The end

I'm leaving for Kuala Lumpur International Airport in about an hour, and thus my odyssey across SE Asia (hardly) has come to an end.

I think it's a combination of both my mind-blowing exhaustion and the relative boringness of the city, but I was a bit let down with KL. There just wasn't a ton to do here.

On Thursday I saw Petronas, and hung around that part of town for a bit, got some lunch at Pizza Hut (wasn't the same). Came back to my hostel and took a quick nap, then walked over to the shopping area Banga Burksit or something like that. Here, I found a sweet looking roller coaster -- like a legit one -- and rode it twice. Pretty fun. I had a nice sit-down dinner around there, wandered around the streets for a bit, wandered through some parks, saw the KL tower (essentially the CN Tower). I was really tired at this point so I headed back to the hostel, had a beer, and watched the second half of Spiderman 3 (I'd already seen the first half, so this worked out well).

Yesterday I woke up feeling mindblowingly tired. The weather was hot and humid and drizzly, not exactly the best sightseeing weather. I forced myself around the city, taking in mosques, minarets, churches, etc. It was disgusting how sweaty I was. Disgusting. I got kicked out of a mosque for not being muslim right after call to prayer. I went to Chinatown and Little India. Ended up back in the shopping district, contemplated eating dinner at Planet Hollywood (seriously) but ended up at Outback because they gave me a card for a free appetizer -- naturally, I could not turn down free Aussie Cheese Fries. Hung around these parts for a bit and then came home, slept.

The language here is bizarre, either some Malaysian tounge or some weird form of pidgin English: you eat in a "restoran," you take an "ekspres" bus if you want to go somewhere in a hurry, and "ogos" is the month that comes after "julai." Weird.

I'm just done with Asia, as weird as that sounds. I've had enough. I think it's just the fact that I know I am going home. If I knew that I were staying for another few weeks, I wouldn't be at this point. But since my departure is now like 3 days away, I've mentally already packed my things. I haven't eaten Asian food in over 2 days now and walking by the restaurants makes me gag. My patience for it all had diminished greatly.

My feet are just destroyed. Honestly, my whole body is wrecked. I've been doing 12-14 hrs a day of straight walking for the last 7-8 days. It's been a lot of fun. I've seen a lot. I even got to pray in a Christian church yesterday, which, after being in a Buddhist nation for 2 months, felt great. It was probably an Anglican church.

But I've loved my trip. I truly have. This has been amazing. I've been trying to spend the last few days absorbing everything, taking it all in. I can't. There's so much there. I am so blessed.

I'm going to take the rest of today to rest and relax -- I think I am going on absolute fumes. Probably just go back to PP and watch movies or something, as most of my roommates are gone. I'm no longer feeling this rush as if I have to take in every second, every ounce of Asia.

I'm just so excited to be home. I haven't let myself miss it too much, but now that I'm a few days away from landing in Detroit, the floodgates are starting to open.

See you in a few days. For now, I've got one last encore performance in Cambodia.

- m