My compatriots on the flight over.
Chinese medicine set out to be sold at the pharmacy in Chinatown.
Traditional style food market urban style in Chinatown
Juxtaposition!
The Kuala Lumpur mosque.
Kuala Lumpur itself, the meeting of two muddy rivers.
Our tour guide and the national flower of Malaysia, the hibiscus.
Kuala Lumpur Mosque
You can't get away from crows.
The old KL station.
Lunch in the old KL station.
The National Mosque
The inner sanctum of the National Mosque. Mecca is that way.
Petronas Towers
Batu Caves, exterior.
The stairs up to the cave itself
There were plenty of friendly monkeys around
Inside the caves
Looking back towards the entrance
A look at the ceiling of the cave.
Just outside the entrance.
Looking back towards KL
I love these limestone cliffs.
Little India
Note the maple leaf on the can. We export to Malaysia!
The courtyard/patio/thing at The Blue DiamondMalaysia, Kuala Lumpur and area
Week 49 and 50
Well, the week leading up to Malaysia was nothing spectacular, just a lot of waiting and trepidation. I had enough time during the week to drop out to Kichijoji and do a bit of shopping for things I thought might be helpful while overseas. This included a couple of T-shirts and pairs of boxer shorts (which were both helpful) but was more focused on, of course, photographic equipment. I’d been trying for the last while to really get a proper suite of tools available, so I added a little bit over this week. Got a nice neutral gradient filter and a star-cross filter for the camera (didn’t use the former, did use the latter). I also bought a small, transmit only, GPS unit. It’s a pretty interesting little device though. It’s made to attach the GPS positional data whenever you take a picture to the photo, which is great because it then makes it very easy to figure out where you were when you took it. Super handy for hiking.
And that was pretty much it. The week passed slowly because I was so psyched to head out of town for the trip. But man, when Sunday morning finally rolled around…woooooo.
I was up and on the train relatively early and, for the first time, made it to Narita without watching rain lash against the windows of the Narita express. Fortuitous prediction for the rest of the trip, no? I also spent most of the trip listening to a song by Rise Against on repeat for at least all the time I was on the Chuo line. First time I’d heard it, even though it had been on my iPod for quite some time.
Anyways, I met up with Seth, Melissa and Winny at the airport. After wandering around for a bit to find Seth (he was saying good bye to a lady friend of his) we all hopped on to the train and began the six and a half hour flight down to Singapore.
It was a really long flight, not made any shorter by the baby that cried the entire trip. I felt really sorry for the kid, and his parents even more so because they were obviously embarrassed by the conduct of their child. It was alright though. I spent the whole time watching movies of course. Quantum of Solace and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I do hate watching films on those tiny airplane TVs as they never quite provide the right experience. No matter. Quantum I’d already seen and Benjamin Button was alright, nothing spectacular and a bit too long for the pay off.
So after the long, long flight we ended up in Singapore airport for a two hour layover before our final flight out to Kuala Lumpur. Singapore International Airport is very well appointed. Seth even managed to score some free whisky. Bonus. Speaking of which, the great part about flying ANA (All Nippon Airways) is their all-you-can-drink policy. Never have I had more poor quality red wine.
Long, uninteresting story short, we killed the 2 hours then hopped back on to a different plane with the same crying baby for the final trip to Kuala Lumpur proper.
The airport was a bit less chaotic than the one in Bangkok. We also weren’t harassed by hundreds of gypsy cab drivers, only a half dozen. Instead we simply bought a taxi chit at a kiosk and were soon zooming down one super wide highway towards the center of Kuala Lumpur. As exhausted as we all were it was impossible to contain our excitement. And we weren’t disappointed. Just on the way into the city we were able to see the Petronas towers lit on the horizon, those two pinnacles that are so symbolically linked with Kuala Lumpur. And the film Entrapment.
The cabbie dropped us off in Chinatown after we had a bit of difficulty locating the hostel. Winny managed to pick out a sign and get us to the general area our lodging was in. We were staying at the reggae house, in an annex building which was way off down the street from the bar it’s primarily associated with. This caused us a hell of a lot of confusion but after a bit of searching and direction asking we were successful. The walk to our section of the hostel was also a bit disheartening. It was garbage night, so not only did we have some amazingly terrible smells, but we also saw our fair share of gigantic cockroaches. We even played footsie with them in some cases.
