Leaving KL,and the irony of floods

View of 7 floors of the Starhill Gallery mall

Our final night in KL was spent in the amazing hotel-cum-mall. The pictures do not do it justice. We explored it a little before dinner, on every level would be little collections of chairs like you find in a hotel lobby, but with a theme, like white leather and purple cushions, or old-fashioned mahogany and burgundy. On one floor was a little coffee kiosk surrounded by funky patterned tub chairs clustered around small tables on which lay games like chess or cards. Each level itself had a theme as well, like the 'Pamper' level full of beauty salons and cosmetic surgeries, and the 'Muse' level made up of art shops and galleries. The 'Relish' level was the undergroud 'food court', which is where we headed for dinner. We ate in a very trendy Indian restaurant, with the highlight as far as I was concerned being a round of bread with a similar texture to naan, only denser, with a topping of honey, coriander, garlic, and pepper. After dinner we had a drink in one of the bars, this one had massive columns of glass bottles going up to the ceiling which was also decorated in lots of coloured glass lanterns. It was staffed by young Chinese women in impossibly short black dresses which the older male tourists (and some younger ones...) seemed to appreciate, although in Australia they would be a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen. You really noticed them especially given the high number of Muslim women wearing full hijab who were walking past.

Toby with his drink in the trendy restaurant, a coconutty, gingery thing with what looked like pesto on top. Mmmm, trendy.

Which brings us to probably the most overused cliche in travel writing - the 'land of contrasts'. It's an awful phrase but suits KL well. Take Bintang as an example, which was a lot like Surfers Paradise, especially at night, only with more Muslims. Which meant a conspicuous lack of little skirts and high heels, and a lot of flowing black and colourful headscarves which are clearly as much a fashion accessory as shoes or bags, carefully chosen to suit one's outfit. The scarves are treated like hair - girls re-do them in bathrooms and rearrange them before having photos taken. Another example would be the workmen we walked past after getting off the monorail one day, who were squatting on the ground below that multi-million dollar piece of infrastructure, patiently chipping away at the concrete footpath with chisels. Monorail? Check. Jackhammers? Only for wusses.

The next morning we left our lovely hotel and got a taxi to the airport, which is about an hour's drive away. Thus began our 20-hour journey to Heathrow, which for the most part was uneventful although riddled with frustrations as these are. Like the shops near our departure gate in KL not selling lollies, tissues or water. WTF? Poor sound on the flight, although the individual tv screens meant I could watch 5 episodes of Grey's Anatomy in a row. Missing the bus at Heathrow because the English don't believe in signs. We made it to Margaret's about 9.30 that night. It was a lovely summer evening that reminded us of home. Margaret fed us and we promptly went to bed.

And no, we haven't floated away down the Thames. The floods are obviously the biggest news item here right now. The media's loving it, especially the irony. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!!!! Today I read that Rhianna's 'Umbrella' is at the top of the charts, the longest number 1 since Wet, Wet, Wet. I don't know if that's true, but it makes for a good story. I'm not sure the people wading through their streets clutching bottles and buckets on the search for clean water are appreciating the irony.

Luckily the area of Oxford where we're staying is unaffected by the heavy floods currently soaking England. But the area where our bank sent our account information was. The corner of the road where the bank was had flooded. It was blocked off by bollards and there was a police van full of police sitting there, but I'm not sure what they were supposed to be doing - they certainly didn't try and stop anyone walking or cycling through the water. The lady behind the front desk at the bank was filling in for the usual staff, who apparently couldn't get in. So everything took quite a long time, but it's done now. Ready to earn some pounds, just as soon as someone hires me.

Man cycles through flood, determined to get...somewhere.

Today we came back into town for a wander around Christ Church and more internet cafes. I am typing this in Pie Minister where we ate rather overpriced pies (with mash and gravy, of course) but where the wi-fi is free. The prices in the UK are a disappointment, especially after KL. Everything costs the same in pounds as it did in ringgits, only instead of dividing by 3, you multiply by 2.4 to get the conversion. The trick I think is to just start thinking in pounds, otherwise we will get too depressed.

