Monkeys, Museums, Butterflies and Movies

Kuala Lumpur is turning out to be a great city. It is somewhere between Tokyo and Bangkok, cheap things if you want it, classy exciting new technology around the next corner. The twin towers are amazing, at night they look sensational.

We ventured over to the monorail yesterday towards the Lake Gardens, got a little lost then found a huge Mosque, I was not that keen to go in. I feel funny about going into places of worship when I have no intention of worshipping. We did end up going into the museum of Islamic art, very pretty. Amazing architecture and interesting to see how Islam has spread over the world around various Asian countries. Also very sobering to be once more reminded of religion's incredible power to inspire people to create and imagine such beautiful things, with the other side of the coin being its power to encourage hatred, discrimination and fear. We continued to walk up the road and noticed a monkey in the bush, then more monkeys, then monkeys everywhere across the road, people were pulling over to see them and one guy on a scooter pulled over and put food on the side walk and they came out to eat. Very cute I wanted to go over and play with them, I wish I had some food to give them. We continued up the road and went to the butterfly habitat. So many pretty butterflies and the gardens that had been setup were quite spectacular. It was hard to take their photos as they kept on flying away, very inconsiderate of the tourists.

We kind of felt done with museums and gardens and walking, so we found a cab, a funny Indian guy was driving who was quite chatty and quoted us a price to get to Chinatown. Just before arriving he said, you people are good tourists and good tourists tip. I said “I assumed the initial price you quoted us included a tip”. He murmured something and we got out. Chinatown was just like walking through Bangkok markets, not quite as pushy, but the prices and merchandise were all very similar, I was regretting bringing any clothes over at all. For Dot who hasn't been to Bangkok it was very much like how one would imagine an Asian city - noisy, dirty, crowded and poor. We found our way to a makeshift mall and I bought a power cable for my laptop (turns out Malaysia uses the same power point style as UK). It cost $3.00. We also found a great lunch that left us very full and cost us $5 each. When we walked out it was pouring. The markets were flooded and there was water on the ground a few inches deep. People didn't really care, just waded through in their sandals and bare feet in some cases. It felt like real travelling, making our way through the temporary river that had formed at our feet. Chinatown is not well serviced by stormwater drains; we walked past several mechanic workshops that had been flooded. We found the monorail again and returned to Bintang, a great area near our hotel which was not flooded; a clear sign of where KL's municipal services money is being spent.

If you are ever in KL you must go to the shopping mall in Bintang that is attached to a hotel. It is like a mall inside the Hyatt, or like the Hyatt inside a mall. Marble floors, marble toilets, classy shops and the food court has to be seen to be believed, very hard to describe but each little restaurant has its own theme, some of them had glass bottles up to the ceiling others had sails to separate them from the other shops, words can’t do it justice. It was like an underground dungeon full of fancy restaurants. We checked out the prices and promised ourselves we'd return on our last night for dinner. We headed back to the hotel and used the newly bought cable to watch Dodgeball from the laptop.

We headed back over to the mall next to the twin towers for a cheap dinner, it was not too bad, then on a whim we decided to see a movie. Dinner and a movie plus a Sprite cost us $12 each, begging the question, why are we moving to the UK for a year? We queued up to get our ticket and this woman ran past the queue and demanded the salesman's attention and just bought a ticket, it was one of the rudest things I have ever seen. On a par with Parisians really. They were out of chocolate at the candy shop, this was sad as we wanted some kit kats. We watched Dead Silence by the guys who did Saw, it was pretty scary, except in the movie phones were ringing, phones being answered, rustling of bags and candy being eaten loudly (which we did not have). Would have been much scarier had the noise been less, if it is a horrible rainy day we might go again today. We got poured on going home (again) and then just snuggled up and went to sleep bitching about the rudeness.

This morning Dot slept in and then we headed back over to Bintang to have breakfast (yesterday we found out the hotel would charge us over $30 for breakfast, not too bad in Australian terms but around here it's a rip off) and then went back to the Chinatown district. This time we went straight up to Central Market, claimed to be 'KL's centre of arts, music and culture.' The prices weren't as good as Chinatown but it was a more relaxing (and air conditioned) environment. Except for the Gwen Stefani being piped through the complex. Dot had her heart set on buying a bracelet of some kind and ended up with a silver bangle she didn't even need to haggle on, because the salesgirl gave a discount right away. We had lunch in the food court (less than $2 for Dot's plate of fried rice, $3 for Toby's beef teppanyaki and vegies on rice) and also visited the Independence Square, where Malaysia was declared independent from Britain. This year is the 50th anniversary of that occasion so everywhere you go you are reminded of that. Next to the Independence Square was the National History Museum which cost us 30 cents each to visit. It was a good if brief (and slightly biased) introduction to Malaysian history, which appears to be complicated and violent for the most part. We have now returned to our hotel to have a cup of tea and relax (yes we are old) and maybe a swim/visit to the gym, before heading out again to the amazing mall-in-a-hotel food court for dinner.

The last few days have been easy, we just seem to have become adept at travel, it's not scary, we get lost we add it to the adventure, we find our own way very well and we don’t fret about ordering strange food either. I think our trip to Japan turned us into more hardened travellers. We are certainly avoiding the tap water this time around.