A new year in Malaysia

Happy new year!

Our time in Malaysia is fast coming to a close, after a month of heterogeneous, haunting, not-to-be-forgotten experiences. Our travels — limited to just the west coast and the central highlands of the Malay peninsula — have spanned the bustling port towns of Melaka and Penang, the misty green mountains of the Cameron Highlands, the sleepy beaches and tropical jungles of Pangkor Island, and the thriving (often sleep-depriving) urban pulse of Kuala Lumpur (which locals call simply "K.L.").



I'm challenged, with so much variety and still being so close to the experience, to draw themes across these various Malaysias, but of course that won't stop me from trying.

Many of our experiences in this incredible country have already been documented elsewhere. What I perhaps haven't expressed is that above all else — above its lush natural environment, its distinctive museums, its tropical climate, its rapid development or even its delicious cuisines — I am struck by the richness of the coexisting diversity of Malaysia's people. I should admit to being more than a bit put off by a country having an officially sanctioned religion, flattening as it does the inevitably varied expressions of people's spirituality, even the variations within a single faith, and making thanks-but-no-thank-you folks like me feel a bit, ahem, left at the altar. So, upon learning that Malaysia is an officially Islamic state (as is Indonesia, save for the Hindu enclave of Bali), my presumptions about this place painted it in monochrome, a fascinating and beautiful Islamic portrait, to be sure, but still one daubed with a single brush.

Ah, presumptions. My time in Indonesia should have been more instructive about the gap between government-endorsed religion and daily life. Malaysia feels nothing if not multi-cultural, and faith hardly seems monolithic. Yes, I've seen more head-scarved women here than many other places I've traveled, but while Muslims are the obvious majority, they are far from the only game in town, and I have perceived none of the smugness that I imagined could be engendered by having the government recognize my god instead of yours.

Cuisine — ever one of my favorite lenses into culture — bears this out, with the dishes deriving from Chinese, Indian or Malays roots coexisting in adjacent food stalls, on the same menu and in the bellies of happy diners, regardless their ethnic extraction. (There are also lots of Western foodstuffs here, but in general, those aren't the kind of joints we patronize. With a notable exception below.)

We celebrated the arrival of the new year under the countenance of the enormous Petronas towers, the bustling, gleaming César Pelli-designed headquarters of the national petroleum company, amid a crowd peopled with as much diversity as any crowd back home: locals mingling with Malaysian tourists and foreigners like us; every hue in the spectrum in people's faces, in their clothes, and in their outward expressions of cultural and religious identity; every generation represented; and affection displayed straight and queer. (K.L. is still far short of a queer mecca, in my estimation, but K.L. seems the most open and liberal of the places we've visited in Malaysia.)

We were treated to a remarkable, and very different, view of Malaysia these past two days, thanks to some generous fairy godparents, with an all-encompassing two-day stay at Le Meridien, a cush, five-star resort with panoramic vistas from our corner 31st floor room of K.L.'s leafiest neighborhoods. We envisioned walking through the nearby gardens, taking in night markets and finishing our sight-seeing itinerary, but after reclining into the comforts of this place and appreciating its depth, we haven't left the compound! Nor have we needed to, between the nightly cocktails and appetizers, the 24-hour open snack-bar in the penthouse, the serpentine pools with three different temperature zones and, lest I forget, breakfasts and dinners at the Jean-George Vongerichten restaurant on the 8th floor, all included in our "package" deal. It's been an utter departure from our (adequate, but let's admit, four stars lower) accommodations of late. What an unexpected treat!



So we're soaking up this luxury for our last few hours in Malaysia, taking temporary leave of Southeast Asia for a five-week visit to India. If my brief, transformative visit to India five years ago is any guide, we have some indelible, wonderful, challenging experiences in store. Although sharing many cultural and historical roots with our recent habitations, India seems also irreducibly distinct. The economics of the place alone — a global economic superpower in aggregate, and one of the poorest nations per capita — hint at some of the paradoxical rush of visiting this place as a westerner. I anticipate that it will remain distinct in quality and in kind from the rest of our itinerary, a point suggested by the trending relationships between the wealth of a nation (expressed as per capita gross domestic product) and our travel budget for visiting each place. (Indonesia would have been more in line with this trend, but for the fabulous scuba diving.)



(By the way, I'd be curious to know who won the pool on how long it would take for charts and graphs to appear in these posts.)

After our arrival in India tomorrow, in the southern state of Kerala, we plan to spend our first week at a yoga retreat, acclimating to our new surroundings and stretching muscles actual and metaphysical. It may be a little while until the next post, but please don't let that stop you from chiming in in the meantime!