(For that, indeed, is where I had been for the past 10 days...)
Well, I have to say, I wasn't that much taken with it. Dirty, noisy, disorganised, and debilitatingly HOT. An orgy of construction going on. Crass modernity trampling any sense of culture or history.
Yes, it was all rather depressingly reminiscent of China - particularly of one of the burgeoning new mega-cities on the south-east coast.
Except that.... the pace of life is conspicuously more relaxed there. And people are much nicer, much friendlier. Even touts and hawkers - who can be bothersomely intense - don't have that abrasiveness and aggressiveness and insane persistence that is so wearing on the soul here; if you tell them 'No', they give up and walk away - with a shrug and a smile.
What's KL like? my friends here ask me.
It's like Guangzhou - with nicer manners.
3 comments:
Read yesterday (at the Barstool, and at your friend Ruby's place) of the Global Battle of the Bands. I'm glad you got to indulge your musical tastes!
Given the above "first impressions," though, it doesn't sound as though you've returned, um, refreshed, revivified, and all the rest.
I spent half the time in Penang, which was much nicer.
And having someone to hang out with on the second weekend was much nicer; solo travel is becoming a bit of a bore for me in my advancing years!
And the weather got a lot less severe. The first couple of days, I was trying to orient myself around KL city centre in 40 C heat - not nice.
By the by, JES, if you've taken a look at the GBOB post, have you checked out the earlier post I linked to there on The Amazing Insurance Salesmen? It includes a video of their trademark extended improvisation on Duke Ellington's Caravan (a rock band playing a jazz tune? yes, they're strange!), which is.... worth a look. (My other leading commenter, Hopfrog, only just got around to checking it out, and now berates himself for his earlier neglect. He is a fanatical convert.)
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