Before getting into my thoughts on Kuala Lumpur and what I've been up to for the last week, I'd like to share the view I currently have from my table at Skybar:
Yup, that's happening. The Petronas Towers are the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. They've got a futuristic look but they still have the classiness of sparkling diamonds. I'm so enraptured by these buildings that they alone could almost convince me to work for Petronas, if only it wasn't an oil and gas company. Here are some much better photos taken with my camera and tripod:
A quite decent amount of my time in KL has been sightseeing on foot and shopping (out of necessity). I've hit all the usual touristy places (KL Tower, Merdeka Square, Central Market), explored a few neighborhoods (Chinatown, Little India, Golden Triangle), and seen my fair share of malls. Good god, the malls here! Evidently Malaysians are serious about their shopping. There are numerous malls that dwarf anything in SF, especially when they're linked together to create massive labyrinths of consumerism.
Perhaps the most egregious example of business is Low Yat Plaza, a six-story mall dedicated entirely to electronics. If that wasn't enough, the first three floors are for only mobile phones and service providers. And if that wasn't excessive, consider that all the dozens (if not hundreds) of stores and kiosks on those three floors sell the exact same phones and plans. I felt like a crazy person seeing the same displays over and over and over. I honestly don't understand how they stay in business since it's nearly impossible to differentiate them from each other, except by the level of pushiness they display to potential customers (which is how I made my shopping decisions).
I thought the cell phone culture in America was crazy, but KL takes it to another level. There are ads for phones and providers everywhere and it seems every corner store has a display case of phones and accessories. I found myself begrudgingly dragged into this culture when my phone adapter and my phone stopped working within a week of each other. Truth be told, the phone wasn't that useful anyway since it wasn't GSM; I was already thinking of unloading it. My hand forced, I shopped around and picked up one of the cheapest new phones I could find, the Sony Xperia E. It's simple, has a recent version of Android, and most importantly, can actually work as a phone here. While I was out tech shopping, I picked up a travel mouse - mostly to make photo editing much easier - and a new laptop sleeve as my old one was already falling apart (admittedly because it was incorrectly sized).
The fancy malls in the nicer areas of town stand in stark contrast to places like Chinatown and Little India, which are run down and a little grimy; you can travel from a $$$$-part of town to a $-part of town in just a few LRT stops. But that's just a manifestation of one of the foundations of KL: diversity. Everywhere you look, you'll see Chinese, Malaysians, Indians, Muslims, and the occasional Western or Japanese traveler. Women in formless burkas walk alongside their boyfriends or husbands in Tommy Hilfiger shirts. Regardless of your ethnicity or religion, Chinese food hawkers try to convince you to sit down to eat at their stalls.
Coming from America, and San Francisco in particular, this ethnic and religious mixing isn't new to me, except for the significant Muslim influence. Malaysia is the first Muslim country I've been to; I don't count Indonesia because I spent all my time in Bali, which is Hindu and animist. In fact, KTM Komuter, one of the light rail lines, has multiple cars per train that are designated for women only.
After a few hours here, I became used to all of it. Truth be told, I actually like seeing women wear hijabs; they're like long hair, but with a lot more variety of colors and patterns. And I find the burkas mysterious and even a bit intimidating, though that illusion is shattered when I hear the women speak (often to ask a mundane question like how much something costs).
In addition to wandering the city, taking lots of public transportation, and going shopping, I got a taste of the local culture (pun intended, you'll see in a second) by setting up a lunch date via the website Plate Culture, which I read about in AirAsia's in-flight magazine. It launched a few months ago and is primarily in KL for now, but is starting to expand to other locations in Southeast Asia. It's basically Airbnb for meals: you look at profiles, sign up for a meal at a host's house, and enjoy home-cooked food and conversation with your host and other guests. I had a really delicious vegetarian Chinese/Malay lunch and good conversation with Nicole, a twenty-something professional in the city who loves to cook for others. It was really nice to have a deeper conversation with a local and see how they live. And it was also really nice to be able to safely eat Chinese food without fear of consuming some gross animal part.
Outside of the city center, but still technically within the city, I visited Batu Caves and FRIM (Forest Research Institute of Malaysia). Batu Caves has become an important religious site for Hindus, which doesn't really interest me, but still has actual caves that you can take a guided tour through. My tour group was very mixed - America, Australia, England, Japan, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, with no two tourists coming from the same country - and on our hour-long tour through the "Dark Cave" we saw spiders, long-legged caterpillars (including one that ran pretty quickly by us), other cave bugs, and even a solitary plant. We saw one dead bat and heard hundreds more above our heads, constantly flying around and making noise. Coupling all the creepy crawlers with pitch darkness, this was certainly the place where you need to be comfortable with the levels of your various fears. I didn't realize how dilated my pupils were until we reached the cave opening again; I haven't had that much trouble adjusting to sunlight in a long time.
FRIM is a forest area that is sometimes described as man-made, but maybe man-preserved is a better term. There are wetlands, arboretums, nature trails, and lots of research centers, but the main attraction is the canopy walkway above the treetops. After a steep and surprisingly strenuous 500m climb, you walk across 150m of suspended walkways that hang 30m above the forest floor. No one else was there when I went, so I got to enjoy the exciting and slightly terrifying heights without interruption. When those suspensions start moving around and those wooden boards start creaking under your weight, you come to peace pretty quickly with placing all your trust into whoever made those walkways.
Now that I have some semblance of an idea for my itinerary through Malaysia, I'll be heading out of town tomorrow. The next stop is Taman Negara National Park for a couple days of hiking, but mainly for its canopy walkway, which is the largest in Malaysia. After that, it's on to the Cameron Highlands, then possibly Ipoh, then to Penang and Langkawi, though I'm not sure in which order yet.
