Note 1 – Monday 23rd May

We have our passports back, and with six month, multiple entry visas for India! Eat my shorts, Stuart Buchan, no missing passport stories for you my son! Multiple entry is a bonus, given that we didn’t ask for it, on the advice of Rapid Visas, who said it might cause unnecessary problems (more questions being the last thing we wanted, given our undeclared and phone-less location on the other side of the world). Makes up ever so slightly for the fact they sent the passports back to us via DHL express next day delivery, costing over twice the amount we paid to send them back to England in the first place. Particularly stupid, I feel, given that we’d chosen to pay for the standard eight day visa processing service, as opposed to the quicker and more expensive five or three day offerings. Did it not occur to them that this would suggest we either weren’t in rush or keen to save money (both being the truth, as it happens, as we were quite happy chilling out on Tioman island for as long as it took, and we’re into the last third of our budget now). Ah well, can’t be helped now.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this already or not, but Paula’s heading off to India before me, some time in the next week or two, depending upon when she can get a cheap-ish flight. Yoga school calls again! And it’s a residential thing that lasts for almost a month, so I figure it therefore doesn’t really matter whether I’m waiting in the next town or somewhere else a thousand miles away. And my choice is the latter – Indonesia! I’ll have plenty of time to see India with Paula after she’s finished anyway, plus the monsoon season has just started there. Indonesia, on the other hand, is best visited at this time of year, and it sounds brilliant for many reasons; volcanoes, orangutans and excellent diving sites, to name just three of them! I’m going to chill out in Malaysia for a bit longer, though, hopefully to get up to date with my blog entries and photos, and definitely to eat more amazing food. Then I’m going to head to Singapore, and Indonesia plans will materialise from there…

I managed to catch the second half of the last round of matches of the Premiership season on TV last night. The frantically yoyo-ing relegation battle was quite exciting, with every one of the bottom five or six teams in the relegation zone at one time or another, but as a Liverpool fan it was all a bit of a disappointing anticlimax. My expectations weren’t high, but a glimmer of hope at some point would have been nice. Not to be, alas, as we started losing early and stayed losing throughout. However, the poor season doesn’t seem to have dented general Malaysian support for the mighty reds! Kids all over Britain may be donning Utd shirts for their kick-abouts in the local parks, but in Malaysia the mighty reds from Merseyside still reign supreme! The streets are flooded with Liverpool shirts, on market stalls and Malaysian backs, and I’ve no idea why, but it’s great to see! (I just googled “Liverpool popularity in Malaysia”, but am still none the wiser). Anyway, I guess that’s it, football related blog entries are now over for the season 2010/11. In fact, probably over for good, as the cricket mad Indians don’t generally give a stuff about football, do they? We’ll see, but I’m not going to hold out hope for August Premiership screenings in Mumbai…

Note 2 – Wednesday 25th May

Went to see “Something Borrowed” at the cinema last night. Not my usual cup of tea, but the combination of big screen, comfy seats and air-con are always a joy. I think I’d even consider paying for a film-free experience, actually, with just the seats and air-con!

I had a really good day today (while Paula was otherwise occupied), looking around temples. Or places of worship, rather, which seems a more appropriate term, as they were all actively being used. This probably comes as a surprise, given my previous expressions of disinterest in such things, but I find Malaysia’s religious diversity, with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians all peacefully co-existing, quite heart warming. And I noticed on the map of central Kuala Lumpur that within very close proximity of our hostel were a number of different places of worship, representing about half a dozen different religions. So I thought hey, why not have a bit of a wander, and compare and contrast! And it was really enjoyable. As I mentioned earlier, they were nearly all being actively used by locals, with none existing purely as tourist monuments, in the way, for example, some of the wats in Bangkok and temples in Beijing seem to. So I was able to sit by, sink into the corners, and watch people and customs, rather than just look at architectural features. The peace and quiet, and the instant sensation of detachment from the loud, bustling, smoky city around, was really relaxing, too. I think my route, which took all of two hours in total, went something like Sikh, Methodist (although hands up, I’m guilty of not knowing exactly what one is; a branch of Christianity, I think, but not sure how they fit in with Catholics and Protestants), Methodist (yes, that’s two, not a typo), Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic, Muslim. And Hindu was my favourite, as it happens! It had a spectacularly sculpted entrance gate (although that’s not why), it was immediately welcoming, and both incredibly tranquil and friendly inside, where I had to proceed barefoot, having given my shoes to a smiley Indian guy in a small room opening onto the street in front. I instantly felt at ease, and enjoyed sitting and watching for fifteen or twenty minutes, while people came and went, a couple of older Indian gentlemen played on instruments (that I don’t know the name of, but I’ll upload the pictures) for a while, a ceremony involving pouring milk and water over a statue and then carrying a flame around for participants to acknowledge in some way took place. All a very pleasant change from hassling hawkers and honking vehicles.

