My first thoughts when arriving in Kuala Lumpur (and in Asia) were threefold. It's hot, it's humid, and there's a lot of people milling about. After the disaster in Perth, I decided to splash out on nice digs in KL, and I wasn't disappointed. From the moment I rocked up at reception a hot sweaty mess (this is to be a recurring theme), some pleasant lassie appeared from nowhere to offer me a glass of something-that-looked-like-orange-juice-but-definitely-wasn't.
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I've had worse views from my hotel
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Anyway, the hotel was lovely, and my room looked over two of the tallest buildings in Kuala Lumpur. The KL tower - which has a race to climb to the top by stairs every year. Thankfully, the race wasn't on while I was there, otherwise I'd have probably expired in the heat attempting it. The other tall buildings was ....
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| Quite big. But not as big as the ... |
... the Petronas Towers, which used to be the tallest building in the world and now don't even make the top 20.
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It also featured prominently in the film Entrapment
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For about 20 notes (or 100 Ringgit), you could go up either building, although I didn't see the point of going up the lower one, so Petronas it was (I've since found out that the observation deck in the KL tower is actually higher. Dammit). The first lift takes you up to the bridge that connects the two towers, the second takes you to the observation floor near the top. Not much else to say, except you get nice views from the top (not that surprising since you're a quarter of a mile up)
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The nice view doesn't include me btw.
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My hotel - which was no slouch in the height department - was barely a speck from here
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The grounds of the KL tower also has an upside-down house (not sure why, because Malaysia is in the northern hemisphere) ...
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The Upside Down House
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... and next door to that, a World Peace Gong with a flag of every country in the world (well, not Scotland). Perhaps it would achieved its lofty goal of World Peace if they'd also provided something to strike the gong with.
Oh, and another leafy building. Why don't we go in for these more back home ... maybe they'd be too difficult to weed?
I also managed to sign up for another "private" tour, which sounds great on paper, but it means you're paying top Ringgit to sit in some guy's motor while he drives you about. Great if he's up for a chat, less so if he's just phoning it in. Luckily, Kathir was more than up for a chat. It was Ramadan during my visit, and he was quite surprised I'd even heard of it (even though the UK is closer to Mecca than Malaysia). The tour was to take me to a key religious site that represented the three main ethnicities in Malaysia - Malay/Muslim (67%), Chinese/Buddhist (25%), and Indian/Hindu (10%). First up, the Indian temples at the Batu caves.
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| Some very colourful steps and the Lord Murugan |
I was more worried about the monkeys nicking my glasses than climbing the stairs. Thankfully, they prefer food - and I witnessed one monkey mug some poor tourist's lunch, then climb to the top of a huge pole to eat it triumphantly.
There were actually loads of wee temples dotted about the complex, but the main ones were at the top of the long stairs. The ornate and colourful templates would have been fascinating even if they hadn't been built inside caves.
The next stop was one of the largest Muslim mosques in the country. Once I'd whipped off my shoes and filled in an entrance form (I really wasn't sure what to write for the "Religion" field), I was looking around the impressive and impeccably clean rooms (there are certainly no animals running amok here)
The largest of the rooms can hold 3,000 worshippers at a time.
One of the mosque's volunteers asked if I'd ever visited a mosque before, and I told him "Yes, to get a Covid vaccination", which I think floored him somewhat.
The last religious site was definitely a new experience - a Buddhist temple. I didn't have a clue about much of what was going here (and it wasn't just the language barrier!). At one point, I was drawing sticks out of a cup to tell my future. It wasn't particularly flattering but sadly, I lost the wee bit of paper that told me I would never marry and my "fiscal forecast" was "not hopeful".
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| No tigers were harmed in the filming of this picture |
I'd now booked a tour that would take me from Thailand to Laos, so I didn't have long to get there. Before then though, I had a bus to Singapore to catch.
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