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Published: January 22nd 2009
Petronis Towers
It is really hard to get a good shot of the towers!Malaysia
Well we have arrived at 10.30 at night and found a cab, after purchasing a prepaid taxi coupon, Advice we received at the airport. Little did we know we were in for a very quick & scary taxi ride... as we watch the speedo hit 140km's/hr I notice the drivers eyes slowly closing...”Tired are you?!!!!!” What the...! Lynne does her best to keep him awake, chat, chat,chat, complete confusion on the drivers face...cos' he doesn't speak English! We were very happy to arrive at our hotel in one piece.
Into KL city centre we go..... this place is huge! We slept until noon after arriving at 1am at the Prescott Hotel. We booked online at Agoda.com and due to a promotion the room was ½ price US$15/night...How cool is that?! The plan for the first day...check out what there is to do and make a plan. So our plan to make a plan and find coffee! sounds good. Our thoughts were to spend a couple of days in 3 or 4 different cities/towns and fly out to Hong Kong, not going to happen.(We've been watching the weather there, Brrrr!) KL has so much to offer and all within a
We found the monkey!
He was hanging around having lunch with the locals. small distance from the city centre. KL is set up for tourism! Well that is an understatement! Buses, tourist and standard, Monorail, Trains etc., etc. Getting around a city has never been this easy. The main places we selected to see are the national mosque, the Islamic arts centre, China town, little India, of course the shopping district and who could miss the Patronas Towers and the big needle thingy...oh yea the Kuala Lumpur Tower.
Time to do some touristy stuff. The KL tower and the Patronas Towers today. They are fairly close together, well sort of. Depending on the holder of the map and the ability to find north. (the maps are not to scale). We walk around about and through a back street and happen across some monkeys begging for food at the local food stalls. Found it! the big telecommunications tower. They have turned it into a bit of a show with a winter theme park, animal zoo and grand prix video game cars at the base and of course the viewing platform at the top. For the small price of 38RM each you can see all. (RM=ringgit or local dollar = 2.3AUS). You also get
Entry to the elevators in the tower.
The ceiling all hand cut mirror pieces. Shiny...Sparkly.....ooooaaaaaa! a free info head set...so Lynne is set for the next hour, info being directly down loaded to the brain! The view from up here is great. You can see across to the mountain range and back to the sea. The landscape is different it has some similarities to Vietnam but flatter. The urban spread can bee seen clearly, you can't tell where the city ends and the suburbs begin. We visit the animal zoo after the platform and they have some great creatures in there. A HUGE python the length wasn't printed but the girth had to have been 500mm or larger, HUGE tarantulas (they don't move much) the standard lizards Etc.
Time to walk to the towers. These guys, phallic symbols - after all two huge shiny stainless steel structures joined by a thin membrane half way up? There had to have been some grunting going on in the board room the day these were completed. The trip to the viewing level of these is free, yes free. However the tickets are limited to 2000/day and you are allotted a time to visit and each day they are sold out. Yes they are sold out most days so
get in early. Then up to the viewing level, it is not high, it is not as a spectacular view compared to the KL Tower.
The ability for man to build something of such significance, originality of design and link it to the culture so closely is an outstanding achievement.
Our funny host for breakfast is an Indian fellow who, well in olden terms dresses to the left? (I think) But he is nice and very helpful. Each morning he asked us “And where are you going today?” Including the little head wobble. The info he gave us turned out to be great a quick chat each day was helpful. “We're off to the shops we say” he suggests the better shopping is in the Bukit Bintang area. Make a plan, go into town and see the big shopping area, briefly! Yea right, like briefly is way understated! Now there are a lot of shopping centres I have been to in Australia and they are neat and tidy and nice. Here they are BIG...bloody big and busy. We visited various shops inside many plazas and many plazas. You know what the good places are straight away. They are
the busy places. The places where you are literally rubbing shoulders with people trying to get to the same place you are and pushing your way through the other half of the crowd heading out! Food courts and stalls on every level, vendors selling every type of gizmo and novelty that they believe will be the next fad or the next 'to die for' accessory. You have to watch out for the guy wheeling the big green bin (An indoor rubbish collection service) he honks a horn as he walks as a warning of his approach. You have to duck past the shops selling the remote controlled micro model helicopters as they spend their day terrorising passers buy seeing how close they can come to shaving your hair while every electronics store is selling “Genuine copy DVD's, 1 for 10RM or buy 5 and get 2 free” or Mp3,4,5 player's cheap! Real iPod copy too! We spent the entire day here and as the sun does not set until 19:30hrs much of the night too. Did not buy much though... just meandered in a sort of astounded, dumbfounded daze.