Full photo albums: KL Architecture, FRIM Canopy Walk
Yup, that's happening. The Petronas Towers are the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. They've got a futuristic look but they still have the classiness of sparkling diamonds. I'm so enraptured by these buildings that they alone could almost convince me to work for Petronas, if only it wasn't an oil and gas company. Here are some much better photos taken with my camera and tripod:
A quite decent amount of my time in KL has been sightseeing on foot and shopping (out of necessity). I've hit all the usual touristy places (KL Tower, Merdeka Square, Central Market), explored a few neighborhoods (Chinatown, Little India, Golden Triangle), and seen my fair share of malls. Good god, the malls here! Evidently Malaysians are serious about their shopping. There are numerous malls that dwarf anything in SF, especially when they're linked together to create massive labyrinths of consumerism.
Perhaps the most egregious example of business is Low Yat Plaza, a six-story mall dedicated entirely to electronics. If that wasn't enough, the first three floors are for only mobile phones and service providers. And if that wasn't excessive, consider that all the dozens (if not hundreds) of stores and kiosks on those three floors sell the exact same phones and plans. I felt like a crazy person seeing the same displays over and over and over. I honestly don't understand how they stay in business since it's nearly impossible to differentiate them from each other, except by the level of pushiness they display to potential customers (which is how I made my shopping decisions).
I thought the cell phone culture in America was crazy, but KL takes it to another level. There are ads for phones and providers everywhere and it seems every corner store has a display case of phones and accessories. I found myself begrudgingly dragged into this culture when my phone adapter and my phone stopped working within a week of each other. Truth be told, the phone wasn't that useful anyway since it wasn't GSM; I was already thinking of unloading it. My hand forced, I shopped around and picked up one of the cheapest new phones I could find, the Sony Xperia E. It's simple, has a recent version of Android, and most importantly, can actually work as a phone here. While I was out tech shopping, I picked up a travel mouse - mostly to make photo editing much easier - and a new laptop sleeve as my old one was already falling apart (admittedly because it was incorrectly sized).
The fancy malls in the nicer areas of town stand in stark contrast to places like Chinatown and Little India, which are run down and a little grimy; you can travel from a $$$$-part of town to a $-part of town in just a few LRT stops. But that's just a manifestation of one of the foundations of KL: diversity. Everywhere you look, you'll see Chinese, Malaysians, Indians, Muslims, and the occasional Western or Japanese traveler. Women in formless burkas walk alongside their boyfriends or husbands in Tommy Hilfiger shirts. Regardless of your ethnicity or religion, Chinese food hawkers try to convince you to sit down to eat at their stalls.
Coming from America, and San Francisco in particular, this ethnic and religious mixing isn't new to me, except for the significant Muslim influence. Malaysia is the first Muslim country I've been to; I don't count Indonesia because I spent all my time in Bali, which is Hindu and animist. In fact, KTM Komuter, one of the light rail lines, has multiple cars per train that are designated for women only.
After a few hours here, I became used to all of it. Truth be told, I actually like seeing women wear hijabs; they're like long hair, but with a lot more variety of colors and patterns. And I find the burkas mysterious and even a bit intimidating, though that illusion is shattered when I hear the women speak (often to ask a mundane question like how much something costs).
In addition to wandering the city, taking lots of public transportation, and going shopping, I got a taste of the local culture (pun intended, you'll see in a second) by setting up a lunch date via the website Plate Culture, which I read about in AirAsia's in-flight magazine. It launched a few months ago and is primarily in KL for now, but is starting to expand to other locations in Southeast Asia. It's basically Airbnb for meals: you look at profiles, sign up for a meal at a host's house, and enjoy home-cooked food and conversation with your host and other guests. I had a really delicious vegetarian Chinese/Malay lunch and good conversation with Nicole, a twenty-something professional in the city who loves to cook for others. It was really nice to have a deeper conversation with a local and see how they live. And it was also really nice to be able to safely eat Chinese food without fear of consuming some gross animal part.
Outside of the city center, but still technically within the city, I visited Batu Caves and FRIM (Forest Research Institute of Malaysia). Batu Caves has become an important religious site for Hindus, which doesn't really interest me, but still has actual caves that you can take a guided tour through. My tour group was very mixed - America, Australia, England, Japan, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, with no two tourists coming from the same country - and on our hour-long tour through the "Dark Cave" we saw spiders, long-legged caterpillars (including one that ran pretty quickly by us), other cave bugs, and even a solitary plant. We saw one dead bat and heard hundreds more above our heads, constantly flying around and making noise. Coupling all the creepy crawlers with pitch darkness, this was certainly the place where you need to be comfortable with the levels of your various fears. I didn't realize how dilated my pupils were until we reached the cave opening again; I haven't had that much trouble adjusting to sunlight in a long time.
FRIM is a forest area that is sometimes described as man-made, but maybe man-preserved is a better term. There are wetlands, arboretums, nature trails, and lots of research centers, but the main attraction is the canopy walkway above the treetops. After a steep and surprisingly strenuous 500m climb, you walk across 150m of suspended walkways that hang 30m above the forest floor. No one else was there when I went, so I got to enjoy the exciting and slightly terrifying heights without interruption. When those suspensions start moving around and those wooden boards start creaking under your weight, you come to peace pretty quickly with placing all your trust into whoever made those walkways.
Now that I have some semblance of an idea for my itinerary through Malaysia, I'll be heading out of town tomorrow. The next stop is Taman Negara National Park for a couple days of hiking, but mainly for its canopy walkway, which is the largest in Malaysia. After that, it's on to the Cameron Highlands, then possibly Ipoh, then to Penang and Langkawi, though I'm not sure in which order yet.
Full photo albums: KL Architecture, FRIM Canopy Walk
