| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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October 23, 1990: Well, we arrived after a fairly
uncomfortable night to more bad news. The 'newly renovated' Station
Hotel (as described in one guidebook) was again closed for
renovation. So much for the idea of staying at the train station
and not having to schlep luggage around. We ended up at the Hotel
Puduraya instead, at the Puduraya Bus Terminal. This was M$80
(about US$32) a night, considerably more than the Cathay Hotel, but
then this was the big city. We were probably also overcharged in
the taxi at M$5 for a ride that I think should have been M$2, but we
didn't realize that at the time and US$2 still sounded cheap.
After checking in, Steve, Mark, and I had breakfast at an
Indian/Pakistani restaurant across the street while Binayak and
Barbara ate at the hotel buffet instead. Ours was cheaper. After
breakfast, we had to go back to the train station to book our
tickets out (we had gotten in so early that the advance booking
windows weren't open). We walked back since we had no luggage to
carry and, except for some problems crossing the major roads (there
were pedestrian overpasses, but we couldn't always find them), we
managed to find our way back. On the way we met the conductor from
the train the night before who asked us how the fan was!
After our previous night's experience we decided we wanted air
conditioning. But our choices were limited to first class air-
conditioned berths or second-class air-conditioned seats. Sitting
up all night, even in a reclining seat, was no one's idea of a good
time, so we asked for five first-class berths. First problem: there
were only three left, all uppers and all for men. (Because first
class is divided into cabins with an upper and a lower berth, if a
man has reserved the lower, they will sell the upper only to another
man.) The men decided to be chivalrous and not take the first class
and leave Barbara and me to fend for ourselves. So we asked for
second class non-air-conditioned, as many lower berths as possible
and the rest uppers. The clerk initially said she had one lower,
but by the time she punched it into the computer, even that was gone
and we ended up with five uppers. We hope the fan works!
The National Museum was just a short ways down the 'street,'
but the street being a four-lane divided highway made getting there
a bit tricky. We did, however, make our way there eventually. The
museum had three major halls (as far as I could tell): one on
ethnography, one on natural history, and one on sports in Malaysia.
There were also several smaller exhibits scattered around, but a
large area was taken up by a special exhibit on death customs. The
rest of the museum was free, but this exhibit had a M$3 (US$1.20)
admission fee. (Why can't the Metropolitan Museum of Art follow
this pricing structure? :-)).
The special exhibit started out with customs surrounding death,
funerals, and burials in Malaysia and the rest of Southeast Asia,
but as you walked through it expanded to cover this topic around the
world. With several hours to devote to this exhibit alone, we might
have done it justice; as it was, we tended to skim over the sections
with which we were the most familiar (Egyptian, Viking, etc.) and
spend more time on the less familiar areas. Well, okay, we did
spend a fair amount of time looking at the stills from old mummy
movies in the Egyptian section. While the exhibit was fascinating,
it's a bit off the topic of this already bloated travelogue, so I
will leave you to research death customs on your own.
The ethnography section showed the usual exhibits of costumes
and furniture. It also had a display of shadow puppets. It seems
that even in as narrow a field as shadow puppets, there are
variants. Some are strictly silhouettes, but others are translucent
or semi-transparent and show up in colors rather than strictly black
and white. One wonders if the two camps have the same debates that
proponents of color movies have with proponents of black and white
movies. The silhouettes are a more minimalist approach--perhaps
Philip Glass should score the plays.
The natural history exhibit was the usual set of dioramas of
stuffed animals. Given our limited time, and even more limited
interest in sports, we skipped the sports exhibit.
We rejoined the others and took a taxi (actually two taxis--the
police in Malaysia are much stricter about the allowable number of
passengers in a vehicle and also about front-seat passengers wearing
seat belts than the police in Thailand) to the Central Market. This
used to be a farmers' market and was going to be torn down when
people decided it was a landmark because of its 'neo-Egyptian'
exterior (I have no idea what that means--it didn't look Egyptian to
me). So it was renovated and turned into a shopping mart
concentrating mostly on handicrafts and other tourist-appeal items.
We ate lunch in the food court upstairs, then split up to do a
little shopping. We got a few odds and ends: a plaque with a verse
from the Koran, a couple of carved wooden statuettes, and a T-shirt.
(I hope these countries' economies aren't counting on Mark and me to
keep them running.)
We then walked back to the hotel for our afternoon siesta.
While we were resting, it decided to rain--hard. When it finally
stopped we went out to the taxi stand to go to an artists' center
recommended by one of the brochures. For some reason, none of the
taxis would take us. Then someone came over and offered to take the
five of us in a mini-van. This sounded a bit suspicious but
everyone else was willing to try it. I did suggest that if we
couldn't get a taxi out there, we might have trouble getting one
back, but Barbara said it was only a couple of miles and we could
walk back if we had to.
