A Blast from the Past

Since I didn't take many pictures of Chinatown and Little India in Kuala Lumpur, I thought I would post some from those same neighborhoods in Georgetown.

The street below is where I stayed in Chinatown. During the day, it is a quiet business district full of repair shops and sundry shops. At night, they line the left side with plastic tables and chairs in every nook and cranny and roll up the food carts to serve the masses.


This is a typical store in Little India, selling fabrics, flowers for offerings, and other necessities of life.

One of the gems from today was a visit to the Pinang Peranakan Mansion. I had planned to just take a peek as I walked by, but it looked so beautifully restored that I decided to head inside. The informal tour consisted of me and two asian women, who were led around by a man that told us stories of the original inhabitants, the origin of the decor and art work, and the history of Penang and the local people.

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This building was owned by one of the Kapitans of China (in the Chung clan), who built and ran the house with primarily slave labor from China in about 1880. The current owner bought it from a businessman and spent close to $1.5 million restoring it from bare bones to the pictures you see here. Since it is a private collection, we were allowed to take photos, sit in the chairs, and touch the fabrics. Some of the items belonged to the original owner, but many others were taken from the current owner's private collection.

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This first picture is of the ladies' sitting room just off the main reception room.

Below is the main dining room. Notice the beautiful detail in the gold-painted wood surrounding the entryway.

The stairs are original wood with steel railings from Europe, which is also where the piano hails from. The dishes are from the owner's private collection.

This is one of the bed chambers. These rooms were filled with clothes and hand-sewn beaded slippers.

And this is the main courtyard in the middle of the house. The whole house opens up to this courtyard, except the kitchen which is housed in a separate building in the back of the house.

The tour of the house took an hour and a half and was so well worth the investment of time. I could write so much more about this home, but for lack of time and space.

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In the afternoon, I visited Fort Cornwallis, stopped in at the Penang Museum, and toured the colonial part of the city. Below is a shot of the old Town Hall in Georgetown, not to be confused with the City Hall next door. This is typical of the architecture of the colonial part of town. Note the line of trishaws waiting for fares.

This peaceful little setting is in the Protestant cemetery in Georgetown which houses the remains of many of the European "fathers" of Penang, including Captain Francis Light, the founder the the British colony here. There is also a grave for the officer (Thomas Leonowens) that married Anna, a la The King and I.

Peaceful setting; mean mosquitos.

Tomorrow I start my journey into Thailand.

Uphill Both Ways

It was a long day, so it will be more photos and less writing today (probably to everyone's relief.)

I went up to Penang Hill today aboard what must truly be the world's slowest Swiss-build funicular. It took 30 minutes, interrupted by a change of trains halfway up. But the view was worth it. It is hard to see the detail when the picture is this small, but that is Georgetown to the left.


The other major attraction I saw today was the Kek Lok Si temple (translates to Temple of Supreme Bliss). It is the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia. I took a view from the hill to show the size of the overall complex. There is also a smaller portion further up the hill, which is still under construction.

Here is one of the lower courtyards...

the main prayer hall...

lanterns with cards bearing names of people being prayed for...

and a cute little pagoda at the top of the hill. Up here, there were also taking donations of RM30 (less than $10) for the temple. In exchange, they will put your name on a tile that will be part of the roof over their giant Buddha statue. I noticed that in the lower halls, the signs written in Chinese and Malay only asked for RM20.

And a special picture for my Mom: This is one of the cats that was sleeping on the cool floor of the temple prayer hall.

In the small world department, I was eating at a stall outside of my guesthouse when I felt a tap on the back. It was one of the backpackers, Scott, that had stayed in the same hostel as me in the highlands, so we had dinner together and chatted about what to see/miss in other countries.

What is this Country's Obsession with Rambo?

A few days ago, on the bus to the Cameron Highlands, they played a movie for us. Sadly, it was Rambo 2. After it ended I was looking forward to another, perhaps better, movie, but it never came. I thought to myself, is it possible that this man only has one movie, and worse yet, that it is Rambo 2?!

