We love KL and use it regularly as a hub to travel round south east asia. It is a cheap, friendly, easily accessible place - nothing like London then! Our favourite area is Brickfields or Little India as it is known. Even though it is part of a big capital city, it has a vibrant and diverse community atmosphere. Oh and it has great, cheap Indian food too! We have done lots of the touristy things in KL already - twin towers, China town, Menara tower and its rainforest park, the botanical park and a heritage tour of Little India. This time we went to the twin towers in the evening, apart from seeing the towers lit up like a weird spacecraft, there is also a sound and light show with the fountains round the back. The fountains are lit with many different colours and they dance along to the music - very nice. There is also the GoKL bus, which is a free bus that goes along three different routes around KL's various attractions. Our first trip out of KL was out on the cheap 40 minute train to Batu caves. The caves are just outside KL and have been turned into a hindu shrine. One of the early Indian settlers in KL a man called Thamboosamey Pillah used his money from tin mining to build Hindu temples and shrines around KL. The caves are pretty big and feature enormous Hindu statues and internal shrines - a little bit tacky really. Amazing for photos though. On another day, we did the Merdeka Square heritage walk. This is a free, two and a half hour tour that takes you around the British built heritage buildings. The tour starts at the Gallery at 9am on Saturdays and begins with a peek at the expansive model of KL city - an amazing display which includes details of future developments including the heritage tower that will be completed in 2020 and will be way higher than the Petronas twin towers. The tour was great as we got to see restricted areas of some of the buildings and highlights of the museums. Paul asked a bit of an awkward question though. When the tour guide was talking about the cultural heritage of the diverse ethnic groups in Malaysia i.e. Sarawak Indians, Malay, Chinese, Indian, Orang Asli, Paul asked how many of the 30 million Malays are Orang Asli. You could see the tour guide wince as she explained that only 10,000 orang asli remained, which means that the indiginous people of the Malay Peninsula have all but been wiped out. We know that their homeland, the forests, are being torn down to plant palm oil plantations and the orang asli are being forced deeper and deeper into the jungle. Rather than preserve the heritage of the Orang Asli and allow them to live as they have for hundreds of years, current government policy is to rehouse, re-educate and integrate them. Our tour ended at the Royal Selangor Club, originally a gentlemen's club, it overlooks Merdeka Square (Freedom Square or Independence Square) which is where cricket was played during the late 1800s during British occupation. Women are now allowed to be members but still are not allowed to be served at the long bar.
After the tour we headed to the Hornbill restaurant, which forms part of the KL bird park. I have yet to see a Hornbill in the wild and I decided that a bucket list item for this trip would be to see one in flight. (I saw a peacock in flight in India on the last big trip). Reviews of the restaurant mentioned that it was next to the hornbill enclosure and you could often catch a glimpse of them. The food and drinks were a bit pricey, so we just ordered a diet coke each and sat on the balcony that overlooked the canopy below - no sign of them! We then heard its weird bird call and followed it to one side of the restaurant balcony. I spotted it in the tree just in front - wow it was huge. As if by magic, he then flew onto the rail of the balcony and posed for several photos. He then flew back to the tree - bucket list well and truly ticked.
It was Hari Raya (the festival to celebrate the end of Ramadan), while we were in KL. Just like Christmas, it is a time when people travel back home to spend quiet time with their families. We thought it a perfect time to visit the Templer hills park outside KL, with its many waterfalls. It would be very quiet. We got the bus there and arrived as coaches and buses and cars piled in there. What we hadn't factored in was that Hari Raya was a public holiday, but non-muslims didn't necessarily stay at home with the family. Lots of Indian families had headed here for swimming, picnics and fun. Good God it was mayhem! The waterfall at the bottom was full of people fully clothed having a splash about. As we followed the path further up the hill to more waterfalls, we realised it was not getting any quieter - each waterfall was a site for massive barbeques, picnics and fully-clothed canyoning Indians. It was quite a spectacle. Please see the video tab to get a glimpse of what I mean.
Our only other day out was to Putrajaya, a man-made city south of KL. We had done some research and found that you could hire bicycles and cycle round the city's main attractions including the Putra Mosque and the many bridges over the lakes and waterways. Cycle paths are pretty rare in Asia, so this town sounded idyllic. The cheap E1 bus took us straight to Putrajaya for around 70p each. Unfortunately, as it was Hari Raya, the tourist offices were closed along with the bike hire. Putrajaya is a lovely place and they have done a great job with the town planning with wide avenues, gardens, waterfalls and many bridges. We took a cheap bus to the mosque which is very beautiful. I was stopped at the door and asked to put on a robe to cover myself. After grabbing a robe, I suddenly felt indignant. I had long trousers on and a long sleeved shirt buttoned up to my throat and stretching down to my thighs - fairly respectful as I had planned! I went back to the young man at the door and asked why I had to wear a robe. Paul was wearing a t-shirt and combat pants and he had not been stopped - I was more respectfully dressed than him. The guy explained that my pants were too tight and I needed to cover my head. I asked if Paul needed to cover his head and he said "No". O.K, so I'm not oblivious to the Muslim culture and I'm more than aware that women always need to cover their head, but something about being treated differently in this way really wound me up. Plus, you have to realise that in my red robe rather than rocking the Jedi Knight look, I was looking more like the midget in the film "Don't look now!" Anyway, Paul was a bit disappointed as the walkway into the dome only went part of the way in so he couldn't get some of the angles he needed of the beautiful dome above. Putrajaya is well worth exploring; we'll do our bike ride next time we visit. Check out Paul's photos on the Photos tab. Thanks for your messages on here and on Facebook, Sri Lanka next.