Three Cool Things About Malaysia

(For those of you who haven't been following along, this is part of a series on our trip to the EARCOS 2008 Teacher Conference in Kuala Lumpur.)

Still struggling to catch up on work and sleep since arriving back in Seoul yesterday, so instead of the standard itinerary travelogue, let me offer you this brief and incomplete list of reasons, in no particular order, why Malaysia is totally cool.

1. The Food

From the first to the last meal of the trip, I tried to take pictures of the food, only to be thwarted by absent-mindedness (I'm not in the habit of bringing a camera to dinner) and by voracious appetite. Normally, within a minute or two of its hitting the table, most of our Malaysian meals looked like this:

(Those being the remnants of an Indian lunch at the Central Market.)


Just rest assured that Malaysian food (which includes Indian, Indonesian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Thai dishes--that's what you get when you've been sitting across a major ocean trade route for a full thousand years) is utterly delicious. Of all the cities I've visited, Kuala Lumpur was definitely one of the best places to eat. And cheap, too--trustworthy food stalls can over-feed you and yours for about 9 ringgit ($3 US) per head; mid-level restaurants run about four times that much.

Below, you can see some spicy-sweet fried wontons and some beef rendang (a spicy-smoky beef curry thats a signature dish in Indonesia and Malaysia).
The bottom corner of that last photo also shows some pumpkin fried chicken, which Nana practically inhaled. Yum.

2. Teh Tarik

A sweet, spiced milk tea concoction (think mild chai) served hot or cold with just about any meal. Great for taking the edge off a spicy curry or as an afternoon snack.
3. Groovy Multiculturalism

Seriously. Where else to Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists more or less get along? Kuala Lumpur packs a dozen different ethnicities and cultures into one cool little town. (Listen to me, calling 1 million+ little! I've been in Seoul too long!) There aren't only tons of different cuisines, but also different architectural styles, different musics, different dances--at the conference welcome dinner, for example, we ate food from four different countries and watched performances by dancers from five. In fact, this multiculturalism made Kuala Lumpur feel more familiar than Seoul, in a lot of ways--though the blistering heat was anything but familiar.

Well, that's about all I've got for tonight. Stay tuned for more news and notes about the trip. Did Justin eat himself into a coma? Did Nana survive the monkey attack? Check back tomorrow. All the best till then.