Well, first of all, there was no mini-van. There was a car.
We insisted on two cars. Eventually another car materialized. They
were in fact taxis, a somewhat reassuring development. After
starting out we discovered why no taxi at the stand would take us.
It was rush hour and the streets leading to our destination were
bumper-to-bumper with cars. To make matters worse, on the way it
started to rain again.
So we got dropped off at this center in the pouring rain and
the taxis drove off. True to Luck of Leeper, we had arrived after
the workshop area had closed and before the restaurant opened--a
couple of hours before. The center was basically deserted. It was
not the thriving artists' hangout that had been described.
A couple of taxis came by to drop off staff, but wouldn't take
us back to the center of town because of the traffic. We waited
until the rain stopped and then started walking. Here arose a
conflict. Some of us felt that we should walk back towards where we
wanted to go and look for taxis or buses in that direction. Others
thought we should head toward an area of less traffic in the hopes
of finding a taxi more willing to drive into town. I was in the
former group--why walk from one uninteresting area to another
uninteresting area? Eventually we prevailed and began walking.
We had thought of taking a bus and even stopped at a bus stop
to wait for one. But the first one to come by was so packed already
that we scratched this idea and ended up walking all the way back to
the Chinatown night market. I find walking in cities interesting
and rather enjoyed it. At least it didn't rain any more.
We passed a book store and naturally went in. Barbara got some
cookbooks and Mark got an illustrated version of PILGRIMAGE TO THE
WEST. It's heavy, but there's only one more city to carry the
suitcase to. We then started looking for a place to have dinner.
We hadn't gone more than a half block when a boy at most fourteen
years old came out from a restaurant, pushed menus into our hands,
and said, 'Eat here. You don't like, I pay.' Well, the menu looked
reasonable and we had a guarantee (of sorts), so we decided to give
it a try. We sat at a table in the street and got a chance to watch
this kid's marketing skills while we ate. He nailed everyone
walking by, and almost everyone stopped and ate here if there was a
table free at that moment. The service was a bit slow--not
surprising considering the number of customers--but the food
compensated: chicken in clay pot, cuttlefish in oyster sauce, chili
beef, a noodle dish, and greens. One doesn't see much pork here
(the Muslim population wouldn't eat it or at any restaurant that
serves it) but seafood is popular. Here halal differs from kosher,
or rather the inverses, haram and treif, differ. Seafood
(shellfish) is treif but not haram; that is, it is not forbidden to
Muslims, but merely discouraged. (Obviously this can vary from sect
to sect.)
(The Islamic nature of the country is noticeable in many ways.
One is that the hotel rooms all have arrows pointing toward Mecca
for prayer purposes. Of course, here they point west instead of
east. In our room, in fact, it points in the wrong direction--I
have this feeling they removed the ceiling tile it's on to do some
work and then put it back wrong.)
After dinner we walked around the market. This market bore a
remarkable resemblance to all the other markets we had seen. The
only new feature was a number of vendors selling Indian and Tibetan
artifacts, including tantric necklaces and prayer wheels. We bought
one of the latter, which the vendor claimed was made from bone but I
suspect is plastic. It's hardly a typical souvenir for Malaysia, an
Islamic country, but it's something different at least.
October 24, 1990: We started to go out for breakfast but then
decided that with as many food stands in the bus station as there
were, we might as well just eat there. We got soup with noodles for
breakfast (except Barbara, who went to the hotel restaurant, her
stomach not being up to soup for breakfast). Even with juice and
coffee, this came to only M$2.50 (US$1) each.
Again, we kept one room for the day at half-price and checked
out of the others before leaving for our day's travels. We all
decided to go to the Batu Caves north of the city, which the Lonely
Planet said could be gotten to be a bus from the bus station. When
we asked at the information desk, though, the answer was that there
was no bus from the bus station that went there. A taxi tour who
overheard us insisted that there were no buses to the Batu Caves,
and he would take us there for M$5 each. This seemed unlikely, and
further enquiry at the window elicited the information that there
was a bus that went there which left from a bus stop about two
blocks away.
Figuring which bus went to the Batu Caves was easy--it had a
sign in the front window that said 'Batu Caves.' We verified this
with the driver as well so he would know where we wanted to get off
in case we couldn't figure it out. An in fact he did let us know
when we reached the stop, since the caves were accessible from a
side road and not immediately obvious. This cost, not M$5 (US$2)
each, but 50 sen each, so a round trip would be M$1 (US$0.40) each.
True, it probably took a little longer, but in exchange we got to
see more of the towns between Kuala Lumpur and the caves.
The Batu Caves are limestone caves, the largest of which is
inconveniently placed at the top of a 272-step staircase. Before
the staircase was built, it was even more inconvenient, of course. |
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