KL - some thoughts....

Lai Foong

Lai Foong Coffee Shop has been a fixture of Chinatown’s Tun Tan Cheng Lock street for more than fifty years now. It is actually a collection of half a dozen frantically hectic eateries and is famous for Lai Foong Beef Noodles and for what must be the most tooth-rottingly sweet coffee in Malaysia.

The rushing waiters yell in shrill Chinese and from the surrounding tables you can hear voices chattering in Malay, Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Tamil. The cultural mix is as mind-bogglingly diverse as the menu.

Four ringgit will get you a heaped serving of delicious Penang Fried Kuey Teow – thick noodles served with egg, chicken and vegetable...but for just a little more you can get a plate of omasum, or cow intestines. The board of fare also offers tripe, lean meat, tendon and what is described simply as ‘balls.’

You can wash your tendons and balls down with a glass of something that the menu calls Jolly Shady. Presumably this is in fact a shandy. Not being a Muslim establishment, Royal Stout, Guinness and Tiger Beer are also on offer. There’s also Carlsberg Special Brew which reminds me only of High School Days but to which the Chinese typically have attributed some supernatural health-giving powers. But then the Chinese see aphrodisiac qualities in everything.

It was here where a Chinese street trader once sidled up to me with a packet of something which he claimed was the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac.
“Test it out,” he said – “if you drop just a few grains of this into a plate of instant noodles all the noodles will straighten out!”


Coliseum
Time almost seems to stand still at The Coliseum. This KL icon is close to celebrating its 100th birthday and has changed little since the good old days when planters used to occupy the rented rooms and colonial engineers used to meet here for sundowners. The bar is said to be the highest bar in South East Asia: it was ergonomically designed at a time long before the term was even thought of and is placed ‘exactly at the height of the average Englishman’s elbow.’


The old bar has seen some wild nights and the loyal crowd of staunch regulars regularly threaten to rebel (or, worse, desert) whenever the owner threatens to refurbish or even just paint the tobacco-stained walls.


You never know who you might bump into in the Coliseum’s bar. Last time I was here I ended up on a G&T binge with a leading military advisor from East Timor and a man who claimed to be an exiled Bengali noble who was battling to regain his ancestral fifedom.
Returning this time the regulars still look vaguely familiar and even old Captain Ho, the famous Chinese waiter has recently celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday but still insists on hobbling out of the kitchen to tie the napkin around your neck and serve up your sizzling (or “sizzering”) hotplate steaks. The traditional British Pot Pies are also a sought after delicacy but the staff here refuses to be rushed...the menu stipulates that these delicacies must be ordered with three days advance notice.


The only noticeable difference these days is that the bar-staff seem to be a bit stingier on the gin slings. Can it be that even the venerable Coli is having to face up to an economic downturn?


Every time I stay at the Coli I think that it’s impossible that it can still be here when I next get back. I’ve been saying that for years though and chances are I guess the infamous ‘Coli’ might outlast me after all!