meh...

For the past few years, I've been on the advisory board for my undergraduate sorority and I occasionally find myself incorporating some of their lingo into my own day-to-day vocabulary. "Meh" is probably my favourite term to date. As best I can describe, it means something along the lines of, "eh, I'm indifferent" and that pretty much sums up how I feel about KL.

Prior to moving to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur just sounded so gosh darn exotic. I think it was also mentioned in an Enrique Iglesias song. (Oh heck, who am I fooling? I know it was mentioned in Rhythm Divine/Ritmo Total - Enrique, I love you! - I have no shame apparently.) So, I felt obliged to visit. There are hundreds of luxury buses that serve the route from S'pore to KL daily so getting there was no big hassle but, once we got there, I just was not impressed.

As to be expected, it's nowhere near as clean as Singapore but, that wasn't so much the problem. More of an issue was when we decided to explore the city by foot and made the "mistake" of walking through one of the markets and side streets on our way to some of the more famous mosques. It literally took every fibre of my being not to hurl from the scent. My mother and friend Erin were with me as well and the three of us could not get out of that area faster if we tried.

Then there's the issue of transportation. While KL gets points for having relatively decent public transportation, it really is a random hodgepodge of subway/monorail/train lines that just happen to cross each other on occasion so transferring between the lines and getting around town can be a challenge. Certainly, an option is to avoid public transportation all together and just take a taxi but then you're faced with the touts. Despite signs posted prominently stating that it's illegal for taxi drivers to tout and that you should insist on the metered fare, at certain times of the day, all of the taxi drivers tout and will refuse to take you for metered fare. Don't get me wrong, I've been in cities where you have to be forceful with the taxi drivers in order to get the metered rate but never to the point where the driver will rather not take you than only charge you the metered rate. To make matters worse, if you approach the tourist police/security regarding the touting, they just shrug their shoulders and say maybe you'll have better luck down the street (which of course you don't).

I don't want you to think that KL was a total waste. There were some gorgeous Islamic architecture to be seen throughout the city and, of course, the Petronas Towers which are impressive regardless of how you slice it.



Also, food and lodging is remarkable cheap there as well. For the first time in my life, I had the pleasure of staying at a Ritz-Carlton property (and it was NICE) not because we're rich (because we're not) but just because the price was actually on par with what you'd pay for a two star hotel in New York City.

But, at the end of the day, would I go back to KL? Probably not, especially if I had to pay for it.