The sun disk slid under a cloud, burning a trail to the horizon, stealing day with it. This is my second night in Kuala Lumpur and a strange place this is. I am in a hermetically sealed hotel with comfy beds, air-conditioning and a balcony out onto the 13th floor view. We hover over the road, train track and station, this place feels like it is developing daily. I know I am in Malaysia because a big lit up sign on a building beyond tells me so. There is also a 11 storey high hoarding for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I suspect many places feel like this in the tourist centre, it feels so artificial. It is easy to say this at this distance. All the time I am thinking: there is someone who lives with stair windows obscured by a fried chicken advert, people walk behind the profile of a luscious chicken thigh.
On the superfast train from the airport we were rushing through palm oil plantations and gorgeous shacks with corrugated tin roofs. These are rapidly being replaced by high rise pagoda style blocks of flats and the personal expression is now relegated to the hanging of washing from windows. The ex-architect in me loved the low-rise buildings organically following the earth and crowning tree line. From the abstraction of a train view it seems beautiful. The palm oil trees flood the landscape and in the distance a mosque rose above it.
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