River of Treacle
Kuala 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:
***
The ride back from Taman Negara had been somewhat eventful. All went smoothly until after lunch, except that it was cold and windy on the river boat and the minibus driver kept us refrigerated in time-honoured Malaysian tradition (when will I learn to keep a jacket handy?)
After lunch I felt a little queasy, but not actually dizzy until we were practically in the outskirts of KL. By then, I had inadvertendly nearly killed myself by hanging on to a grip which turned out to be the opening for the emergency exit next to me. Failing that support and not offered with much choice, I sank quietly across the (thankfully vacant) seat next to me on the last row and closed my eyes for a while, registering a brief look of amused surprise from the traveller in the opposite corner as I bit down a curse. Vaguely, I wondered whether he would offer to help when we arrived and, more to the point, whether I would let him. However, when the shaking and rattling of the bus diminished in the rushhour gridlock, I began to feel better. It was going to be alright. There are backpacker hostels everywhere in Chinatown, including close to the drop-off point, so I would not even have to walk far to find a place to crash.
I kept my eyes peeled: one hostel across the road turned out to be closed and another appeared to be five floors up. But I spotted a sign to a ‘Hotel Aroma’ just next to the Hotel Mandarin Pacific where the bus stopped. Curious name for a hostel, but room rates started at 30RM. And I could make it across the street.
However, once I had gotten that far, I realised that the entrance of the hostel wasn’t there, it was further away, across a parking lot. Suddenly I knew that I couldn’t make it that far. And I could not go back. Never go back.
Cue the nice lady with the peppermint oil and the parking lot attendant with a bag of iced water. Together with several on-lookers, they got me back on my feet until I could get across that parking lot. But the ‘Hotel Aroma’s’ cheap room rate turned out to be for periods of a few hours. I couldn’t stay there.
“Fifty Ringgits,” the owner called after me: “for all day!”
“And night?” I muttered to myself as I staggered on, sniffing at the peppermint. Despite the kindness of strangers which I had just experienced, I had never felt so alone.
So much for being too pig-headed to ask other travellers for help.
I ended up taking a taxi, having to squat next to one while the driver unloaded the bags of his previous passengers in order to get a shot at it. Don’t ask why I did not just request one from the lobby of the Hotel Mandarin Pacific where we had waited for the Taman Negara shuttle service in the first place—backpackers and luxury hotels seem to exert some mutual repelling force on each other. But I got into the taxi and sank into the seat, staring vapidly at the colours outside while we circled slowly furher and further away from the promised land of backpacker hostels in the river of treacle that is rush-hour traffic around Chinatown’s one-way streets.
At last, we got to the Pudu Guest House. The guy who had booked the Taman Negara shuttle ticket for me there said I would always be welcome. I was sure he could help me, whatever happened. But he was not there. The receptionist handed me a key to the window-less cell which I inspected, declared truly horrible and then booked. There, in the dark, I had a good cry. I had mentioned the Indian temple to the taxi driver as a landmark, so why had I not asked him to drive around the corner to the place where I stayed previously? Because I didn’t trust those guys? Those rooms have windows.
I the end, it wasn’t so bad. Pudu Guest House has a big lounge and I stretched out on one of the sofas right in front of the large screen, and spent the afternoon and evening dozing, watching comedies and movies and smoking countless cigarettes, surrepticiously sipping some medicinal brandy.
Tomorrow, I’m going to hit the road to Indonesia.
Tags: SE Asia, Tag Index
Denni