After some difficulty convincing the owners that I was, in fact, Ian Cantello (I left my booking information back in Japan) we had acquired a couple of small rooms and were ready to paint the town red.
Not exactly.
We were kind of exhausted, so we settled for going to the Reggae bar and having a few drinks. Keep in mind of course from this point on that Malaysia is in fact a Muslim country, and although generally well disposed towards foreign cultures, alcohol is still somewhat difficult to find. That’s why staying in Chinatown is a good idea. The Chinese keep a particularly strong allegiance to alcoholic beverages and the right to imbibe them, not merely to have them gather dust on the shelves.
So we sat and chatted. Winny and I observed a wonderful mating dance between a young turk and a pair of girls. It was pretty funny, especially after the girl that the guy was clearly going after took off for an extended period of time leaving him and the other girl sitting in awkward silence for like 20 minutes. Comic gold.
It was sort of an odd atmosphere in the bar though. You got the feeling that they were trying to go with more of a club feeling, but it never really came together. Especially because it’s a frigging reggae bar. Jumping and dancing around is about the exact opposite of most things Reggae related.
At least in my limited experience.
The barmen were also kind of taciturn, which was even more disconcerting. They seemed frustrated every time I went to buy a drink even though the clientele was clearly predominately foreign.
This aura of the bizarre continued at the hostel itself. The desk clerks seemed to be generally overly hostile and suspicious towards us, if not the other guests. The overall atmosphere of the place was just… uncomfortable. The other guests were appeared to be about 3 to 5 years younger than our group, which was also disconcerting. They were also, to a soul, distant. They barely spoke to one another and when they did only in muted tones. Speaking to people they didn’t know was unheard of. I tried to strike up some conversation by asking about the spelling of Kuala Lumpur (hey, I was tired) and all I got was a polite smile. I’m not THAT bad looking, right?
We finally hit the sack a little past two and were soon asleep. I got top bunk too. Bitchin’.
The next day saw a decently early wake up. We were out and about at a decent hour, although hilariously enough I made the mistake of waking everyone up an hour early (I guess? I think Seth and I were still late) because I forgot to change the time on my cell phone. Speaking of which, although my cell worked perfectly in Thailand, that was not the case in Malaysia. None of our cell phones worked at all which, although not being a serious problem, was wickedly inconvenient.
We bought a ticket for a bus tour at our hostel and started out into the blisteringly hot but not too humid Kuala Lumpur day. And what a day it was!
First stop was breakfast at a Swedish inn, which was quite good although we only caught the tail end. We would come here again the second day in KL for breakfast too.
After that, it was time to wander aimlessly. Unlike Bangkok where you have to be a little bit more focused in your wanderings, KL is quite easily navigable without any specific plan while still allowing you to see some great things.
For example, our first stop was for Seth at a drug store. He’d been having some problems with a sore throat, so we tried to find some medicine for him. The store we went to was just really neat mostly because of our timing. They had all of these crazy Chinese traditional medicines lined up and ready to be packaged for sale. Really cool.
After wandering through the street market and not seeing anything particularly great, we switched shopping locales and found the Sentral Market, an indoor area with more traditional handicrafts for sale. It was just nice to get into some A/C!
From there it was closer to a bit of a business sector. You get some great juxtaposition in KL between ultra-modern sky scrapers and very old colonial architecture, which is actually pretty well preserved. It’s a real pleasure just wondering and enjoying the scenery. And speaking of architecture, you can see some stately old mosques, and Arab-inspired architecture all over downtown.
This brings me to the first major stopping point on our trip: the Kuala Lumpur mosque.
So, wandering in with a bit of trepidation, we discovered quickly that it’s totally cool to go in and look around so long as A) You have a guide and B) you wear appropriate clothing. That meant donning the world’s least flattering, most polyester robes. And for the ladies, headscarves.
