Long pause sorry, while this trip has been great, I’d be remiss if I were to pretend it’s been all sunshine. I’ve been hit with a wall of sadness and exhaustion lately, I’ve never been more tired in my life. I think the past year has finally caught up to me, when I no longer have busy work to keep me from thinking about it all. I’m mourning and I don’t know how to process it. I’ve cried most days between amazing meals and excursions, made awkward eye contact with drivers in the mirror as I fought back tears, and full cried while staring out the plane windows. I don’t know how long this will last or what will finally snap me out of it, but hopefully soon it will plateau. My anxiety in some ways has also started to return, I think there’s an impending doom of what waits for me. The spring ended with me feeling an overwhelming sense of underappreciation and that I no longer belong where I am, in many ways, so I think I’m starting to dread the return, worried that the feeling was right. But that’s for another day, until then I’ll be catching up on this trip. I’ll be covering our first days in Malaysia today, then finish Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and South Korea in a few posts. I hope to get them all scheduled out over the next few days, as I return next Wednesday to the US and won’t have time to write for a bit once back. After that though stay tuned, I have some plans for what comes next.
Starting the trip with relaxation
And now back to the trip, our original plan was to arrive in Kuala Lumpur in the evening, but when we had to reschedule our flights due to the typhoon, our only option was a redeye from Taipei that arrived at 5am.
Since we couldn’t get into the hotel, we ended up finding a day spa to kill time at, which ended up being an excellent way to spend our first day. We went to Billion Onsen, about ten minutes from our hotel. It was a much needed relaxing day. I went to the sauna, got a massage, and snacked on many many mini donburi bowls. Every table and seat had a QR code you scanned and then they brought everything to wherever you were. I think this is where the wall of exhaustion really started to emerge, as after my fifth donburi bowl snack, I curled up on a recliner in the relaxation room, where I slept curled up in a ball for four hours. I only woke up because I was hungry for another snack.
After the spa day, we went back and checked into our hotel, before getting a light dinner and calling it an early night.
Batu Caves
The following day, my former colleague from Queen Mary’s Malaysia office came to pick us up at our hotel. She took a few days off to spend time. One thing I have been grateful for one this trip, is how many work friends I’ve been able to meet up with and make new non-work related memories, having gotten to meet other friends earlier in the trip in Belfast, London, and Taipei.
My friend first took us to Batu Caves, where we had a light breakfast and then ascended the 272 steps up to the Subramanian Swamy temple. It’s the location where the Hindu festival of Thaipusam is celebrated annually. A procession starts at a temple in Kuala Lumpur and they then walk out to the caves.
I visited here in 2014, since then they’ve painted the stairs differently. I was also able to visit the Dark Cave, which hosts bats and one of the rarest spiders in the world. It’s been closed since the pandemic apparently.
Chinatown and Central Market
After the caves, we drove back into Kuala Lumpur, where we went to Chinatown for lunch at Old China Cafe. The setup of these restaurants typically had the owners home upstairs. My friend said they now sell antique furniture upstairs at this one.
After lunch we walked around and saw the murals in Kwai Chai Hong, which focus on how the neighborhood used to be and the people who once called it home.
BookXcess was our next stop, a bookstore chain with unique layouts. The one we visited used to be an old cinema, you climbed up and down labyrinths of stairs and steps finding new crevices everywhere. I found a lot of new reads for my list as well as had fun just climbing around on what was essentially an adult playground.
Finally, we ended our day at the Central Market, originally a wet market built in the 1800s, it was transformed into a hub for galleries and stores focusing on Malaysian culture, arts, and crafts. We walked around for a while taking in artwork and visiting grocery shops where I bought way too many spices.
It was a good end to the day and afterwards my friend dropped us off for the evening.
The Wandering Wisconsinite 