Nights at gentrified Chow Kit

Backpackers love to stay at the hotels in this area because they're fancy yet cheap. I'll tell you stuff about Chow Kit, Malaysia, that travel brochures probably won't.

I do enjoy having breakfast at The Chow Kit’s restaurant. I will pay high prices for the coffee, but not for the overpriced roti canai. (Pic from The Chow Kit)

When I told my mum that I’d be spending a few nights at Chow Kit, she froze.

"What are you doing there??"

Chow Kit is the place most Malaysian mothers worry about. They definitely do not want their young, sheltered daughters there at night, and even if said daughter is no longer young nor sheltered, Chow Kit raises the shadow of forbidden activities.

To quote Wikipedia: “Chow Kit has traditionally been known as one of the major red-light districts in Kuala Lumpur. Many of the prostitutes are daughters of prostitutes who have grown up in the area."

Not only is Chow Kit the place where prostitutes dwell, it is also where drug addicts and the homeless live.

But if you're more familiar with crime havens abroad, you'd be forgiven if you're puzzled to discover that it is nothing like that. Definitely its distinct lack of homeless camps.

At least, today.

The brown building is The Chow Kit. Next to it is Momo’s, an upscale ‘hostel’ that is a favourite with backpackers. Unfortunately for me.

One of the most bizarre developments for me, anyway, is that Chow Kit has been gentrified. But due to the area's unsavoury reputation, the hotels there are cheaper, even the fancy The Chow Kit.

That's why on days when I have to physically be at the office in Kuala Lumpur, I'd hop on a monorail after work and head down to The Chow Kit or Momo's to stay a few nights.

Today, Chow Kit has fancy cafes dotting the area. The amount that The Heritage Lane's cafes and restaurants charge for their meals would make any Chow Kit resident wince. It could be a day's wages for most of them.

Last week, my accommodation of choice was Momo's. I didn't want to pay too much because I'm planning for a big vacation in Taiping and Penang soon, and I want to save as much as possible for a grand beach holiday. Besides, I just wanted a place to crash after work.

The weather has been intolerably hot lately, and to add fuel to the fire, my neighbours downstairs have decided to perform massive renovations, drilling, hacking, and sawing ... together with the neighbour down the hill who was doing the same thing in tandem.

Noise was literally everywhere. I couldn't escape it or the heat, and I just wanted peace.

So Momo's it is. It is terribly basic, but all I need is sleep, and it serves me well. (Well, unless you're unlucky like me—on one night, a gaggle of French girls were partying in the room next door, and I told them, in my Malaysian polite way, to shut the fuck up.)

Anyway, I like to have a nice breakfast every morning, either at The Chow Kit next door (Momo's is its poorer cousin) or walk down an elevated pedestrian walkway to Tapestry, which is nearer to Medan Tuanku monorail station and The Heritage Lane.

As I walk on this bridge, I can't help but think how gentrification is a thin application of fanciness over real societal ills. How it renders the people who live here ‘invisible’ and push them out of their homes as rents rise.

Along this bridge, you'll see the homeless sleeping on the beautiful steel benches along the walkway. As I reached the station, I saw a man, presumably homeless, searching through trash for food. (He sniffed a few of his finds.)

When I see the homeless on this rainbow bridge, I always feel guilty that I'm enjoying luxuries he couldn't even think about. Buying designer coffee with money he could've used to feed himself a solid meal, not taken out of the trash.

One of the things I noticed during the American exodus to Xiaohongshu is how much they seem to put China on a pedestal. They do the same for Malaysia. Many want to move here.

As I said in a previous controversial newsletter, there's a lot wrong with that mindset, but another point I want to touch on is that people have an idealistic view of a country, especially as tourists.

Malaysia has so many problems. Some of them I don't even want to talk about because it makes me spiral down into doom, but most of the time, I live a good life, only because I had privileges when I grew up.

I wasn't like the daughters of prostitutes who didn't have an option or even an idea that they could be someone else.

I had parents who worked as civil servants, who saved their money to give me an education ... in a country that puts barriers to education for minorities.

And by some weird stroke of luck, during the economic crisis of '98-99, I managed to get a scholarship to Australia to finish my degree. Somehow, with some luck (and grit), I passed. And by some more luck, I was hired by the top English paper in my country. And somehow with some luck (and grit) I managed to spin out of a dying journalism industry to land as an executive in tech.

A series of fortunes and decisions that led me to drink designer coffee in a cafe, walking past homeless people sleeping on the bridge, after a night in gentrified Chow Kit.

Life is like that, isn't it?

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