CNYp1 - Malaysia or, how I rode an elephant and got chased by ninja monkeys

CNY (Chinese New Year) adventures... PART ONE: MALAYSIA


As my Chinese New Year vacay will take quite a bit of blogging, I'm going to split up blog posts and dedicate one to each country I visited. First on the list is Malaysia.


I left Sunday night with Patrick from the Taipei airport and flew into Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. We arrived at 4am in KL and chilled in the airport McDonalds until our hostel opened while we quickly googled some facts about Malaysia, as we knew nothing about it before we came. Seriously, we naively thought KL would be just another Taipei. We walked around and saw girls wearing head scarves - surprise! Malaysia is a Muslim country. Who knew? We looked up a few phrases in Malay, like Apa khabar (how are you), which was unnecessary since everyone speaks English there, unlike in Taipei.


I was also extremely proud of myself because I could definitely tell the difference between Malaysians and Taiwanese. I CAN TELL SOME ASIANS APART! IT'S POSSIBLE!

Once we got to our hostel, we weren't allowed to check in yet, so we wandered outside to explore Kuala Lumpur. I fell in love with KL because they had Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew AND trash cans. These are usually my requirements for judging the awesomeness of a country. I just about hugged the trash can when I saw it - the Taiwanese are trash nazis and refuse to put out public trash cans. I chugged some delicious Mountain Dew and my sleep-deprived, hopped-up on caffeine body explored KL. We first went to the Petronas Twin Towers, which is an icon of KL. They are two big twin buildings that are just about as exciting as they sound, aka not exciting at all. There is a big mall inside the towers that we walked around in (and fell asleep in, whoops). Feeling tired and grumpy, Patrick and I walked around and took pictures of some cool architecture,. but there wasn't much to do.

The next day was my favorite spent in KL. I had booked a tour and a Malaysian guide picked us up in a car and we first stopped at the Batu Caves, another famous Malaysian tourist spot. The caves were sweet! There's some huge golden Hindu thing in front of the caves.

You walk up a bunch of steps to get into the caves, which is an adventure itself because there are tons of these crazy terrorist monkeys chasing after you while you go up the stairs. No joke. They're scary as shit and run around on the steps and try to steal food and pickpocket you while you try to walk up stairs. Probably half my Batu Caves pictures are just of monkeys, including the national geographic-esque one I took of a mom and baby (below).

Patrick taking a pic of the monkey on the stairs

We then drove to Deer Park. The park workers shuffled us in so we wouldn't miss the bear photo op. I thought, all right, I'll go take a picture of this bear, whatevs. We walk in and they push us into the bear cage and ask for my camera and tell us to pet the bear. WHAT. Here is Patrick and I petting the bear with a look of "WTF why are we petting a fucking bear" look on our faces.

We then fed some deer and looked at the other caged Malaysian animals.

There was a snake in the cage and the guy went into the cage to take it out. Again, I thought, cool, I'll take a picture of this snake. But no, the guy threw the snake around my neck and I took another "WTF why is there a fucking snake on me" picture.

Then came the Elephant Sanctuary. This was the main destination of our tour. Thus far, the tour was amazing, partially because I had 0 expectations of Batu Caves and Deer Park so I was pleasantly surprised. The Elephant Sanctuary, though, was a bit anti-climatic, especially since I had some preconceived ideas about what it'd be like (you know, jumping on a beautiful elephant and running through the jungle while the Lion King's Circle of Life is playing in the background). We did eventually ride an elephant in an elephant version of a pony ring I used to love when I was five. The elephant was uncomfortable and awkwardly hairy and no one played any Lion King music while I rode it.

We got to feed the elephants too, which was cool but disgusting. The end of their trunks feel like the inside of someone's nose so I kept getting elephant snot on my hands while giving them peanuts.

The rest of our time in KL was more low key - no more ninja monkey chases or elephant snot. Some highlights:
*They drive on the left side of the road and the driver is on the right of the car. I sat in the front left seat of a taxi and it tripped me out.
*I tried my first and last durian. I've never ate a fruit that tasted so disgusting. It's spiky and badass looking and feels like it belongs more in Mario Kart than it does in my mouth. You open up the spikyness and there are seed/nut things covered in lard. You are supposed to eat the lard off the seed. It smells terrible and I gagged when I took a nibble of the spiky lard shit. Blech.



Stay tuned to find out how I got kicked out of the country of India!