Not being lovers of big cities we had planned on only two days in Kuala Lumpur after Melaka. We had to fly from KL to Kuching in the state of Sabah, Borneo so you have to see a bit of KL when you're there, right? If you've gotten this far, you've already read the post from our jungle homestay outside of Kuching.
We might have planned more big city time if we had known that we'd meet fellow Canadians Christine and Warren on Pangkor Island whom we really enjoyed; that we'd be in KL at the same time and that they would so generously show us around this city that they once called home.
We spent two days wandering around, seeing some of the great architecture, sampling street food, and having some laughs. Our hotel is on the edge of Little India. One night we share some great Indian food.
KL has public transportation everywhere. It must be great for locals who probably don't need to own a car, but for a brief visit, it can be very confusing. There are buses, monorails, LRT, subways … you name it, KL has it. We were glad to be led around.
Needless to say, we don't have time to go out to the famous Batu Caves.
KL in photos
The Towers
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| Petronas Twin Towers - 88 stories tall |
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| Menara KL Tower - taller than Petronas & much less expensive to go up |
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| From Menara Tower, this beautiful mosque can be seen in the far distance |
More views of the very modern KL from high up in the Menara Tower viewing area:
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| Istana Negara - Malaysia's National Palace & home to the King of Malaysia |
Selected jumpers from KL Tower International Jump Malaysia are allowed to jump from a crane installed at 312 meters to this landing field below. Is that wild, or what?
Photos Wandering Around
Photos Wandering Around
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| Malaysian Kite welcoming people to Central Market - a place to find handicrafts |
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| A vendor on Flower Street |
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| I think we were sampling Snake Fruit here after we were shown how to get into it |
The next two photos are of the beautiful Sultan Abdul Samad building which today is home to the offices of the Ministry of Information.
Merdeka Square just to the west of the Sultan's building is where Malaysia's Independence Day parades and ceremonies take place. The rest of the time it's a great green space in the heart of a busy city.
There are high-end malls galore in KL. Here are some of the landmarks used to draw attention to them.
It's hot. It's humid. We've been walking our feet off. Christine, Paul and I pause to photograph some wall art in an alley and Warren heads out to find some cold beer. We find a place to sit, its peaceful, colorful... and the beer tastes so good. Drinkin' in the alley.
We say our goodbyes to Warren & Christine as they head out to meet some friends. They've already shown us to the bus to take to the airport, so we're on our way to Kuching.
Kuching Capital of the State of Sarawak in Borneo
The name Kuching translates to cats, so it sometimes is referred to as the City of Cats. No one really knows how or why it got the name. True to its name the city has put up numerous cat statues. Some quite attractive, others less so.
Our hotel is showing her age now, but she must have been grand in her day. There's much woodwork and great collections of art. Much of the art is behind glass, so it doesn't photograph.
Sarawak is very culturally diverse, having about forty sub-ethnic groups, each with its own distinct language, beliefs, and culture.
The first work in our hotel is of the tree of life that according to the beliefs of the Orang Ulu tribe of Borneo, gave birth to the first man and woman. Perched atop the tree is the Rhinoceros Hornbill (bird) that represents the celestial upper world.
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| Warrior's Shield |
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| This totem pole graces the entrance near the hotel |
Kuching reminds us a bit of Melaka as it's on a river.
The rainy season in Borneo is usually December and January but climate change has been lasting late into February. Indeed most of our days here are cloudy with some rain and other days of straight out downpour.
Not ones to sit around we head down to the waterfront. Just as we are getting into a little boat to get taken across the river, the downpour begins.
Our boatman is one of the first Malaysians we have run into who doesn't have perfect English. We point to the building that we want to go to. He obviously wants to tell us something about that building but we don't get it ... so off we go in the pouring rain anyway.
You'd want to check this out too, eh?
PS - at night this building and the entire bridge are lit up - gorgeous!
We get out of the boat, walk along a sea wall only to discover a barrier that we can't get around. Perhaps this is what the boatman was trying to tell us!! And he is already back across the river, so uphill we go. It's raining harder than a downpour now. We trek past a botanical garden and a limestone 'forest' that look intriguing ... but we are soaked and getting wetter. Finally, finally, we come upon this building to discover it's not what we thought and is not open to the public. Waaaa. We manage to get to the beautiful footbridge on the left to get back across the river. See the representation of the hornbill on the top spires of the bridge. We just want to get back to the hotel - still raining. Even though it's warm out and we're just wet, not cold, a warm shower still feels good when we finally get there.
We make it back down to the waterfront on a day when it's just cloudy. It's so pleasant walking by the river.
There's lots of street art and just functional art (like the doors below) in the downtown area.
The waterfront jazz festival held every September attracts international and local musicians as well as artisans and food vendors.
Several stores downtown sell artifacts and artwork of indigenous peoples of Borneo:
We get ourselves out to the Sarawak cultural village by catching a bus at the Margarita Hotel. This is known as a living museum with an economic development bonus as it actively works to preserve and teach the next generation.
There are replica buildings of traditional longhouses of the Bidayuh, Iban and Orang Ula tribes. There's a Chinese farmhouse, a Melanu Tall House, plus Malay and Penan huts. Wandering the site we see an on-site residence for students, students practicing dance, cooking demonstrations, and musicians with traditional instruments. There are booths to practice your accuracy with the blowgun. We have lunch with our ride, so there is a restaurant and a souvenir shop.
A highlight will be the multi-cultural dance performance.
Visitors as they arrive are greeted by a welcome dance.
The grounds are beautiful.
Cooking demonstration. Kitchen supplies. Rice gathering equipment.
The men below are making music on traditional instruments. The senior man also demonstrates an instrument used to call birds so they can then be hunted. Paul buys one for Elliott to hunt birds with a camera or just with awe.
The Iban people are known, among other things for their hand-tapped tattoos using 2 sticks dipped in soot or charcoal to produce black 'ink'. There are many meanings to the tattooing which basically died off with the coming of Christianity as many of the tattoos involved myths and symbolism. The ink was mixed with protective charms such as pulverized animal bones to give protective powers to the wearer. A young man got his first tattoo before going on his 'bejalai' or journey of knowledge and wisdom. Every journey he made thereafter was followed by a tattoo, so his skin told the story of his life: where he was from and where he had been. Tattoos placed on the back or the back of the neck were associated with protection from having your head chopped off, an important feature in a head-hunting society. Today there is a resurgence in traditional Iban tattooing.
Traditional tattoo equipment
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| Ornate Kettle |
We come upon dance students practicing 'tinikling' and Paul is invited to give it a try. Basically, two people beat, clap and slide bamboo poles together while the dancer steps over and in between the poles. The rhythm gets faster of course the longer the dancer is in the game. Paul walks away without bruised ankles.
The Cultural Show was really worth seeing.
The young man below played a long and beautiful solo on this traditional lute instrument called a sape.
The next photo is of sapes under construction. They teach the making of the instrument here at the cultural centre. Note how the back of the sape is hollow, giving it a distinct sound.
The young man below was an actor with great deadpan humor, a good dancer, and skilled with the blowgun. He had a big solo number where in one part he is hunting. He comes into the audience, leaves, and returns by another entrance. From the back of the audience, he blows a dart through the blowgun and breaks balloons up on the stage. In the middle photo that bowl that he's picking up with his teeth is such solid wood, I might not be able to pick it up with two hands. In the photo on the left, he has brought a woman onto the stage and is getting her to do things as part of his act. It's hilarious.
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| A dance of courtship |
On the day we drove to Saloma's Village Stay, we stopped by the Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre to see the semi-wild orangutans who live in the jungle on the reserve. The orangutans here have been injured, orphaned (a baby stays 5 to 7 years with its mother), or kept illegally as pets.
Unfortunately, as it's still rainy, there is much fruit still in the jungle, so the orangutans do not feel the need to come for the fruit offered twice a day by the park rangers. We didn't see any. The day before a mom with a baby did come to eat. When its dry season and there is little natural fruit, feeding time is busy.
The park has huge billboards that we study with photos arranged in a family tree of each orangutan with their name and a characteristic or history of each.
When we are being driven back to Kuching from Saloma's, Greg her brother has photos of two young backpacking tourists that we recognized from being at the same 'feeding' we were at. Apparently, they disobeyed all instruction and slipped off into the jungle on their own, perhaps thinking they would find their own orangutans. Two days later they were still missing.
Kota Kinabalu in Sabah state, Borneo
It feels like its too soon to leave Kuching as rain has robbed us of some time, but our plane awaits. It's off now to the state of Sabah where we hope to go up the Kinabatangan River to see animals in the wild: orangutans, proboscis monkeys, pygmy elephants, crocodiles, birds, insects and more and to stay in villages along the river. This will be a highlight of Borneo.
Disappointment reigns supreme. I come down with an incredible head and chest cold that leaves me too weak and tired to do much of anything except cough and sneeze. A few days later, Paul gets it.
We do manage to squeeze in heading to a one day tour.
On the day of the tour, we drive for about 2.5 hours up and up into the misty hills, stopping briefly at a small village where artisanal products are for sale.
Then we go through a botanical garden. Our guide is quite knowledgeable about the flora and fauna and is able to spot the tiniest of flowers, that more often than not are a type of orchid. Unfortunately, our camera is acting up, not focusing and so we missed many photos.
We were able to go on a canopy walk here too, but we weren't allowed to take photos unless we paid an extra fee and there were people watching to make sure you didn't. I snuck in a quick one. The walking surface was one plank wide. It gave a great view out over the jungle.
A highlight of the trip was on the way home. A local village has a few rafflesia plants and one of them happens to be in bloom now. We didn't think we'd get to see one. Of course, the village charges a fee to go in and see its flower.
There are 28 different species of the world's largest flower. The rafflesia has no leaves, stems or roots of its own as its parasitic. It absorbs nutrients from the vine or root of a tree on which it lives through an absorptive organ. Some species can be over 40" in diameter and weigh up to 22 pounds. One recorded in West Sumatra was almost four feet in diameter! These are rare enough that we have spoken with Malaysians who have never seen one in bloom.
Many species have an odor like rotting flesh in order to attract flies which it needs for pollination, after which it digests the flies. Pollination has to take place quickly as the flower blooms for only a few days every year. In the photos below there are rafflesia in different stages of development from the big red flower, to it darkening, then disintegrating at the end of its bloom cycle, to the next buds coming along that will take up to eight months to mature.
Well it's off to the UK. We have new tickets after Fly360 (online ticket seller) goes bankrupt and took the money from thousands of people but failed to buy their airline tickets for them. So 3 flights - 16.5 hours of flight time plus layover time in airports coming up, followed up by phone calls to try and get our money back. We are looking forward to caring for Molly, Daisy, and Dottie for three weeks. The city of Frome in the SW of England looks like an exceptional little place to spend time in.
