Atmosphere

Ipoh, the first major stop on the Kuala Lumpur run, has a station hotel, a late Victorian Gormenghast with long windows covered by sombre curtains. The brown drapery hangs in thick folds, keeping out the breeze and preserving the heat, which is paddled around the dining room by ten slow fans. All the tables are set, and the waiter, who might be dead, is propped against the wall at the far end of the room. It is fairly certain there is a suicide upstairs waiting to be discovered, and the flies that soar through the high-ceilinged bar are making for the corpse of this ruined planter or disgraced towkay. It is the sort of hotel that has a skeleton in every closet and a register thick with the pseudonyms of adulterers. I once walked into the station hotel at Ipoh with my little boy, and as soon as we crossed the threshold he began to cry. His innocent nose had smelled what mine couldn’t, and I rushed away with him, relieved, savouring the well-being of deliverance.

Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar