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By the time we left the hotel it was midday. I was still feeling tired, but our time here was limited so we had to do something. We acceeded to Alex’s demands and caught a monorail a couple of stations up, then a light rail to Pasar Seni, the Central Markets. B was looking for curry powder and knew it should be available somewhere around there.


Somewhere… We wandered the streets, past moneychangers and jewellers, though a street of Indian goods and made it to outside Khota Baru, opposite Petaling Street when the very dark clouds opened up. It rained as only the tropics can. The streets were flooding and lightning flashed close by with loud thunderclaps. Taxis would pull up and disgorge their passengers into the water. Umbrellas were useless.


We were stuck there for an hour before it eventually cleared enough for us to cross the sheltered bridge and make our way into covered Petaling Street. We ignored the watch and t-shirt sellers and eventually found a couple of shops selling dried prawns and curry powder in an adjacent street.
Lunch was at one of those open sided collection of food stalls that I so love about this part of the world. Alex ate half my mee suah, proudly demonstrating his dexterity with chopsticks, while B ate char kway teoh and chicken rice.


We walked back along Petaling Street and caught a monorail back to the hotel for another, longer swim. Then a taxi to Cheras to go shopping and eating at a pasar malam, a night market. You can buy underwear and blackmarket DVD’s, toys and torches and all sorts of other knicknacks at a pasar malam. We were after foods, sweet kuih, satay, noodles, curry puffs and lots of lime juice. It was a lot of fun. Afterwards we bought a few books at a nearby shopping centre bookshop.

The problem was finding a taxi back. It took us an hour of wandering around. Another late and exhausting night!