Malaysia: Truly Asia

Malaysia’s current come-on line for tourists is ‘truly Asia’. With many cultures and flavours in its mix of attractions, it can offer up blue rice, grey monkeys, pink orchids, emerald jungle and some very bright city lights. Very Asian indeed.

Story Lindsey Dawson Photography Courtesy of Tourism Malaysia

Plenty magazine: Autumn 2007

Blue rice was new to me. I found it in the Old China Café in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown. One of a row of traditional old “shophouses” dating back 100 years, it was once a back-street guild hall where wrinkled mah-jong players tested their skills.

Faded buildings like this aren’t likely to last in booming KL, but proprietor Leonard Tee is holding on to its low-rise charm – with the help, he believes, of neighbourhood ghosts. “They own the whole area,” he told me gravely, “though I have not yet encountered one.”

The ghosts would surely approve of the café’s local antique furniture and the Nonya (Chinese/Malay) dishes on the menu, flavoured with tastes like galangal, candlenut and kaffir lime leaves. The violet-blue rice, cooked in coconut milk, is suffused with the colour of a flower called the butterfly pearl. Yum! So delicious, so different.

In KL everything’s different. You wake very early after flying in from New Zealand. It’s the time change, of course. Dawn in KL is mid-morning at home. And even 20 floors up in an air-conditioned room, you can still hear, very faintly, the lofting call of the muezzin, calling out the day’s first invitation to prayer.

Malaysia is mainly Muslim but it seems a relaxed sort of faith here, where lovely young women sashay through the malls wearing headscarves teamed with skin-tight jeans. And there are many more faiths and races. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians all knock along in a country that’s buoyed by the capitalist ethos. The blend makes it a great place to visit.
Despite the differences there’s also much that’s familiar. Over a breakfast of dragon fruit, guavas and rambutans, I browsed newspaper stories about young men’s speed habits. We call them boy racers. In Malaysia they’re the mat rempit, boys burning rubber on motorbikes rather than cars. And just like us, Malaysians have other crime worries. I read of the murder of a poor girl who’d been raped, hit on the head with a coconut and then stabbed with a stingray barb. Exotic method, familiar sentence – 10 years’ jail.

But those are local tensions, cause for curiosity rather than concern. For tourists, it feels very safe and has so much to enjoy, from steamy lanes with temples offering glimpses of incense and flowers to in-your-face architecture.

There are pockets of old English buildings built by colonial chaps apparently driven wild by Oriental fantasies – a mass of pointy minarets, crenellated domes and breezy arcades.

Today it’s the mighty 88-floor Petronas Towers that spear the humid sky. Underneath them is a vast, glass-and-marble shopping mall packed with all the luxuries you might find in Paris or New York. But hop aboard the “tren”, KL’s efficient city train, and for a mere 1.60 ringgit (about 60 cents) you can be whisked to the noisy, jostling Petaling Street outdoor markets, bursting with novelties and cheap knock-offs of the world’s great labels. Quality? Nope. But too vivid to miss – and bargaining should score you at least 20-30% off the asking price.

As in much of Asia, you may not find clothes to suit if you’re ample of girth. One of my friends had to laugh when a cheeky stallholder told him, “We don’t do King Kong size here.” But King Kong and even newer movies are on sale for a mere few dollars per DVD. Authorities may do their best to stamp out counterfeit goods, but most shoppers don’t much care. Bargain hunting is thirsty work so street stalls sell delicious local fruits and juices. And you can’t beat an icy beer and some satay sticks. Satay is so much seen as the national dish that Malaysian Airlines’ kitchen barbecues 23,000 skewers a day for consumption in the sky.

KL’s fusion of various Asian influences makes the food fabulous. Coffee addicts may not do so well, though western-style hotels offer good kopi susu – coffee with milk – and there is, as everywhere, Starbucks.

For relief from city life head for the cool Cameron Highlands (once the colonials’ favourite haunt) or Malacca with its Portuguese influence, or laid-back Langkawi Island, a 55-minute flight from KL.

Langkawi locals potter around on scooters, grey monkeys lounge on roadsides, golf course beckon, the shopping is duty free and you can get out into nature. Try an early morning jungle walk amidst the racket set up by 26 species of cicada.

You’ll need a guide – this emerald paradise is fascinating but has sharp plants and ferocious ants. Bird life is great; with luck you’ll spot a racket-tailed drongo, its rear end sporting feathers like tiny twin ping-pong bats.

Langkawi has many super resorts, but for something different try Bon Ton, where you can hire your own authentic antique Malay house, but with gorgeous décor and air-con, plus a terrific restaurant.

Australian owner Narelle McMurtrie will love you if you donate to her nearby shelter for abandoned animals. Dogs aren’t much liked in Malaysia and she’s caring for 75 pooches long-term and not a few cats as well. “People ask how we keep the shelter going. I say, ‘Eat more, drink more!’ Would you like another bottle of wine?” she urged us with a laugh.

Oh, there was so much to eat and see and try out. Very tiring. Which is why, the next day, I whiled away an hour on a massage table at the elegant Andaman Resort. The spa was in a shady pavilion above the white beach. I could hear the soft tch-tch of green geckos chatting in the rafters. A Balinese girl with soft but steely hands gave me top-to-toe attention. Every now and again she asked politely, “Excuse me? How is my pressure?”

“Lovely,” I sighed. And, later, as she handed me a cool drink flavoured with golden tamarind root, a touch of honey and a drop or three of fresh lime juice, I realised I was feeling, so unusually, no pressure at all.

Reprinted by permission. Copyright 2007 Plenty magazine Autumn 2007 published for Hanover Group. Subscribe to Plenty today.

print