For the May Holiday we decided to visit Malaysia as it was relatively close & came highly regarding by others. The only problem when visiting another country is where to go especially with Malaysia due to its size & various islands. Since we didn’t want to spend a whole day getting somewhere we picked the capital Kula Lumpur & down the coast to the ancient city of Melakka.
We left smoggy Shenzhen via its airport & arrived 4 hours later. The KL airport is at least 50 minutes from the city itself. The lines at the customs are fast but long & getting a cab is a different set up. You can get a bus-van-taxi ticket & that cost more than a typical metered taxi. We didn’t know that until we took the ticketed cab, which is very nice & about 105 RM (ringget or 40 USD) as to 70 RM for a metered taxi.
Our driver wasn’t sure how to get to the Shangri-La Hotel as the roads were blocked. Why? Well, he did know the right word so he said it was due to a meeting. I figured VIPS were in town & when we got to downtown KL is was pretty empty. As we checked into the very nice hotel we found out the city was in a semi lock down mode due to political demonstration, which we found out the next day turn ugly & violent. No bother to us as we & other tourist-locals had the place to our selves with a great sense of peace & quiet. So after settling in we grabbed dinner & went to the famous Petronas Towers & the KLCC shopping mall.
The next day we slept in & headed out to climb 272 steps to the top Batu Caves Hindu Temple (trying not to get mugged by brazen monkeys), the National Monument to the fallen military members (designed by an American sculptor), Butterfly Park, & the Islamic Arts Museum, which was nicely air conditioned as the others are not. The museum held my interest as we’re heading to Saudi Arabia in August to teach there for at least the next 2 years.
On Monday the 30th we took the bus down toward Melaka or Malacca. It use to be a big seaport trading center & then under the Europeans, starting in the mid 17th Century, the place has dried up economically with Singapore & Penang taking over as the main trading centers for the area. It is now slowly rebounding as a tourist center with 3 mega malls, nice hotels, many mini museums, as it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. To get to the very nice, huge, & modern bus station of KL you have to take a 20 minute 40 ringget cab ride out of downtown KL to purchase a 10 ringget express one way two hour ride down to Melaka. As you can see cabs are expensive. The highway was one of the best I’ve been on & it was nothing but green vegetation as far as the eye can see on rolling terrain. It has also been really hot with temperatures just around a humid 38 degree centigrade.
Get around is easy as English is the second language & the people are so kind & helpful. We bought traditional Malaysian outfits & we look really regal. Eileen purchased a Muslim ladies outfit with headdress. She had to have one of the young Muslim female clerks help her put it on & today she bought a baju kurung or sarong. She looks stunning. I purchased a baju melayu, think of a nice pajama set, with a sarong (kain pelekat) wrap to go with it. The head gear (a tanjak) was the hardest thing to purchase. The tanjak is more Malay & the other is called a songkok (Malay Muslim version of a fez). I finally found a tanjak at a bridal shop that took pity on my sad search story & sold me a used one for 50 ringget, God bless that woman as I combed all these shops in the heat.
Now Malaysia is round 65% Muslim. So a lot of the restaurants, including the Holiday Inn where we are staying, are “halal” or prepared by Muslim law; so no pork for me. The prices in Melaka are so much more reasonable than KL. Despite some of the bad press Muslims may get in the press back home, I found the Muslims of Malaysia quite friendly & helpful. I’m not certain but I wonder due to their influence that this tourist center is more family friendly in that I see less people smoking or racy advertisements & certainly the dress is more modest. I’m just hoping to sleep better tonight as we’re close to a place where the music is rather loud until 2am, which is my only complaint. Oh, we went into the older part of town & enjoyed a Nyonya restaurant. This is a mix of Chinese & Malaysian cuisine. It is very cheap & quite tasty. We did ask to tone down the hot spices just to be safe. Tomorrow it is off to the former Portugese section of town.
