Further Wanderings

After the Cameron Highlands, Kuala Lumpur was a bit of a shock.  Hot, sticky, big and busy, KL was everything that Tanah Rata wasn’t.  But somehow, despite the change of scenery, we were still felt a bit lackadaisical during our time there.

Part of this came from the fact that Malaysia was such an easy place to travel in.  Public transport was good, everyone was used to tourists (especially in the areas we were visiting), and virtually everyone spoke at least a bit of English.  After the rigours of places like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Sumatra, it almost felt TOO easy to be exciting.

Another source of the feeling came from the nearness of our trip’s end.  During our stay in KL, the day 2 weeks prior to our return to NZ came and went.  Since booking our tickets we’d been focussing more and more on the END of the journey, and finding it correspondingly tougher to focus on the present.

The Masjid Jamek Mosque (a bit redundant, as Majid means mosque in Malay), Kuala Lumpur

We did, of course, still do some fun and interesting things during our four days in KL.  But in keeping with the travel fatigue that’s overcome me of late, I’m afraid you’re only getting a quick summary of them:

The Petronas Twin Towers.  When I last visited KL, they were the tallest buildings in the world.  They’d slipped a few places down the list, but were still impressive during this visit.  Unlike in 2004, we were able to queue up early and easily got tickets for the trip up to the skybridge that spans the gap between the towers.  The view from the top wasn’t really that impressive (the Skybridge was only 41 floors up) but the whole experience was a fun one, and definitely worthwhile.  And though the Skybridge trip wasn’t everything I’d dreamed of, the towers themselves remain beautiful structures, showcasing architecture at its best.

The 07:45 queue for the Petronas Twin Towers Skybridge visit tickets

The view from the top.  Well not, actually the TOP, as the skybridge is considerably less than halfway to the top of the Twin Towers

The Petronas Twin Towers.  The floor plan is an eight pointed star with semicircles in between the points of the stars.  I’m not quite sure what makes this look “Islamic,” but it does, and prettily at that

Wandering around.  This wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.  Quite a bit of central KL was occupied by wide arterial roads, linked together by difficult roundabouts and flyovers, often without sidewalks.  And while many sections of the city (most notably the shiny new area around the Petronas Twin Towers and KL City Centre) did have footpaths, little consideration was given to pedestrians at intersections (either by road engineers or by motorists.)  Despite the difficulties, walking around KL was actually very pleasant.  A few blocks could take one from tidy, gleaming KLCC to the forest of Bukit Nanas reserve, to the chaotic bustle of old Chinatown.  And when one added to this spatial diversity the complete change that took place when the sun went down and the night markets began, the frustrations of exploring KL on foot were more than worth coping with.

A guy walking around with a leaf blower keeping the path clean in the Bukit Nanas forest reserve.  Clearly if they’re using leaf blowers in the jungle, KL has been taking some cues from Singapore…

Islamic Arts Museum.  On paper this was a great museum.  A beautiful building, with a gleaming white exterior, a light, airy interior and topped by tiled turquoise domes.  One of the world’s best collection of Islamic art.  A lovely location near KL’s Lake Park.  But somehow it just didn’t work for Sarah and I.  Perhaps it was because we got soaked by pouring rain and splashing cars on the way to it’s frigidly air conditioned galleries.  Or perhaps it was because we’d recently seen so much great Islamic art in situ.  Or perhaps it was just the road-weariness we mentioned earlier.  Whatever the reason, what should have been a great museum felt merely okay.  (The scale models of mosques from around the world in the Islamic architecture section were pretty cool though.)

The Lake Park.  When we ran out of other stuff to do, we went for a walk in the Lake Park.  This place, in conjunction with the KLCC park, convinced me that Kuala Lumpur has some of the nicest public green spaces of any city I’ve been to.  Centred around a large, serpentine lagoon, the Lake Park contained such attractions as orchid, hibiscus and herb gardens, the world’s largest aviary, great children’s playgrounds and deer and mousedeer enclosures.  All of this and plenty of well maintained and enjoyable green space and walking trails. 

One of the thousands of orchids in the KL Orchid Garden.  Sadly few of the epiphytic orchids were in bloom while we were there.  Epiphytes are cool!

Me with lots more of the orchids at the park

A mousedeer!  These residents of the Malaysian jungles are about 20cm tall at the shoulder.  And very cute creatures.  And nervous creatures too.

