Kuala Lumpur 9 - Sunday Trip to Klang

Sunday we went to Klang, a small town along the railroad line to the port on the coast. Why? Well, when I first started blogging and was checking out random blogs on blogspot, I happened to hit on Josh's blog. (It's also linked on the right under blog friends.) (Ropi, one day we'll make it to Budapest, or you to Alaska.) It was a post where he was in class waiting for his boring stats class to be over. I made some comment about the importance of stat and not to let a bad teacher get in the way. Since then I've checked his blog regularly and we became blog friends. So I emailed him when I realized we were headed to KL and he invited us to visit Klang.


Here's the train ride to Klang. There was a big Indian festival this weekend and I think these folks were coming back from celebrating. The paper today says that over one million people went out to the caves for the festivities.

Well, there's Klang and the Port of Klang. In my mind, he lived at the port. Maybe because that was on the map I looked at to find out where Klang was when we first connected. Then we realized on the train there was also a plain Klang. He said it would take over an hour to get there and it was only about 40 minutes. Should we get out in Klang or go to the port? We stayed on, but then decided to get off at the next stop. Now what? I saw a lady coming into the station talking on her cell phone. So I asked if she could call Josh's number. He said no problem, he'd be by to pick us up shortly. So, this is the lady who lent us her phone. Then we didn't know what to do about the tickets. They were the electronic kind you put into the entrance and exit. We were further than Klang. She laughed and said, "No problem" and showed us that the gate next to the ticket exit wasn't locked and we could just walk through. There was no staff at the station.

vHere is where we waited, under the road bridge that crosses the RR lines. That's the end of the station where we went through the open gate to get out.

oAnd this is the Chinese temple across the street from the exit.

They came to pick us up real quick and took us to a restaurant for the local speciality - Bah Kut Teh. This is Josh and his Mom. He had two friends along too - Mervin (sp?) and XinXin. They had been teaching Sunday school, gone home to change and pick us up. It was sort of strange - the idea that we were meeting this person we knew from the internet, but he said "Your personality is exactly what I expected." I felt the same.

We dropped Josh's mom off at home and then Mervin and Josh took us around to see a bit of Klang. It was sort of strange because about a week after I 'met' Josh online, I met a Philosophy professor at UAA who was also from Klang. So there was a greater meaning to this town.

Josh kept apologizing that there was nothing in Klang to do. That they would go to KL to do things. He was only home for the weekend from school. Both Josh and Mervin are looking to go overseas to school. Mervin probably to Australia - though Canada also calls him. His parents met in Alberta while students there. Josh is hoping to go to the US. Both are interested in journalism and mass communications. So they took us where they would go - to Baskin Robbins.

I asked the server what the most popular flavor was. Jamoca Almond Fudge. So I had that in my cone.

And this certificate guaranteed it was halal.
(you can double click the pictures to enlarge them. This one isn't too clear.)

Here's a very nice housing estate in Klang, near the Sultan's palace.

And here's the Sultan's palace. each of the 14 provinces of Malaysia has a Sultan, I think. I don't know enough to say too much here. But the newspaper the last couple of days has been full of news because the Sultan in Perak has fired the head of the government there and appointed someone else. The first guy says he's still the head since he wasn't voted out with a vote of no confidence. The paper must have had 10 different articles on the topic. I asked one person who just shook her head and said she was embarrassed.


Here we are at the gate to the Sultan's palace. If I understood correctly, he doesn't live here, but they do have ceremonies.

We left from the proper Klang station after a delightful afternoon, meeting in person some interesting people. We had no problem communicating - Josh said English is his first language, then there's Cantonese, and Malaysian. I'd like to put in some links to explain more about Sultans and Klang, but I don't know when they're going to tell us to board. The windows are all fogged up. Don't think it is raining quite so hard any more.

Kuala Lumpur 8 - KL Tour Saturday - Miscellaneous

[Monday, Feb. 9, 2009 at KL airport for our way too early flight back to Chiang Mai] They have free wi-fi at the LCC (Low Cost Carrier) airport in Kuala Lumpur. But otherwise, this airport is not quite ready for prime time. But it's fine. And they have free wi-fi.


Back to Saturday's tour. We got out of the bird park and rode past the National Mosque. Someone explained later that there is a boycott against buying US products because of US support for Israel.




I forgot this building was and I'm trying to get these up and out before we walk out to the plane. It's raining fairly hard and we have to walk out onto the tarmac to board the plane. We have some time still, so maybe it will stop.

This is in an area of KL called Chow Kit.

More Chow Kit.

We got off the bus and wandered down to an Arabian/Yemeni restaurant. J wasn't too excited. Probably the meat dishes were tastier. It was pretty bland after all the spicy Thai and Malay food. But they were very nice and I was stuffed.

The Arabian restaurant is on the right. They put us downstairs, but there were all these people coming and going to the upstairs. It turned out there was a balcony there where people could smoke. From there we could see some excitement. the traffic was being rerouted, so we went to see what was happening.

It was a big Chinese New Years celebration. The street was blocked off, there were bigwigs. One guy came by shaking hands with people behind the barricades. We have no idea who he was. Here is some music and singing. Maybe, I'll get some video up, but don't hold your breath.

