Malaysia Can

An “Oh Shit” Moment, KL, Malaysia

As we were walk­ing the 8 min­utes (as stated pre­cisely in our hotel’s infor­ma­tion pam­phlet) back from Suria KLCC, we saw a motor­cy­cle make a U-turn sim­ply by going over the divider. Naomi, who gets stressed by any­thing mov­ing on the roads, sim­ply sighed and said “Wah, Malaysia really Boleh, man”.

On the way up to KL on the Plus, we had the radio on, with Naomi busy­ing her­self switch­ing fre­quen­cies as we passed from one FM cov­er­age area to another. On one sta­tion, there were peri­odic traf­fic reports in an artic­u­late female voice (as opposed to inar­tic­u­late typ­i­cal radio jock types) which were really infor­ma­tive — “south­bound on the KL-Seremban high­way at kilo­me­tre 123.4″ — as well as funny — “there’s an over­turned truck on the shoul­der, it has spilled cans and bot­tles, please, do not stop for happy hour”.

Some of the more bizarre things heard on the radio made for a more inter­est­ing drive into KL proper, espe­cially since 1/3 of the dri­ving time was spent within KL’s traf­fic itself. There was some­thing about inter­net con­nec­tion roll­out on the news which stumped us. Maybe it was because we’re from such a con­nected (ingter­neck­tit­edly) city-state that we we appalled that we thought we heard the news­reader say that inter­net roll­out in rural and unde­served areas was to be recon­sid­ered. We were appalled enough to ask a KL friend of mine, who said he wouldn’t be sur­prised that it was exactly as we heard.

It was a good thing that the hotel we were stay­ing at wasn’t an unde­served area. We had patchy but free broad­band access for the 3 days and 2 nights we were there. And before I for­get, there has to be a big, big shout out to Arun, the guest rela­tions per­son who attended to us when we checked in. Dude, you are the most accom­mo­dat­ing hotel staff per­son fella we’ve ever met in Malaysia. The Hotel Maya is very lucky to have you. If only they had more luck with the rest of the hotel, though.

It’s not that the Hotel Maya is a bad place. The spe­cial rates were a good deal, as were the designer inte­ri­ors. It’s just that when you look closer, it all seems a lit­tle howyousayit, salah. Faucets wob­bled, pol­ished wooden floor­boards warped at the edges, and the pil­low­cases were torn. We had the one meal at the hotel’s brasserie, and um, the less said the better.

Still, it’s nec­es­sary to men­tion the atti­tude of the staff again. Maybe it’s because we haven’t been out of Sin­ga­pore for awhile, and are pleas­antly sur­prised by any a) sense of irony, b) sense of humour, and c) sense of initiative.

We did some home­work on hotel accom­mo­da­tion before book­ing at the last minute, and learnt that a room at the Hotel Maya has either a Twin Tower view (KLCC) or a KL Tower View, only that the KL Tower View also includes a Jalan Ampang Cemetary view. So when we asked a reser­va­tion staff mem­ber about it, she laughed and said, yes, but we pre­fer to call it the KL Tower View. I’m not a gam­bling man, but I’d bet a few bucks that a Sin­ga­porean hotel staff mem­ber wouldn’t even give a hint of a gig­gle if put in the same posi­tion. Plus, we were allowed a late late late late check­out when our book­shop spree took longer than expected and we only man­aged to trun­dle back to our room to pack up at around 10pm.

Aside from being able to spend a small for­tune on books at Kino, like we did on our last trip there, it was very good to meet up with my uni mates, and for Naomi to put faces to the funny sto­ries I’ve told her about my uni mates, and for the faces to retell the funny sto­ries for as many more times as time would allow. This is the guy who laughed till he had an asthma attack dur­ing Con­tracts; this is the girl who took ten min­utes to par­al­lel park and then went up the wrong flat for study group. Things that were funny back when but not quite now.

Oh, and yes, we were there for a my uni mate Boo Seng’s wed­ding, and I don’t have to men­tion that I’ve writ­ten about Boo Seng and his many exploits in this blog, and that you shouldn’t bother about search­ing for those posts because I’ve changed his name in those blog posts except this one, let’s get back to talk­ing about the wed­ding dinner.

It wouldn’t have been a typ­i­cal Boo Seng event if every­one could find their way to the venue with­out trou­ble. Nes­tled some­where in the back back streets of the sub­urb of Petal­ing Jaya, the restau­rant pro­vided the per­fect semi-rustic loca­tion for my friend Boo Seng’s wed­ding, for as another class­mate put it, you can take the Boo Seng out of Batu Gajah, but you can’t take the you know the rest. It was al fresco, com­plete with rain and rain con­tin­gency seat­ing shuf­fles, and for every­thing else the wed­ding turned out to be, it was a very enjoy­able reunion for a bunch of friends who’ve known each other for over 15 years.

It seems like just yes­ter­day we were teach­ing our­selves cricket in the park with a cou­ple of bats, a ten­nis ball and rub­bish bins pro­vided by the Rand­wick City Council.

Con­grat­u­la­tions Liz, for bowl­ing our Boo for a golden duck, though he’s sur­vived many maidens*.

*it’s just a cricket term, don’t read too much into it.

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