Well, today, as I was waiting for the funicular up to the hill, they were playing a movie to pass the time. It was another Rambo movie (the one that takes place in the desert. What is that one, Rambo 14?) I just had to laugh. Of all the great movies we make in our country, this is what the world watches!

A Product of My Environment

My room in the guesthouse in Penang was very clean and recently refurbished with hardwood floors, fresh paint, and new sound-proof windows. It had no A/C, but fortunately there was a fan across the room, which seemed to work best with the windows open. When I opened the windows, the sounds of the traffic, food stalls, and tables full of late night diners right outside my window poured into my room. I laid down on the bed to enjoy the cool breeze from the fan and the clamorous sound of the city's night life.

I quickly drifted off to sleep and slept through the night. The crickets keep me awake, but when I can hear the city, I sleep like a rock.

Step Aside, Six Flags

Although I could gladly have stayed in the Cameron Highlands longer, it was time to move on. I booked a seat on a bus from the highlands to Penang, a province that mainly consists of a large island off the Northwest coast of Malaysia.

There are assigned seats on the bus and I was seated in the first row. This means I have a great view out the front window, but there is no safety bar on these buses. So there is nothing between me and the stairwell to the door of the bus as we are careening down steep hills, guided by a bus driver to whom driving is secondary to smoking, spitting, and repeatedly counting his money. (Turns out he wanted to make sure he had enough for a snack at the bottom of the mountain.)

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I was forced to hold on for dear life and to hold my small bag, as well, to keep it from ending up in the stairwell that had engulfed other small items that were sliding forward from the rest of the bus as we raced downhill. As we carelessly skated around corners, there were a few moments when I thought today could be THAT DAY.

It is funny, though, how after an hour or so, my own sense of judgement began to shift. As the driver passed someone on a blind S-curve, I was right there with him, thinking to myself, "That makes sense. I would have done the same thing," with not a single note of sarcasm in my thought.

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I did however manage to snap a few pictures out the bus window as we went. The first two are taken in the highlands and the last is taken in the countryside shortly before we reached Penang.

A Day in the Woods

Today, Ingrid (my new friend from the Netherlands) and I went for a leisurely hike in the woods. To my surprise, the forest retains it's jungle atmosphere and flora, despite the increased altitude.

We started out by walking up a bricked path to a cute little waterfall, which is sadly littered with trash from a neighboring upstream town.




We then continued on to a dirt trail, which started out with cute bridges and easy paths, with a few uphill climbs...

But after a while, it became steep and slippery, with trees to climb under and over and semi-dry stream beds to traverse. The picture below is of poor quality, but it shows an example of the trail we hiked. The black area in the upper left is a tree that we had to duck under, before heading up a wet, leaf-covered trail. Fortunately, it had roots that we could stand on to avoid sliding down the hill. (And, no, the picture is not crooked, the earth is.)



After a wrong turn due to confusing signage and vague maps (there are no true topos of this area), a hike that was supposed to take just over an hour and a half, turned into four hour hike instead, during which we only saw three other hikers.

Mind you, I am not complaining. It was rather humorous and, although we only intended to take a relaxing walk, it was actually a very pretty and interesting hike. I am just glad I did not attempt it alone, as it had a few tricky parts that could strand you in the woods by yourself.

All in all, it was nice to spend a day with nature.

A Day in the Country

I arrived in the Cameron Highlands last night. The highlands are a mountainous area with a damp and cool climate, making it ideal for year-round agriculture. Today, I went on a tour to explore the local produce. While much of the tour was commercially motivated ("tour our facilities and buy our product"), it was rather enjoyable and I did get to see some great views of the countryside.

We started out at the Sam Po Buddist temple. This was originally a wooden structure, but was upgraded to its current state with donations from Malaysia and Singapore in the 1970s.

Those glowing pillars on either side of the altar are filled with candles for people’s prayers.

We then headed for a rose garden.

The flowers were pretty, but my father has a lovely rose garden, so this didn’t have anything I had not seen from a plant perspective. It did have great views of the hillsides, though.

There was a brief stop at a strawberry farm. You forget how sweet fruit is until you taste it fresh, rather than after it has been refridgerated and shipped 3000 miles.

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We then headed to a tea plantation that has been in operation since 1929. Interestingly, the founder was a Scotsman that owned several businesses, but became interested in tea when he realized that the tea commodities remained stable, even when other commodities fell.

The hillsides offered great views and the tea "cafeteria" had a veranda that made for a nice way to while away some time talking with fellow travelers.

Below, in this picture of the tea harvesters, you can see on the right hand side, laying on a bush, a tool used for trimming the plants. Rather than plucking my hand, a two-person team runs this trimmer over the top of the plant to trim the leaves off and suck them into the baskets on their back. A good harvester can yield about 200 kg of leaves per day, earning a wage of about RM40 ($13) per day. This is considered good money for this strenuous work and the plantation provides family housing, medical facilities, and primary education for the children.

The plants are trimmed every 21 days for 3 years, then are pruned and left to sprout for 3 months. This encourages growth of new, younger stalks, and prevents the bush from turning into a tea tree, which is good for oils, not for tea.

The next stop was a butterfly farm. They started off by showing us the huge scary bugs that can be found natively in the highlands, but I will spare you those pictures so you can sleep at night - interesting, but creepy. The butterfly portion, though, was amazing. At first, it seemed as though there were barely any butterflies, but as we walked around, we began to spot them resting on the plants and fluttering about.

This first one is apparently the "Butterfly of Malaysia". Note my finger in the picture showing the relative size of this insect. The place was covered with these and although they are alive, they rest very still on the plants with their wings open, making it easy to photograph them.

The others, however, were fluttering about and I caught photos of them as I could. Here is one of my favorites...

The last stop was a honey bee farm, which was less than interesting, so we wandered over to the market next door. I wanted to try some fruits that were unfamiliar. This is a picture of the woman who I confused when I asked for a single passionfruit (not one bunch, just one fruit.) I just wanted to try it, not eat it for three weeks. I also tried the Cameronian apple and she made up for the small order by throwing in some oranges to reach a full kilogram.

Here is a close-up of the fruit so you can see it better. On the left are the Cameronian apples, which have absolutely nothing to do with apples. They are more along the lines of melon or kiwi. The passionfruit is in the middle (top). I had never had passionfruit outside of a juice concoction. They are both sweet and sour, with a fragrant scent. And the oranges were just plain good.

I met a woman from the Netherlands, Ingrid, and together we dined on what is apparently a highlands specialty, "steamboat". It is similar to the main course portion of fondue, but with a Chinese slant. The pot over the burner in the center of the table is divided into two sections, one filled with a spicy broth and the other with a plain broth. You are provided chopsticks and spoons, and plates filled with raw meats, fish, prawns, cabbage, noodles, and eggs. You drop these into the boiling broth to cook them to your liking and then try to fish them out with chopsticks before they overcook. While the waitress assured us that we were doing just fine, we were a little distracted by the fact that the Chinese family at the next table kept turning around and laughing at us.

Malaysia's Answer to Green Man

When I was living in Germany in '95, my friends and I used to comment on how the German pedestrian crossing light system made a lot more sense than our own American version. Rather than the outline of a white man and red hand to symbolize walk and don't walk, respectively, Germany used a green man for walk and a red man for don't walk. Very logical and very German. We fondly referred to the crossing light as "green man".

Well, Southeast Asia has an even better answer to this problem. Watch what the green man in this video does after about two seconds and you will see what you must do to safely cross a street in Kuala Lumpur.

Also, you should turn down your computer's volume, as my camera has a surprisingly strong microphone. (The background noise is KL's Little India.) And I apologize for the poor video quality; when it comes to motion picture, I am more than a little shaky.

Stupid American Shopping (KL Day 3)

After the seeing the caves yesterday, I wandered around Little India, which, you guessed it, looked, smelled, and sounded Indian. The streets were lined with stores selling beautiful fabrics, the air smelled like curry and jasmine, and there were Bollywood movies showing in the shops, blaring songs from four-hour-long movies with lots of dancing.





