All Roads and Rails Lead to KL

Seven different hands, of different shades and different sizes gripped the grimy silver pole of the morning commuter, and Khalisah’s hand was lost in the middle. Bodies pressed against each other with every jostle of the train, and Nour struggled to pull her own hand out of the awkward position it was in – squashed between a pole and another woman’s stomach. Everyone stood as still as possible, almost holding their breath to maintain their personal space. Sweat beaded people’s foreheads, turned their collars dark and made the poles slippery to hold. We looked at the clocks on our cell phones: only half an hour to go.

This is a typical journey for us now, starting any time from 7.15 to 8.30 - depending on how punctual our train decides to be. After a series of trial and error, this claustrophobic commuter was deemed champion of the Malaysian public transport system. For weeks, we had been searching for the “Sweet Spot”— the correct combination of transport to get us to and from work as efficiently as possible. To find the perfect way to work and back home, we had to try every mode of public transport available to the average Malaysian.

The first thing we tried was the KL Rapid, the air-conditioned wonder of the streets of Malaysia. After over a week of different bus trials and combinations, we now know that 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. are the worst times to be on the road, because we’ve sat on those KL Rapids for hours, watching their public service commercials play on loop from the high plastic chairs. We know that to escape morning gridlock, we need to leave the house at least a quarter to 7 a.m., unless we want to spend hours stopped in front of a school watching little Asian kids bounce around in their white sneakers as their parents drop them off.

This means waking up at 6 a.m., getting breakfast to go from the nearby mamak (ice coffee in little plastic bags with a straw to drink out of), being on the correct street corner before the bus arrives, sitting through anywhere from one-and-a-half to two hours of traffic (if we’re lucky enough to not be forced to change buses halfway through our trip), trugging from the KL bus stop to our office building, and still getting to work ten minutes late. It also means leaving the office at 6 p.m. to retrace our morning steps, often getting home at 8 or 9 in the evening.

We quickly realized that this system wasn’t exactly efficient. Next, we tried car pooling with a neighbor, but our schedules were too different to mesh well. After that, we tried to take a bus to the nearest train station, but a trip to the station that should have taken no more than ten minutes took over half an hour as we shuttled from stop to stop before getting to our destination. That’s not worth it, we decided. We’ll give up the irresistible one-ringgit-thirty-cents bus fare for an eight ringgit cab ride to the station - which was worth it. We made a deal with a soft-spoken pak cik (uncle), who would pick us up every morning at 7 a.m. in his battered yellow taxi, entertaining us with everything from Quranic verses to the latest Katy Perry hit on his radio.

Once we started taking the train, we found ourselves right in the middle of the claustrophobic scene we described above. But after a few days on the KTM, we discovered a little trick that offered some comfort: by getting on the last carriage of the train, we could avoid the jam-packed front carriages in favor of a place where we could each have a few precious inches of air to ourselves – something we’d never previously considered as a privilege.

In the end, we don’t consider all those hours on the road and rail a waste of our time, but an investment. We’ve come out of our dizzying first four weeks in Malaysia as experts of KL. We know that there’s a Church of Our Lady Fatima opposite the La Salle school; that Chow Kit looks like a red light district, even in the day; that graffiti is surprisingly popular on just about every available wall in the city; and that the ponds and grasses that cover Malaysia can be beautiful even at the sleepiest hours of the morning.

We know even better the kinds of people you meet (or jostle by or crash land into) on the country’s trains and busses. Usually they’re just people who want to get to work without hassle, but sometimes they’re the guy with the earphones blasting Rihanna, or the tattooed Chinese gangster with the freshly stitched cuts on his face. Other times they’re two rough-looking travelers who, in our minds, can be nothing but Indonesian pirates – or very convincing Jack Sparrow look-alikes. Still other times they’re school kids in uniform, mothers taking their toddlers to see grandma, or a band of traveling musicians.

