Subject: Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Thaipusan Hindu Festival
My Kuala Lumpur Chinese Couchsurfing hostess Jasmin rises at 4:30 am to commute 60 kilometers to her math teaching job. She doesn't stop at 3 pm either, but tutors privately. Most nights she gets back at 7 or 9. She studied in the UK and will travel to the British countryside in the summer. I am left with her two 'fraidy cats and computer.
My first day I didn't venture far, to buy spicey potato puffs at the corner, and try the complex's round pool, where a Pakistani woman, Mariah, befriended me and took me home to meet her daughter Sara and have tea and apples. Then I had to sample her chicken curry and chapati. She studies English and wants to learn to swim. I promised to return the next morning, Prophet Mohammed's birthday.
When in Rome, PpS I Love You, and The Holiday in one night. Another night it was Sherlock Holmes,The Nanny Diaries, Woody Allen's Scoop (or Snoop), and New in Town (which switched from English to Russian halfway through so I gave up). A couple of them froze, and Sherlock Holmes clearly had pirated subtitles. They vaguely resembled the spoken word and were in English, but made no sense whatsoever!
Jasmin urged me to visit Malacca, an historic Dutch colony, so I took a small pack to the wrong bus station, then another bus to a huge new bus station, and sat with a Pakistani man whose leather business is in Malaysia. He couldn't understand why I wasn't in Pakistan which has deserts, mountains, forests...and is not dangerous as our media contends. The scenery was not rice paddies like Indonesia, but palm oil plantations, the scourge of deforestation and climate change.
In Malacca, I met a Finnish couchsurfer on the local bus to Chinatown, where the cheap accommodations are, a girl told me. She also warned I risked being bombed by terrorists crossing the border to Thailand by bus or train!
Chinatown was just over a bridge from the old Dutch statehouse (now a history museum), the clock tower, and the old fort. The narrow sidewalks were hot and crammed with tourists. I stopped in a library and the lady drew me a map where to find the cheap guesthouses. I passed a mosque and several Hindu and Chinese temples, walking another half hour and seeing obvious plastic-wrapped shark fins hanging in a store window. That night I emailed Jasmin about it and she pronounced the soup "deelicious"!
The main drag is called Jonker. I returned to a guesthouse I'd seen advertising dorm beds with breakfast and wifi for less than $7 and was shown to a large attic room with about eight cots and numerous fans. The next day I peeked into the costlier hotel rooms, they had nothing better than the bunks but walls. When I asked the jovial Chinese host about restaurants, he told me there was a night market soon with every type of snack available, so I got online at the lobby computer until it got dark. Some backpackers shared a bunch of what looked like tiny new potatoes but had tasty white fruit inside.
The streets were crammed with tourists and stalls. I bought lime juice, my favorite, deep-fried this and that, and enjoyed Malaysian Chinese women line-dancing to a '50's Mambo recording and then doing the Twist. I met a Chinese architecture student from Penang at the hostel who advised me where to stay in Bangkok. The Chinese are a suppressed minority in Malaysia. They don't get the scholarships to the UK like the Muslim students with lower scores do, he told me. I walked through Chinatown again and had a delicious spicy soup for lunch. The woman had a production line of ingredients to concoct dozens of dishes. I shared a table with visitors from Singapore. All the bicycle rickshaws are covered with flower blossoms and have loudspeakers to entertain the passengers.
I crossed the bridge to the old clock tower, fort and colonial remnants, first exploring an architecture museum. Each region of Malaysia has slightly different traditional housing, and customs in choosing, blessing and orienting the building. The blood of a freshly killed rooster must drip on the central post. At the old Dutch state house, now a historical museum, I read about marriage ceremony customs and admired the costumed mannequins. The country's history was too complicated for me to absorb, I had a bus to catch back to Kuala Lumpur. Looking for a bank machine I found the modern part of town, wholly unexpected, and when I caught the bus back to the bus terminal, it made a forty minute circle back to Chinatown before delivering me back to the bus station. The fare coming from KL was 9 ringits; one company wanted 23 to go back. I found another company selling tickets for 12.
