All is Swell in KL

We've spent the last couple of days exploring Kuala Lumpur, hunting for interesting sights and sounds. We've been fairly successful, and our family will leave the city with some memorable experiences. I've included some of them below.

KL tends to concentrate its less interesting and generic (at least to us) sights and attractions in the core of the modern downtown, so we had to explore the outskirts a bit to find what we were looking for.

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the city government offers a free bus service on a select few routes. This helped us a few times, and the buses served a dual purpose of escaping the heat (one cannot never get too much AC in KL!) and leaving a bit more ringgit in our wallets for other uses (apparently the city taxi drivers have been less than impressed with this service since it was introduced 4 years ago).

In a city brimming with mosques, I think this is the only church we saw, nestled on the edge of one of the last remaining green spaces in KL yet to fall victim to bulldozers and construction cranes. We planned on exploring this oasis in the middle of the KL metropolis... 

....only to find out it was closed, ironically due to a 'modernization' initiative that will see a giant sky walk constructed through the park. Had to be satisfied with the view from the road. Let's hope Borneo still has some trails to explore when we get there in a few days.

So it was off to Chinatown to stroll through its old streets and market stalls. Though every major city seems to have a Chinatown, this one in Kuala Lumpur is genuinely lived in. With 25% of Malaysia comprised of ethnic Chinese, and with even higher proportion in urban areas, KL has a distinctly Chinese feel to it.

And you can almost certainly count on tasty treats when you're walking through Chinatown - these chewy peanut covered snacks were a hit with Owen.

And what is a day on vacation in Asia without visiting a temple? Being in a Muslim country with large Chinese and Hindu populations (both with multiple deities) you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a mosque or temple. The kids couldn't wait to get into this one to make a prayer - that their dad would stop taking them to temples!

I told them I would stop making them go to temples as soon as they do a better job of worshiping me! I just need a catchy name and a new outfit.

While we were there I did ask Owen to carefully observe the rituals which the temple visitors were following, so I hope he didn't get too close as he shadowed their every move.

Here he studied a lady burning the 'ghost' money, basically an offering to her ancestors who have passed away, so that they have money 'on the other side' with which to enjoy a good life (or death?)

Okay son, maybe that's a bit too close.

Quiet and careful observance builds up an appetite for pig intestines - a hankering which can only be satisfied in Chinatown.

With our bellies full, we headed off on the LRT to one of the last remaining neighbourhoods yet to be destroyed by the wrecking ball of modernization.

Kampung Baru sits in the shadows of the Petronas towers and is a quaint neighbourhood of low rise houses and traditional dwellings. It has retained its authenticity in the midst of rapid urban growth due in large part because of archaic and complicated Muslim inheritance rules here, which require property sales to be agreed to by all family members who may have an ownership claim. A developer's nightmare!

After a lovely, but sweltering, stroll through the Kampung, we headed off to find some more culture, this time in the form of arts and crafts.

The Krafts Kompleks is a government sponsored traditional crafts village which not only provides a retail outlet for craftsmen to sell their wares, but also allows visitors to see and experience how the products are made. Admittedly, and probably due to it being a Sunday, it was a little quiet, but we nevertheless had a nice time here.

This was mainly because we found a Batik house which let visitors try their hand at this traditional art form. The kids were eager to give it a shot....

...and with some time away from the usual number crunching and bean counting, even Dad is tempted to finally let his creative juices flow. 

And for a tummy running empty after long walks and bursts of creative energy, nothing is better than a tasty shwarma sandwich. I don't think he's ever eaten one of these before, but like his Dad, it may now be one of his favourites!

KL has a bit of a hodge-podge of public transit options. Not only have we taken buses, but there is also a monorail, an LRT (subway) and a commuter train (KTM). I guess it doesn't matter, as long as it gets us there. And today we needed to get to the Batu Caves.

And being a predominantly Muslim country, there are certain interesting features of the local transit options. Of course I accidentally jumped on one of these in my rush to board the train. It was my kids who started yelling at me to get back off. I'm sure the ladies on board didn't mind too much - it was the transit police who I was more worried about. 

The Batu Caves, on the outskirts of KL, were 'discovered' by a British colonial in the late 1800's, but were adopted by the Hindus living in Malaysia as their holy place of worship. There are still huge annual festivals which take place here, drawing hundreds of thousands of followers and pilgrims, but most weekday mornings are fairly quiet. Just a few tourists, the local Hindus.....

....and temple monkeys!!

"Okay Arthur, you distract the fat white guy on the left, while I go after his wife's potato chips"

The temple built right into the massive caverns was a sight to behold, and while it didn't match the 1,237 steps up to the Tiger Temple in Krabi, the climb to the top had me sweating buckets.

They look stunned - "Can you believe they're letting us eat this?"

After all, a kid cannot live on fried rice and noodle soup alone.

And now it's back in air conditioned comfort as we head out on an impromptu visit to the Royal Selangor Pewter Company factory, suggested by the receptionist at our guest house.

A long and humid walk yielded the first ice cream of the day - well deserved, I say. And we made it to the factory just before the skies opened up and gave us a tremendous tropical downpour.

I'm only impressed if it's full of beer - because I really need one right now.

We were guided through a museum outlining the history of tin mining in Malaysia in the 1800's and the company's early beginning. Properly done, I think you can make almost any subject interesting, and this was no exception. I happen to own a Royal Selangor Pewter beer mug, so it was pretty cool to visit its birthplace.

Precious boy.

A replica of the Petronas Towers, made entirely out of...you guessed it, pewter cups!

We were then taken through the various stages of the manufacturing process, performed by workers so skilled that you wouldn't believe these were hand made unless you saw it with your own eyes. The final specimen looks so precisely formed and finished that you would swear it was machine produced.

This lady hammers in a common pattern in a seemingly random manner - where's the skill in that....?  

....until they let us try ourselves. Even Annie, the most artistic one in our family, couldn't produce anything more than a bunch of random dents in the cup.

Time well spent in the most unlikely of KL attractions - we would recommend this to anyone who might want to escape the heat (or rain, in our case) and visit an different kind of attraction.

So Kuala Lumpur didn't turn out so bad after all. Definitely different from the city I visited almost 20 years ago, but it was a fast and fun few days for us before we slow down to the jungle pace of Borneo.