A single night in Klang, Malaysia isn’t enough

If you’ve done any traveling, you probably have a list of places you were only able to visit for a very short time and would like to return to someday.

But do you ever really go back? Some lucky travelers make it back; for most, these places just go onto the never-ending bucket list.

This is the story of how Klang, Malaysia became such a destination for Masayo and I on Day 36 of our Southeast Asia trip.

Having relaxed in the wildlife-surrounded coastal town of Kuala Selangor for several days, it was time to move on to Klang. But we only spent a single night in Klang; it became one of those faceless stops on a long-haul journey that serve as a pivot point and not an actual destination.

This isn’t intended as a slight against the town of Klang; what little we saw of it seemed nice. We got a room at a place called Hotel B, and the dull but functional name of this establishment is a good reflection of our experience with Klang.

The colorful shops crowded along the vibrant streets of Klang were rather wonderful to behold as we walked through the streets, but we didn’t stop at any of them because we had a goal: we were looking for in internet cafe that might let us plug the internet into one or both of our laptops; paying for this trip by working online can be stressful and requires constant attention.

But the only internet cafe we could find was in a tower-like jumble of tiny shops in a shopping mall, and it was a noisy, windowless room full of Windows towers and teenage boys playing games, eating junk food, and laughing and yelling to each other. Not a good environment for computing.

Little India

The highlight of Klang came for us later in the afternoon; we walked across a bridge over the Kelang River to the Little India section. It really was like I imagine parts of India must be: wildly colorful cloths and trinkets hung about a motley collection of stores and stalls, their wares spilling out onto arches over the sidewalk creating a kind of narrow open-air hallway to walk through. High, sweet Indian music blasted from some shops, and the smell of incense and the occasional cooking wafted through the hot Malaysian air.

It was great!

Masayo and I stopped at a restaurant for dinner: piles of rice with little cups of curries, served on big banana leaves, plus a mango lassi for me. I was a little annoyed that they gave me cutlery, but not Masayo. Why does she get to be the only one in-the-know, who can eat with her fingers? I’ll have you know I ate with my fingers too; excuse me very much! In fact, Masayo used my fork. So there.

They also had some Indian sweets which we got as dessert takeaways: bright colored cubes absolutely packed with sugar. If I wasn’t diabetic before, I sure would be after I ate this :p

The evening was spent in the room, and the next day we went to the impressively modern but diminutive train station to get tickets back to Kuala Lumpur, an hour or so away.

Klang was nice enough, but other destinations were calling us and we weren’t able to give it its full, proper due. For me, Klang is one of those many places that I get a hint of while passing through that gets pencilled in for a re-visit… someday!

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