Mall raiding in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore
Trip Start
Aug 21, 2007
1
10
27
Trip End
Dec 20, 2007
Singapore,
Singapore
Monday, October 1, 2007
First stop after the chilly (acc. to Oxford English Dictionary: cold, relaxed and spicy) Cameron Highlands was Kuala Lumpur by bus. We stayed smack in the middle of Chinatown at a chinese budget hotel called Lee Mun's. Ah Hong, the good-natured proprietor is seriously addicted to newspaper cut-outs and his gallery lining each and every wall is well worth visiting, if only to try and appreciate his humour. We also recommend the experience of low-fi DVD watching there. We were thankfully well informed about hostels infested with bed bugs. Just in case, we always have our trusty pyramidal moskito net which is also enclosed at the bottom and impregnated with insecticides. So we're ok in the dodgiest of places. Having seen one of the less fortunate bed bug victims from "the Village" parading his countless hemorrhagic bug bites certainly wasn't for the faint hearted
Dining with Liz and Peter
.Kuala Lumpur is truly astonishing in that where there is now a sprawling 8 million inhabitant metropolis with 2 of the10 highest buildings in the world (TV tower and Petronas Towers) only 100 years ago there was nothing. Zilch. Wow. Kuala Lumpur gives itself very western in the centre with skyskrapers and several huge shopping malls (e.g. the KLCC at the foot of the Petronas Towers), but certainly maintains the culture of its multi-ethnic society in Islamic, Indian and Chinese quarters.
It's also got an excellent quick and very safe public transport net, with Metro services very comparable to those we've seen in Singapore and Bangkok.
The first night of two we went up the 421m high TV tower Menara Kuala Lumpur to get a view of the night sky. The most remarkable building on the night skyline were the exquisitely illuminated Petronas Twin Towers.
These are 452m and 88 floors high each. They were erected following islamic architectural principles on the bases of 2 angled squares creating an eight-pointed star, I think to highlight the 8 heavens of Islam, but I'm sure it's more complicated than that
Dengue is rife in Singapore
. It's a beautiful structure joined at the 41st/42nd floors at 170m high by the skybridge made famous by that (excellent) Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones movie the name of which of course escapes me (help me!). We went up to visit the skybridge the next day and had remarkable views of the city from it. We then played backgammon for the rest of the day on level ground beneath it. Bjoern won. He's incredibly good at all games, but especially at hopscotch.Our next stop was then to be Singapore. And what great timing we had! We arrived just in time to celebrate Liz Oei's 30th Birthday (I do hope I'm allowed to publish your age, Liz...). I used to work and live with Liz and a bunch of other great House Officers in the Red Home residence at Edinburgh's old Royal Infirmary in 2002/2003. We were the last crop of junior doctors to live there before the hospital moved to a spanking new site quite a bit out of town. Those were memorable times!!! We got to meet Liz's husband Peter and a bunch of wonderful friends at fashionable Clarke Quay for some Italian. Yes, Liz dearly misses the food in Europe and specifically England...hard to believe for us, but food in England really is far better than it's reputation. I'm not going to give away Liz's absolute favourite food in England, but let's say it's interesting and should have warned me for what was to come...
Bjoern always wins - Peter too by the way
After the dinner we went clubbing at the Ministry of Sound. Yes, that one. No western "institution" could possibly afford not to have a franchise in Singapore. Same goes for booty shaking temples.The next day we met up with Liz and Pete for some assorted delicacies of the region. We were both already very full indeed after a heaped table full of "starters". Liz's enthusiasm for the Asian cuisine was so infectious that we ended up trying a dizzying variety of treats. These were largely excellent (various dumplings, chicken rice, satays, etc.). I say largely, because we didn't really warm up to the chicken feet we'd bravely chosen and also politely refused sampling pigs' feet. It was all so delicious, I just couldn't stop eating. So I then carried my staunch belly elsewhere to try the truly magnificent soup-filled pork balls, an absolute specialty. You bite a little hole into the noodle dumpling to then suck out the soup before finally eating the meatball in the centre with the rest of the noodle wrapper. Mmmmmh, scrumtideedle-do!
To end it all, I dragged my hunched figure with impending gut-buster alarm bells ringing for a stroll to pre-emptively burn some of the calories being eagerly sucked up by at least 4l of greedy blood coursing around the engorged vessels of my digestive tract. We saw the slightly tacky Merlion Mascott of Singapore and the famed "Durian", Singapore's state theatre
The Petronas Towers - side on
. No, I didn't explode like Mr Creosote from Monty Python's Meaning of Life, but only just. Lesson learned.Thanks, Liz and Pete, for a very memorable time with you guys. It was great to catch up with you. It's been a wonderful culinary experience. I hope we can repeat that soon again (with better measure on my part). Have fun in Sardinia! I hope when we next meet up we can treat you to a Bavarian pork knuckle or two or some of that excellent Devon braised lamb :o)
Our daytime hours (while Liz and Peter were working) were spend whizzing around town to see the flash multiple story malls pretty much everywhere. Imagine a huge city with the centre completely hooked up with gopher tunnels, all of which are studded with shops. Wow. Even more than in Kuala Lumpur, the development of this tiny island city-state in the 42 years of its independence is awe-inspiring. Built mainly on import-export trade, banking and tourism, Singapore entered the First World quite some time ago together with the 3 other Asian Lion States south Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And that's just through Singaporeans flexing their brains and drawing savvy minds from all over Asia. And that's after Great Britain shunned it off into the Malaysian Union shortly after reclaiming it from the Japanese after WW II. The Malays then pretty quickly kicked it out. Singapore's budding economy was then raised under a Titan of a man, Lee Kuan Yew, who is still a political gray eminence behind the present ruler: his son. It's a one-party state, yet the threat of corruption is tiny, mainly because of the ridiculously high governmental wages. Also corruption and other laws are very tough. This reflects onto the common citizen through fines for chewing gum, jaywalking and drinking/eating on public transportation. Then there's caning and the death penalty, e.g
Menara Kuala Lumpur
. for any degree of drug trafficking. This makes it a clean and orderly city, indeed. The ethnic majority is made up of Chinese, with large Indian and Malay minorities.Daytime highlights were certainly the visit to the excellent Bird Park and the Singapore Zoo. Very high standards of zoo keeping in both! We just love zoos! Regine is uploading a bunch of fascinating pictures of some of the animals. The zoo was a truly befitting way to celebrate our 4-year anniversary together on 30 September which also happens to be Regine's birthday. We also went to Sentosa Island, an expensive plastic fantastic Disney World (we should have been warned: it boasts another tasteful specimen of giant Merlion - a Lion's head and body with a mermaid fish tail). We saw a ultra-tacky light and sound show with a paperthin plot, but nice fire, water, laser and light effects.
We stayed at a place called Ali's Nest in Little India, very close to the Farrers Park MRT station. It's a family run place that comes highly recommended not just because of it's cheap rate of S$25 for doubles.
So now we're staying at the footloose hostel in Johor Bharu right behind the Singapore/Malay border from where we'll be flying to Sandakan on Borneo tomorrow. In the meantime I have the rigors and hope it won't turn into a nasty (dengue) fever. Else I'll have to miss out on Southeast Asia's highest peak and some excellent jungle...Bedtime!!
