(October 13th, Friday) After a hard night out (especially for Kathleen) Ro and I rolled to the airport and headed out for Kuala Lumpur and a weekend in the city whose name means 'muddy estuary'. Later we were to be joined by Elisa, Kathleen, and Shamik, but the first day was largely on our own.
General thoughts about Kuala Lumpur: fascinating city, definitely an up-and-coming. English speaking ability of the locals is fairly strong (residual effects of British colonialism, as well as a sizable Indian population). The ethnic and religious breakdown of the city/country are crazy as well. Kuala Lumpur, like many larger malaysian cities, has a slight Chinese majority, with Malays close behind, and Indians bringing in the rear. The country as a whole of course, is more Malay, but I know for a fact that Chinese constitute something like 1/3 of the population.
This leads to some interestingness - there is no doubt that the populace is multicultural, but the individual communities are large enough that they do not have to assimilate into eachother. To complicate this dimension, there are reglious considerations as well - Muslim, Hindu, traditional Chinese, and some Christians (british colony, etc). In any case, if I had more time, I'd love to have explored more.
After arriving, Ro and I ran right into the travelers' bane - hustlers and conmen. We thought we were smart; we had printed out a guide about how not to get cheated getting a taxi to town. We were wrong. Despite holding that guide in that hands as we bartered, we found out later that despite figuring that paying a slight (20 nett~5.25 USD premium) over the usually 70nett ride was reasonable to keep things sheriff, that we were doubly cheated by our driver.
About 5 minutes into our ride (the city is about 1 hr from the airport) the 'luxury taxi' driver told us to get out and hop into the budget cabs on the side of the ride, telling us that everything had been paid for and arranged. We were creeped out at first since he stopped on the side of the road and starts conversing with 4 large men (apparently bartering off our contract). We were scared that the men would approach, beat the shit out of us, steal our passports, money, and then urinate on us for good measure.
Anyways, we took the budget cab into the city thinking that everything was ok. But when we got to the hotel and started to walk into its sliding doors, the budget taxi driver was like 'yo, pay me'. We got into an argument, but fortunately we had gotten a reciept at the booking service's desk. After getting pretty irritated, we decided not to dick over the budget taxi driver (apparently he'd paid the luxury taxi driver 30nett to take us into the city on the assurance that he'd be paid 80nett by us) and paid him his 80nett, deciding to take it up with the counter when we went back to the airport on sunday. (I'm happy to report that after making a ruckus, they gave us our money back, disavowed all knowledge of the dishonest activities of the luxury taxi driver they commissioned and promised to fire him)
After that headache, we met up with Boris and his friend Eugene. Boris and Ro know eachother from Beta at Penn. We went out for dinner in Bukit Bintang (something of a tourist district) and then to a bar.
The story gets good here. If you're interested... let me know. But its not meant for public consumption.
More to come on our next 2 days of exploration.
All in all, the trip was pretty slick.
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