A bunch of young Moslem men all in white mounted the bus, coming from a conference. I asked my seatmate about the way back, and a woman of Indian extraction took me under her wing and rode the train with me in KL. Jasmin had told me about an upcoming Indian festival I shouldn't miss, though I remembered seeing a Saddhu with a pierced tongue years ago on the road to Nepal. This woman planned to go to Thaipusan, as it was called, the next day. 'Thai' means the harvest season in Tamil language and 'pusam' means a celebration. She said people travel from India for the event. Late as it was, I got home before Jasmin to watch more movies.
The next day I took the train to Majid Jamek and found Hindus waiting for a bus to the ceremonies. It was a long ride, ending at Batu Caves, where thousands of people were milling past hundreds of stalls. A retired Malaysian policeman, Maha, befriended me after we got off the bus and together we made our way through the crowd. His wife is Catholic and made the pilgrimage just once; he comes every year. In the past he was part of UN peacekeeping abroad, and has visited friends in Darwin, Down Under. As he explained in an email later, The devout Hindu will go on a religious fast, where he refrains from eating meat and leading a very simple life, 42 days before the celebration. He will not have any form of sexual gratification or entertainment , will not lose his temper, pray to God every day, do charity work and eat little vegetarian food during the fasting period.
Many Hindu will carry out a vow to bring peace in their lives or to avert a calamity or to thank God for solution to their miseries.
Big heavy wooden and metal structures (called Kavadi) are carried and walked barefoot for several miles (in sweltering heat) that ends in The Batu Caves walking up 272 steep stairs up into the limestone cave, where they would be blessed by a high priest. The lightest vow is to carry a metal pot of cow milk on their head and pouring the milk onto the Lord Muruga (Hindu diety).
Men with hook-pierced skin pull and lift elaborate flowered displays with god statues, peacock feathers and loudspeakers up to the temples within the caves. There were numerous Westerners snapping pictures. I hadn't recharged my camera, but Maha kindly shared his by email.
All those people moved very slowly up all those steps, so it didn't seem a problem. But first, time for a snack! Hindu charities give out drinks. water and meals. Some people were having their heads shaved, then covered with tumeric, men, women and children, for $3. I was considering it! We found a makeshift restaurant and Maha joined me in delicious masala dosa, a rice pancake filled with curried potatoes, with dhal and other sauces for dipping. Then a stop at the free toilets, no waiting for such an enormous crowd, and we took our places in the procession to mount the stairs to the caves. I was wearing Ida's maroon batik blouse and my yellow batik fan/hat; Maha was sure he could find me if we were separated, which we soon were. I was directed to another staircase that moved much faster than the ones with the slowly mounting displays.
Some people suffered in the heat and exertion. Medical personnel and plain clothes policemen were on hand. At the top of the stairs I waited for Maha a long time, but later he told me he'd been busy helping people who fainted. I gave up hope of ever finding him again. The limestone caves had lots of height and I spotted monkeys clambering up the sides. There were several temples inside and more vendors of drinks and offerings. There were plastic bottles and trash everywhere, as well as offerings of food the monkeys would enjoy. Caught in the crowd I suddenly realized we were heading down a staircase next to the one we ascended. Back below, I bought drinks and snacks, always looking for Maha's blue shirt and red cap.
Finally I was heading for the train back to the city when he caught up with me. A miracle! We hadn't exchanged emails yet and it seemed impossible to find him again. In 1978 I'd thought of having my head shaved in India, a sign of devotion (and widowhood). This time I was ready to do it. Maha found a place and snapped away as I got a $3 G.I. Joe haircut, which a friend posted on Facebook. Too late I asked for a little tail in back for Krishna to grab. People were surprised I was doing this and a Western girl snapped me. When I saw the shape of my head later, I had regrets and hope it will grow back fast before I get home to the States.
Getting back to town was long and complicated but we finally located the right bus. Maha and I parted and since I was near Chinatown, I decided to visit it. Young men hawked pirated videos aggressively. I found an upstairs restaurant that had deer and frog on the menu. My meal wasn't tasty after the Hindu food and the tea was terrible. Back to the bus station past the same old man and woman singing on the sidewalk to amplified music, the same blind man selling tissues, the same boy sitting alone on the walkway. How fortunate I am to be passing through!
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