Kuala Lumpur

10:14 pm, and feeling the drain... walked another 8 or so hours again today.


Got to KL around 6 last night. Found a crash pad named Backpackers Traveling Lodge( a name of pure genius), met a real wanderer who's been pushing along for the last 3 1/2 half years through South America and now South East Asia, and started settling into to the my new mode of solo travel.
- 35 Ringget room (~10 USD)
Talked with the wanderer, Ben, and he definitely shed some new light on certain areas of SE Asia that I had had my reservations about heading too. Think I'll give Burma another look once I get over into the North of Thailand. Some sources say not to go there, because your tourist bucks might go to helping the corrupt regime that been quashing it citizens human rights. But as I've come to agree with Ben with, you can often gain and spread greater awareness, and simply add to the general consciousness of these things by visited such places. In addition, there are means to support the common people over the government when in Burma; mainly by trying to stay away from government run amenities. And maybe the most obvious being that there going to next to nothing from a cheapo like me.

Other places for to add to the list: Sumatra, and Mindanao.


Time running thin after writing emails and always leaving this to last really suffers. Already 10:30 and need to go hit the town up a little tonight, so in brief then:

Walked all over KL last night, well into the night. KL, super safe city, babies could walk the streets at all hours of night. Aside from the the occasional proposition and shady cars full of shady girls with dudes behind the wheel and pimps trying to get you go with them, really a peaceful night life. Nobodies to crazy, and nothing quite boring, a constant hum, through out the whole place. Side walk grills go all night, men sit around cafe's drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes well into the night. Equal measure of Indians, Chinese, and Malays everywhere
( except in Little India, china town, and all the out skirts, and you may imagine how that works).
Went to a bunch of little club/bar joints last night. Rum Jungle, Hardrock cafe, some Curry place.
- 20 Ringget for a beer (~7-8 USD) .. very prices
Took it quite light considering beer was so expensive, but definitely didn't call it a night because of that. Saw an African band at the rum jungle, they played 'king of the jungle', pretty funny.

got back at around 2 a.m. I think. slept good.

Took another night at same Hostel place, and went to the Museum today... walked, walked and walked around KL arches aching. Got a foot massage- 35 RM (10 USD). Ate food, took a number 3 ( a couple of those), and maybe one more.

Anyway, tomorrow will probably head north to Butterworth! Buses run pretty much every hour and are way way way cheaper then the train (3x cheaper). No rush though. They've already cleaned my room out at Hong Kong, so the whole thought of going back there to kind of regroup and settle and figure things out is seeming more hampered now with the thought that I'm going to be 'that guy on the Futon'. No biggy I suppose, but definitely forcing me to ask the question whether I should try to not even to go back there at all until the last minute to get my stuff in August....(wish I didn't have this huge sack full of worthless stuff on my back though)....


Other news... read the paper today:
-The US has a crap ton of H1N1 cases now a days. Some some what startling statistic. I think out of the the 10's of thousands in the world the US had something like half.
-North Korea's blowing some more nuks off, more airplanes are crashing into water.
- Here's a crazy new story from Singapore today, maybe it's made it around the world. A little disturbing but can't help but be amazed by it. In real short: Family in high rise. Argument between Mother, Father, Son. Son locks all of the family(brothers and some others) in a room and jumps off the balcony. Police come, bring family down stairs. A pun finding out that his favorite son had killed himself, the father runs back up to their floor and jumps off killing himself.... F'in crazy.

Alright, promised myself I wasn't going to start using this blog as an umbilical chord. One exception here, separation anxiety maybe. Give em' hell Adam.

the nights not over yet, where's that map a had.......