Land of the bloody tall buildings

  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Sunday, June 13, 2004

Have managed to make my way to KL now. Not a bad sort of city but I think I am still a bit in slow mode from the island. The buildings here are pretty spectacular. Some really nice architecture, and they have a bit of a fascination with size. The Petronas Towers are here, and true to their reputation they are indeed tall. The world's tallest flagpole is also here, which certainly was a highlight for me. Most of the buildings have a strong islamic influence, but they blend it with western design fairly well so that it makes for quite an attractive city. If it weren't for all the damn building construction going on to make more pretty buildings. I think I counted more cranes when I was staring out the window during lunch today than there are in the South Island.

Hanging out with a couple of Aussie chicks at the moment. They're alright and a bit of entertainment. They were on Tioman and them bumped into them in Melacca. Wandered around KL yesterday - it was nice just blindly following someone else for a change. We went out for a few drinkies last night and went into the not so wee hours of the morning, so all feeling pretty jaded today. We hit the ex-pat area which was probably not sensible in light of the fact that a beer cost the same as accomodation for a night. On the bright side, I did get a collateral beer from a couple of kiwi rugby players over here who were trying to pick them up. Was a pretty good night tho, although Malaysia has a definate 80's bias on their western music, so that was pretty painful at times. Mopped around today in a huge shopping mall that had great boy's toys shop. Pretty much an entire level was dedicated to things that make me salivate. We were sort of in that not today mood, so partook in KL's scenic delights and went to a movie.




Quite funny actually. Shocking film - we saw "The Punisher" which none of us knew anything about but featured John Travolta and everything else was full. Not his finest hour. Looks like he'll be taking another 10year career break. The moving was hopelessy corny and predictable, and a tad violent. However, the Malaysian censorship was ham-fisted at best - conversations would end mid-sentence for seemingly random erasons - some obvious ones like they were just about to get jiggy or talk about god, but most of the time you were just a bit "huh?". The movie is about a vigalante. He kills a crime group that murdered his family (at a family reunion!! - not just his kids and stuff, but like his 2nd cousin's pet dog also). Then at the end of the movie he disappears into the sunset vowing to punish "murderer's, rapist and pyscho's!". Then they have a little fyi paragraph afterwards, obviously put in by the censors, saying "John Castle was caught, tried and convicted for the crimes he committed, and is currently serving a life-sentence without parole." Just in case you thought it was a documentary, and you liked the notion of turning someone's head around 360degree when you're annoyed. The quality of the movie, the censorship, and then our somewhat jaded state just made the whole 2 hrs an absoluetly surreal experience. We couldn't stop laughing. People looked at us a lot.

Tried a durian, which is an incredibly popular fruit in SE Asia, but smells like a toilet. Turns out that it tastes like petrol.

Got to Melacca via a long-distance taxi I shared with an American family who were staying at Juara. Just the place to meet people that place. Scary-ass driver - apparently roads in Malaysia have three lanes - a middle one for overtaking cars to squeeze through. Oncoming traffic sort of just swerved around us a bit. The poor motorcyclists have the roughest life tho - people just drive straight towards them. The bigger the vehicle, the straighter the journey sort of. Amazingly, after spending about 6 hrs in isolated Tioman jungles without seeing a single monkey, we spotted a whole troop just sitting on the side of the road. The taxi ride was a bit of a musical chairs set-up. It actually took us 3 cars before we got all the way to Melacca. They kept on swapping us - "ah, no problems, my friend here is taxi driver too". Kind of worried we would run out of taxi's or the last guy would demand payment as well. End up in some god-forsaken town with nothing but a tourist's map of malaysia to work out where we were. But we made it, although the last guy had virtually no english and was too long-sighted too read the map I was showing him, so trying to find our hostel was an amusing 1/2 hr.

Melacca was alright mostly. Sort of a bit of a historical place - they were invaded pretty much continuously from the 1400's, so have a motley collection of british, islamic, dutch, portugese and modern buildings. In that vein, they possess the ugliest building in asia - the Museum of Democracy. It has a british style entrance, mediterranean style walls, 90's style dark windows, dutch triming around the roof, and all topped off will Islamic domes.



But an interesting place to walk around. Got a rickshaw ride around the China town. Melacca rickshaw drivers have quite a competition with each other to make the most colourfull carts. Most look like xmas trees on wheels, and sound like a karoake bar. However, not mine. It was the ugly duckling that would never grow up. It was the soviet-russia model I think. And the guy pedaling was 78yrs old. I felt kind of guilty, worried I was going to have to do CPR. I actually had to get out and help push on any sort of incline.





But the tour was amusing. Visited a 400 yr old well. As you do. Drank from it even, which I wasn't sure if was particularly wise, but it doesn't seem to have been the gift that keeps on giving. Also went to the "light and sound extravaganza". Possibly a bit over-hyped. It consisted of a 45minute pre-recorded, rabidly pro-Malay lecture, and every now and then they would turn on some lights to illuminate one of the surrounding buildings. Sometimes they just illuminated grass.

Meant to leave Melacca after the first night, but managed to miss the last bus to KL by about 10 minutes. But, you know, its always useful to do a recon of bus stations before you do it for real. Luckily, the bus ride to the station was excitment enough. JUst a normal inner-city bus, and it stops for petrol. Just pulls up to a gas station and starts pumping. Then the guy backs out onto the main road to get going again. He sort of figured that everyone else would swerve. Actually missing the bus was how I bumped into the aussies again - checked into a hostel for the unexpected additional nights-stay and they were there to. Tried my hardest to actually catch a bus the next morning, and actually succeeded. So there you go, I can face these awesome challenges if I really put my mind to it.

Starting to build up an impression of Malaysia. Quite conservative - KL less so - alot of women have the full headgear and robes. Even at MacDonald's - instead of thos caps they have headscarves. Actually, when I was on Tioman I saw a few woman in full regalia going snorkling. They just put a mask over the head gear, dropped on a life jacket and jumped in. Pretty surreal. But also pretty easy for a westerner to get around (well for a guy at least, most of the chicks I talk to have annoying to severe problems with the Malaysian guys thinking they must be all hussies as they're western). I think becuase of the huge number of different races here that, altho they try to favour Malay, english is pretty widespread - in signage and conversation. The only real problem is getting a pork sandwich. I noticed one cafe that sold nothing but pork/ham/bacon based foods - obviously a few people get a craving. Karoake is obviously a big part of life. I was a bit freaked to see that a hall that was a Funeral Rites Hall in China town, turned into a karoake bar at night. And it brings a tear to your eye to hear local renditions of "Blowing in the wind" and Frank Sinatra. But then, this is the country that has Hanson (no, unfortunately they weren't killed in a horrible car wreck) in the Top 10 Music Chart.

Heading to Tarman Negara tomorrow for an opportunity to donate blood to leaches. 7:30am minibus so that could be a bit painful, and not overly certain with my bus record.