Kuwaiti Ibrahim and his Dad were also waiting for the parade. They offered us some food but we'd just eaten and I was way too full.

Lots of Lions and dragons.

And we eventually made our way home. I went back across the street to the tourist office to post and this lady was sitting next to me doing her Arabic homework.

Kuala Lumpur 6 - KL Tour Saturday Bird Park

[Stlll Sunday evening Feb. 7, 2009 Malaysia time]

The bird park was a short walk from the butterly park. Most of it was covered in mesh like the butterfly park.

This was a place to get your picture taken with the birds. I never thought of owls as being trainable before. And later in the bird show they had a Brahminy Kite doing tricks.

Emu. (J's here - I'm back at the visitor center across the street
from the hotel using the wifi - and we're going to eat so I'm going finish this quick.

The bird show.

Wasn't exciting enough to keep everyone awake.

There were lots of storks and I think this one thought my camera case was a fish bag.

And there were a number of peacocks showing off.

Kuala Lumpur 6 - KL Tour Saturday Butterfly Park

We got off the bus again at the Butterfly Park. I'd been here before and really love the ambiance. A giant green area covered by a screen of sorts. Inside lots of flowers and butterflies.

Here's what it looks like - just lots of green.


No these aren't butterflies, but they're much easier to catch with a camera and they were in the park. These two were each about 30 inches long.



Here they had pineapple out and the butterflies loved it. They didn't mind photographers coming up real close.






They also had a museum inside with other insects. J wasn't excited and wouldn't even look at the mass of centipedes. I thought it was very cool, including the giant walking sticks. And the displays of beetles and butterflies. But I'll spare you.

Kuala Lumpur 5 - KL Tour Saturday

[Sunday, Feb. 7, 8pm Malaysia Time] Yesterday we spent the day on the Hop On/Hop Off bus. A person we met on the monorail the first day recommended it. It was a good way to get a sense of the whole of KL, but probably a little pricey and we could have taken cabs and trains etc. for considerably cheaper. Since I'd been here before - about 5 years ago for a conference - I had a reasonable sense of things. But all in all it was fine.

I'm going to try to break this down into different parts of the day. After the roti breakfast - see previous post - we walked through a small urban forest to the KL Tower where we were going to catch the Hop-on Hop-off bus. You can start anywhere and pay on the bus. We ran into this guy who is doing a report on how the Bukit Nanas area of KL contributes to tourism. He'd been taking lots of pictures of the park. Including a picture of us tourists. So I took his picture.

On the top of the hill, well, almost the top, is a campground, and these girls had camped there that night in tents. I was pretty impressed that we were in a pretty thick forest right in the middle of KL. But it wasn't quiet. The researcher told us to be careful on the path because the "monkeys like to pass urine" from above. We didn't see any monkeys there, but saw lots at the bird park.



This is an Australian nurse we met waiting for the bus. You can get on and off all day. We'd gotten off to go to Low??? Plaza - a big electronic shopping mall - to see if I could get a back up battery for my camera. I'd forgotten to recharge mine and it was flashing. After rejecting the Canon battery as too expensive, we ended up with a generic version for less than what eBatt wanted with shipping. And, it had enough charge in it to get me through the day. When we got back to the bus stop we talked to this nurse who was headed to Ho Chi Minh City for two weeks to train nurses and doctors in emergency stroke care.



Here we were driving through China town and they had a dragon dance going on. It's the tail end of the Chinese New Years and yesterday was a big day for celebrating it in KL>

Kuala Lumpur 4 - Roti

[This post and the previous two posted Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009 around 10:30pm Malaysia Time - which is one hour ahead of Thai time, so it gets dark about an hour later]

Joan wanted to see what snacks they had at Temptations, one of the hotel restaurants last night.

The Indian chef Yodesh (I think that was his name) was
teaching one of the Chinese chefs how to make a roti.

So they insisted that we taste it.

This morning we passed up the 44 Ringget buffet for another roti in a little Indian shop cooked with egg and served with a delicious sauce. Joan got tea and I got water. 7.50 ringget for the two of us. It was delicious.

[Update Feb. 9] Wikipedia tells us more about this

Roti canai (pronounced "chanai," not "kanai") is a type of flatbread found in Malaysia, often sold in Mamak stalls. It is known as roti prata in Singapore, and is a close descendant of Kerala porotta. . .

Malaysianfood.net has a recipe. But the chef at the hotel said it took three months to master.

After looking at about six roti cannai videos, I think this one gives the best overall picture of how they are made. So, no, this is NOT my video. It was posted by rustyanalog.

Kuala Lumpur 3 - More Petronas Towers Pics

Those little white dashes at 5 o'clock and 8:30 around the moon are bats.

Looking up.

This one is this afternoon when it was still light out.

And this is the giant shopping mall inside.

From Greatbuldings.com:

ArchitectA	Architect: Cesar Pelli
Location	Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia map
Date	1998 timeline
Building Type	skyscraper, commercial office tower
Construction System	glass, steel, and concrete
Climate	tropical
Context	urban
Style	Modern
Notes	Tapering twin towers (connected by a sky bridge) share an Islamic-influenced geometrically polygonal plan. Featured extensively in "Entrapment", a cool action movie starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones.