Sunday, April 16, 2006
A day in KL
My first full day in Malaysia is now drawing to a close. Yesterday didn't count that much since after my initial wandering around a little, I fell into a deep slumber from about 4 or 5pm until I woke up to brush my teeth at 9 and then slept right through until this morning. I hadn't slept much on the plane since I got a bit hooked on playing Dr. Mario and besides they kept feeding us. So anyhow, today I was alert and ready to go.
My first adventure was trying to find the bus stop, as described in the lonely planet, to get me to my first destination. The first stage was easy enough, as I knew where to find the monorail and travelling on that to my chosen point of alightment was simple enough. As soon as I walked out of the station at KL Sentral, however, is when things got a little more complicated. Though I had gotten rather disoriented around noon the day before seeing as the sun near the equator here is of little use in guiding you that time of day, the morning sun clearly indicated east. And I knew I wanted to go northeast. So that didn't seem like it would be a problem. But that is before I accounted for the non-pedestrian-friendliness of most of KL's 8-lane streets outside of the touristy areas. And the uneasiness of walking around alone in a foreign country, particularly in the early morning when few people are about.
Nevertheless, after a few false starts, I managed to find my way to the Chinatown street that would lead to "Medan Pasar", which is where LP promised I would find an appropriate bus. At this point I realized I was Still following the monorail line and in fact should have gotten off two stops earlier than I did. This is one of the problems with using a 2-year-old guidebook (the latest edition) - when it was printed, I don't think the monorail had been completed which I assume explains why the stations were mainly not shown on the maps.
I wandered through a chinatown street market that was just starting up for the day - it was in many respects similar to Vancouver's or just about any other city's Chinatown, but the live chickens walking around on crates, the guy with an ashy cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he filleted a fish, the beggar with the lower half of his leg missing and the stub on display, and the cars brushing past pedestrians on the narrow street did help to reinforce that this is a different country.
[Just lost connectivity and a large chunk of this post I had already written and could not recover, so I may skim over the next bits instead of retelling them in great detail. Then again, that's probably a good thing since I was rather longwinded.]
Now, where was I. Ah, Chinatown. Ya. Wandered around that a bit then an Indian man tried to force me to buy a pearl from him for first 50, then 40, then merely 10 ringgit (~$17 - ~$3.50 Canadian) in exchange for some minimal directions. He claimed to have 'studied stones' and believed, based on my birthdate, that the pearl is my lucky stone. Then some more confusion with attempting to find the bus named in the lonely planet (both major bus companies have changed names since the guidebook was printed, apparently). But finally I found my way to my destination of Batu Caves.
The caves are the site of a series of Hindu temples and shrines, which are scattered around and within the main very large cavern with the biggest stalactites I have ever seen. Out front is an enormous golden-yellow statue whose head probably reaches near to the level of the 272nd (highest) numbered step which leads up into the cave. Everywhere there are carved and painted figures of all sorts of interesting creatures. The shrines were alright and the cave was pretty impressive, but for me then main attraction was the monkeys. Already I have achieved my goal of seeing monkeys! I think they were long-tailed macaques, but I'm not sure. They were quite little, but it was amazing to me how human they seemed in their actions and expressions. One of the little baby ones was whistling. Like, sitting on a stone and pursing its lips together and whistling, seemingly because it had nothing better to do. Just like a person! I think it was the eyes, being positioned on the front of the head and all that made them look the most human. And, like many of us, they seemed to avoid looking at me directly in the eye, although I could get quite close to them. That is, all except the relatively large and old-looking male who came up and grimaced menacingly at me when I was trying to take a picture. I spent most of my time in the cave watching the monkeys.
Oh dear, I'm just about out of time here and I haven't even talked about taking a taxi out to the Orang Asli Museum, more fun with busses trying to get to the Lake Gardens, the huge thunderstorm, lunch, the National Museum, the spiciest but very yummy thai meal (larb moo) that I had for dinner, and everything else that I have done today. But so be it, I should be off. Tomorrow I am looking forward to leaving the city...
ok, bye!
My first adventure was trying to find the bus stop, as described in the lonely planet, to get me to my first destination. The first stage was easy enough, as I knew where to find the monorail and travelling on that to my chosen point of alightment was simple enough. As soon as I walked out of the station at KL Sentral, however, is when things got a little more complicated. Though I had gotten rather disoriented around noon the day before seeing as the sun near the equator here is of little use in guiding you that time of day, the morning sun clearly indicated east. And I knew I wanted to go northeast. So that didn't seem like it would be a problem. But that is before I accounted for the non-pedestrian-friendliness of most of KL's 8-lane streets outside of the touristy areas. And the uneasiness of walking around alone in a foreign country, particularly in the early morning when few people are about.
Nevertheless, after a few false starts, I managed to find my way to the Chinatown street that would lead to "Medan Pasar", which is where LP promised I would find an appropriate bus. At this point I realized I was Still following the monorail line and in fact should have gotten off two stops earlier than I did. This is one of the problems with using a 2-year-old guidebook (the latest edition) - when it was printed, I don't think the monorail had been completed which I assume explains why the stations were mainly not shown on the maps.
I wandered through a chinatown street market that was just starting up for the day - it was in many respects similar to Vancouver's or just about any other city's Chinatown, but the live chickens walking around on crates, the guy with an ashy cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he filleted a fish, the beggar with the lower half of his leg missing and the stub on display, and the cars brushing past pedestrians on the narrow street did help to reinforce that this is a different country.
[Just lost connectivity and a large chunk of this post I had already written and could not recover, so I may skim over the next bits instead of retelling them in great detail. Then again, that's probably a good thing since I was rather longwinded.]
Now, where was I. Ah, Chinatown. Ya. Wandered around that a bit then an Indian man tried to force me to buy a pearl from him for first 50, then 40, then merely 10 ringgit (~$17 - ~$3.50 Canadian) in exchange for some minimal directions. He claimed to have 'studied stones' and believed, based on my birthdate, that the pearl is my lucky stone. Then some more confusion with attempting to find the bus named in the lonely planet (both major bus companies have changed names since the guidebook was printed, apparently). But finally I found my way to my destination of Batu Caves.
The caves are the site of a series of Hindu temples and shrines, which are scattered around and within the main very large cavern with the biggest stalactites I have ever seen. Out front is an enormous golden-yellow statue whose head probably reaches near to the level of the 272nd (highest) numbered step which leads up into the cave. Everywhere there are carved and painted figures of all sorts of interesting creatures. The shrines were alright and the cave was pretty impressive, but for me then main attraction was the monkeys. Already I have achieved my goal of seeing monkeys! I think they were long-tailed macaques, but I'm not sure. They were quite little, but it was amazing to me how human they seemed in their actions and expressions. One of the little baby ones was whistling. Like, sitting on a stone and pursing its lips together and whistling, seemingly because it had nothing better to do. Just like a person! I think it was the eyes, being positioned on the front of the head and all that made them look the most human. And, like many of us, they seemed to avoid looking at me directly in the eye, although I could get quite close to them. That is, all except the relatively large and old-looking male who came up and grimaced menacingly at me when I was trying to take a picture. I spent most of my time in the cave watching the monkeys.
Oh dear, I'm just about out of time here and I haven't even talked about taking a taxi out to the Orang Asli Museum, more fun with busses trying to get to the Lake Gardens, the huge thunderstorm, lunch, the National Museum, the spiciest but very yummy thai meal (larb moo) that I had for dinner, and everything else that I have done today. But so be it, I should be off. Tomorrow I am looking forward to leaving the city...
ok, bye!
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