The bus from Hat Yai dumped us at the side of the highway,
leaving us wondering if we were even in the right country much less the right
city. Luckily, we were just a few minutes from the train station. And tickets
to Kuala Lumpur for the same day were still available! Score! However, that
didn’t make us feel much better about spending the next 14 hours in
Butterworth, just a stones throw away from the Island of Georgetown which
“retains more of its cultural history than virtually anywhere else in the
country, with a host of beautiful colonial buildings to admire”. But we weren’t
about to risk the three-hour Ferry queue making us late for our train.
Especially since we had snatched a few of the last high-commodity night train
tickets. The Australians with their three huge suitcases were not so lucky.
Less is more. I hope they brought a gallon of hand sanitizer, a huge gaming
desktop, a rollaway bed or something else useful that made lugging around 50 kg
worth it. Anyways, we were stuck
in the industrial town of Butterworth, despite people shaking their heads in
dismay when we asked them what we could see or do there. Exploring was made
significantly more difficult by the fact that we only had Thai currency on a
day when all the money exchange kiosks were closed. Time to get really excited
about two-person card games. Or go on a monumental quest for an ATM so we could
eat lunch. Totally worth it. Malaysian food is a wonderful blend of Indian,
Chinese and Malay cuisine. Ann Arbor: please open a Malaysian restaurant so
that Marco and I can eat all the things on our Malay food bucket list that we
didn’t have time to try.
Although most people in Malaysia speak English, I felt like
more of an outsider that I ever have before. It probably didn’t help that we
were completely outside the tourists areas. Conversations fell silent and heads
turned as I walked by, which led to some really weird thoughts forming in my
head “Do I have a really obvious wedgie?”,
“Does my hair really look as greasy as it
feels?”, and “Would it be worth it to
wear a long sleeved shirt even though it’s 100 degrees so I won’t be the only
one showing my arms?” I would have paid good money for a nice light-weight sari.
Not that anyone would have accepted my Thai baht. Marco on the other hand fit
in like he’d lived there all his life. Apparently his Malaysian friend in
Michigan thought he was Malay before they got to know each other. So as long as
Marco didn’t surprise people by speaking English without a Malaysian accent, I
just looked like the Malaysian dude’s unassimilated American friend. Better
than two tourists lost in Butterworth all day.
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