This afternoon, I headed over to Petronas towers, which until recently were the tallest buildings in the world. They were out of tickets to go up the tower, so I stood at the bottom looking up to get that "it's so huge it's going to fall on me" feeling. Standing there looking up, it really does make you dizzy.

For those not familiar with the towers, that is a picture of them to the right, albeit taken from an odd angle.

I ventured into the mall at the metro stop next to the towers. KL really knows how to shop. The mall was pristine and filled with six large floors of stores I cannot responsibly afford. To quote my mother, "My dear, you are in the wrong mall."


From here, I returned to the Central Market where I had a cup of white coffee, which is so sweet that it tastes like hot chocolate without the chocolate flavor, if that makes any sense. But my main goal at the market was to buy a birthday present for my nephew Billy who just turned 8. I won't say what I got him since I don't think it has arrived yet. But I did see these really cool woven reed hats in a child's size. They were shaped like what you traditionally see in pictures of people working in the rice patties, but they were woven with colored reeds so that they formed a star-shaped decorative pattern on top. I thought this would be fun for the kids to add to their costume box and I inquired about the price of the hat.


After some very confused conversation, it was explained to me that these are actually used to cover plates of food, but that I could "wear it as a hat if I liked." I didn't know whether to laugh or hide my red face. This explains why it only comes in a children's size. It also explains the confused look I got when I asked if people wear these on their heads in the countryside. I guess you can't be smart every day.


Before leaving, I did encounter this interesting musical instrument being played. It is an Angklung which is made up of rows of bamboo tubes that are shaped for pitch and shaken to produce their unique sound. Here is a movie clip of it for your listening/viewing pleasure. He is playing it along with some recorded music, but he stops about 10 seconds in so you can tell the difference between the recorded music and the instrument itself.

Please excuse the poor video quality; I am awful with motion pictures.

Important: Start with your volume turned down, as the audio is quite loud.

It's a Small World...

After seeing the main Batu cave, I had some time to kill before catching my bus, so I decided to take a peek at the more commercial, auxillary caves off to the side. These were billed as "art displays."

Does anyone think this one is a little like a certain Disney ride? For some reason, I can't get It's a Small World out of my head...

I guess that makes this "Pirates of the Caribbean" (on acid)...

For others traveling to the area, I would say that the Batu caves are well worth a visit, but only pay the few bucks to see the other caves if you have a very strange sense of humor.

Quick, Robin... to the Batu Cave!

This morning, I decided to head to the Batu Caves, just outside of KL. They can be reached by bus from Chinatown or by taxi. Since my guidebook indicated that it was best to be there before dawn to beat the crowds, I decided a taxi was better than standing around Chinatown at 6am.

As I was walking out of the hotel a little later than planned, I realized that I did not have enough money for a taxi. So I headed to the ATM next door, only to find that it was out of order. I ran back inside the hotel to explain that the ATM was broken and to ask where I could find another. The clerk at the front desk cheerfully pointed me to the ATM that I had already been to. I explained again that this machine was broken and could he point me to another. He then proceeded to explain that I could go to this machine next door and it would give me money. Agh!

After another few rounds at bat, I got him to point out another ATM, which happened to be immediately across the street. How foolish of me to have missed this! And I knew that this machine would work since someone was using it at that very moment. I once again risked life and limb to cross the street, only to find that this ATM had now also ceased to work.

Sometimes, it feels like someone is trying to tell you something... like all the ATMs in KL are broken. No, wait, that's not it. Maybe it was that I should not worry about trying to beat the crowds, and now that it was light out, I should try the bus.

The two metros and the bus to the caves turned out to be reasonably simple to figure out and I even met a nice student that I talked with on the bus. It was just nice to have some human interaction after spending a few days in a city crowded with people too busy to talk. And, as you can see from the pictures, there were no major crowds when I reached the caves.

So, about the caves... The caves were discovered in the late 19th century and shortly thereafter, a Hindu shrine was erected inside. The giant golden statue of Subramanian was erected much more recently.



There are 272 steps to reach the cave. That is 16 flights of 17 stairs each.







Stopping to take pictures like the one on the left is a good excuse to take a break mid-climb.

