City Tour - Kuala Lumpur

---

One of the best ways to view a city- at least on an introductory level is a city tour. Its kind of weird spending Easter (Orthodox) touring a city but hey, its an experience. It started really early, meaning that at 8 :45 we were picked up and ready to go.



Mr Fong our guide picked us up, an after a short stop to registrate, we begam the tour. First stop was at a chinese temple. In Malaysia they are mainly Muslims, Hindu, and Chinese, so you see all of these influences throughout- our hostel is surrounded by all those temples of the above religions.To continue the description of the tour, we have been introduced to certain ceremonies, first being that we had to take off your shoes. We went inside the temple which was amazing, i love the architecture and the use of colour, its more 3dimentional compared to the Christian Churches. He told us that this year is the year of the dragon with the water element, then he asked ours, know for a fact that i am Tiger and Joanna is Rabbit but we were not sure about the elements. To get a proper reading by a master you have to follow the advice so tht you ll find prosperity and good luck. Certain elements like high roofs and paintings/sculptures of fish one can put in their house for good Feng Sui, but in order to put lions and dragons the master has to read ur luck to define if you are luck is more than 2 lions etc. ( one of the lions is female and usually its the one that has a closed mouth- it protects the children and the family/ the male has an open mouth and protects the business. The lions are placed at the entrance.)

After taking soeme pictures of the temple we moved on to the yard where there were sculptures of each animal and took pictures with them. Mum is Dog and Dad is Horse, very interesting😊 Moving along we passed the National Museums that are clustered together at one destination, then the next stop was the new palace, as it seems they have relocated palaces with the new one being only 4 months old. The amount of money spend was 1 billion for the residence of the king & queen. Each king ( there are 9) rules only for 5 years and they rotate from each district. Some districts like Malacca and a couple others do not have kings due to the fact that they were held by the English. Malacca until now is ruled by the English, and still has Dutch and Portuguese neighbourhoods.

For a brief History lesson on KL we passe from the KL City Gallery where there were maps of how the city evolved and some historical facts like the flood of 1971, an that Malacca was once the Centre of Malaysia which very interesting as it is highlighted on Independence Day, they can not officially start the celebrations unless Malacca fires some fireworks. On the Actual Independence day the people can meet the King at only one day of the Year! His Birthday😊 imagine how many ppl he has to see!!! On the actual square - there was a huge screen that showed the rally, very thoughtfull. Honestly some countries are really considerate of tourism. Leaving from that destination we saw that the lampposts had the national flower as a decorative element and commented on how cool it woul have been if the lamppost was painted green.

As in other countries there was a monument for those who fought at war, the first 2 wars were WW1 and WW2 and the 3rd was when they were held under Japanese siege where the only language taught and spoken was Japanese. There was another fact about trying to resist Communism something that they managed, but Thailand did not. Our kind guide also explained the coat of arms which is very intricate but symbolises the unity between the states, there are 14- a star symbolises that( it has 14 edges). There are symbolsoff the fleet and army and the national flower and the Malay tiger if I'm not mistaken.

Next part was a personal favourite as we went to taste white coffee, chocolate and see the art of batik. So coffee was great, comes in different tastes, even durian- cant imagine someone liking that.Next to that , literally was the chocolate shop which was unsupringly it was packed, there was someone doing something with chocolate, it was too crowded do I did not get a closer look. We were the only English speaking persons there and soon enough we got someone to give us a mini your/ tasting. There were the covered choc almonds and dark , but there was a really nice ginseng one and even a curry flavoured one! Another thing that Annita could appreciate was a quite big and intricate chocolate dragon sculpture. I cannot imagine the patience for the person who did it.

Next= time for batik. Obviously we have heard of the art but never saw how the actually make it. They have big tables and secure a piece of fine cloth depending on what they are making, either silk / cotton etc and then the artist draws the pattern. It was quiteamazing , he dips a kind of brush into some kind of melted glue and draws . What is amazing is that when you paithe the artefact ,the paint never goes further than the glue-and when the whole thing is painted where the glue was, there is only white, it kind of melts. But they have various techniques, for example if they want it outlined they have a way of making it.

To end the tour we went back to the office, because the guide had said something about the jungle( our soft spot) and it was quite cheap compared to our other jungle experiences so we thought why not? So we went back to the office and arranged our departure from Cameron Highlands which was already arranged to Taman Negara!

---