Kuala Lumpur

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Thursday, 3rd June, Kuala Lumpur.

The ship docked in the Port of Kelang where we became a part of farcicle operation of trying to organise 1500 ageing Australian pensioners into tour groups for the trip into Kuala Lumpur. And what a farce it was. I have seen better organized wars and it was funny, but not funny, seeing everyone walking round in circles not knowing where to go and trying to follow instructions issued by Ships crew who didn’t know where to send us. How we all ended up aboard thirty odd coaches in some semblance of order is beyond me.

Anyway, off we go on a hot steamy day in a hot steamy coach. If we thought Darwin, Bali and Singers was hot then we got a shock in this place. And it got better still, we ended up with a tour guide called Ben who was Malay Chinese who could hardly speak an intelligible word of English and who used the microphone so close to his mouth he sounded like a second rate drunken bar room crooner singing ’I did it my way’ in Yiddish. By the end of the 1 hour drive into KL and trying to interpret what Ben was saying I had a massive headache. Still, this is life in the tropics and we are here to experience it, so on we go eh ?

How to describe Kuala Lumpur ? In four words, Petronius, Concrete, heat and traffic. A cosmopolitan City by any standard. Big, brash, modern, busy but a good 10 years behind Singapore in style and class. A concrete jungle of massively tall buildings dominated by the Petronius twin towers, once the tallest building in the world. The traffic is extremely busy, like Sydney on steroids, but they have a very good motorway system with plenty of Toll booths and believe me they need it for the amount of traffic they have. I will talk about the ‘heat factor’ shortly.

We were dropped off at the base of the twin towers after an hours drive and we immediately went into the Petronius Mall at the foot of the towers. What an event this was, with a magnificent shopping area that had seven floors of shops. Extremely modern, classy and clean with all the worlds top clothing and jewellery designers on show. I got a shock after seeing a shop, in between an Armani store and a Nike sports shop was a ‘HARLEY DAVIDSON’ motor cycle shop selling motor bikes and HD clothing. Never seen the like of it before.

We wanted to go up the twin towers but it was booked out for tours so we missed out. We decided to use the ‘hop on-hop off’ bus system which went to 150 minutes with 22 stops around the city. It was supposed to be air conditioned but we found after a while that the air conditioning was about as much use as three dogs wagging their tails in our faces. It was stinking hot, I have never felt humidity like this before, even in Australia. It was a great experience though and it took us to places we never would have seen such as China town, The Royal palace, the poorer suburbs where we saw how folk really live and other interesting places.

When we alighted from the bus we went back into the Petronius Malls fantastic aircon cooled paradise and just walked and people watched for 2 hours after a meal in an eating area like no other I have ever seen. We call them ‘food halls’ in our Malls, but this was just a massive conglomerate of eating venues with hundreds and hundreds of people grazing like cattle. It was amazing.

Of course we saw hundreds of Moslem females and girls in this area. Malaysia is predominantly a Moslem State so it was to be expected, but sitting and watching all this it came to me that all the young teenage Moslem girls were just the same as other girls of their age. Giggling, eyeing up the boys, chattering, laughing, wearing designer jeans, shoes, watches, iPods, mobiles etc, the only obvious difference being their headwear. The teenage boys we saw again were no different, perving, wearing modern designer clothing etc but the big difference was that we found that people were polite, well mannered, accepting of others and certainly not obnoxious or loud. We saw so many different cultures in this place that it reminded me of Bankstown Square on a Thursday night multiplied by a factor of ten.

I wish I could have said the same of some of the Aussies we observed. I’m afraid the ‘Ugly American’ tag can now be worn by some of our own countrymen and women. Many of the older generation take great delight in criticizing the behaviour and manners of todays youth, but after seeing the extremely poor manners of some of our elderly passengers I think they should keep their mouths firmly closed. Some of them might have the cash to go on a cruise such as this, but the saying that ‘you can polish a turd, but it’s still a turd’ immediately comes to mind..

All in all a very interesting but tiring day. We managed to drive the one hour back to the ship with our guide Ben keeping his mouth shut for the bigger part of the journey and when we got back to our ‘home away from home’ we dropped on our beds and slept for an hour, showered and went for our evening meal.

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Comments

[Kirstie]

Where are the photos.
We need photos.. Your commentary is great but would be even better with photos.