Shop Shop Shop

I'm in ecstasy. I think the food currently on my table is the best food I've ever eaten - certainly the best Indian. The naan is smoky from the tandoor, the paneer masala has the perfect level of spice. It's a completely unpretentious cafe/restaurant in a back road of Kuala Lumpur, and I will always remember with deep love the woman that sent me here. I'm kind of glad I don't live in Kuala Lumpur, because if the shops didn't take all my money, this restaurant would. In the hopes that they will also take all of your money (which would admittedly be difficult, as my whole meal cost me about £1.20): Sangeetha Restaurant, on Lebuh Ampang, round the corner from the Masjid Jamek LRT station. Go.

I feel like I've been from one end of the shopping scale to the other today, and walked every inch of it. I've bought a new camera in a Korean-style electronics mart, walked awed through a luxury mall that had an aquarium in the basement and a 5-star hotel in the attic, bartered at a flea market, wandered through a very sedate Central Market (like an over-civilised Grand Bazaar in Istanbul), bought spices and incense using only hand signals from an Indian woman with a cart, and been dressed in a saree by an over-ambitious shop assistant in a fabric shop in Little India (there was a short silence and then he slowly started unwrapping me again.) I'm fairly certain I spent most of my salary in one day, and on return to Sabah will be eating instant noodles until the 27th of April...

But look at where I stayed! Kuala Lumpur is a remarkable city in some ways - the hustling crowds of the cityscape suddenly give way with no warning to quiet streets lined with century-old shophouses. My hostel was in a converted shophouse, the middle one in the picture below; although 'converted' is stretching it a bit. The front was immaculate, the back they had gutted and replaced with some oddly beautiful modern architecture - steel and concrete and brick.

And they had awesome doors on all the rooms too:

Yep, that's me! Emily! My room! (It also really helps for when someone new arrives, tells you their name three times, leaves, and you promptly forget their name and then bump into them at bedtime. Sneaky.) (In case you were my roommate, I totally remember your name, it was that other guy next door I'm talking about.) 

The Big City

Discovering you're a country hick is never fun.

Arriving in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, my first thought was, gosh, look at that - they've got trains. Then I mentally smacked myself, and boarded the express train to the centre of town, where I gaped at the existence of internet-connected tourist information booths. A taxi drove me through buildings taller than three storeys, and past beautiful old mosques. And I stared.

My first action at the hotel was to ask where the mall was, having some shopping that needed to be done (apparently in Kota Kinabalu, file dividers simply do not exist, and shop assistants repeat my words like I'm a crazy person. "File divisions?" "No, dividers." "Divisiers? You mean a document folder?" "No, I mean a divider, and if I meant a folder, I would have picked up one of those pretty folders on prominent display behind you.") The man at the desk suggested 6 malls, all within walking distance, and offered to call a taxi to take me to several more. I blushed and walked across the road to the Pavilion, Asia's Premier Luxury Mall, and owner of the Tallest Liuli Crystal Fountain in Malaysia, as endorsed by the Malaysia Guinness Book of Records. Truly. I'm not about to admit that I don't know what a Liuli Crystal Fountain is, because the look on my face already marks me as the hick I am.

The mall is about 50 floors high and probably covers more floorspace than the whole of Kota Kinabalu, and it has a Japan Street, which has a two-floor shop devoted to plastic cameras, and authentic Japanese street food stalls. There are two art galleries, and one hundred and seven restaurants and cafes. Four of those are Starbucks. Actually, I think it might have been three, but I got lost and passed one of them twice. There are two car dealerships - Bentley and Jaguar.

I'm overwhelmed, and not least because I've just seen two women dressed in black sacks with a mesh covering their eyes buying sexy lingerie. 

I get lost.

Then I find the Nando's in the basement, and everything becomes alright again - and it's even okay that the waiters say "Yebo!" with a thick Malaysian accent, because Oliver Mtukudzi is playing on the stereo, and the vegetarian burger tastes of home...