Gardens around Christ Church college.

I do like Oxford very much, I said to Toby it's a place that resonates with me. He thought that was strange but it's true. I feel very at home here. Unfortunately the rental prices here are way out of our range. Tonight we are buying Margaret some Indian takeaway, and then tomorrow we are off to Edinburgh for a week.

Margaret's lovely English house, in an English lane. Very Jane Austen.

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.

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur

Well here we are in KL. I like to say KL because I'm afraid I'll pronounce it wrong (koala lumper anyone?). As could be predicted, it's hot and humid here. We just spent some time at the bar in our hotel by the pool, a very civilised way to have a beer and some chips until a tropical storm blew in. Even then it wasn't so bad. Things you would never put up with at home become bearable when you're on holidays. When in Rome.

We arrived late last night and quickly realised our lack of preparation for our time here was, while unavoidable, a good recipe for feeling out of one's depth. For the first time we have arrived in a foreign country without (a) an idea of what we'd like to do here, or (b) how to say hello or thankyou. We have previously found that these two words are the most important to have in order to come across as polite. Instead we have found ourselves like bumbling strangers, without any social graces, simply nodding our heads and murmering thankyou everywhere. We have since looked up online how to say those words, but have yet to try them out properly.

After a lazy morning we ate breakfast in the hotel lobby (lazy, but easy when one's brain has shut down due to lack of fuel) and then headed off to see the Petronas Towers. They are about 10 minutes walk from our hotel. When we glimpsed them from the taxi window last night they looked pretty, all lit up in silver lights, and reasonably impressive, but seen from the ground level in the daylight they were massive. And beautiful, all curves and squares, not your average skyscrapers:

At the foot of the Towers is a shopping mall, of course. Seven levels of window-shopping, because (a) we don't have any room in our luggage for more stuff, and (b) we couldn't afford a lot of it anyway. Which is a shame as we both had some very exciting moments in the mall. The first was when we saw a real-life Jimmy Choo boutique. I have never seen Jimmy Choos outside of TV or magazines so this was a moment where dreams became reality for me. I only saw a few pairs from the window as I wasn't really dressed for browsing, but suffice to say they were as gorgeous as you would imagine. Toby didn't share the amazement but his time would come in the toy shop a few levels up when he spied a miniature monster truck with 5 horse power. Apparently this is about on a par with our lawn mower at home, even though it looked like a toy. There was a sign on it saying THIS IS NOT A TOY. I found it hard to imagine the point of it, but Toby tells me boys would understand.

Other interesting things in the mall included the creepy mannequins (little boys making faces and holding their fingers like guns, small faces with noses but nothing else), Muslim women dressed in full garb, the pink laptop I was almost tempted by in the Sony shop, and job vacancy posters in shop windows which would not be allowed in Australia ('cashier needed, female only'). The mall was full of expensive designer outlets, so there must be a good bit of money in KL, although the busiest section was the market area down the bottom with jewellery and knick knack stalls. It's amazing you can fly on a plane for 9 hours only to find the same shops selling the same things.

We are having a relax this afternoon since the weather's not good and we think we deserve one. Plus I found a Malaysian soap opera on TV, I'm not quite sure what the story line is but from what I can tell the young handsome doctor is involved in an illicit affair, possibly with the headscarfed woman old enough to be his mother. His real mother is a real drama queen who doesn't stop shouting. They have an innovative plot device on the show which consists of playing a scene twice - once for real, the second time with one of the characters replaying it in their head, like a memory montage.

Tonight if the weather clears we'll head off to Bukit Bintang, KL's 'premier shopping and entertainment district' for dinner etc. If the weather stays like this we'll go downstairs, since the hotel has a reasonable looking Japanese restaurant. Tomorrow we're hoping to head out to the Lake Gardens to check out some museums, markets and the Independence Square where Malaysia was declared independent from Britain 50 years ago, followed by dinner in Chinatown if we can last that long. Should be a good day.

I will end with a final picture of what I like to call the scooter jungle. This is KL's efficient and sensible solution to parking shortages in the city.