The tour itself was quite interesting. We noticed a lot of people just sort of hanging out at the mosque. Our guide informed us that homeless people (or I assume people that are just taking a break) are perfectly allowed to wander in and enjoy the use of the premises. Pretty socially responsible policy I think. Our guide also explained to us washing ceremonies before prayer (if you’re in the desert, you use sand instead of water!) and a few other things.
We walked out to the point within the mosque that gave it and Kuala Lumpur their names. The very tip of the mosque’s grounds is located between the junction point of the two rivers that flow through Kuala Lumpur. These two rivers are quite muddy, which therefore gives us the name, Kuala Lumpur, ‘Kuala’ meaning muddy and ‘Lumpur’ meaning river junction. There you go! There were also several fruit trees on this point that our guide informed us were free to be picked by any visitors. She recommended we try this one fruit that tasted a bit bland but was about the juiciest thing I’ve ever eaten.
I was super satisfied by the tour myself, but Melissa and Winny told me that the guide basically ignored them all the way through. I’m not sure why, maybe some sort of cultural thing, but it was too bad. I thought our guide was awesome AND hilarious.
Once we’d left the mosque Winny stopped at the first of many fruit vendors. It’s a great feature of travelling in South East Asia, the ready access to excellent and fresh tropical fruits. Watermelon in hand, we continued on.
At this point we got slightly confused, but eventually found a bus stop for the Hop on Hop off bus tickets we’d bought that morning. Now, these busses were supposed to swing by each bus stop every half hour. We waited for about 40 minutes with no bus in sight. Wilting in the heat and kind of pissed about the situation, we decided it was time to just forge ahead on our own. It didn’t help that Melissa and the rest of us sampled the local Red Bull and found it surprisingly lacking. Seth decided at this juncture to coin the excellent term “hop on? fuck off.” in regards to the quality of the bus service.
No matter.
Wandering on our own we crossed through a rail station before eventually finding something that had been sitting on the horizon since we got up that morning, the National Mosque. When we arrived, it was closed to non-Muslims due to prayer services, but we noticed the posted times for visiting hours for the not-so-aligned-with-the-state-religion types and made our way down to what turned out to be the old central station building for KL.
It has long since been converted into a hotel, and it’s awesome. It feels really colonial, like the kind of place spies might have been meeting while trying to topple a military junta…or in American’s case, put one in place. It even had one of those super archaic elevators that is built up the middle of a staircase and has a wire cage all around. So cool.
With lunch disposed of at the station hotel, we returned to the National Mosque. Once again, it was on with the polyester robes, pink this time.
The National Mosque was also quite inspiring. Huge. In some places it almost felt like something out of Star Wars, maybe a Jedi temple. Spectacularly beautiful. I also managed to pick up some neat pamphlets to educate me about Jihads and whatnot. No tour guide this time out though. The inner sanctum was off limits to non-Muslims unfortunately, but no matter.
Finished with the National mosque, we followed a road up into a heavily forested section of Kuala Lumpur just west of the National Mosque. We saw some great rainforest trees and our first few wild monkeys on the way.
There were a few different attractions here, and we visited an orchid garden (free) and a butterfly farm. The orchid garden was fantastic, and the butterfly farm was okay too, but it wasn’t as…active as the one in Thailand. I’m not sure what the difference was. Maybe I just wasn’t as wowed. The garden in Thailand was the first one I’d seen.
Following that though, we visited what was maybe the winner for best sightseeing location of the day. We took a cab down to those two massive symbols of Kuala Lumpur, the Petronas Towers.
And they were absolutely awe-inspiring.
We didn’t get the opportunity to visit the sky bridge, but it was enough just to see them from the outside. We didn’t spend too long outside though at first as we were all quite hungry. Instead it was a beeline for the food court, where we all got some surprisingly excellent food. We then followed that by dropping by the Kinokuniya (a Japanese book store) that occupied part of the building. I managed to find a copy of Master and Commander, which I figured was pretty appropriate for a journey into a former British colony.
After spending quite a while perusing the books it was back outside to snap a few photos in front of the towers before heading back to our Hostel. We investigated the night markets while we were there before returning to the Reggae Bar. I WAY over paid for a pair of knock off sunglasses, which was stupid because I was in the midst of bargaining fine and then just panicked when everyone told me they were leaving. So instead of paying like $10, I ended up paying $40. It also hurt that I didn’t have the currency exchange straight in my head at the time, and that’s kind of important. It just sort of pissed me off!
