I Crashed in Kuala Lumpur

For those of you who have been reading Go Go Global Gringo! for the past few months have picked up on what I've be doing since late January.   For those of you who haven't, first off, welcome!   My wife and I have been traveling around Southeast Asia for almost all of 2015 up until this point.  

Another afternoon storm rolls over KL next to the textile museum

Most people I know, or at least who I have contact with, are envious of us.  After all, not everyone can just leave their job, their home  and their lives and travel around one of the most exotic places,  on the planet renowned for it's food, culture, stunning natural beauty and alluring mystique, with no real agenda and no constraints other than a loosely defined budget and the limits of our entry visas.   Sounds a hell of a lot better than rotting away in an office, right?  Well, yes probably.  But that's not to say that it's any less taxing (read more after the jump!).

In fact, being in constant movement, living day-to-day, eating out all the time, and sleeping in hotels non-stop is exhausting.  And this is all before the fact that we're doing this on the other side of the Earth where we don't speak the language and we both stick out like a sore thumb.  

In short, this is a recipe for burnout and lo and behold, we burned out.  When we arrived in Kuala Lumpur three weeks ago, we had just completed a two month tour of both Vietnam and the Philippines.   You can read all about our experiences both here and here, but long story short, when we arrived at our hotel in central KL, we had just finished what felt like a never-ending marathon. 

The suite we were upgraded to in the Hotel Maison Boutique in Kuala Lumpur

We initially booked four nights in our hotel, the well maintained and reasonably-priced Hotel Maison Boutique.  We absolutely loved our time in the Philippines, but after spending the whole month in various forms of spartan accommodation, we were ready to treat ourselves a little bit and enjoy the finer points of modern city life.

We had already been to Kuala Lumpur before.  In transit to the Philippines from Vietnam, we spent around 36 hours in the city.  Our first tastes of the city were overwhelmingly positive and only left us with an appetite craving more.  

Malaysia tends to get overlooked by most guidebooks and, as a consequence many people who travel around southeast Asia tend to skip it.  The weather here isn't exactly great as being this close to the equator leads to constant thunderstorms and unbelievably humid weather (think stepping outside and immediately beginning to sweat; and that's before you've even taken your first step).  

Further, it's really hard to put a finger on this city's make up and composure.  Malaysia sits at the crossroads between the Middle East, India and China.   For hundreds if not thousands of years, merchants have used the country as a meeting point to trade goods and by extension, cultures.  

This has resulted in a broad mix of ethnic Malays, Tamil-Indians, and Chinese.  Throw in the cultural and religious influence from Arab traders (Malaysia is a majority Muslim country) and the lingering remnants of both Dutch and later British colonial rule and out pops out is a country and a capital city not quite like any other place on the planet.   With all of this put in front of us, how could we not resist the temptation to explore this Asian melting pot? 

We started off with a what turned out to be a week-long food binge (which you can read all about here), mainly to give ourselves a reprieve from the Filipino/American food we had been eating for the past month.  In between stuffing our faces, we went sight-seeing, or more accurately, wondering around the city, just taking in urban life.  It took some getting used to after spending a month on small islands and rural back country.  For the first two days, I was constantly looking all around me, not really paying attention to my surroundings. It was sensory overload and more than a few times, I almost ran into people walking on streets around me.  I thought it was funny as it's completely out of character for me to be 'lost' in a city environment. I got the hang of it after a couple of days, and no one got hurt in the process, so I suppose it worked out.

We also did some shopping to replenish supplies.   We stocked up on sunscreen, bandages, tooth paste and other toiletries.  I wound up buying a new pair of flip flops as I had walked through my old ones, causing my feet to hurt.

Kuala Lumpur from the apartment roof

Before we knew it, the four day stay we had booked at the Maison Boutique was up.  Definitely not ready to go, we re-upped for another night to try and figure out our next moves.  We informed reception that we would be staying and then headed over to 'Ali's Food Corner,'  the Nasi Kandar (a type of open-air buffet/restaurant unique to Malaysia), ordered Teh Tarik, and tried to formulate a plan for not only the next week but also the next months.

We again hit deadlock and left with no plan to leave or when to come back, we extended our room once more, this time for two more nights.   The hotel, appreciating our repeat business, upgraded us to a suite.  As awesome of a gesture as this was, it ultimately had two negative and indirect impacts: 1) We had another reason to stay in the city  2) it made us way too comfortable.

The first reason wasn't entirely the room's fault.  I was having a fabulous time just hanging out and taking full advantage of that particular freedom only large cities can offer.  I wasn't ready to leave and I took getting upgraded as some sort of sign coming down from the cosmos telling me to stay a little bit longer.  The second was a bit more detrimental as it completely messed with the effort we've made over the past four months slowly decompressing ourselves for luxury hotels.

