Malaysia, 16 March 2011

I felt like a new woman after a shower in my lovely marble-clad bathroom. I was about to embark on an 8-day sejour with a hundred and fifty Swedish women. No wonder I needed a single room! I phoned C, who had arrived from New Jersey, via Copenhagen, and asked if she was up for some shopping. She was. I had already registered my presence on the mezzanine floor of the hotel, where some incredibly efficient and calm KL Swea:s handled the arrival of all those visitors from around the globe. We asked somebody about handbags. That's what we wanted. You'll understand, if you know me. She suggested Chinatown, gave us an address and off we went. That is all I saw of Chinatown during my stay - the visit lasted all of 30 minutes, but we came away with three bags. One for me.


So Musings. I had wondered before what to expect. My only previous visit to Kuala Lumpur was a four-hour stop-over at the airport, with I. in 1971. Would it be like China - Hong Kong -, like Vietnam, like Indonesia? What I saw here was a huge city, teeming with a muchness.. of everything, simmering with people, cars, shops trains ...and the heat, the wet-blanket heat! Thing is, you can read all the signs, so you don't feel as foreign as you do in China. And from the very darkest corners of my brain a few phrases came back, in Indonesian, but fully useable here. C had been summoned by The SWEA Board, so she left the taxi at a sprint. I was getting a bit hungry now and asked those serene girls at the SWEA desk where to eat. They pointed me in the direction of a sort of glorified food court, named "Feast Village" and I had a pasta. The International Board of SWEA were having lunch a few yards away. Such familiar faces, and yet how far away they all seemed now... I have no idea what their problems, plans and joys are. The doings of The Board are once again shrouded in mystery. Then, suddenly they all got up and hurriedly left, all passing right by my table. Presumably for the meeting with C. I just saw them go right past me without even seeing me. It was an eerie feeling. Finally our Founder saw me. Trust her! Also lovely M. and dear I. from Stockholm.


I had booked a city tour for the afternoon. Oh, how very near I came to chickening out. Jet lag affects me badly these days, and what with not being a 100% anyway.... but I went. Our guide was an Indian Malaysian - there is a great mixture of different origins here; they pride themselves on living in perfect harmony. This guide was a bit strange, to put it mildly; he had no idea who we were and pitched his spiel tentatively low, asking if we understood words like "original" etc, or high, launching into complicated political soliloquies. I feel so stupid to admit this, but I have really vague memories of what we saw. There was a war memorial and a palace, where we only saw the gates. Then we arrived at a giant golden statue. Somes caves were worth visiting, up a staircase of 276 steps. I am not entirely sure how I did it. It was so hot and I was so tired. The cup of tea I had in the little café after coming down was one of the best ever.

We also stopped for a phot op - of the Petronas towers, but as you can see, we were so close that they were hard to snap. It would have been great to get up there, but I gather admission is limited and a bit complicated. I heard afterwards that some had managed it. They must have been among those young ones, with more energy than me!

We had supper in another restaurant in "Feast Village", "Enak", a Malaysian place. I realised that Malaysian also (as well as bahasa indonesia - and Danish!!) has glottal stops when I heard them pronouncing "Enak" with a g.s. at the end. Not even my lingustically interested friend R from London thought this remotely interesting. "Is that so? was her stony answer. I decided to keep musings on glottal stops to myself in the future. There were four of us, three from London, one from Rome. We ate really good food and drank three bottles of wine. I slept like a log!