Winny was a bit tired and took off early, but the rest of us hung out and enjoyed another hookah, this time with a truly bizarre guy setting the thing up for us. We just couldn’t seem to find a happy medium between normal and bizarre with the help in KL, that elusive balance that qualifies as ‘interesting’.
Exhausted, we returned to the hostel and called it a night. Once again we dealt with the strangely mute guests at our hostel, but no matter. We also spent some time trying to coordinate the next couple of day’s worth of travelling. More difficult than expected, considering we weren’t sure whether we wanted to go North or South. But that pretty much finished off the day.
The second day in KL began much like the first. Same place for breakfast, although Winny split off to have congee in a very authentic Chinese restaurant. I believe her exact quote was “it was just like being back in Richmond. Everyone was speaking Cantonese!”
After that we wandered again trying to find the central bus station, puduraya, which looked more like a parking garage than anything else, but whatever. We filed its location away for future reference.
Still in a post-breakfast haze, we were soon in a cab headed a little bit out of the city to the site of Batu caves, a limestone cave near the city thought to be something in the neighbourhood of 400 million years old.
More recently it was converted into a Hindu temple.
But, religious trappings aside…wow. Words don’t really do it justice, I’ll make a brief stab. It’s pretty amazing first walking up the steps and eyeing the massive limestone stalactites hanging off of the mouth of the cave. Not to mention the hordes of monkeys eyeing you as you wander upwards. The cave itself is absolutely astounding. Fucking gigantic. As if the mountain itself had been hollowed out at the top. I can’t believe how long it would take to for water to slowly chip away enough rock and dirt to build this thing. But I guess 400 million years sounds about right.
That still was a shitty description. Look at the pictures damn it.
After a long time of wandering around and snapping pictures we took off back down and out. On a personal note, I spat out some gum while I was in the temple and missed a garbage can. Even though it was obviously a pretty rough and tumble place what with the wet concrete floor and the rainforest overhead, I felt so guilty I had to go back and pick it up. Ah conscience, so inconvenient at times.
Once we’d finished our slack-jawed gawking, the crew headed back out down the steps, passing more simians before arriving at the parking lot where we investigated a few more of the sights around the caves. There wasn’t too much to see though.
After ordering some nice cold water and sitting in the shade for a few minutes, we were ready to get on the way once again. Hailing a taxi we were informed that it would cost 35 ringgits to drive back into the city, 10 more than the cost to get out there. I quickly replied that’s too expensive. Our cab driver conferred with his mates and lowered it to 30 rm. I was happy to have succeeded a little bit in bargaining after the monumental failure from the night before.
Oh and of course, I should mention at this point that Malaysia’s driving situation is what one might expect in South East Asia. Scooters zipping between transport trucks and cars weaving in and out from lane to lane, general chaos. It’s not exactly relaxing, but as long as your driver seems confident, really no problem.
We had the driver drop us off in Little India, where we were treated to a small open air market where a bunch of workers from the surrounding buildings were enjoying their lunches dressed in the brilliant colours typical of Indian saris.
Again, wandering completely aimlessly, we happened across a bazaar and just sort of soaked in the flavour of the area. It was positively bustling with activity. We were pretty hungry at this point, so the first chance we got we ducked into what turned out to be an incredibly authentic little restaurant. It seemed to cater almost exclusively to the local Indian population, and as such we saw many people eating with only their hands, which is one of the few times I’ve seen that.
Stuffed with a great and spicy meal, we headed on out to hostel to pick up or bags and ventured back to Puduraya station to procure tickets to the extreme North-East coast of Malaysia, where the city of Penang is located. The ride was about 5 hours, not too bad, and quite comfortable.
The long range busses are probably the best way to travel in Malaysia from what I gathered. They’re generally cheap and fast, which is a good combination in some things, like a computer, and not so good in others, like a restaurant.
