I took a little tour around SE Asia in July and my first stop was the capitol of Malaysia – Kuala Lumpur.  I was told that it was pretty much just like Singapore, except less clean and that there wasn’t much to experience.  Well, I was stubborn and kept it on my itinerary just because I wanted to see it for myself.  It turned out to be a great choice and though there are decidedly fewer things to do there than a place like Singapore, it definitely had its own personality to offer.

My first unique experience was the monorail, which sit atop these concrete tracks suspended above the roads of the city.  It’s nice to be able to look out and see things when you’re traveling, which is my one complaint against subways.  Being underground and in the dark is just not very exciting.  Floating over the cityscape is.  Granted, they do move far more slowly and these little monorails don’t take many passengers (not that they need to).  I got in pretty late that night, so I just went to my hostel to rest.  I only left to go next door to get something to eat back at the hostel.

The next day I went to check out Batu Caves.  I walked through Chinatown to get to the bus stop and was driven out to the surrounding countryside.  A huge golden figurine guarded the stairway leading up to the cave, no doubt some sort of religious being meant to protect the place.  There is a plaza area before you approach the stairs and on the string of lights in that area perched dozens of pigeons.  Many more were cooing on the ground and the entire place was speckled with their droppings.  I climbed up 272 steps to arrive at the foot of a big open-air cave in the middle of the mountain.  The cave was mostly empty except for some roosters and, well, cavernous.  I went to the other end where another set of stairs led up to an area that opened up directly to the sky and held a shrine or worshipping temple.  On that side were a cluster of monkeys, climbing up and down the walls of the cave and running up and down the stairs.

On my way down the mountain, a man brought out bananas and began to throw them up the stairs towards monkeys that were streaming towards him.  They grabbed whatever they could and horded what they caught, then each found their own place to enjoy their food.  Being hungry myself, I decided to get some lunch after I explored the rest of the grounds and took a spin around a much larger temple structure at the base of the mountain.  My lunch was pretty simple, just pickled vegetables and rice with a salty, crispy wafer of bread, but it was filling and good for my exhausted body.

A strange finding in the temple.

When I got back to the city, I walked around Central Market, where they had a lot of goodies for sale.  There was a Fish Spa place where a lot of people were getting their feet nibbled at by the “doctor fish” that eat away your dead skin and leave your feet softer.  I was tempted to give it a try, but decided that I would get around to it at another place.  It’s pretty popular in some countries in Asia and at the least I knew there was a place back in Singapore that I could visit if I didn’t get around to it before then.  Instead, I bought a little keepsake cloth art to remind me of the place and summer dress to wear when things got hot.  I then wandered through Chinatown, too lazy to bargain and not really in a spending mood.  I nearly stopped for a massage service but then decided against spending money and went back to the hostel.

At night, I went out to eat dinner and found myself in front of a huge shopping center called Pavilion.  A beautiful fountain (Liuli Crystal Fountain) stands at the entrance of the massive collection of shops.  I went inside for a stroll and found a lot of classy shops in a mall that’s probably twice the size of the largest mall I’ve ever been to before.  There are something like six stories and the food court at basement level is four times as big as my own mall’s.

My final day there, I met with some people from the company distributing the Livescribe Pulse smartpen in Malaysia.  I was treated to dim sum before we sat down to share our experiences and ideas.  I was then taken to KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Centre), where the iconic Petronas Twin Towers are.  Yet another shopping center is situated at ground level there and I was shown the shops where the smartpen is being distributed.  After a break for lunch (and sitting out a quick rainstorm), I was shown how the cloth art I purchased the day before is made.  It’s called batik and they melt wax in these special “pens” and draw out designs on cloth.  When the wax hardens, colors are painted on to the design and then the color of the cloth is “fixed” (not sure what that means or how it works).  Cloths are then dewaxed and dried and the result is a pretty design with the white lines as areas where the wax was.  Sometimes the wax is left on so the lines appear to be golden in color.  A final pit stop at a chocolate-making factory was a bit less exciting since they wouldn’t actually let you view the process and only offered a huge shop with every flavor of chocolate imaginable (including durian and chili, for example).

They were using salt cystals to I guess "burn" a pattern when fixing the cloth color.

So all in all, I enjoyed myself and I’m glad I went to check out KL.  Next time I go to Malaysia, I’d want to go to a coastal city to enjoy the ocean.