Melaka :: Malaysia
Is there a chance the track could bent? No on your life my Hindu friend!
Places: Kuala Lumpur (KL) & Melaka.
Coolest thing I did: Walked on the skybridge, that bridge between the Petronas towers. I also learned Petronas is the best company in the world.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: I apparently look like a TV actor in the Philippines. I'm not sure what his name is and searching for "Looks like Stevil" came up with zero hits in google. Damn google.
KL is officially the only city I've ever heard of that has a monorail that actually goes somewhere. This is hard to imagine for someone from Sydney, whose monorail is about as useful as the one in North Haverbrook.
I think KL is the kind of place that could grow on me, it's far better compared to Singapore or Tokyo than it is to proper 3rd world Asian cities like Jakarta. It's got transport that works, shiny buildings, no shanties and inhuman scale advertising almost everywhere. It's also practically impossible to walk around as you have to navigate overhead walkways crossing several lanes of traffic that want to do their best to funnel you into shopping centres. It does all these things, only on a smaller scale than Tokyo, and with noticeably less neon.
It does still look poorer than either of its peers though, and nestled in the shadows of the skyscrapers there are still night markets run by the three main ethnicities (Malay, Chinese and Indian) selling street food that fulfils my love of cheap and good. The Malay Sunday market (which is confusingly held on a Saturday) had some of the best Malay food I've had here, laid out buffet style but was slightly denuded of people, all due to the fact that we're into the very tail end of Ramadan. It's dogged me all through this trip, only it's been more noticeable for sucking all the people of out KL in the time I was there. I didn't really get to see the nightlife because most of the bars and clubs were either closed or closing early in the weekend I was there. Which is probably good for my bank balance in a country where beer costs so very, very much.
As you get out into the sticks you also notice that the shiny new blocks get slowly replaced with concrete in what can only be public housing. It's far better than the favela-style accommodation the poor have in the rest of urban Asia, but like everywhere the fruits of growth aren't evenly distributed. You do get the idea that people have their priorities right as these blocks bristle with satellite dishes and split cycle air conditioners all randomly placed, leading you to believe these are new additions.
I did the touristy things you're supposed to do in KL, including the Petronas twin towers, probably the only iconic building in the city, if not the country. You can only go up to the skybridge between the two of them (at the 30 something-est floor) and to do so you have to be subjected to a short film about how bloody awesome Petronas is and how they're fixing all the 3rd world's problems. I even walked out thinking "maybe sucking oil out of the ground and turning it into petrol is the way to fix the world's problems". They were very persuasive.
I did like the view but I have to say the building is far more stunning from the outside, especially when they light it up in stages in the evening. I'd hoped to see this spectacle from the bar of the Traders Hotel across the park, which was in a copy of Wallpaper that happened to be lying around the guest house in Langkawi (I read all their magazines whist waiting for the rain to stop). It's got a pool inside and a view right over the towers. It's also closed for Ramadan, which I only found out after walking for about 30 mins, which in KL means ending up wearing a kilo of your own sweat inside your shirt, even at night. Damn you Ramadan!
I also got to notice that despite having beautiful parks to act as the lungs of the city most people would rather shop. On the Saturday I walked around the lake gardens above the city and only encountered the gardeners. However, later on that day when I was walking through the shopping centres (which is pretty much unavoidable as you go through the city) the places were rammed. This country seems to do nothing but shop. I guess that's why it feels so modern.
I did like the Islamic Arts Museum, which shows that when you're a rich(er) Muslim country you can buy lots of stuff from other Muslim countries that a poor (or more likely Petronas just repossessed it all when the Syrians or Turks owed them money). They have a room that goes through the history of Muslim Architecture and has models of all the major mosques in the world. I've been to a surprising number of them, but looking at the ones from Iran and Central Asia I thought I'd love to see those too. The big ones in Saudi are off limits to infidels apparently, and I really can't be arsed converting just to see them. Too much work involved with all that faith stuff.
I left this morning for the ruins of a town that was once so important the world's most important natural sea lane is named after it: Melaka. It was once the powerhouse of trade between India and China and since it was made into big news by a renegade Indonesian Hindu prince it's been held by the Portugese, Dutch and finally ended up in the hands of the British around a similar time as Singapore was being founded. The British at the time were worried that they'd have to give it back to the Dutch in a peace settlement (as was the style of the time) so they went about demolishing heaps of stuff. The city was already in decline so this helped end it's run as a trading outpost, with Singapore, Batavia (now Jakarta) and Penang hogging the glory.
What's left is mostly Dutch and mostly heavily restored. It's a little strange to see the same style of roof you see in central Amsterdam between Chinese shop houses but the whole city is a bit of a stylistic amalgamation. There are apparently Euro-Malay people here who speak a creole based on Malay sentence structures with lots of Baroque era Portuguese mixed in for good measure. There's also the oldest Chinese community outside the country itself, dating back to the Ming dynasty (which I guess was aaages ago) who have food styles that are from both and neither culture.
All this is good because it takes seriously about an hour to see all the tourist stuff here, unless of course the stamp museum or architecture museum are your thing. I'm glad I've decided to take off for Singapore tomorrow, having carefully avoided the night Grand Prix I didn't know was happening.
As a footnote I reckon the Malaysian government are criminal masterminds for taxing booze so highly. It's a Muslim country, so the tax is seen as only hitting the rich Westerners here, which no-one would complain about as being wrong. Then of course lots of Muslims drink all the time anyway, but none of them would dare complain about the tax because they're not supposed to be drinking in the first place. Genius. You can raise the tax all you want and none of the actual voters will complain. Damn them.