Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
Anna's entry:As I mentioned earlier, the purpose of coming to Kuala Lumpur was a re-union with our former college friend Bee Ling, who we used to study with back in the U.S. We have not seen her for about 12 years, and it was great to meet again. So many things have happened over these years, we had so much to catch up on. Besides Bee Ling, we also had a great opportunity to re-unite with another college friend Ling Phong, who also lives in the KL area. We spent a lot of hours together, talked a lot, Bee Ling took us to taste various Chinese and Malay cuisine, and we did a lot of outings together. I did not expect Kuala Lumpur to be so modern! We also discovered a lot of cultural intricacies in population of Malaysia. The population consists of three major groups - Malays (i.e. Muslims), Chinese, and Indians. The government and religion are heavily intertwined, in many ways religion actually governs. When in Malaysia, we heard a story on BBC about a Muslim widow going through the courts with a petition to be allowed to leave the Muslim religion group. The judge, for the first time in the history, approved her petition; however, now the appeal was sent to the Federal Court to over-turn the decision, and make the widow stay a practicing Muslim. OK, whatever... I must add however, we were told that Malays/Muslims apparently are given a preferential treatment in Malaysia in certain aspects (i.e. education, work, etc.), so some Chinese and Indians are converting into Muslim faith for that practical purpose. Seems complicated, doesn't it? In today's world, Muslims seem to be getting a bad press, in various parts of the world they have been charged with a violent way of thinking. I am not in expert in that, however, I tend to think that the political leaders are to blame for using the extremes; average Muslim person on the street we've encountered is polite, helpful, and a pleasure to be doing business with. So, let's leave it at that.
Back to Kuala Lumpur... Bee Ling took us to an interesting place, a natural phenomena known as a "fire fly river". At night thousands of fire flies are coming to the river, attracted by trees covering the river banks. Fire flies flash light (via bioluminescence) in order to attract each other, creating a "Christmas lights" effects all over the banks of the river. We took a boat along the river to observe that, it was indeed a very unusual phenomena.
On another outing, we went to a fortress, inhabited by hundred of monkeys. You know how people come to city squares to feed pigeons, well, here in KL, people come to feed monkeys. Monkeys were everywhere, they wanted attention, they wanted food. At one instance Rob opened his backpack to reach for camera batteries, and a second later a monkey, thinking that food was coming, crawled up his body, and comfortably positioned itself on Rob's head. It did not want to leave Rob's head, so I had to give it a gentle push. Local people were a little confused, why we would not feed the monkey - little knowing about the rabies and some risks associated with that. As much as I disapprove of people's involvement in ruining the wild monkeys, I must admit it was a cute photo opportunity of watching local kids and parents interact with the monkeys, and making it one big family picnic...
We explored KL for several days. I loved the city architecture - so diverse, modern, and yet intricate. Some skyscrapers were decorated with the Muslim ornaments; buildings' architecture was very imaginative, for instance, one skyscraper was designed in a shape of a giant half-rolled newspaper, very different. But, there were a few seemingly architectural copies as well, like a creative imitation of former Twin Towers of New York, CN Tower of Toronto or Space Needle of Seattle. Could all be coincidental though. KL also has gorgeous mosques and temples. One of them was a Blue mosque surrounded by peaceful gardens. I enjoyed it very much.
After four days in KL, it was time for us to say good-buy to our friends Bee Ling and Ling Phong. After KL, we will be heading out to the jungles of Taman Negara national Park.
posted by Rob and Anna @ 3:36 AM
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