I’m surprised that we’ve been told by locals, on a couple of occasions, that people from different ethnic origins don’t all get on in Malaysia. There certainly seems to be good integration, to the casual observer, with Malays eating in Indian restaurants, Indians looking after market stalls in Chinatown, and generally a spread of ethnicities everywhere you look. Sitting on the subway and looking at the sea of mixed faces, if I didn’t already know where I was in the world, I certainly wouldn’t be able to guess. In fact, there are so many varying faces that it’s hard to pinpoint a large proportion of them as just one of Malay, Chinese or Indian, such would seem to have been the integration over the years. And I should add, actually, that despite being very much in a minority, as white-faced Westerners, no-one bats an eyelid at us, either. I remember once hearing that Toronto was the must multi-cultural city in the world, but without having been there, I reckon Kuala Lumpur must run it pretty close. I suspect that the locals who told us of racial tensions may not have been looking at them in the same light as we are. Perhaps what they considered serious would just equate to something like the scouse-manc rivalry back in England, as opposed to the sort of differences that are causing far more serious problems in places like Chechnya, Israel and Somalia (and many, many more, of course).

We also moved rooms within our hostel for the second time, today! We took what we could get on the first night, having arrived late, which was a basic double room with a fan. And no window, which we hate. Not having daylight, particularly for a few nights in a row, is depressing, so we’re always keen to get rooms with windows. There’s nothing worse than waking up and not having a clue if it’s five or ten in the morning. So on the second night we moved to a similar room, but with a window. Windows, however, depending on their size and orientation, can have somewhat of a greenhouse effect – and this one did in a big way! So after lying sweat-soaked for a couple of nights, we traded in daylight for air-con today. Necessary, I think, and I’m not now anticipating a further move whilst still in Oasis Guesthouse, Kuala Lumpur, but we’ll see!

Note 3 – Friday 27th May

Paula has booked her flight. Alas, not the fifty quid Air Asia bargain she was hoping for! It gets dirt cheap in a couple of weeks, either because the monsoon season has started or, simply, because it’s far enough in advance, but her course starts in ten days, so that’s not an option. Keen to get out of Kuala Lumpur as soon as possible (it’s interesting, but not a pleasant place to stay long-term), in the end she went for the balance of leaving on Thursday next week (2nd June) rather than paying almost three hundred quid for a flight before then, but not saving a further thirty quid by waiting any longer, which would have been a bit tight, time-wise, in terms of actually getting to the town where her course is. And, annoyingly, it even went up again in the couple of hours she took between getting a price from the travel agency and then going back to confirm and pay for it. Three figures in the end, but at least the first one didn’t quite begin with a two!
And having spent five days here already, I’ll now be the first to leave. Twelve days, having already had a few days here before we went to Pulau Tioman, are too many to use up here, so my new plan (replacing the Singapore one) is to head off to Penang this weekend. My plan is to get my visa for Indonesia there, before crossing over by ferry at the most northerly point possible, to Medan, in Sumatra. As well as still spending those few days catching up with blog entries and photos and eating lots of nice food, as per the previous plan!

I went to Putrajaya today, the new town about twenty kilometres from Kuala Lumpur that serves as the government’s administrative centre. They only started building it in the mid-nineties, in fact, so very new, far newer than our “new towns” of the sixties, most famously Milton Keynes. Paula was invited, but predictably declined - in favour of anything else, I believe, including the proverbial observation of drying paint! And there weren’t any other tourists on the train, either, now I think of it. What can I say, it must be the remnants of that old architecture student in me…

Talking of which, the train that is, I almost turned back when I found out it was nineteen ringgits return, compared to the two or three to get anywhere else of a similar distance! My guess is that’s what one pays for a spanking new transport link (which continued on to the airport), an ultra-smooth express service (it definitely whooshed rather than chugged or clickety clacked) with comfy seats, video screens and air con. Nice, but I’d much rather have paid two ringgits for the hot, slow, overcrowded, chugging version that stops every couple of minutes and takes an hour! But not an option, unfortunately, so I just had to remind myself that nineteen ringgits is only four quid, and that you can’t get that far in England for four quid. It still hurt.

