It was strange being back on the busy neon signed Khaosan road. I felt differently about it this time around, maybe because I was now a little more accustomed to South East Asia and I knew my way around. But it was odd being back on my own.
I found a hostel owned by Nepalese people which was one of the most basic rooms I have ever stayed in, just a matress on the floor with about 2 foot of floor space, a fan and a shared bathroom.
I tried to spend as little time around Khaosan as possible. I had a few days to kill before I could get a train down to Butterworth – A town on the western coast of Malaysia. I spent most of my time exploring the back alleys and canals of Bangkok. One day I ended up in a market called ‘The iron bridge market’ It is a small market on a bridge that covers one of Bangkok’s many canal’s. 1 metre wide isle’s and low ceiling’s with hundreds of electrical wires hanging from it, surrounded by small stalls selling smuggled electronic goods, from remote control cars to cameras.
A couple of days later I boarded the night train to Butterworth. In the morning I chatted to an American girl on the train and decided to head over to the island of Penang seeing as I was there and I didn’t much fancy getting on another coach or train. Penang was nice but I was eager to get down to Kuala Lumpur to meet a friend of mine so in the morning I caught a coach down to Kuala Lumpur.
You cant help being impressed by the huge sky scrapers and tower blocks that you see when you enter Kuala Lumpur for the first time. Walking down Petaling street in Chinatown which is the tourist hub of KL you see the usual market stalls selling the fake ray bans and watches that every market in SEA sells and smoke rises from great metal buckets where chestnuts are being roasted. Another thing that surprised me about Malaysia was the amount of Indian people there.
The following day I met my friend Sueann, who took me to a nightmarket in Bangsar to try a few different traditional Malay dishes and after for drinks with a few of her friends.
Me with an milk ice tea or was is ice milk it? it seems you can put those words in any order and get a different thing, and beef rendang (photo stolen from Sueann)
Some more assorted dishes
I spent the week in KL walking from one freezing cold aircontioned shopping centre to the next, which seems to be a favourite past time of people in KL, that and watching the fountains outside the Petronas Towers.
When I reached Kuala Lumpur it marked the end of my planned trip so from here on I was freestyling. I decided to book a flight to Jakarta as it was one of the closest destinations to KL.
The weekend before I flew to Jakarta Future Music Festival Asia was on in KL and luckily Sueann had a few vip tickets so I got to see De La Soul, PSY (the guy that sings that annoying Gagnam Style song) and The Prodigy, all for free.
A Tramp In Asia 