The view of the city from the observatory at the national planetarium was actually rather nicer than that from the Petronas Twin Towers Skybridge.  Admission to it, and to a very entertaining exhibition about the Malaysian space program (in what direction should a good Muslim pray while in orbit?) were included with the planetarium show ticket

Batu Caves.  These famous caverns are a 45 minute bus ride from Central KL.  Which is good, because they would’ve felt like a big waste of time if we’d travelled much further to visit them.  The caves are set on a hillside, surrounded and even filled by various Hindu temples.  While the sheer size of the Murugan statue out front and the two main chambers inside the main cave were impressive, the overall feeling was one of disappointment.  There were bits of litter laying around, human-habituated monkeys begging for food and lots of souvenier stores and stalls both around and in the entrance.  And it was very clear that, nice as they were, the caves would have been much prettier before humans came and started mucking with them.

The Murugan Statue at the Batu Caves (the world’s largest apparently.)  Though the caves weren’t that exciting, it was kind of cool that they were right in the middle of an industrial/residential suburb of KL

The Main Cave at Batu.  Note the bright yellow Hindu temple at left, and the less bright one near the top of the stairs

Water Parking.  One day we attempted to head out to the Sunway complex south of the city, with its huge mall and theme park.  Unfortunately we’d brought limited money, admission prices had soared, and tickets to single sections of the park weren’t available anymore.  So our day at the water park, which I’d been going on about excitedly for weeks, turned out to be a no go.  At least we got to explore the mall and amuse ourselves by scarfing down large quantities of ice cream from the supermarket.  (Interesting note: the supermarket had a special “non-halal” section where all of the alcohol and pork products were sold.)

 

The Skating Rink at Sunway Pyramid Mall.  Apparently we just missed Skate Asia, which was being held there a couple of days after our departure

I love poking around in supermarkets in foreign countries.  In many ways they’re virtually identical to the ones back home, but every now and then you come across subtle, but fun differences.  You would NOT find three different varieties of pineapple for sale at your average Loblaws in Canada

The Malaysian Telecom Museum.  This place wasn’t in our guidebook, nor on any maps of tourist attractions.  We just happened upon it during one of our wanders.  And seeing that I’d spent the previous 10 years or so doing telecommunications engineering, couldn’t help but  head inside.  It was a delightful little place, with the typical Malaysian museum’s cheerful view of the past and future, and two small floors worth of exhibits about the history of communications in the country.  Perhaps the funnest thing about the place though, was that there wasn’t another soul in it for the whole 1.5 hours of our visit.  No other visitors, no museum staff, no security guards… we had the whole place to ourselves

 

The national planetarium.  They didn’t really use the star projector, except as the background to the dramatically titled “Threats from Space” film that was projected on the inclined, semicircular dome of the planetarium.  In typical optimistic Malaysian fashion the film concluded that, despite all of the horrors it had just presented, we have nothing to worry about, as people will figure out how to deal with them before/when they happen

Petaling Street in Chinatown is THE place to go for knockoff sunglasses, handbags, watches, etc. etc. etc.  Unless you’ve recently been to Cambodia, in which case it all seems vastly overpriced

Eating.  No ‘blog entry would be complete without a discussion of food.  As with everywhere else in Malaysia, most of our calories came in the form of yummy Indian thalis, dosa and roti.  But we had a few other memorable food moments as well.  Our wander through a couple of Saturday night markets picking snacks from the stands as we went was a fun way to spend an evening, as well as a great way to try a wide cross section of Malaysian cuisine.  And the Fatt Yan vegetarian restaurant where we had our last dinner in the city was a miracle of meatless mouthwateringness.  The resemblance of the soya duck in the ginger duck noodles was uncanny.  And while the soya prawns weren’t 100% perfect, they still mimicked real crustaceans impressively.  And even leaving aside the entertainment value of eating fake meat products the food was great.

Me with Nasi Kerabu (and yummy chili sauce tempeh.)  A north Malaysian specialty, Nasi Kerabu is rice cooked (and coloured) with blue flowers

Sarah with our banana leaf thalis.  Though I’d spent a fair bit of time in India, I’d never eaten from a banana leaf before.  It’s mostly a south Indian practice, while I’d spent all my time in the north.  Eating with one’s hands is fun!  And gets smiles from the waiters and fellow customers too!

Obviously Kuala Lumpur was a big, modern city, but it somehow still managed to feel like a small city.  We spent a lot of our time in KL wandering around wondering what to do with ourselves, and most of its main attractions felt underwhelming.  But somehow the place managed to charm me anyway.

 

The sun setting over a KL street

The Kampung Baru night market, with the Petronas Twin Towers in the background provides a nice summary of what KL is all about

Tags: KL, Kuala Lumpur, Llew Bardecki, Malaysia, Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 5:13 am and is filed under Malaysia, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.