Putrajaya was kind of what I’d expected, having been to Milton Keynes, Welwyn Garden City (albeit passing through) and Brasilia before. Fascinating, in my mind, in its failure! Admirable in its objectives, and rational in its design, I guess it sounds good if I describe the well considered zoning of housing communities, work places and leisure areas, with excellent transport links between them, as well as acres of green space, infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians, and a general feeling of space and clean air. But it just doesn’t work! I have to admit this is subjective, of course, but for me, you can’t build a city from scratch. Cities are about the layers of history, the contrasts between old and new, the lack of organised planning, born of years without highly regulated planning departments, the mixture of people living, working, eating, socialising, all in the tight spaces that exist anywhere they found they could fit. The bustle, the noises, the smells, the surprises. Atmosphere, basically. Convenience is nice, but surely it can’t replace atmosphere. And character. So I wandered around for a few hours, checking out the buildings, bridges and landscaped spaces in between. And it was nice, and interesting, but I could never live in a place like it.

That said, getting back from the station to our hostel, a kilometre through Kuala Lumpur, I did wish the allowance for pedestrians was somewhere more in between the two places! Kuala Lumpur’s pedestrian infrastructure is terrible, aside from within the very central areas. Pavements would be nice, never mind more complicated things such as underpasses, bridges and crossings! And half the time, even when there would appear to be pedestrian lights, they never actually work, with one flow of traffic just repeatedly making way for another. But I guess it’s hard to squeeze those things in, once you’ve forgotten to put them there in the first place. OK, maybe one point for new towns.

Note 4 – Sunday 29th May

Off tomorrow, our paths to split for five or six weeks! A strange thought. But it’ll be exciting adventuring solo for a while, and we need to make the most of our remaining time and budget (the latter informing the former, of course).

But I’m not going to dwell on that, I’m going to write about my haircut yesterday! I walked into the little hairdressers I’d spotted, timely, just as an old Chinese gentleman was walking out, and the friendly looking Indian man gestured straight towards a seat in front of the mirrors. He finished cleaning his scissors or whatever it was he was doing at the other end of the room, said “you want short, yeah?” as he walked over to me, before proceeding to start cutting my hair before I’d even had time to answer! As it happened, yes, I did, and I guess technically the chances of me stopping by to get a hair extension were pretty slim, but still, the measure of how short and where exactly is usually determined first! Anyway, no worries, he gave me the best haircut I’ve had on my travels yet! During which, we chatted about Malaysia, India, cricket and football. He told me he was heading back to Chennai soon (a big Superkings fan, naturally!), after fifteen years living in Malaysia. It was getting too expensive to live in Malaysia, with his annual work permit now costing two and a half thousand ringgits, not to mention the four hundred it cost to watch the Indian Premier League cricket tournament, and the five hundred to watch the cricket World Cup (which he and some friends split between them, but even still, I’m sure it’s partly the principal). He seemed a little sad at the circumstances, but happy overall, I think, to be heading to where he considered home. Anyway, he finished cutting my hair, or so I thought, and as I was getting up to pay (all of two quid) he motioned to me to sit back down. At which point he grabbed my head in both hands, jerked it ninety degrees towards him, making an almighty crunch (I’m not sure where it came from exactly, but either my head, neck, or a combination of the two), and then did the same in the opposite direction. Sounded terrible, felt great! Then I got a shoulder massage, a series of strong pats on my back, before he finally, carefully, styled my hair up towards the centre, as close to a Mohican as you can get with hair that’s about two centimetres long. Brilliant! Well, not the last bit, which I readjusted upon leaving his shop, but the rest was a process hairdressers back in England should definitely consider! Like I said, best haircut yet, without question.

Paula and I went for our last meal at our favourite veggie, mock meat and mixed veg, buffet today. A sad moment. Not because we’re heading in different directions for a few weeks, as we’re both quite excited about our plans, but because it was our last meal there! The food there has been so good, with such variety, and so cheap, that we’ve literally eaten there every day we’ve been in Kuala Lumpur on our second visit, on top of a few occasions on our first stint in the city, when we found it only towards the end. I think we must be the best traveller customers they’ve ever had (some locals clearly come every day), with about a dozen visits in total! …Which makes it about forty quid we’ve spent there. (Hmm, so maybe we’ve actually better customers of Sapporo Teppanyaki in Manchester, where we went just the once, before we left, and spent twice that amount…)

Anyway, that’s all for Kuala Lumpur. Next report from Georgetown, Penang (and I’ll try to include updates from India, if available!)