Malaysia, 26 Sep 2006 --

It’s Ramadan here in Kuala Lumpur, yay.  Those of you who have been reading my random bloggings for over a year will recall that I spent last Ramadan in Jordan, making this the second year in a row I’ve been in a Muslim country for Ramadan.  Many things are the same:  drivers have shorter fuses in dealing with traffic, late afternoon busses drive by full of people who are either asleep or look like they wish they were, and there’s a general air of sluggishness.  

There are definitely some differences here, though.  Obviously, with the large Buddhist and Hindi communities it’s a lot easier for a guy to get a decent meal in the middle of the day.  You have to think a bit about your available choices, though.  I mean, in Jordan if a restaurant was open (most were not) you pretty much figured they were fine with you coming in for a bite.  Here, though, with the large non-Muslim communites, many Muslim restaurants stay open to make money.  They’ll have the usual large trays of food out…but the tables will be completely empty.  Additionally, many non-Muslim restaurants employ Muslim employees.  I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t worry about it…but I feel really bad making a Muslim woman in a hijab who I know hasn’t eaten all day serve me food.  Employment in the food service industry during Ramadan if you’re Muslim has to pretty much suck. 

At lunchtime today I found myself in Little India, which usually has lots of tasty northern Indian Muslim food.  I considered my food options carefully…and ended in the only full restaurant could find: a KFC at a mall, where I was joined by many of the mall’s Chinese employees.

Speaking of malls, KL really likes it’s malls.  For a variety of reasons (searching for free mooncake tastings, going to see movies from Hong Kong about asian boy bands, etc.) we’ve found ourselves in several of them, each more modern than the last.  The MidValley Megamall had a HaganDaas, you could literally smell the paint drying at the Cineleisure Damansara, and the Ikano Power Center had…wait for it…an Ikea.  I think it’s a bit scary to think of upper middle class Malaysians furnishing their homes with the same Poangs, Forbys, and Tindras found in post college ‘gotta get some cheap interior decoration going on’ homes across America and around the world.  Thank you McGlobalization.

Categories Malaysia