The museum has an ancient weapons exhibition. Worth a look!
and the national mosque. Well you know how I feel about temples.....Hmmmm! Well the museum was as museums are quiet. I guess the highlight for Lynne was the HUGE mosaic on the front wall before you enter. The exhibition was interest. Three sections - early human development, middle period up to about 100 years ago and then current. The history of the migration was interesting and the museum is set up to be interactive. We walk in to an area, on the floor is a projection of an image of ice cast by an over head light, the curators have modified the light with sensors to detect you and the ice cracks each step you take which causes more ice to crack and the sound reverberates around you, Lynne of course starts dancing and completely destroys the ice and ends up swimming in the water below. There are many exhibits like this and it makes for an interesting tour. The weapons display I mentioned had one floor, to activate the displays you needed an ID card for Malaysia so foreigners missed out a bit. Off to the mosque....... ....... ...... ...... ...... ...... there you go some stunning architecture and
The local's
Naaa! This is part of the animal display at the base. again another mosaic, a pretty fountain but visiting hours are very limited so i guess we will miss the inside view, Oh well.
For a day trip we bus off to Genting. There is a large hotel seated on top of a mountain only 1500m up but it makes one hell of a difference to the temperature. Anyhow this hotel is a big one 6000 rooms and it has it's own theme park, indoor and outdoor, Mc bloody huge. I know we haven't to Las Vegas, I hear you say but come on it is the biggest we have seen. There are a few ways to see this place you can book a tour or just catch the local bus from the city. It is like any theme park with indoor and outdoor roller coasters and rides.....LET LOOSE THE CHILD WITHIN, cries Lynne. Let's go on the superman ride......Hmmmm. I am not one for roller coasters, they make me nauseous but for Lynne I'll do it! Yea! I had my eyes closed through this one the next two were not so bad so I actually did not mind them. Lynne's inner child had been cured of it's need for
This is 2 snakes....
1 is over 8m's long. speed. and we opted out of the cork screw ride.....hahahahahaha! Lynne was feeling queazy. Then some lunch a look around the place and time to go. It is an hour and a half ride up the mountain going down was quicker... Tomorrow I think we'll do the Islamic art museum and have a rest day.
The Islamic arts museum...is a beautiful place. It is so peaceful and well displayed, not so much art as a museum of the religion of Islam but the pieces displayed are so immaculately inlayed with gold and semi-precious stones, as well as the displays of the Qur'an (the Islamic holy bible) with it's pages guilt with gold and adorned with all manner of individual design. I forget what they called it when a book was created back in yea olden days and the pages were all made and decorated by hand. The museum also explains why the writing of sanscrit is the way it is... it is this way because the written words of the language was designed by educated artisans not simply scholars. Yes you probably guessed by now I am inspired by this country and it's ways.
Ooops! some bad food
Lynne...oooor....Pretty
An interactive display at the museam. It was cool! last night, this is going to be a bad day! Back in a sec!.........
Feeling a bit better time for one last trip to the shops and collect some necessities for China then pack for Hong Kong and tomorrow morning we fly out but it means a 3am wake up call.
Thanks for reading, talk to you again after we do Hong Kong!
PS: Lynne has more pictures to add so check back later...Ok.
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