Malaysia: Land of Overpasses

You know, for months I made fun of Colin for being a bad blogger: "when are you going to update your blog?" "When can I see pictures of [wherever he'd gone last]?" Et cetera. But then when it's my turn to update, it takes even longer. In this case having my wisdom teeth out has finally left me with the time and the nothing-better-to-do of finishing this entry. It's also left me somewhat loopy (yay Tylenol 3s), so apologies in advance if this entry is weirdly phrased and/or gramatically incorrect. Hopefully most of you are just looking for the pictures and won't stop to read.

It's funny, too. I was talking to Colin a while ago about how it seems like so long has passed since Christmas. "It has been a long time," he said. "Yeah," said I, "but it seems even longer than that." It's kind of like travelling takes place at a different pace than the routine back home.

But enough bland pseudo-philosophising. Onward to the pictures...

We started our travels across southeast Asia with a trip to Malaysia, mostly to visit Colin's friend James. We set off early in the morning to Bedok MRT station to catch a bus across the border.

Colin looks excited as we speed through Singapore. The bus we took had reclining seats, lots of legroom, curtains on the windows, extra padding, etc. It was one of the very few times in Asia that we had enough legroom.

Singapore and Johor Bahru are connected by a causeway. (This, incidentally, means that a tourist marketing board can claim that a little islet connected by a bridge to Sentosa Island, connected by a bridge to Singapore, connected by a bridge to Malaysia is part of continental Asia. Not sure if I buy that, but more on that in a future blog post.) Anyway, the causeway is neutral ground as far as immigration is concerned; Malaysia has its checkpoint at the north end and Singapore at the south. We cleared out of Singapore pretty quickly (though Colin got yelled at for forgetting his student card, or something) and set off across the bridge.

In contrast to our breezy trip through security to exit Singapore, getting into Malaysia was not quite so efficient. The Malaysian border office was a little building that was filled--absolutely filled--with people. There was no air conditioning, and the fans weren't working, and we were carrying all of our bags. I wish I'd taken a picture, but all the threatening 'no photography' signs were kind of intimidating. You can see in the picture on the left the causeway leading up to the border checkpoint. But the picture doesn't show the sheer number of people quietly standing in the slow-moving lines to get across the border; it was staggering. It took an hour and a half and a large quantity of swack to get through the checkpoint.

Don't we both just look thrilled to be done with that? We were both impressed that our bus was still waiting on the other side of the border--it's lucky that we weren't the only non-Malays stuck in line. Take note too of the ad behind Colin for the "Menara KL"; we ended up going up that tower when we got to KL. It's funny looking at these pictures and noticing things like that that we didn't see when taking them.

Hooray for not having to walk hundreds of kilometres!

We were on the road again. A little bit of waiting, some more travelling and a couple of rest/nasi ayam (which is just a tasty plate of chicken and rice, but it sounds more sophisticated to say it in Malay) stops occupied us for a few hours.

This was taken on December 16. I know it's not quite as nice as Edmonton was then...

...and a strange fish sculpture that only silly white tourists would take a picture of. Which brings us to the next picture:

This was at a toll booth on a highway not far from Seremban. I'm not going to name any names, but this definitely made us think of some of our friends. At any rate, it was more significant for indicating that, a mere seven hours after leaving Singapore, we were finally approaching our destination.

The Lonely Planet describes Seremban as "the rather down-at-heel capital of Negeri Sembilan [state]" and goes on to mention that "crumbling colonial-area shop-houses, eroding from damp and neglect, and green with moss and opportunistic vegetation, lend the town a certain nobility." Seremban is not a tourist destination by any stretch of the imagination, but it does have a certain charm. It's little more than a place for people to live, and it definitely made a contrast to the ostentatious city of Singapore.

We were there to meet James and his family, but because we were so late arriving they'd returned home from the bus depot. Ergo, we had a brief stroll around the central part of the town. It was here that we were first exposed to the random pedestrian overpasses that seem to be everywhere in urban Malaysia.

You can see on the right side of this picture some of those crumbling shop houses...

...as Colin looks demurely over the town.

But we finally met up with James and family, his mother and two sisters (the littler one being somewhat shy, as seen above). They proved to be a very kind family--and his mother made sure we never had too little to eat! After being stuffed us full of tasty food, James, Colin and I wandered to a nearby park and took in the sights and sounds of suburban Seremban. We sat by a fountain surrounded by families with small children...

...and found out that, amazingly, James actually smiles for pictures. Not that I'm implying Colin doesn't, or anything.

We had but a brief time in Seremban--just one night. The next morning (after James' mother took us out for lots of tasty noodle soup at a nearby Chinese restaurant) we made for the train station and started our trek to Kuala Lumpur.

This is Tasik Solatan station, the intersection of three rail lines--the KTM Kommuter to Seremban and other far off places, the KL "Star" LRT and the KLIA airport line. This is worth mentioning solely because we ended up at this station on all three trains during our stay in KL. That and, hey, trains are cool.


We found our hotel, the Hotel Wira, with minimal effort. Colin booked it in advance since it's part of Hostelling International. We were expecting fairly frugal accomodation, but it turned out to be a full-service hotel. We got settled in...

...and set off to explore the town.

We were staying near the Chow Kit district in Kuala Lumpur. It's not a touristy part of the city--the Lonely Planet even calls it "seedy"--but it wasn't bad by any means. We found food and sights to see pretty easily. Colin mentioned in the last post that I quite liked KL. It's a city with character--not one that caters to tourists, not one that everyone just has to see--it's a real city; that's what I liked. It's relatively compact--we walked what looked like huge distances on the map in very little time.

That's our first gimpse of the one feature of KL that most people have at least heard of--the Petronas Twin Towers.

The man behind me looks like he's emerging from a time warp or something. This is at the Chow Kit night market, enjoying some soup from a roadside stall...

..."roadside" being open to interpretation, since roads and sidewalks are not the absolutes we think of them as in North America...

...and, for good measure a view of the Petronas towers by night.

The Petronas towers were, until a few years ago, the world's tallest buildings, some 88 stories and 450 metres tall. But they're not that big--see? You have to watch your head under that bridge.

We wanted to go up to the sky bridge to see the sights. It's funny--when Colin's friend Itt went to KL with some of his friends they were so excited to go to KLCC--the big mall at the base of the towers. But Colin and I, being weird, like tall buildings more than shopping, and we wandered through the mall with barely a glance. Go figure.

Anyway, going up Petronas was not to be, as the skybridge is closed on Mondays. So we went outside, took even more pictures of the towers, and glanced at yonder Lonely Planet to see what else we could see.

Yep, it's still a big ol' tower...

...and Colin spotted this little bird frolicking in the trees.

The Lonely Planet directed us to the Menara KL--which, translated, means "KL Tower", which promised even better views than Petronas. It kind of looks like the Calgary Tower...or the CN Tower in Toronto...or any number of other towers around the world. You know you've made it as a city when you have a tall, round telecommunications tower that you turn into a tourist attraction. Restaurant at the top? Check. Gift shop? Check. Binoculars for sale? Check. Prerecorded audio tour? Yep.

Incidentally, the picture at left is a combination of three different pictures. You'll notice that the computer stitched them together by matching up the clouds rather than the shaft of the tower--since the clouds were moving, the tower looks weird. I find the result quite interesting, but that's probably because I'm weird. At any rate, it's not actually so oddly shaped.

Oh, and because we're dorks we took the KL monorail to get there, complete with several repetitions of the Monorail Song from the Simpsons. When we got back to Singapore, Colin's friend Aileen (who grew up in KL) told us tales of how the monorail was a source of some controversy when it was first built, with pieces of concrete falling off the guideway and so on. Is there a chance the track could bend? Not on your life, my Hindu friend!

Speaking of braindead slobs (another reference to the Monorail song, I'm not actually being mean), isn't Colin cute?

Some views from the tower. Looking down on skyscrapers is always fun...

We noticed that big rock formation in the distance. It turned out to be the Batu Caves, a series of Hindu temples inside a big limestone cave formation. Since Colin and I make decisions in the "hey, that looks interesting" style, we decided we'd go there later.

Hey, go national pride. Though, again, not that tall ;).

But first we took a trip to Chinatown for lunch. Confusing roads, crowded markets and squid soup made for a fun afternoon. We wandered around for a bit before seeking a bus to the Batu Caves.

Looks kind of Lord of the Rings-esque, doesn't it?

The inside of the cave. Like any good tourist attraction, there's a conveniently located gift/snack shop. There was garbage strewn about all over the cave, so at first we blamed slovenly tourists, until we saw the real culprits...

...monkeys! These guys were all over the place in and around the cave. I got one to smile for me, until Colin pointed out that it wasn't smiling because it was happy. That's the story of Peter not being attacked by crazy monkeys in a cave.

Because we have the combined maturity of a six-year-old, we had a laugh at this building we saw as we were coming back from the caves.

We finished the day with a trip to Little India for even more tasty food. I think that the (relatively) diverse population was another thing I liked about KL. Malaysia is a Muslim country, but there were people of many nationalities, religions and such throughout KL.

If only they had room for tall people!

We set out the next morning for the airport to go to Chiang Mai. After a bit of a hassle at the airport (First, our flight was at the budget terminal, which of course is half an hour away from the main airport. Then they didn't want to let us on the plane since we didn't have a return ticket, even though Canada is one of the countries that Thailand exempts from that rule. We argued and grovelled and finally got on the plane) we set off on our next adventure...