During our five plus days at the EARCOS Teacher Conference in Kuala Lumpur, we scrounged enough free time together to see much of the city and a bit of the countryside as well. Here are just a few episodes from the shenanigans.
1. Chinatown
The Chinese ethnic community in Malaysia makes up a huge minority of the population (nearly 25%, according to Wikipedia) with a long and complicated history in the region. Malaysian Chinese people run the gamut from long-settled, assimilated Malay speakers, to Anglophone colonial-era traders, to more-recent, Mandarin-speaking arrivals. (In fact, Wikipedia's got some fascinating stuff on Malaysian Chinese people--that appears to be the PC term--including the fact that they rarely intermarry with Malays because Malaysian law requires that Malaysian Muslims can only marry Muslims. Neat.)
Anyway: None of this history whatsoever is evident at Petaling Street, Kuala Lumpur's bustling Chinatown, a raucous emporium of cheap junk, knockoffs, and counterfeits interspersed with a few decent places to eat. We found one--sketchy, cheap, and delicious--walked about the market for a little bit, then promptly found another for spring rolls and some Tiger, the local beer. For the first time in my life, I felt like a real Expat (with a capital "E"), swigging lager at a plastic table after sunset under neon lights in the lazy tropical heat.
(Cool Tiger Beer factoid, fliched from Wikipedia: The advertising slogan "Time for a Tiger" gave author Anthony Burgess, probably most famous for A Clockwork Orange, the title of the first novel in his trilogy on the decline of British rule in Malaysia, The Long Day Wanes.)
2. The Hotel Shangri-La
Of course, going back to the hotel quickly disabused me of these expat delusions. There, I felt like some kind of high-powered globetrotting executive, sweating in the sauna after a long morning workout, or sipping tea over my complimentary breakfast as I looked down on the streets of Kuala Lumpur below. Only in the morning did reality set in: I was but a lowly rookie teacher, with much to learn and even more to do. But hey! At least we'd be living in luxury for the rest of the week. Swanky pad with a view of the Petronas Towers? Complimentary breakfast? Free evening munchies and cocktails? Man, Dr. Kim really knows how to treat employees right!
Bonus: the room even had a Gideon Bible AND a "Gideon" Koran.
P.S. Apparently, McDonalds delivers in Malaysia. Who knew?
1 comment:
Haven't been to your blog for a while, so I decided to hop by and say hello.
Hey, The Road! Neat.
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