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Published: April 20th 2009
Visitng a Mosque in KL
They gave us these robes when we entered. Let the culture touring begin. The trip thus far has been about beaches and diving. The Philippines just did not have the rich cultural interests for us that other SE Asian countries have. Spain was such a brutal colonial power. They actively destroyed the native cultures of the lands they colonized and the Philippines was no exception. We saw this when we toured in South America. I remember in Bolivia seeing precolonial statues that the archaeologists had found. They would be defaced, literally, with crosses carved in them. The Spanish policy was that their pagan subjects should convert or die.
The British, Dutch, Portuguese and French were in it for the money. They let their colonized subjects carry on with their beliefs as long as it did not interfere with their commerce. They were not saints by any means, but at least they did not kill people who would not convert to, say, protestantism and gratuitously destroy their revered holy places. The gold plated Inca capitol of Cusco was totally destroyed. The Taj Mahal survived.
We caught a 10 pm flight out of Manila on March 31. All I can say is that it must have been cheap. We
arrived in KL, or near KL at 12:30. Unbeknown to us, we arrived at the low cost airport. They have 2, high and low cost. The low cost airport is twice as far from KL, 70 km, so the cab ride was expensive. We got to our hotel at about 2 and crashed.
We stayed in an area called the “Golden Triangle.” We chose it because we read it had a large concentration of restaurants. In our limited experience of KL this turned out to be true. It was also ground zero for shopping. There are at least 7 huge malls within 3 blocks of our hotel. We promptly went to one of the newest, Times Square, and hit the Borders. Karen wanted a book on Malaysian food and I wanted something cultural/political about the country. We checked out the new neighborhood, bought a chip for our phone, found the restaurant row, got laundry done....all of the usual first day in town stuff.
Malays migrated up from Indonesia maybe 1000 years ago. They drove the local less advanced tribes into the hills. These minority ethnic Malays are now a downtrodden class. The Chinese came here as traders and
set up settlements in Melaka and later Penang in the 1400s. There the Chinese intermarried and became the Straights Chinese, or the Nyonya. They have a wonderful cuisine and their coffee, Kopi, is to die for. Then came the European colonizers, first the Portuguese, then the Dutch and finally the British. The British brought in many many Chinese and Indians to work in the plantations and the tin mines. So today in Malaysia, the Malays run the government, the Chinese are the businessmen, they run the economy, the Indians and the ethnic Malays struggle economically. Islam is the majority religion, followed by Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism with some percentage of Christians thrown in for good measure. Everybody pretty much gets along just fine.
The contrast between Manila and KL was dramatic. Manila, 5th largest urban area (Wiki) in the world is also one of the most dense (14,090/km2). KL is # 48 with 5.7 m people and only 2,130/km2. Just for comparison, Chicago is #26 with 9.6 m people and density of 1,600. Manila's gritty chaos is stark contrast to KL's planned orderliness. KL has good public transit with 3 intercity lines and several intracity lines feeding workers to the
Entrance to Pedaling street Kl
This is in the heart of Chinatown and is one of the big touristic destinations. city from the suburbs. One of the lines is a monorail, which is pretty cool. Like most more recently developed cities, KL's subway and elevated lines are very impressive compared to Chicago's, which look quite shabby in comparison.
As we have been finding, the mall is a big element in the cities in Asia. The dining and shopping scenes are dominated by big malls. There just is not as much happening on the street. Arguably, we may just be moving too fast to find the smaller off the beaten track places, but it really seems that the mall is a much bigger part of the equation in these big cities than we have found in the states. In KL and Singapore we picked up a copy of each city's Time Out Magazine to try to get the pulse of the city. We rely on Time Out in Chicago for good dining and drinking info. Most of he recommended places were in malls.
We had some really good meals on Time Out's recommendation. It was interesting, they rated every dining option from fancy places to hawker stalls. Unfortunately we either could not find the hawker places they mentioned or
they were just too far from PT for us to go. We did eat at other hawker places frequently, especially for breakfast and lunch. Breakfast is always a tough meal. Karen does the soup thing here in Asia. I'm not into that. In Malaysia and Singapore I usually went for the Nasi Lemak, a Nyonya dish. Nasi Lemak is Redang chicken curry, coconut rice, peanuts, dried fish bits and a spicy sambal (salsa). There was usually half a hard boiled egg too. Yummy, curry, the breakfast of champions!
The food was really great in Malaysia and Singapore. First there is Nyonya food which is a blend of Chinese, Malay and India. Then you have your Malay food. Add to this mix several regional types of Indian and Chinese. Being international cities the western food was also very good. The variety was really refreshing coming from the Philippines.
The Nyonya coffee, or kopi as it is known, was really good. It is Robusta coffee roasted with butter, sugar and sesame. They brew it by pouring hot water back and forth through the ground coffee contained in a fine mesh sleeve. It is interesting to watch. Kopi O is black.
I liked the Kopi, also known as white coffee, which had lots of sweetened condensed milk added. I usually had it over ice. The coffee is thick and, of course, sweet, but it is balanced by the more bitter Robusta coffee. The butter, sugar and sesame from the roasting process add a strong carmely flavor.
