River of Treacle
Sunday, December 11th, 2005Kuala Lumpur is a strange town. It has no day or night, only periods of light and dark.
When I woke up in my window-less cubicle for the third time, I finally turned on the light. It was just before 7. Relieved, I gathered my stuff together and grabbed the daypack.
Outside, the sky was just brightening. In the dim lights shining through glass-panneled doors, I could make out people playing snooker and figures lit by the ghostly shimmer of computer terminals—the remnants of the past night. At the Hindu temple at the corner of Jl Pudu Lama, bells, incense and the first colourful flower displays heralded the arrival of the new morning.
At my old guest house, I had to wait, but when the receptionist finally emerged he was happy to see me and did not seem to mind when I turned down the first room he offered—opposite the first floor toilets and smelling as if the previous occupier had not quite made it that far. I checked into a large, airy room in the upper floor for 30RM and breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever the situation was with Michael, if I’m going to recover from being sick, I better do it in comfort.
Yeah, that heat exhaustion from 2 days ago was not all there was to it. Transferring my backpack from the Pudu Guest House around the corner, I could feel the dizzyness return, although I took care to walk slowly. I felt a flash of indignation: it was not even 7:30 in the morning and yesterday the fever had not returned until the afternoon—I had expected to be free from it during the first half of the day. Whatever it was that spread through my body was taking over, robbing me of my strength. Well, it could hardly get worse than almost collapsing on the street in Chinatown.
I clutched the little flask of peppermint oil one of the Chinese ladies had given me and ascended the stairs slowly.
After two hours of rest, the dizzyness had all but disappeared. It turned out to be nothing serious, just the repercussions of the stomach upset from Taman Negara, but I decided to rest for 2 days, get all my clothes washed and recharge my batteries before hitting the road to Indonesia. That’s why I’m still in KL.
***
Because I exist in no particular time zone, I wasn’t sure what time it was when I emerged from the darkened internet café today. I returned to the temple and ordered a vegetarian curry from one of the restaurants next to it, only to notice that everyone was tucking into Dhosai—it was only 10 in the morning.
Damn, I thought: I missed out on a good thing. But then the vegetarian curry arrived:
Denni