Eaten Alive

3/12/2010

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur

Got up slowly and ate one of my pieces of raspberry bread for breakfast, paid for another night in my hostel, which only cost RM18 ($5.75) but was an absolutely crappy, horrid cockroach infested place, and left with a fuzzy image of a photocopied map in hand.  I walked in the direction of the Petronas Twin Towers, but without a real aim to get there, thus I ended up in the Golden Triangle, KL's fanciest and largest shopping destination.  And yes, I did just start referring to Kuala Lumpur as KL, because that's what locals, and anyone who has been here for more than a minute, say.  I looked around it, but left the area fairly quickly.  As in Singapore, they were almost all shops I knew, and the prices were generally the same, or more expensive than they would be at home.  I walked up to the towers and was dismayed to find that they were out of tickets for the day, but was quite excited to hear that they were free if I could get one.  So I just gazed up at the towers for that day, got some more unidentifiable food for lunch, and started heading back towards the hostel.  As little as there was to see or do on that walk, it was a fairly long one and I was feeling exhausted from the extreme, humid heat.  Still, I wasn't going to drop, so I mapped an interesting route back.

 Sultan Abdul Samad, with the Darumbia builind in the background

I walked by the Masjid Jamek Mosque and was shocked at how full it was until I realized that it was midday Friday, the most important time for prayer of the entire week for Muslims.  From there, again meaning to head back, I walked over to Merdeka [Independence] Square and the Sultan Abdul Samad building, wandered through the Textile Museum mostly because it had AC, though the antique jewelry exhibit was pretty awesome, then went through Darumbia, which was a very cool Islam design building, but mostly boring shops and offices.

Still trying to eventually get back to the hostel, though with a bit more energy after the time in the AC'd museum, I went through Central Market.  It was rather unexciting but while looking at the various tchotchkes I passed a stall with an above ground pool, about three feet tall, eight feet long and five feet wide.  Several people were sitting on silver stools with their feet in water being eaten by fish.  This "fish massage" as advertised, cost RM5 for ten minutes so I obviously paid the woman for the honor of being their dinner.  A bit cautiously, I lowered both feet into the water and watched the 2-3 inch long charcoal fish swarm around my feet.  I squealed.  I like to think of myself as fairly stoic, but I squealed so loudly that the tourist couple sitting across from me started laughing.  It wasn't the biting/eating that I minded, even though I could sometimes feel an individual mouth sucking on my toe, trying to open its mouth even wider to devour me whole.  No, the worst part was the flapping and flopping around my feet, it tickled and was slimy and gross.  Within mere seconds of first submerging my feet, they were out of the water again, taking one of the fishes with them, though it fell right back into the water.  I asked an Australian guy next to me to take a picture and this is what I looked like:

I put my feet in again, without much more success than the first time, though I do think the second squeal was a bit quieter.  Dipping my feet in and out, kicking up fish as I went, I eventually was able to stop squealing but still didn't like it.  At this point, I was demoted and moved to a tank with smaller fish.  It wasn't as bad, but I could still feel them horribly covering my feet, their slime likely transferring onto my skin.  It was icky and it was as this point that I realized that I really don't like having my feet touched by anyone or anything.  I don't know if that makes me phobic, I just know that I don't like it so I left before my ten minutes was up.

Getting back to the hostel, I relaxed for a while, reading my giant hardcover book.  Later, I headed out to look around Chinatown, which I found garbed in designer fakes of every variety from curb to awning.  Most of them were fairly well done, if you didn't look too closely or open them or feel them.  I decided against a faux Hermes Birkin bag, and a copied Chanel chain bag and looked for something to eat.  I'd already been dinner, but it was nearly 9 and I hadn't had any dinner.  So I ate this:

In case you can't tell, those are four tiny crabs, fried on a stick.  They tasted decent and actually had a pretty good flavor, but they were pokey.  You could feel their claws scratching the sides of your mouth and the back of your throat as you chewed.  It didn't fill me up so I also got some rice with a spicy, brick red sauce before heading back.