Thirty-Four Hours in Kuala Lumpur

Kady and I negotiated a price with a taxi driver to carry us to the bus station for our 12am overnight bus to Kuala Lumpur. On the way, he offered us some fatherly advice regarding our brief stay there. It went along the lines of "don't trust anyone ever no matter what"... which is fine. He was adorable and all of this made Kady and me smile to one another. The advice that followed however, was downright menacing.
"Don't help any old ladies who are carrying anything. Ever. Don't help them cross the street. Don't help them carry grocery bags..."
"What!?" we inquired, confused.
He then proceeded to explain how even the sweet little old ladies are in on the whole KL drug ring. This made me really sad. And probably caused me to view with suspicion the little old Chinese lady at the bus stop I thought was viewing us with suspicion. Turned out she just really wanted to have a conversation in English.
Kady and I learned that her sister lives in Pennsylvania. We learned that the film "Anna and the King" was filmed in Penang and they paid hundreds of locals to be extras. She and her family made around $5000 from this. However, only her brother appears in the final cut and, as she explained, the film completely tanked. I tried to decipher how self-deprecation could translate as she repeated several times that she was not intelligent like her sister and she was a little bit worthless because of her health problems; however my favorite fact about her was not that she really enjoys the American television series "Baywatch", but that she thinks Shannon Doherty (who she has only seen on the 1990's series 90210) is the most beautiful woman in the world.
"She is so sweet like a baby doll!" she described giddily which put me at ease now that I understood that all of the Asian women who had been coming up to me saying, "You look like a baby!" or "Ohhh, like baby doll!" were actually complimenting me.

Kady and I arrived at a bus station in Kuala Lumpur somewhere between the dark and fateful hours of five and six am. As usual, it was in the middle of nowhere and as usual, we were accosted by taxi drivers who try to snatch you up when you're exhausted and vulnerable after spending the night on a bus. We stood our ground because I refuse to make decisions under pressure and there's always a cheaper way. We hauled it the quarter mile to the bus station for a Kady and Summer powwow- now a standard feature of our travels together. Nothing was in English and there were no maps anywhere. We had no idea where we were. We were just about to give up and accept one of the taxi drivers over-priced fares when we stumbled upon what seemed to be a mirage- a local bus that appeared just meters from the spot we accepted defeat. Inside of the bus was a helpful bus driver who dropped us off exactly where we wanted to go.
(CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!)
I stubbornly insisted on checking out several guest houses which paid off as we ended up getting the nicest hotel room of our entire trip for the same price as all of the nasty ones we looked at.
(CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!)
We checked in at some unknown hour and showered, falling asleep in the freezing cold air-conditioning until about 5 pm.

Kady and I awoke with that limbo-y feeling. We were tired and had been travelling at quite a fast pace for several weeks. We also didn't know much about Kuala Lumpur. I had always wanted to go there but at this point really couldn't recall why. It's huge and very modern with enormous skyscrapers and pristine malls. And more Indian food. Oh man...
Since this was the biggest and most Western city we'd visited, we decided it would be a good idea for Kady to finally get her hair done as she had been complaining about feeling ugly and mousy since we met up in Bangkok. We found a salon near our hotel with an advertisement for a color-line I recognized. That was the easy part.
The hard part was trying to explain to the entire salon staff what Kady's hair wishes were. We looked through magazines. We pointed at photos. We demonstrated with our hands...
They came to the conclusion that it just couldn't be done. I tried to explain that it was all very easy and see I know because I'm a hair stylist and all you need to do is this...

A call was made to the manager and in ten minutes, I was mixing up bleach and folding foils. What followed is best described with pictures:

I insisted one of the adorable Malaysian hipsters style Kady's hair and we were off...

into a torrential downpour that banished us to our room for the next couple hours until at 11 pm, I got the incredibly practical idea to go jogging to the twin towers. We didn't quite make it there but, despite the dripping sweat, got some great shots and bonded with our taxi driver...

So far, no old ladies with grocery bags...