One of the greatest lessons I learned in the Philippines was how to live in very basic hotels.  Prior to starting this trip, I had grown accustomed to the finer comforts of 4-star hotels (Nathalie works in the tourism industry, which gave us access to some amazing deals).   It took us a long time to break that habit, and it finally felt that we'd overcome it.  Going into the suite did a fine job of reversing a lot of that.

We took advantage of the upgraded room to spend as much time in it as possible.  We had figured out that we  wanted to go to Indonesia next, but looking at the visa requirements and restrictions, along with the time we've budgeted for the remainder of the trip, meant that we would need to spend three more weeks in Malaysia before heading across the equator.    That left us with a bit over 20 days to play with.  We calculated that we wanted to go to both the former colonial outpost of Malacca (also known as Melaka) and then up to the island of Penang to the north, and we were both interested in visiting the Borneo-side of the country.  The problem was that we had too much that we wanted to see and not enough time to see it.  It was becoming overwhelming.

GoPros are fun! (taken in the pool in the apartment building)

We voted against prolonging our stay in the Maison Boutique any longer and following  checking out one week after we arrived,  began the trek to the bus terminal en route for Malacca.  We stopped over at Ali's for one last Teh Terik and to say good-bye then slowly walked to the monorail station.   The whole time we were moving, something felt off.   This feeling of sadness and attachment kept coming back to me despite my efforts to rationalize it away.  We've been moving so much that leaving a city, town, or island hasn't really phased us since we started.  Constantly moving is the point after all, right?  Trying to leaving KL, for some reason was different.

By the time we had got to the bus terminal, the feeling had morphed into something bigger: I couldn't leave.  It slowly started to hit me on the way over, but once it came together, it all made sense.   I had no energy left to keep traveling.   Nathalie and I sat down and talked it over for almost an hour.  She saw that I was drained and we agreed to postpone our excursion out of KL, return to the city, and look for a plan B.  

We took a room at a different hotel this time as a) we wanted a change of scenery and b) there wasn't any availability at the Maison Boutique anyways.   We spent the next couple of days back in the same routine; eating, wondering, and putting off any major decisions.  By the time the next checkout rolled around,  I realized that I was procrastinating on making a decision to leave.   I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with not only having to face the reality of moving again but also feeling anxious to plan the next few months of the remainder of our trip in Southeast Asia as well as booking all of my flights back to the US for the fall.   In short:

I had burned out.  

Nathalie came to my rescue and started to look for a solution.  She wound up finding an apartment on Air BnB that was in the neighborhood and, after negotiating with the renter, we decided to take six days and live a little bit.   The unit we were staying in was a one-bedroom open-air style apartment on the 8th floor of an 22-story building.   On the roof, there was a swimming pool along with a covered patio, looking out over the iconic Petronas towers.

Inside the  our Apartment

Relieved to not only have a place to stay for the next week, but to also be able to get out of this seemingly perpetual motion.  I was in a town that my heart had taken to, life was comfortable, and most importantly, I had the space to clear my head and re-charge my batteries.

I had promised Nathalie that, as a compromise for staying static for another week, we would plan as much of the remainder of trip as we could.  This entailed booking flights, contacting dive centers, reaching out to people we knew that could give us advice on upcoming destinations, doing visa and travel research and, maybe most importantly, putting these dates onto a calendar to sculpt the next few months.

We also took the opportunity to clear our administrative backlog.  We both had emails to catch up on, we needed to prepare our tax declarations (I get to do two thanks to America's unique tax system!), I wanted to clean up my blog and most importantly, I needed to relax.  We did just that.  Everyday, weather permitting, we would go up to the pool for a swim.  We'd workout every morning.  Each evening, we'd either go out to eat, or take away dinner and enjoy watching a movie from the comfort of the couch; just like we would've done at home (minus the pool).   We even went to the bird park.

We wound up extending up until the Saturday, when the unit was no longer available for rent.  After three weeks in Kuala Lumpur, we finally left.  We went back to the bus terminal and were able to take the bus the two short hours down to Malacca, where I'm writing this now.

Burnout was  bound to happen.  We had been moving non-stop more-or-less since we started in late January, and there's a limit to how much we could take.  Most people told us that this was going to happen.  Their advice was to stop at some place where you're happy, a place that you like, and enjoy. Most people assumed that this would be on some idyllic beach or on an island in paradise.  Instead, we bucked the trend and crashed in a city.  In any case, it was our way, and that's what counts.