in Kuala Lumpur

I landed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, around 9 in the evening. Mine was a short layover, for my next flight left the next day around 11 in the morning. After logging into the airport wireless network I looked at a few maps of the surrounding area, read some city review websites, and decided to ride the train into town instead of sleeping on a bench somewhere in the airport.

I emerged into what looked like a settlement for people from subcontinental India, most of whom had already closed up shop. After familiarizing myself with the landmarks near the station and memorizing the time-schedule for early trains back to the airport, I started walking toward the tallest and brightest thing I could see - the twin Petronas towers. I had neither cell-phone coverage nor a physical map and mainly relied on gut feelings when deciding which way would most quickly help me reach my goal. After a few hours I was close enough to the towers that I could take a full-screen picture of them, two glittering white phalluses that dominated the skyline even from a couple of miles away.

My backpack was getting heavy, my feet were tired, and at that point it was nearly 4 a.m. The walk back seemed far shorter than the walk out, of course, and I took a couple of different streets - just to shake things up. The sun had risen by the time I felt like I was near the train station again, and the buildings I had committed to memory looked far different in the light of day, but I eventually got on a train that took me back to the airport.

The airplane took off and as we were flying over the city I was shocked to see how far I had actually walked during the previous night, covering most of the distance between KL Sentral station (Brickfields) the Bukit Nanas station, near the Petronas towers. Sleep soon beckoned, however, and I gladly slipped into Morpheus’s tender embrace, happy that I had seen a bit of KL, at night.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