So yesterday we walked to the Portugese section of town. After a long hike we made it to the “settlement” which is a bunch of homes & at the end is a nice hotel (The Lisbon), & a bunch of closed up near the beach eateries. It is absolutely nothing to speak of, really. All that way for what I thought was nothing. Ah! That’s not the whole story. Well one restaurant was open & we order a lunch to be soon joined by Signor Georgas. He is an 81 year old man & the local historian who gave us a free lecture while we were having lunch on Portugese involvement in Melaka. Where he learned his English, I’m not sure but he is at least tri-lingual. Than we were joined by a Brazilian young lady who is on break working for an NGO in Timor, where they speak Portugese. It turned out to be a nice time learning more about the place. Then we went to the “floating Mosque” which is on a man made island in what will be called Islam Town. We couldn’t go in, though we were told we could at our hotel. So we took off our shoes, wore a “graduation robe” to cover ourselves; I was wearing shorts & Eileen a sleeveless blouse; & took a quick walk around the mosque. Nothing really. For dinner we went to the hotel across from the Holiday Inn that had a really nice buffet. Yum but again, halal foods, no bother as everything was really tasty.
You know you’re enjoying yourself when you loose track of time. It’s Thursday already & we have to head back to KL to spend the night in a B&B called Rumah Patih. A Brit by the name of James & his Malay wife Jo run the proprietors but Ashby the chilled out Siamese is the boss. One last day before flying back to smog central, Shenzhen & 7 more weeks of school. Our trip back was a bit confusing as there are two airports & our airlines (Air Asia) was at the other older & smaller airport called LCC. LCC is not only old it is an odd way to check in the transit system to KLIAA is smooth & easy but the LCC is in the dark ages & to get from KLIA to LCC is an expensive taxi ride of 20 minutes or the cheaper 30 minute bus ride. All this was not explained to us before but we left quite early & had the cash so it worked out. Still we made it. Overall, we enjoyed Malaysia, as it is pretty easy to get around due to the English, people are so friendly, & the pace of life slow. The heat is rather tough to get use to but thank God for AC. Well, gotta get going.
For the May Holiday we decided to visit Malaysia as it was relatively close & came highly regarding by others. The only problem when visiting another country is where to go especially with Malaysia due to its size & various islands. Since we didn’t want to spend a whole day getting somewhere we picked the capital Kula Lumpur & down the coast to the ancient city of Melakka.
We left smoggy Shenzhen via its airport & arrived 4 hours later. The KL airport is at least 50 minutes from the city itself. The lines at the customs are fast but long & getting a cab is a different set up. You can get a bus-van-taxi ticket & that cost more than a typical metered taxi. We didn’t know that until we took the ticketed cab, which is very nice & about 105 RM (ringget or 40 USD) as to 70 RM for a metered taxi.
Our driver wasn’t sure how to get to the Shangri-La Hotel as the roads were blocked. Why? Well, he did know the right word so he said it was due to a meeting. I figured VIPS were in town & when we got to downtown KL is was pretty empty. As we checked into the very nice hotel we found out the city was in a semi lock down mode due to political demonstration, which we found out the next day turn ugly & violent. No bother to us as we & other tourist-locals had the place to our selves with a great sense of peace & quiet. So after settling in we grabbed dinner & went to the famous Petronas Towers & the KLCC shopping mall.
The next day we slept in & headed out to climb 272 steps to the top Batu Caves Hindu Temple (trying not to get mugged by brazen monkeys), the National Monument to the fallen military members (designed by an American sculptor), Butterfly Park, & the Islamic Arts Museum, which was nicely air conditioned as the others are not. The museum held my interest as we’re heading to Saudi Arabia in August to teach there for at least the next 2 years.
On Monday the 30th we took the bus down toward Melaka or Malacca. It use to be a big seaport trading center & then under the Europeans, starting in the mid 17th Century, the place has dried up economically with Singapore & Penang taking over as the main trading centers for the area. It is now slowly rebounding as a tourist center with 3 mega malls, nice hotels, many mini museums, as it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. To get to the very nice, huge, & modern bus station of KL you have to take a 20 minute 40 ringget cab ride out of downtown KL to purchase a 10 ringget express one way two hour ride down to Melaka. As you can see cabs are expensive. The highway was one of the best I’ve been on & it was nothing but green vegetation as far as the eye can see on rolling terrain. It has also been really hot with temperatures just around a humid 38 degree centigrade.
Get around is easy as English is the second language & the people are so kind & helpful. We bought traditional Malaysian outfits & we look really regal. Eileen purchased a Muslim ladies outfit with headdress. She had to have one of the young Muslim female clerks help her put it on & today she bought a baju kurung or sarong. She looks stunning. I purchased a baju melayu, think of a nice pajama set, with a sarong (kain pelekat) wrap to go with it. The head gear (a tanjak) was the hardest thing to purchase. The tanjak is more Malay & the other is called a songkok (Malay Muslim version of a fez). I finally found a tanjak at a bridal shop that took pity on my sad search story & sold me a used one for 50 ringget, God bless that woman as I combed all these shops in the heat.
Now Malaysia is round 65% Muslim. So a lot of the restaurants, including the Holiday Inn where we are staying, are “halal” or prepared by Muslim law; so no pork for me. The prices in Melaka are so much more reasonable than KL. Despite some of the bad press Muslims may get in the press back home, I found the Muslims of Malaysia quite friendly & helpful. I’m not certain but I wonder due to their influence that this tourist center is more family friendly in that I see less people smoking or racy advertisements & certainly the dress is more modest. I’m just hoping to sleep better tonight as we’re close to a place where the music is rather loud until 2am, which is my only complaint. Oh, we went into the older part of town & enjoyed a Nyonya restaurant. This is a mix of Chinese & Malaysian cuisine. It is very cheap & quite tasty. We did ask to tone down the hot spices just to be safe. Tomorrow it is off to the former Portugese section of town.
So yesterday we walked to the Portugese section of town. After a long hike we made it to the “settlement” which is a bunch of homes & at the end is a nice hotel (The Lisbon), & a bunch of closed up near the beach eateries. It is absolutely nothing to speak of, really. All that way for what I thought was nothing. Ah! That’s not the whole story. Well one restaurant was open & we order a lunch to be soon joined by Signor Georgas. He is an 81 year old man & the local historian who gave us a free lecture while we were having lunch on Portugese involvement in Melaka. Where he learned his English, I’m not sure but he is at least tri-lingual. Than we were joined by a Brazilian young lady who is on break working for an NGO in Timor, where they speak Portugese. It turned out to be a nice time learning more about the place. Then we went to the “floating Mosque” which is on a man made island in what will be called Islam Town. We couldn’t go in, though we were told we could at our hotel. So we took off our shoes, wore a “graduation robe” to cover ourselves; I was wearing shorts & Eileen a sleeveless blouse; & took a quick walk around the mosque. Nothing really. For dinner we went to the hotel across from the Holiday Inn that had a really nice buffet. Yum but again, halal foods, no bother as everything was really tasty.
You know you’re enjoying yourself when you loose track of time. It’s Thursday already & we have to head back to KL to spend the night in a B&B called Rumah Patih. A Brit by the name of James & his Malay wife Jo run the proprietors but Ashby the chilled out Siamese is the boss. One last day before flying back to smog central, Shenzhen & 7 more weeks of school. Our trip back was a bit confusing as there are two airports & our airlines (Air Asia) was at the other older & smaller airport called LCC. LCC is not only old it is an odd way to check in the transit system to KLIAA is smooth & easy but the LCC is in the dark ages & to get from KLIA to LCC is an expensive taxi ride of 20 minutes or the cheaper 30 minute bus ride. All this was not explained to us before but we left quite early & had the cash so it worked out. Still we made it. Overall, we enjoyed Malaysia, as it is pretty easy to get around due to the English, people are so friendly, & the pace of life slow. The heat is rather tough to get use to but thank God for AC. Well, gotta get going.
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