We spent 4 nights in KL before catching a bus up to Penang, a 4.5 hour ride. We took a Transnasional bus and it was one of the nicest we have ever been on. Most busses have a 2 and 2 seat configuration. This was 2 and 1, really spacious. The highway up was perfect except that they insist on driving on the wrong side of the road. I digress, but I am allowed, it's my damn blog. I am pretty used to being in left hand drive countries, especially after out West Indies trip last year. I have learned, especially after being in places like Saigon (right drive) that one must look left, right, up, down and back before stepping off the curb. I do sometimes get caught. I was crossing the street with the light the other day and a truck was
turning left. I looked into the cab to make eye contact with the driver, to make sure he saw me. The guy was leaning out the left window looking at a pretty girl walking past. The truck was rounding the corner and he was not even kind of looking at where he was going. I started to become alarmed just as I realized I was looking at the passenger, not the driver. I still get caught by the seemingly driverless cars with passengers speeding down the road.
Penang is a smallish island a mile off the west coast about halfway up to the frontier with Thailand. It is an old trading center. The attraction is the colonial architecture and it's rich history. We had heard from many travelers about how good the food was. We stayed at the Cititel in Georgetown which is where all the touristic stuff is. We booked 3 nights and stayed on one additional night. We toured the colonial areas, Chinatown, Little India and spent a day up on Penang Hill. There are some really interesting and beautiful Chinese temples and clan houses dating back hundreds of years. This culture touring is really hard work,
exhausting. One big reason is the heat. On a sunny day, by 10am it is punishingly hot in the sun. The highs have been ranging up into the low 90's with high humidity.
We caught an Airasia flight from Penang to Johol Bahru. JB is at the southern tip of the country just across the causeway from Singapore. We took a cab from the airport through immigration and customs to our hotel. All I can say is that the speed with which we cleared through was impressive. This is a highly trafficked border with tens of thousands of Malaysians commuting to jobs in Singapore every day. I hope our busy crossings with Mexico and Canada are as well thought out and efficient. It was Good Friday, the beginning of a 4 day weekend in Singapore. We got lucky, the traffic was terrible coming out of the city but we sailed right in. I don't think it was a long weekend in muslim Malaysia.
Singapore is a very different kind of city than I have ever toured (4.5 m people, 9,400 density). It is the most immaculately manicured, orderly city imaginable. It is like a city in a park.
It is mostly mid to high rise buildings. Away from the city core the apartment developments stretched on for miles, block after block of identical 15 story buildings distinguished only by the number on the top, 144, 58 or 26...The roads were perfect. The trains were spotless. The sidewalks scrubbed down. This is the place that bans chewing gum and kaned the kid for keying a car. Karen felt there was a “Stepford Wives” creepiness to the place. The core was a very walkable city, which was refreshing when compared to Manila or Bangkok. They are really tense about jay walking, There are signs in the middle of each block admonishing the pedestrian not to jay walk. In most cases it was impossible without climbing a fence or bushwhacking through a thick hedge. To their credit there were many pedestrian flyovers and every light had a button to get the “little green man” for the pedestrian crossing. I like to jaywalk and felt a little corralled at times going a block out of my way to get to the corner. We had a very pleasant time but were ready to go after 4 nights. We toured the colonial core, Chinatown,
Little India and their megamall strip, Orchard Road. The area along the Singapore river was very nice. They have redeveloped the old quays into restaurant, nightlife and (of course) shopping areas. It was an easy walk from out hotel. They had it set up very well with pedestrian bridges between all of the streets. They have really long blocks.
From Singapore it was back to Malaysia for a 4 hour bus ride to Melaka. Melaka is another old trading center with deep Nyonya and colonial roots. It is a lot smaller than Georgetown and really quite sleepy. There was not much to do there, we toured their Chinatown and looked at their colonial buildings. The food was a little disappointing. We had trouble finding anything open on our first night in town. We stayed 3 nights, which was plenty, and caught our bus back to KL.
We went out to a Indian restaurant we liked on Friday, our first night here and had a great meal. The place is located on the street here in the Golden Triangle with many other restaurants and bars. It's a pretty happening little strip. After dinner we went to an ex-pat bar
called Green Man, that's right, yet another of Ireland's greatest exports. There we ran into a bunch of Americans who are living in KL and closed the place. It was a fun night. Overnight, Karen got sick from something she ate, probably the marginal mall sushi we had for lunch.
At this point in a long trip, we are really in the mind set of waiting for the plane, especially now, less than 12 hours before our flight at 10:55 pm. We are both anxious to go back to our easy life in Chicago where we know where everything is, how to get there, the familiar food, a routine.
I hope we'll see all of you soon! If not, look out for a blog from our next trip. Our next trip out this way will probably include Borneal Malaysia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
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AmerExpatKL
non-member comment
Do come this way again. Yes, you have to cover Borneo next time. Totally different from KL, so exotic. And try out the durian. This fruit beat Andrew Zimmern, the NY chef who goes all over the world and eats anything except the durian. He spitted the durian out of his mouth in a durian farm in Penang on his TV show. :)