I have a story that was both my best and my worst, but a very exciting experience for me regardless. It involves the first day of my trip to Malaysia.

A bit of backstory, I had booked a hostel for under $6 / night on Agoda, and I was freaking out a bit as I knew my plane would arrive at 11:30, so I'd get to the hostel very late at night, and worried that nobody would be there to help me check in. The hostel had no email address, just a phone number I couldn't call without paying extra anyway, so I just send a "special request" on Agoda to have someone there late at night, which of course didn't get a response, so I figured I'd just see how it goes.

So anyway, the day started very early; I had to wake up around 6 in San Diego after getting to sleep around 2:30 the night before to catch a Greyhound bus to LA, which was 45 minutes late in leaving. Decided to use a free Uber ride to get to the airport, and everything was smooth. Was flying on ANA, who had a special for LAX-Kuala Lumpur for under $600. Flight went as planned, left on time, cabin crew was very nice, chatted a bit with the passengers next to me who were going to New Delhi, and landed in Japan for the layover. We had to go through security again but it took about 5 minutes, Japanese security seems to absolutely destroy the TSA in terms of efficiency, so even though my layover was less than an hour, there was absolutely no time rush.

I get to my gate and it's pretty interesting. The NRT-KUL flight was actually the first one ANA was offering, so there were a lot of special things going on. There was something that looked like a photo shoot, a big backdrop with many press people and well dressed people taking photos. When we got past the area where people scan your tickets, the entire cabin crew bowed to me and someone gave me a little goodie bag for the maiden flight, with various Malaysia souvenirs and a commemorative box of Pocky sticks just for this flight. An interesting thin to note too was that it seemed the majority of people on this flight were Americans.

Anyhow, the flight was once again smooth and on-time, and landed in KUL at 11:30, though it seemed to take forever to taxi to the gate. Once we arrived we were greeted by some ladies dressed in traditional Malaysian attire who gave us another goodie bag with more souvenirs, and we immigrated. I was extremely tired, as I do not sleep well on planes, and have thus been up for about 24 hours at this point.

The airport is pretty far from downtown, so we had to take a train for about 30 minutes, during which I chatted with a couple of Americans, who seemed to dip pretty soon after arriving at the train station. I realized then I'd have to try to get a taxi in the city that was rated worst taxi drivers in the world, so I vouched to get a prepaid fare at the station, paying slightly more to avoid being ripped off by somebody unscrupulous.

So I get in the taxi, tell the guy where I am going, it's a street called Kasturi. He says "which side of Kasturi?" Of course, I have no idea, I only know what the general area looks like based on Google maps, so I tell him this and he just says OK. He takes me to somewhere and says that this is where I am going, though I don't see any signs for Kasturi, but he says "oh, this street turns into Kasturi down that way." I don't really have any alternative so I just say OK and get out. It's about 1 am at this point and I just start walking down this street looking like an obvious backpacker.

I see some kind of bizarre things on the street, like a large group of guys just sleeping on a random table outside with no shirts on, but nothing seems absolutely sketchy about this place; it's quite quiet in fact. However, I realize I'm getting to the end of the street and I can't find Kasturi anywhere. So I go back and hesitate for a few minutes and worry just a bit, but I find a guy who seems to be painting a mural to sell in his shop tomorrow (why doing it so late?) and he appears to be the least sketchy guy on the street, so I ask him if he can help me find this place. He says "I don't know anything, ask him" and points to a guy across the street, who seems to be taking out the trash or dirty water for a restaurant or store. I go ask him, and he thinks for a second, and says "follow me" so I follow him to the intersection where a few guys are sitting at a cafe. One guy seems to know somewhat where it is, and he says "go down 3 blocks, and then turn either left or right, but I don't remember which one." Well, it's the best advice I've gotten so far, so I go down.

I turn right, it appears to not get me where I want to go. Luckily I see some sort of pseudo-cop (city-contracted security guard?) who finally knows where I am going and points me in the right direction. Seems Kasturi is basically at the end of the street the taxi driver originally told me, but it was offset by 50m and across a very wide street, so you couldn't clearly see it, especially in the dark.

I get to the hostel around 1:30, everything is smooth, guy checks me in, and I appear to have two roommates, one is a passed-out European guy, and the other is this guy from Oman who has a bit of a weird vibe to him, is well dressed and speaks English well, and says he has been in Malaysia for a month due to an injury. The guy from Oman starts conversing with me and when I tell him I'm from the states he says "Why do you bring fire to my region??" And the discussion gets pretty political, and we discuss a lot of things like class differences and how people are treated in America versus other areas, etc etc etc, but I feel very put off by him. He offers me some fruit and I'm quite suspicious, though he is eating an orange so I eat the orange he gives me. I bite into the date he gave me, and it tasted poisonous, bitter like the inside of a peach pit. If you have ever read a survival guidebook and how they describe the taste of an unknown plant that you shouldn't eat, this is what it tasted like. Luckily I was somewhat out of view of him, so I sneakily put the date in the orange peels and threw them away. I had to use the bathroom too and he started getting very distant, not really acknowledging me as much anymore. It was 3 am anyway so I was extremely tired and needed to sleep. When I came back from the bathroom he was outside skyping someone so I went to sleep.

Next morning I woke up, he was gone, the European guy was still passed out, which I attributed to partying too hard or something, as I heard that KL was a nightlife town. I went out to enjoy the day, and came back a couple times, once at noon, once at 6 pm, during which he was still passed out. I got a little worried at the second one, but he woke up at 6:30 to ask me what time it was. Apparently he had missed his flight, and suspected that the guy from Oman drugged him with fruit, later evidenced by the fact that his phone and cash were missing. The guy who worked at the hostel seemed to be pretty useless, just kind of laughing saying "haha, he gave me fruit every day and nothing happened to me." I gave the guy 10 ringgit to get a small snack or taxi ride and he left. Then I went on to enjoy my trip.

tl;dr ANA has amazing service, KL taxi dropped me off in weird region, people who hang out in Chinatown didn't know the area well, and some guy tried to drug me and succeeded in doing it to the other roommate.