“KL is still something of an experiment in urban living. Looking out of my hotel window on my last evening in Malaysia, when rain and mist veiled the tall, silvery buildings and the thickly forested hills behind them, I could imagine the land to be as empty and untenanted as its first explorers may have found it. The illusion disappeared as I walked through the old entertainment hub at Bukit Bintang. Now colorfully seedy with backpacker hostels, massage parlors and malls, it crackled with all the languages I can recognize, and more: Bahasa Indonesia, Filipino, Urdu, Bengali, Arabic and Persian, as well as English spoken with a variety of accents, from the broad Australian to the singsong Sri Lankan and the lovely Malay lilt. I left Kuala Lampur convinced that here in the heart of the new Asia, the city is working out a way of being reflexively cosmopolitan, truly Indochine.”
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