Now, I'm not saying I fell in love with Kuala Lumpur during my 18 hour layover in the city from Vietnam to India, but I was definitely tearing up as I was leaving the city. I think it had something to do with all the tear gas in the air though... Gotta love a good political protest to liven up your travels right?
Vietnam was a rush of craziness, and I didn't get much chance to actually get down and blog about it, but I'll come back to that. Today was much more interesting anyways. For my final leg of my trip I will be traveling through India, and because there are no direct flights from Vietnam to India, I had to go through one of 3 southeast asian hubs: Singapore, Bangkok, or Kuala Lumpur. Well because I have already seen Singapore and Bangkok, I figured I'd stop over in Kuala Lumpur and sample some cool Malaysian cuisine while I was at it. Well little did I know that Southeast asia has some political rumblings going on.
Arriving at 1am at the airport, I hopped on a bus that would take me to a station near my hostel. After getting dropped off, the neighborhood seemed a little shady, but everyone I ran into seemed quite helpful at helping me get to where I needed to go. I finally settled into bed at 3:30am for a short nap before waking up for a half day of sightseeing.
I wake up the next day, and during breakfast I strike up a conversation with the desk clerk. We get to talking about my plans for the day, at which point they mention I shouldn't wear any Yellow, but for the most part what I was planning to do would be ok. Slightly confused, I asked what she meant, and she informed me of a non-violent political protest by the locals being staged today. While the protest is supposed to be non-violent, many locals fear a slightly more provocative response by the government military and police.
Well I made it to the Petronas towers without a hitch, at which point I grabbed a couple delicious dishes in the food court below and enjoyed some ice cream in the park. I hopped on the train again to go back to my hostel to pick up my bags. On the way back I wondered if I had accidentally hopped on an express train or something because the train completely skipped two stops, but looking at the stops as we passed, there were no people there either. This seemed odd because only two hours earlier, those stops were fully operational. As I neared my stop, I noticed some police cars gathered on a few street corners, but there was no action. I figured they were on standby in case somethings went down.
I made it back to my hostel, and stuck around for a few minutes to use their internet before taking off. Those 30 minutes made a HUGE difference in the rest of my day. I grabbed my bags and headed out from the hostel. Walking down the stairs of the hostel building, my eyes started tearing up and I could smell what seemed like chili powder. I thought somebody nearby dropped some spicy curry or something in the stairwell. I walked out towards where the buses were picking up, and I noticed more police cars stationed nearby. Then I realized one of them was a truck with a cage, and it had a few guys locked up in the back. I wanted to stick around, to see what was happening, but I had a plane to catch. I kept walking to the station and noticed that everyone coming in the opposite direction had the same teary red eyes and sniffling noses as I did.
Turns out they dropped some tear gas into the station, and this closed all transit moving through this hub. Now I'm screwed because I don't know how to get to the airport. Most of the taxis seemed taken, and the ones I stopped didn't want to take me. Finally I caught one of the airport shuttle buses as they were dropping off passengers and they pulled a handful of others onto the bus and ran out. It seems they didn't want to stay there for very long either.
In the end, I made it to check-in just 10 minutes before they closed it, and made it to the gate with time to spare. I even managed to spend all but 0.10 Malaysian Ringits that I had withdrawn. Now on to some new adventures in India.
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