This morning I walk around Chow Kit, a busy commercial district with a market tha smells more interesting than it looks, and then Kampung Baru. This is a Malay village that is incongruously placed in the shadow of the big buildings of KLCC. It is the definition of sleepy: the odd person doing yard work, chickens scratching in the dirt, a thin uncared-for cat slinking across the road. It is hot: yesterday’s clouds have given way to blue skies (although as I type this the rain has come in again from nowhere and it’s bucketing down). So I slouch along at the same pace as efveryone else. I am mooch personified; but this is what I have come for: the opportunity to walk through the places people live, where they are unguarded and real, to spot the tiny truths of lives.
Now I am eating my thali in one of a row of Indian veggie restaurants. There is a large Indian population here (a bit more than half the population of the city are Malay, there are many ethnic Chinese of different sorts, some Eurasians and people from all over India: each retains their ethnic characteristics, but so far as I know, there is little conflict, although this hasn’t always been true).
Chinatown is rough and busy, its main drag pedestrianised to permit a market that is somewhat reminiscent of the one at Shepherd’s Bush, but with a more Chinese flavour. The South Indian temple is an oasis of calm in the centre of the commercial storm. Sadly, the main shrine was locked, so I didn’t get to see the chariot that carries some mad god to the Batu caves, followed by men carrying buckets of milk with their faces as a sign of their devotion. It’s not just Mormons who believe crazy shit.
Kampung Bharu
Petaling Street Market
Sultan Ahmed Building
Philosophy, Malay stylee
The Equator Hostel