No matter how lost or delayed we got on our trips, we soon discovered that all roads and rails lead to Kuala Lumpur. With that in mind, we stopped worrying about when we’d get to wherever we were going and learned to enjoy the trip, watching people, places and life pass through our train or outside our window. On the Malaysian public transport system we realized that, sometimes, the journey is just as important as the destination.

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

A Day in Shah Alam

No matter how much you love your job, after days of an endless cycle of work, traffic and failed attempts at getting enough sleep, you need your day off on the weekends. A day without working overtime or worrying about cleaning the house or making appointments with important contacts. That’s why this week, we had our day off by leaving the busy neighborhood of Subung Jaya for the sleepy suburb of Shah Alam. There, we alternated between the doting comfort of grandparents and joining the homey bustle of morning markets and Malay weddings. It was a day far removed from our rush of aid work, and we needed it. But it was also a day that opened our eyes to an aspect of Malaysia that we were too busy to pay attention to before: the globalization, or perhaps Westernization, of Malaysian culture – especially outside the cosmopolitan capital of Kuala Lumpur.

At about nine in the morning, we stepped out of the car and into the parking lot that led to the Pasar Tani, or the Farmer’s Market. This Sunday morning tradition involves people setting up stalls with items as varied as traditional Malaysian clothes and shower curtains. Row after row of stalls led us through worlds of second-hand t-shirts, bright red prayer rugs, fake Guess jeans and traditional batik cloth in every color imaginable. The stalls reminded Khalisah a little bit of Iowan farmer’s markets, except instead of apples there were guavas, and instead of deep-fried ice-cream there were fried noodles. It’s amazing how two different markets – from Iowa to Shah Alam—can be equally unhealthy for the under prepared stomach.

The rest of the food in the stalls, like just about everything else in the market, completely fascinated Nour. There was kuih, a word that encompasses just about any sort of local sweet that involves coconut made gooey; durian, the overwhelmingly strong-scented fruit that should be made the symbol of Malaysia; and all sorts of rotis, the Indian word for bread. One of the most interesting rotis we came across was Roti John, which is the Malaysian version of a chicken sub. According to Khalisah, this particular food specimen was an attempt at copying “Western” cuisine, but with all the sauces and spices that were added to it over the years, it is now a fiery chicken sandwich that few Western palates can handle.

Although Pasar Tani is a typical Malaysian tradition, it was interesting to see how much non-Malaysian culture has seeped into it. We made a similar realization at the Malay wedding we attended later in the day.

We had hustled into the banquet hall just in time to hear the drums beat, a signal that the wedding couple are ready to walk together to the persandingan, a raised dais with two gilded chairs and a cloth canopy. Two little girls dressed in white with small green wreathes propped up on their white hijabs took the fore of the procession, scattering flower petals on the floor. This was a little surprising to Khalisah, whose previous exposure to Malay weddings assured her that these affairs don’t usually include flower girls.

But then the crowd parted and the wedding couple took a step forward in true Malay style. The theme of this Malay wedding was a soft peach beige, and though it sounds decidedly unmanly, the groom looked impressive in his delicately patterned pants and shirt, with an intricately sewn samping wrapped around his middle like a sarong and a kris knife secured on his hip. As each couple is celebrated as king and queen on their wedding day, the groom adorned his head with a Tengkolok, a folded piece of cloth that serves as a crown. The bride wore a crystal tiara over her beige hijab, and lace cloth flecked with gold thread cascaded down the sides of her peach wedding outfit, a baju kebaya.

A voice over the loudspeaker soon distracted us from the bride’s and groom’s outfits. “Salla allahu ala Muhammad,” the speaker said as he began to read a few select pieces from the Quran. Then the couple walked forward towards the dais, with the flower girls tossing their petals all over the floor (much to Khalisah’s annoyance). By the time the couple made it to their “thrones,” the speaker completed his reading and proceeded to recite different prayers to bless the couple and the new life they would share together. Later, the drum procession had settled down at the foot of the dais and began to play traditional Javanese music where lots of gamelans (brass chiming instruments) came into play. Khalisah pointed out that this isn’t a traditional aspect of the wedding, just like the flower girls, and Nour accused her of being a purist.