They’re also comfortable. Badass reclining chairs, basically like loungers, just a lot more worn out. I guess all the wandering around in the heat had really taken it out of me because I totally passed out on the bus for a few hours. The scenery didn’t help. At least initially it was interesting looking out the window and seeing row upon row of palm trees as far as the eye can see. However, that gets a bit repetitive after the first hour. When I woke up though about 2/3 of the way through the trip I was pleased to find that we were travelling through some low limestone mountains. Awesome-desu.
Soon thereafter we arrived in Penang. Actually, kind of far from the area we wanted to be in. Apparently the bus station is located quite far from the downtown area. While we sat in the station, getting our bearings, I wandered off and, amazingly, used a squat toilet for the first time since I’ve been outside of Canada. This is just remarkable because they’re quite prevalent in Japan, so I’m not really sure myself how I managed to avoid them up to that point.
It was also a little weird because I had to A: pay for using the bathroom and B: buy toilet paper, which ended up being just a small package of Kleenex. Yep, not the Ritz-Carlton. But it was fine, if a little rough on the thighs.
Afterwards, we hopped a taxi into central Penang city where we were soon trying to find a hotel. The one that was first recommended in our book turned out to be closed (Lonely Planet should update on a yearly basis I think.) The second hotel we tried was…well…interesting.
The Blue Diamond.
I’ll get the best part out of the way first which was, unfortunately, the courtyard (?) outside the hotel. It was covered in that oh-so-classic corrugated sheet metal that just screams Vietnam. It kind of felt like being on leave in Danang or something. Ben, who was in Vietnam while we were in Malaysia, might have a better impression of that, but I felt it was close enough for us. The courtyard also contained, oddly enough, a pretty decent Mexican restaurant. Finally, it also featured a live band. Which was good in that it was live and a band, but not good in that they only knew about 6 songs. The second time they played Hotel California was the last time we sat through it.
If the hotel was a candy of some kind, I’ve established at this point that it had a wonderful milk-chocolate shell. How about the inside?
Well, when we arrived Seth went off with the manager to get a tour of the place. Melissa and I were left to our own devices trying locate him. For one, the building is pretty classic colonial. It had those huge vaulted ceilings that are so prevalent in…well…colonial buildings. It also meant that it had those badass doors that are like 9 feet tall. Approximately. Just super tall. Extremely retro-colonialist-chic.
Other than that though, bad signs abounded. From the geek’s perspective, it’s never a good sign when a hotel’s internet café (used loosely in this case) consists of computers with the side panels on the cases removed. That means that the proprietor either doesn’t have the knowledge or drive to get the inside of the computers cleaned out periodically. That pretty much carried over to the rest of the hotel. The walls were covered in peeling orange paint painted in a truly bizarre fashion. Our room was great. One queen and one single and a couch, everything well stained. The A/C unit barely worked, the bathroom had a nice big hole in the floor covered with a rock. The tub looked like every time it got dirty enough to clean someone simply splashed some paint on it instead. When Melissa and I were looking around for Seth we stumbled across the dorm portion of the building which was fucking bizarre in that there was NO DOOR. You could just walk in off the street, up the stairs, and be with everyone. It lacked a…what’s it called…oh yeah, sense of security. Right.
I make it sound like I hated the place. I actually thought it was pretty fantastic. It’s not that often you get to stay in a place with that much character. Even if a foot-long-rat runs by your table while you are eating and you have to execute a cockroach before your room is down to the number of occupants that are paying the tab. The owner was actually pretty cool too. He was pretty hyper-active and genki. He let us watch him feed the fish he kept in tanks near the front desk. Both carnivorous of course.
Anyways, we finished off the night relaxing in the room, listening to the weak A/C. I ended up taking the couch to sleep on despite the offers of the others to share either three to the big bed or two on the small bed. I declined, quoting “I’m trying to see how uncomfortable I can make myself while still remaining comfortable.” This is actually a rationale I use to make lot of decisions. Of course, I make an equal number that make me more comfortable. But one might cite my stalwart refusal to buy any kind of padding for my futon. It’s good practice, not being used to too many comforting things. That lets you sleep soundly on a ripped up old couch in a hotel in Malaysia.
And that’s that. Part 1 of 4. Next one, Penang tourism and the trip to Pulau Tioman!
Sleeping soundly…
Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello
No comments:
Post a Comment