Days off in KL

Took some photos for you today.

Our first monkeys.

Seeing these were a bit of a surprise.

But first things first.
We thoroughly enjoyed our full cooked breakfast that comes with our hotel room. Something like $40 I think it will be, for both of us. Great value. Jacob continuing to explore the varied tastes available, although finding his mouth filled with many strands of shaved ginger instead of one strand of it might make him a little more cautious for a while.

Thomas had lent us a GPS Navman to help us get around. We fuelled up – learning that if you want to fill up a huge Aussie 4WD, you need to put your credit card into the machine first, otherwise people come running around and suggest we pay them 100RMT cash. This we did, and it nearly filled the empty tanks. Fuel is cheap too, about $0.80 I think. We found our way into the city and found one carpark that had a height limit of 2.1m, just enough for us to slip under. We went a few floors up, only just being able to get around the corners that were designed for much smaller cars and found a few cars to park beside, for company for the day for the car….. .

Using an app in my iPhone, once we got outside I set it to mark our position. I’m not using any 3G data so can’t rely on online maps as I do in Perth. And the surroundings were very strange indeed. Due to the haze, there is no visible sun, and being so close to the equator, it’s not in the north or south sky, so orientation is difficult. Brian has sent me a link for an app that contains off line mapping, which might come in very handy, along with the GPS.

However the road system is slightly chaotic and the GPS struggles to differentiate at times. We did do a little exploring, hilariously finding ourselves lost in the same street in the city twice even though we were heading first into then out of the city.

We suddenly found ourselves in familiar territory, the place that Thomas picked us up yesterday. We got hold of a map from the information desk and found the botanical gardens were nearby, the next problem was to work out how to get there. The information desk girl said, just catch the train to Kuala Lumpur station, were were at KL Sentral, which sounded easy enough.

Then the first ticket queue of the day. After five minutes or so of waiting patiently in line, which is something Malaysians seem to do well, Jacob pulled out his 100RMB note to pay for the tickets. The girl frowned and gave him 98RMB back, and a couple of token to put into the machine.

Then, ever resourceful Jacob figured out the underground rail map, and got us onto the right platform and we travelled our one train stop. About 500m I think. At least we knew how to do the train thing then.

We found the Butterfly gardens, and figured it might be a nice place to escape the humidity.

Further wandering around the gardens we found the biggest covered aviary in the world, but didn’t go in. Some of the places, in fact many, were closed due to a Muslim festival at the end of Ramadan.

The haze is inescapable.

Art Gallery of Islam. Unfortunately closed. Clean and well tended, smart and interesting buildings are everywhere. As well as plenty of rubbish in the streets, old dirty places.

Waiting for more train tickets. The queue moves slowly. The ceiling is low. There is no air movement. It’s not pleasant. AND this is a public holiday, heaven knows what it would be like during a normal business day.

All those above are of the precinct around the Petronis Towers. They used to be the tallest buildings in the world until the Burj in Dubai overtook it. All stainless steel, they are some structures indeed. The shopping malls in the precinct are all the world top end brands of jewelry, suits and trinkets.

AND a pretty nice playground.

He would have really really liked to spend a lot of time here!!!

Couple of other thoughts.

Malaysians have always tried to be helpful to us. Even when the language barrier is there, which it often is, we have been helped out, and resolved any query or issues.

Being a Muslim nation means the vast majority of women wear hijab, and we saw one ‘female only’ train carriage. It’s more moderate approach to Islam means we’ve not yet seen any women with the full heading covered Burka and they are quite happy to drink alcohol. Being part of the Commonwealth means they drive on the same side of the road as Australia, their power points are the same as the British, and their food is diverse interesting and tasty, as well as being much cheaper than I had expected.

There are many many new very fancy looking buildings, both commercial and residential. There are also run down areas of poverty. Not too many though. There was one guy we saw cutting the grass in a garden with hand shears. It’s only a little spot, but we’d have a whipper snipper in there and the job done in moments.