Once you reach the gate at the top of the stairs, you step down into the cave and then up some more stairs to one of the small temples at the back of the cave. I am not sure that the following pictures really do justice to the size of these caves.

And of course, the obligatory view from the top...

All in all a very worthwhile effort to reach these caves. They were beautiful and since most people were respectful in the temple, they were a quiet escape from the city.

Nature, Culture, and City Life (KL Day 1)

I thought a nice way to ease into the city would be to start in the gardens and then work my way towards the city center. Due to my slightly odd sleep schedule, I arrived at the Lake Gardens an hour before opening, so I headed down the road to check out the National Monument.

This statue was erected to commemorate the soldiers that died in WWII and the Emergency.

If it looks familiar, it should, at least to those in Washington DC. It was created by the same sculptor that did the Marine Corp Memorial (Iwo Jima) in Arlington.

I wandered around the park until the hibiscus and orchid gardens opened. These gardens were small, but quite lovely, and well worth the 30 cents I paid to enter.

I did not know it, but apparently, the hibiscus is the national flower of Malaysia (peach-colored flower in the top picture for the non-gardeners.)

I then headed to the large, enclosed bird park, which exceeded my expectations. Many of the birds were in cages, perhaps as much for their safety as for ours, like this guy...

“I’ll eat my way out if I have to.”

But most were roaming/flying free, including flamingos, cranes, scarlet ibises, peacocks, and even a few rhinoceros hornbills.

But my favorite would have to be this particular hornbill...

I then wandered down to the Islamic Art Museum, which had some beautiful fabrics, tilework, metalwork, and carved/inlaid wood, but unfortunately, they don’t allow pictures, so you will have to use your imagination.

By now I had taken in nature and culture and was ready for the city. KL has a good mix of Malay, Indian, and Chinese cultures, so I was headed to Chinatown to start my wanderings and grab some lunch. Now if I could just get there!

While KL is walkable from a size perspective, there are not always convenient pedestrian facilities. It seems the road indicated on my map was actually an elevated highway. I found another way around, which proved successful to a point, that point being when I found myself needing to cross a heavily trafficked 6-lane divided road. After playing Froggert with my life – what they lack in speed, they make up for in surprise – I managed to make my way over to the Chinese Assembly Hall, which was apparently hosting an afternoon rock concert. I made my way through the throngs of Chinese teenagers with pseudo-punk-street-cred to find a tea house serving bowls of noodle soup with seafood for a few dollars. This is actually a complete meal, as the bowl is large and the contents hearty. For those familiar with Vietnamese cuisine, I would liken it to Pho without the self-assembly.

Chinatown was just as I expected. It looked, smelled, and sounded Chinese. Aside from the Chinese faces and written characters, there was a distinct smell of fish and Chinese herbs, and a fast chatter in a language I don’t understand. I wandered the streets, poking my head into shops and restaurants, and even walking through a fish and produce market. I visited quite a few Taoist temples, and unexpectedly in Chinatown, even a Hindu one.

At the Sze Ya temple, which is supposedly the oldest Taoist temple in KL, a gentleman was kind enough to answer my many questions. It seems that this temple has altars to gods specific to education, business, and health. When people wish to pray to these gods, they light joss sticks (incense) and leave them to smolder in the sand-filled urns before each altar. I watched a woman with her four children burning joss sticks for the god related to education. (It reminds me of Catholics burning candles in church for the intercession of saints.)
Outside, there were rows of spiral joss sticks hanging from the ceiling, like the ones in the picture above. These burn for a longer period (about 2 days, as opposed to 2 hours for the standard ones). Many people also burn “gold paper” in small fireplaces to either side of the entrance for good luck. The smoke-filled air, smell of mild incense, and muffled street noise made the city seem far away and I realized how someone could find peace in a temple at the middle of a busy city.

I stopped off at the Central Market to see the local crafts and then headed to a line of street stalls to find dinner. Jin Alor is a street packed with hawkers (their word, not mine) selling stir fry, fried seafood, satay, soups, curry, banana leaf sachets, and every other food you could imagine. Finding something to eat was easy – deciding what to eat was hard.