde hair to be a mini celebrity in Asia!
After the traumatic slipper incident, we thought we'd cheer ourselves up by going to the Royal Selangor factor, where we made our own little pewter bowls AND discovered a mini Twin Towers made out entirely of pewter mugs. So kitsch!
We were made to work reaaaaaaaaaaallllly hard.
In an attempt to be very cultural, we even made it to the Brickfield's Buddhist temple and got a bonus blessing from a lovely monk.
Then, for a bit of spiritual campiness, we went to see Tien Hou Temple where all is like a giant mooncake festival, all the time. We tried to take lots of artistic photos of the dragons on the rooftops and stuff, but these are my favourites: one of me being hiau and one of Eleni in this tiny miniskirt (so shocking for the mahayanists, no?)
Eleni also made some new friends in the little campy park they have out front. They seem quite a bit bigger than her though, and don't say very much, so Eleni amused herself by reading from a giant book.
Eleni got this uber-Asian photo of me buying mangosteens from a stand at Petaling Street. Seriously man, how much more asian can I get next to all those rambutans!
Being the very adventurous sort, she also decided to try durian. We bought some in a sterilised looked styrofoam box, the kind that suggests that whatever's inside can't be that bad.
When we got home and opened the box, she almost died. I swear, it never stops being funny how matsallehs find durian so gross. She was all, "Oh my god, it smells so DISGUSTING."
But she tried it anyway - with a fork (how clever!) so the smell won't infect. I sat ever-ready with a camera to get her reactions. It's a whole little story in itself and here's how it goes:
1: It smells so damn horrible, but Eleni puts on a brave face and tackles the challenge head on
2: She can't spit it out fast enough!
3: And she needs like a gallon of water just to get that godawful taste out of her mouth.
Afterwards, after the terrible shock, she sat there with this really offended look on her face. It was like the fruit had deliberately done something against her. She said, "How can a fruit be so gross? Come on!!!!"
To make up for the fruit though, we went for immense servings of chocolate at the Hilton's chocolate buffet, which really just gets better and better and better and better each time. Actually, the whole two weeks was marked by just how much chocolate we kept scoffing (time to start the starvation again now then...)
To cap off all the super sweetness, Vera and I took Eleni to Tiffin Bay in Starhill. And you know how the whole place looks like Alice in Wonderland? Well, we found a real live Alice to complete the picture! Complete with tea cups, milkshakes and a pretend tea party!
A little later, we headed down to the Feast Village, where Alice took a wander round all the pretty fairy lights, like a magical downtown. She sure looks glad she followed that bunny down to Wonderland!
Finally, for the truly keen, there is always Melaka which is always just so gorgeous in the way it's old and crumbly and holds a million stories in its bricks. We fought off crowds of people to eat chicken rice balls, went to see a Chinese doctor about my damn legs and did the whole tacky tourist thing of sitting in a rickshaw and seeing the old town.
And of course, everytime I'm down there, I try to be artistic and take lots of pretentious photos. I'm quite proud of how these look actually!
And when did this enormous troop of gaudy crazy flowery rickshaws take over the streets of Melaka? They were EVERYWHERE. Too kitsch, even for me...
On the way back from Melaka, we trawled through a few lovely old kampungs to show Eleni what traditional Malay living was like. Then my perasaan dad got out of the car and started to help himself to the rambutans growing on some lady's tree. But you know lah, Malay people are so friendly it's unreal. This lady came out to see what we were doing, then went back into her garden to cut out a proper bunch for us. See, my dad's so good at scavenging!....
I am too princess to hack living way out in the jungly wilderness but still, it's just so booooootiful and cosy and makes you want to become a fairy so you can live in the grass.
There were lots of other things in KL - the malls, eating eating eating, Eleni being dragged to Kechara for one of my meetings, then being dragged out to Bandar Utama to look at a house with me.
Being Malaysian and Chinese means that by default, I am obsessed with feeding my guests. It makes me so damn nervous that my guest won't like what she's eating (not in a Durian kind of way though - that's extreme!) so I spent about 90% of my time planning meals - where to eat, what to eat, where to get the best satay, roti tissu, chocolate cake, brunch...
I think I did well though. We ate ourselves absolutely sick.
And damnit, throughout the whole holiday I was the one who ended up doing most of the shopping, and I bloody live here all the time. Cheh.
[Chapter one ends here! On to more stories soooooon]
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