kl rock city (part 1)

When Maya and I first started telling people at home about the trip we were about to embark on, some of our friends, family, and random acquaintances thought it sounded fucking cool; others thought we were fucking crazy; most probably thought the trip sounded fucking cool and we're fucking crazy. One of those who thought we were just crazy was Maya's cousin Felix. Felix is a few years older than we are, and he's a security guard for one of the building complexes down in our 'hood in Coney Island. He thought we were nuts, and in particular, he thought we were nuts to go to Malaysia, mostly because it's an officially Muslim country. "Be very careful," he warned us, adding to Maya: "And don't let anyone know that you're Jewish," advice seconded by Maya's mother.

So, right now we're in Kuala Lumpur, where we've been for the last 5 days or so, and as shit turns out, KL (as the locals refer to their hometown) definitely is Muslim - there are gorgeous mosques all over the city; women in headscarves and even full-on burkas walking everywhere, sitting in cafes, strolling through the malls; there are restuarants advertising things that no restuarant in the States would wisely advertise, like "Iraqi food" and "Iranian cuisine" - but it's also, well, not. For instance, Christmas is fucking huge here - there are decorations everywhere, carols playing in the shopping centers; it's fucking bizarre. And most of the men that we see walking with the women in burkas are dressed like total wiggers (or "miggers," or whatever the term would be). And the city is actually insanely multicultural, full of Southeast Asians, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, and even the occasional whitey.

If anyone thought we had reason to watch our backs in Malaysia (and they did), it has turned out to be quite the contrary: Kuala Lumpur has proven to be the friendliest city we've visited yet (and the safest and cleanest after Tokyo and Kyoto). Everyone smiles at us, random people say hello (almost everyone speaks really good English, which is the country's second offical language), and we've had almost absurdly congenial conversations with Malay taxi drivers, Bangladeshi waiters, the Iraqi dude at the internet cafe...

And we've eaten the best food - hummus and kabobs, grilled lamb chops, dim sum, "chicken rice" (which, as the name suggests is just chicken and rice but so perfectly prepared that we've eaten it almost everyday for lunch at a restuarant where we've become quick regulars) - and even more impressively, have yet to get sick (a first for any Southeast Asian country).

But maybe best of all, Kuala Lumpur is rock 'n' roll as all fuck. This is actually a very big surprise, not only because Malaysia is Muslim but because the country's Muslim government's National Fatwa Council has gone out of its way in recent years to ban "black metal" - by which they actually meant any heavy music listened to or played by people in black T-shirts, not just the church-burning, corpse-painted brand of metal commonly called by that name - in the country (for more on the bannings, click here). And yet, on our second day in KL, Maya and I went off to find this metal record store, Nebiula HM Shop, which is listed on the metaltravelguide website; we ended up at this shopping center, Campbell Complex, off the beaten tourist track, and on the 1st floor, which had not just the one, but four metal-oriented stores. Nebiula is the best of these, and it's run by this awesome dude Jaei, who's the vocalist of one of Malaysia's leading bands, Sil Khannaz. Maya and I talked to him for an hour or so, as he played us music by his band and a variety of other Malaysian bands (he had a good two shelves full of albums by local bands, way more than we've seen anywhere else on this trip, except Japan) and told us about the scene. He said that the Malaysian government has been "very difficult," and that after the ban on "black metal" (strangely, most of the local bands, even now, seem to play in that actual style), much of the scene had to be rebuilt from the ground up. I ended up buying almost 10 CDs, and he ended up giving me another 4 or so as "free gifts."

After Nebiula, we stopped by the other stores, and in one, we had the most hilarious interaction with the totally adorable middle-aged proprietress, who walked us through her shop's metal section, describing various products with the sweetest little voice: "Ooh, this band, they play death/grind. Very nice." "Slayer, 'Live Undead' T-shirt. Very old-school vibe." We were giggling almost uncontrollably the whole time, and Maya eventually asked the woman if she actually listens to metal, and she explained that metal is very popular and her customers always ask for that kind of music so she has to stock it, and she started listening so she would know about it and that she did like a lot of it. "Some people think it is just noise, but I think some is actually very nice," she said. Maya told her that she was a great saleswoman, but that the whole experience was very crazy, Maya said, like "having my mother trying to sell me metal," which is pretty much how I felt about it, too. (To be continued)