Being new to the experience, Nour enjoyed the Malay wedding and the slightly fermented rice served as a dessert. For Khalisah, the experience was pock-marked with adages from a western wedding: the flower girls, the alien-sounding gamelan dinner music, and the division of the hall into a groom-side and a bride-side (something she later discovered from her grandparents). It took away the more homey feeling of tradition Malay weddings used to evoke. These weddings were held at either the groom’s or bride’s driveway just outside their house, and tents would protect the buffet and the guests that pattered in off the streets. The drums would beat in tune with Malay wedding songs that were interspersed with Quranic verses and kids would run in between (and sometimes under) the tables throughout the whole ordeal.

Maybe the banquet hall wedding was a sign of shifting local culture, where the basics are given a new twist to keep the event from being another day in someone’s driveway, making it a truly unique affair. The same could be said of the “Western” products that were making their way into the Sunday morning market. What was boring and ordinary to Westerners was exciting and exotic to the people who lived here. We decided that as long as the batik cloth in the pasars and the kris and tiara in the weddings stay untouched, we can be comfortable with this changing culture that is emerging to accommodate a new generation of Malaysians. With this bizarre mix of new and old, local and “other,” who knows what will identify Malaysian culture in a few years’ time.

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

Welcome to the Mamak

“My folks aren’t too cool about me interning in a potential war-zone,” Nour said with a shrug at the dinner table.

“You should go to Malaysia then! We have NGOs there, too!” said Khalisah’s mom eagerly. Khalisah and Nour exchanged a look of interest that conveyed the possibility of working and living together in a vibrant city; a look that glinted with the opportunity of independence, new people, unintelligible languages, spicy food, wacky culture and –

“Argh!” Khalisah flinched. “We haven’t even looked into anything in Malaysia together! The deadline for internships is a few weeks away! It’ll never happen.” Nour continued to smile. “It’ll never happen, Nour.” The smile got wider. Khalisah narrowed her eyes as she said, “I’ll believe it when I see the plane tickets.”

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Hi, we’re Khalisah Stevens and Nour Merza, the authors of the Mamak Chronicles.  At the end of last spring semester (in between paper deadlines, exams and failed fax machines in Syria) we found ourselves hanging in internship limbo. Our university requires all third-year students to get a summer of training with an approved organization – without such an internship, we would not be able to graduate with our classmates the following year. As our deadline was fast approaching, our chances of getting an internship were fast receding. We were about to resign ourselves to a sweltering summer in Dubai when an email came through.

“It is with great pleasure that we inform you of your acceptance into the Mercy Malaysia Internship Program for the summer of 2009.”

We were psyched.

Mercy Malaysia is a non-profit organization that provides immediate relief to crisis situations around the world. With a background in international relations, we were both interested in aid work, and Mercy Malaysia’s credentials put it right up our street. The organization has projects going on across the globe, from Indonesia and Sri Lanka to Afghanistan and Iraq. Suddenly, our new theme song was “You got me begging you for Mercy, yeah, yeah!” We couldn’t wait to get started.

A few weeks later, we found ourselves in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, battling train, bus and taxi to make our way to and from the office; a process that begins every day at six a.m. and can end as late as nine p.m. Tiring? Yes.

Luckily for us, we find solace in the marvel that is the mamak. Found on every street corner, mamak stalls are greasy havens that provide locals and tourists alike a place to eat, congregate, and watch the latest match between Barcelona and Manchester United. It is in these mamaks where we begin our day with yawns and egg roti chennai, and end our evenings rehashing the events of the last fourteen hours amid the warm bustle of waiters taking orders, cats scavenging for scraps under tables, and motorcycles beeping as they zip by.

These nighttime discussions gave birth to the Mamak Chronicles. So pull up a chair, order a round of cool teh ais, and follow the accounts of our adventures – and misadventures – in Malaysia.