We found our guesthouse in Kuala Lumpur just as thick drops of rain were beginning to pierce through the sticky heat. This wasn’t our first choice and hardly the only place we looked. But bohemian-inspired Le Village had been boarded up sometime since Lonely Planet gave it the thumbs up in 2007 and most other places were about twenty dollars and an air conditioned lobby out of our price range.So we’ve settled on Wheelers Guesthouse, in the back streets of Chinatown. The air is so hot and muggy that we’ve splurged an extra dollar fifty Canadian each for an air conditioned room. Outside our fourth floor walls—for our room has no windows—touts whine for tourist attention, red Chinese lanterns dot the sky, and what smells like tripe, but probably isn’t, steams out of storefronts and sewer troughs.

Our place is more the Bangkok of The Beach than Bangkok ever was. Wires and yellowed tubes protrude from the walls, mouse holes and masses of dirt delineate the room corners, and the white tiles are patterned with empty squares. Every surface is streaked with slanted black writing—thinner pen strokes and the more jarring stains of permanent marker. The air circulator draws in cigarette smoke from the hall and spins it around the room. But our quarters are clean, the corners of the sheets properly tucked in, and the pillows a sort of magical memory foam.

In the bathroom down the hall, the toilet stall lock is about two inches too far from actually locking, which is too bad as it’s also the shower. Hot water is not an option, nor would you want it to be. But three separate taps to figure out are. And the stall is decorated in everything from “bonne douche” to “douchbag” (and “ouch de bag,”) and in large block letters, the word Amsterdam.

As soon as got here, I showered, quickly, soaping and rinsing, while lightning flashed through the window, and a man’s voice boomed “hey!” every five seconds. Shampoo and conditioner coagulated around the toilet base, but not for long. With every flush the toilets here leak half of what they release.

On the floor below us, the lobby is a small green room flanked by a massive water tank. Crane your neck and you’ll find a large snake-shaped fish lazing across the bottom and a turtle trying to climb its way out of its shell. Just opposite, next to the used book exchange, three hamsters scuttle around in individual cages. All around, fake tropical plants collect dust; the common area is a greenhouse pastiche. The men operating the front desk range from a handsome blue-eyed Syrian who’ll make you guess where he’s from, to a stout local with facial piercings, bleached orange hair, an unbutonned floral shirt, and a definite Hawaii 1980s vibe. Some evenings, he gets special visits from JoJo, a macaque monkey that likes piggybacks and basketball.

We chose to stay at Wheelers despite poor reviews and nauseated looks from those staying here on our way in. But unlike the other reggae and travelers’ hostels on this street, the tenants here aren’t eighteen and doe-eyed and recounting stories of how they just met a guy whose entire family literally died, and then he left everything, literally, and just hopped on a train and started traveling. Literally traveling. The travelers here are more seasoned, and happy to stay anywhere and pay little—budget tourists who aren’t here to “do Asia” but have come to take it in and live it, probably for quite a long time.

Yeah, this place is gross, but these days, I guess so am I. In the shower, I consciously hung my bra and underwear on jagged tetnised hooks. Minutes later, I wiped my makeup off by dabbing cream on the same Kleenex I had used to blot my dumpling-greased hands on two hours earlier. I had even invoked the Ten Second Rule when, earlier, said blue rice dumpling had crumbled a little bit too far from my mouth.

At Wheelers, I wake up with an urge to tag the walls—not to leave my mark, but to leave a better one than what has been left. And maybe to join the Confucian wisdom of those who have come before me:

(do not) Live it up (never)Drink it down (refuse to)Take chances (well,) Because in the end (if)
Life is what you make of it!(then what is origami to paper)

For my part, I have a bag full of markers—to anyone who doubts that markers are essential on a seven month trip, let this be a self-satisfied told-you-so—which beats thin black lines, and inscriptions of how Berry hearts Marry and a rabbit saying “I suck dick’s” with a comment reading “dick’s what?” and, at the foot of our bed, the depressed musings of someone who had recently become unemployed. Plus, below that what looks like it used to be a fist-shaped hole before someone spread a thin coat of of filler over it.

Tonight, I’m considering sketching something close to the single stamp pasted above our aluminum headboard (which is actually nice and new, and a match to the ten others stacked outside in the hall.) I might even draw a pretty frame around our desk and mirror, turning it into a real vanity à la Marie Antoinette. Whatever it is, I want people to say “I want to stay in the (blank) room.” Suggestions are welcome for writing and drawings alike. I have five colours and, seeing as it’s pouring outside, quite a bit of (air-conditioned) time. Besides, leaving the room means bumping into the big red bowl which has materialized outside our door to catch the building’s dripping AC runoff.

But lets face it, even a deluge (air conditioner or other) won’t keep us indoors for long. There are all sorts of lively drinkeries and restaurants nearby, include a reggae bar offering the first ceaser salad I’ve seen on this trip. The street outside is closed-off to car traffic and strung with fake purses—but nice ones for a change—and sundresses which go against everything we’ve read about this conservative Muslim country. There are plenty of American, European, and Asian tousits filling outdoor patios and shelling out for beers that you’d wish were just cheaper so you could have some help swallowing the whole experience down. We have Alanis Morisette blasting from our tinny portable speaker.

So, our place isn’t clean, but for an hour or two post-shower, we are.