Delicious Burdens

Kuala Lumpur by night

I debated whether or not to bring a tabo to Malaysia. In the end, southern
comforts prevailed and I packed the kids’ tabo. What? It’s for them, too!

Our first experience of Malaysian toilets wasn’t exactly promising. As soon
as we landed at KLA, I took one of the girls to the public toilet and we
passed several doors of the squat-to-pee kind. My heart sank until we
reached the first stall with a sit-to-pee toilet. Phew. I also noticed that
every stall was fitted with a handheld bidet.

Yes, mum, you were right.

When we got to the hotel, the automatic bidet—installed just under the
toilet seat—left me with mixed feelings. It seemed a little gross to have
this retractable spout splash water on you. Wouldn’t the dirty water fall
right back on top of the spout?

The bidet isn’t quite effective on small kids. For one thing, their bums
don’t reach far enough and the spray ends up on their lower back, splashing
water upwards. Any attempt to scoot back makes the kids feel like they’ll
fall into the toilet.

But for the adults the bidet is fantastic. By wiggling a little you can
score a direct hit on any region you’re aiming for. The spray is firm but
not…intrusive. It’s very thorough.

And yet it’s not the same. There’s just something about the tabo…

One of the problems when travelling with kids is that it becomes very difficult to discover the soul of whatever place you’re visiting. Children constrain movement, and every experience is prefixed with safety precautions and punctuated with ailments and emergencies ranging from the distasteful smell of the sewers to having to ‘do a great big poo’.

The first time we went for a walk outside, I heard a litany of comments on
the smell:

‘What’s that smell?’
‘It smells bad!’
‘Hold your breath before stepping over the sewer grate.’

So the first non-safety rule when travelling in Asia has become: We don’t
say anything about the smell. If we need to say anything, we say it quietly
and in private.

But the smells of Kuala Lumpur have led to interesting conversations. The
smell of leaded petrol from motorcycles brings back childhood memories. The
smell of chilli or coconut makes the mouth water even when the stomach can
take no more. The air brings the smell of thunderstorms before the first
drop falls. The smell of hotel shampoo reminds me that we’re on holiday and
to make the most of our nights and days.

I haven’t even come close to knowing what Kuala Lumpur’s soul is like. It’s
probably hot and humid, but not sticky. It’s filled with spices and a
multitude of colours. It wears a sari and a cheongsam and a batik sarong.
It takes refuge in air-conditioned mega-malls and has no respect for the
queue.

Or maybe that’s just what a tourist sees. I know that I haven’t eaten as
much as I wanted to. I haven’t tasted a proper Malaysian laksa or chicken
rice. We visit Chinatown and the fruit looks delicious, but buying food off
the street feels somehow icky, so I buy nothing. Instead I buy souvenirs
and sarongs and all the time I wonder if I’m being ripped off. I order the
only laksa I can find at the food court and…it’s not the laksa I want.

This place is foreign and it’s not comfortable and having kids around is both a
hindrance and a distraction. We walk through an alley teeming with locals
eating street food, but it looks too unhygienic so we walk on. One of my
kids chatters happily on about the ‘cat and mouse’ that she saw; I later
learn that the cat was actually a huge rat.

One of the wonderful things about travelling with kids is the way they see
the world—with innocence, with honesty and with curiosity. And although
one of my kids drips sweat like a broken tap as we walk through the streets of
Kuala Lumpur, he asks me, with wonder in his eyes, if this is a dream come
true.