or how I learned to love food courts

I’ve been in Kuala Lumpur for twelve hours now, so I’ve spent most of the day doing things like getting from the airport, checking in, unpacking my stuff, wandering around to learn my surroundings, collecting various supplies, and, most importantly, figuring out where to buy beer in a Muslim country.

I’ve also spent a lot of time in malls.

I remember this from living in the Philippines. When you live in a busy city, which makes up for what it lacks in natural beauty with an abundance of heat, people like to spend time in air conditioned malls, and the developers happily oblige with countless iterations. You move from mall to mall, via a network of overpasses and connecting bridges, gradually becoming less and less human.

My plane landed at 5am and naturally I didn’t get much sleep, and with all the admin tasks asks I had to achieve I wasn’t mentally capable of making big decisions about important things like food, so I ended up doing something I rarely do: I ate in a mall food court. Not once. Not twice. But THREE times.

Because after the first one I realised: this is what Malaysians do. They’re going from mall to mall eating $3 snacks in the food courts.

Just like me!

I think I can safely say I’m practically Malaysian now.