Blogs from Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia, Asia - page 194

A real city! We left Maumere at around 4:00 PM and went through Denpasar all the way to Kuala Lumpur and arrived at around 2:00 AM. Not bad. The two and a half hours it took to wipeout a whole month of overland travel from Kuta Beach to Maumere was a little disheartening. The islands ticked off so quickly. There goes Flores and Sumbawa. They announced our descent over Lombok and then we landed in Denpasar. It tended to trivialize our task. Looking at maps does the same thing. Earf is big. Kuala Lumpur is very cool if a little small for an asian city. Just a few million people. It's pretty compact, but doesn't feel that crowded. After the third world atmosphere of eastern Flores, Kuala Lumpur is like Astroland Moonbase 7, home of the ... read more

Kuala Lumpur has a wonderful and inexpensive monorail that runs north to south and is an easy way to get around. At one end of the monorail is a neighborhood called Brickfield. It is home to many Sri Lankans and Indians. In this area is a small Buddhist temple caled Maha Vihara Buddhist Temple and a Buddhist study center. It was founded by the Sinhalese community based in Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding areas provide a place of worship in their Sri Lankan Theravada tradition. The temple is relatively modest but was a very warm place to be. I was lucky enough to have been there when a young couple was having their wedding photographs taken. And they were sweet enough to let me snap a few shots while their official photographer laughted and let me ... read more

No pictures with this blog im afraid, cos our camera got nicked...but we shall just bore you all with words instead! We spent a couple of days in the Cameron Highlands after the rainforest, which are the highest towns in Malaysia and much cooler than the rest of the country. So nice to spend a few days without sweating all the time!!! We explored huge tea plantations, forests and strawberry fields and ate far too much yummy Malay chinese food :) Did have lovely picture of all the green tea covered hills, but hey. Went to a Tea factory, which frankly stank of tea, and as neither of us can stand tea, it was a bit much! After the higlands, we came back down to the heat and on to the Island of Penang in the ... read more

Saturday - 25th March, 2006 Day 4 of our worldwide adventures… Today we decided to visit the KL Zoo. We walked into town where we had to catch the bus and boarded the bus on our way. The bus trip gave us another view of the city we had not seen, this time it was a view of the lower class living and working areas. With more road side food stalls and shops. We watched the different suburbs go past as we both secretly hoped this zoo was worth the bus ride. Roger was sceptical that it might be a small tin shed in someone’s back yard with a few chickens. But we ventured on our way, to arrive at what looked like a proper zoo. We walked in the car park gates to get swamped ... read more

Before I left Washington DC, I had been given very precise instructions from a friend to get a traditional, colorful Malaysian hijab (the head scarf that Muslim women wear). Especially at lunch time when women pour of their offices and in bazars on the weekends, the streets of Kuala Lumpur become a sea of gorgeous and colorful hijabs of the Malaysian style--beautiful and richly colored shades of purple, blue, green, red, and pink. Many include beautiful batik designs with intricate designs, such as flowers and vines. I had my instructions. While walking around a neighborhood in Kuala Lumpur, I approached a small group of Malaysian Muslim women who were wearing hijabs and I asked where I could get one. This involved more sign language and a lot of curious looks and smiles--for good reason. First, in ... read more