Still having a bit of the RTS today, but I think I’m making progress towards recovery… (Yesterday I didn’t even enjoy the smell of food because it just made me go “Uch. I couldn’t eat a single bite right now,” whereas today food has been smelling delicious even though I really don’t feel hungry…)
I took a culinary tour of the neighborhood around noon and confirmed that I chose a great place to stay: there are like 10 places where I would love to eat within a block of my hostel. Still, I wasn’t hungry yet so I decided to head down to Chinatown and see what things looked like over there. That is one bustling neighborhood, dude… And in case you were about to ask (as about 50 people there did), the answer is “No. I do not want a massage. Really. Please stop following me with you pamphlet now. I am fine. Thank you.” I saw a busy stand selling popiah, so I decided to try one (their small size made them seem like a good option for somebody with RTS). It was pretty tasty, but not nearly as good as the one in Melaka… Then I wandered past a store called Bee Cheng Hiang and was lured in by the pretty pretty barbecued/dried meats inside… I got the Chilli Pork (below) and it was so very very delicious. (Probably not good that the first awesome thing I ate in KL was from a chain based in Singapore, but whatever…) I may have to head back there to get some train snacks before I head to Penang.
After Chinatown I went to the Butterfly Park, which was (somewhat surprisingly) pretty darn fun. It turns out butterflies are totally awesome. Who knew? While the bird park was interesting and the birds in their cages were adorable, this was more interactive. You’ve got all these gorgeous exotic butterflies whizzing past your head and you’re stalking them with your camera, hoping they’ll land somewhere long enough for you to take their picture so you can show your friends how pretty they were… Also, there were bunnies! fI don’t think the tropical climate they maintain in the butterfly park is probably the funnest place for a rabbit to hang out, but they were so cute. There were even tiny little baby ones… and slightly bigger babies sitting in the food bowl, as they do. There were also turtles and koi, but definitely the butterflies were worth the trip on their own. Good stuff.
I had a couple more ideas of things to do after the butterflies, but as I was preparing to leave I started hearing some pretty intense thunder. By the time I got outside I found myself in the middle of a totally kick-ass thunder storm. I’ve never heard such loud thunder in my life, and the sky just opened up and poured down rain… When I made it back to the bus stop there was a nice British couple there (they’d gotten off the bus at the same time as me, but had gone to see the deer park instead of the butterflies) and we had a nice time chatting while we waited for the bus. There was a family from New Zealand on the bus when we boarded, and we all enjoyed watching the storm through the windows and talking about our travels… I think the main thing I miss when I’m not around people who speak English fluently is the sarcasm and jokes (I’ve learned from many bad experiences that usually by the time the sarcastic thing is translated, it ends up being taken literally…). Such a large percentage of the things that I usually say are sarcastic or facetious, and I think I start to feel less like me when I have to try to choose the simplest word possible and to not confuse things with sarcasm. It was refreshing to just be able to laugh and joke with some folks…The rain storm pretty much killed my adventurous spirit and put me in a coffee-and-my-book kind of mood, so that was the rest of my afternoon… The magical Chilli Pork (so good!) seemed to work wonders in thwarting my reverse tapeworm, though, so I was back in business (finally) for a bit of dinner. I was in the mood for a hunk of protein uninterrupted by stuff like, well, anything that wasn’t meat, so I went to a meat shop I’d seen on my neighborhood tour earlier and got a couple small delicious-looking (and, I would soon discover, delicious-tasting) sausages (one garlic, one chilli) for a total of US$1.20. The shop also had something similar to (but not quite as good as) the chilli pork I’d had earlier and I decided to order some just in case I needed it later to combat a relapse of the ol’ RTS. Now, I’m not sure how pathetic white people usually are with spice, because the guy says “Oh. It’s very spicy. Are you sure?” and I was like “Yeah. Spicy is great!” and smiled and gave a thumbs up. Then he still made me try a small bite to make sure I could handle the “spice,” which turned out to be basically non-existent (and not just by Emily-standards, I would say…). Whatever…
After dinner I headed down to see the Petronas Towers at night. Those are some seriously beautiful towers, dude. I was impressed in the daylight yesterday, but they’re absolutely stunning at night…
I’m going to try to get in a nap now before the Bucs take on (and, one would hope, annihilate) the Bears at 1am…
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