| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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I bought
souvenirs: a couple of small carved wooden figures of demons carved by
the Asli people, a local indigenous ethnic group. There was a booth run
by two teenagers selling plaques of Quranic quotations written in florid
Arabic calligraphy. We saw a lot of this sort of thing in Egypt. I
decided that would make a good souvenir. I found one in plastic. This
was a perfect 'chatchka.' A 'chatchka' as I use it is a souvenir that
is cheap, characteristic of the country, and something a local might buy
for himself. The price was fairly cheap. There were two that were
similar. 'What does it say?' I asked my salesman. 'They are quotes
from the Quran,' he said smiling. 'I'm sure. But what do they say?'
The smile fades. He consults with his girlfriend. She apparently knows
or at least can fake it. I took the one that said, 'In the name of
Allah who is merciful.'
We agreed what time we would meet for dinner and headed back to the
hotel by different paths. On the way we passed what I can only guess to
be some sort of a fortune teller. There was a crowd of people around
him and he was speaking very fast in the local language. At various
points, money seemed to change hands and not always in his direction.
Also, pieces of paper were being handed out. Also pieces of paper
seemed to be handed back to him. We watched for a while, but while I am
sure there was a simple explanation for what we were seeing, nobody was
explaining it to us. I sort of know how my dog used to feel. He used
to see a lot of interactions in a language he didn't understand. He
also used to watch a lot of hand motions that made no sense to him. My
only advantages were that I could watch with an eye higher than seven
inches off the ground and I wasn't burdened with the assumption that all
human interactions have something to do with food.
Back at the hotel we rested and around 6 PM we met for dinner. In
the interest of saving our dignity I will not give a detailed account of
how we went looking for dinner. Suffice it to say that members of our
party wanted to go for dinner at a place they'd heard was an artists'
hangout. Then no taxi driver wanted to take us to this place for some
reason we could not figure out. Finally we got to this place which was
way the heck away through bumper-to-bumper traffic in really heavy rain.
I asked our driver why nobody wanted to drive us to this place and he
pointed out how heavy the traffic was. When we got to the place it was
a hotel and restaurant and we immediately decided no artists were
currently hanging out there. I mean, you can tell when you're hanging
out with an artist, can't you? He has an easel up or something, doesn't
he? 'Aha!' we decided. 'It's 6:30 PM and artists don't start hanging
out until about eight o'clock, we bet. Now where is a cab to take us
back?' Are you kidding me? We were in the city bus terminal and could
not find a couple of cabs to bring us through the traffic here. You
think we're going to find two cabs willing to take us back? Good luck!
Allah was at least a little merciful to stupid tourists. He shut off
the water tap up in the sky. After that we were on our own using
private transport involving shoe leather. In parts of Hong Kong or
Thailand it might have been a nice piece of sightseeing. But the part
of Kuala Lumpur we were in looked a lot like any other urban area. It
was about a ninety-minute walk. Maybe more like two hours and we passed
within about a five-minute walk from our hotel on the way to the
Chinatown night market. We got there and I, for one, felt a bit
foolish.
We hit a Western-style bookstore. I was hoping to find the Chinese
novel Pilgrimage to the West. About the best I could find was a sort of
'Classics Illustrated' version in four books and they were darn heavy in
my luggage. We ate at a Chinese restaurant we passed where they jumped
in front of us and pushed a menu in our hands as we were passing.
Probably not the best way to choose a restaurant. However, the food was
reasonably tasty. WE had fried noodles, squid in oyster sauce, and
chicken in a clay pot. As with almost all our meals, there were no
left-overs though some of the food did get fed to passing cats.
My big purchase of the evening was a Buddhist prayer wheel. It was
probably more representative of Tibet than of Malaysia. It is a stick
the size of a pencil and at one end is a cylinder about two inches long
and maybe an inch and a quarter in diameter. There is a chain affixed
to the cylinder and at the other end of the chain is a marble, or so it
looks. You take the stick and swing the marble around in a circle as if
you were holding a small mace. The cylinder spins on the spindle and a
prayer is inscribed on it goes by. Tibetan Buddhists think each spin
sends a prayer to heaven. You get the thing going and you can start
sending out prayers. I can get the usually get the thing revved up to
about 300 ppm. When I think how long it took me to do 300 prayers the
old-fashioned way, the thing is really a good investment. After a
little more shopping we called it a day.
October 24, 1990: Barbara ate breakfast in the hotel; the other
four of us went out to eat on the street but ended up eating in the bus
terminal. Bus fumes were a problem with the open architecture. We had
soup with pork or chicken.
Our goal for the morning was the Batu Caves outside the city.
After a little wandering around trying to find the right bus, we caught
it next to the nearby McDonald's with a big 'Halal' sign. I wonder if
there are McDonald's in Israel with 'Kosher' signs.
The drive gave us a good look at the city. I can remember seeing a
film poster in Malaysian for 976-Evil. I wondered how many of the local
people would understand the title. 976 is an American exchange.
Anyway, so we got outside of the town and saw a big limestone
cliff. We saw more of the same sort of thing up north in Thailand. We
were let off on the far side of a busy street from the caves. Crossing
streets seems to be a problem a lot of places in Thailand and Malaysia.
And there's rarely a traffic light where you want one. Cross the street
and you go through a gate and there you see a long stairway in front of
you a few hundred yards away. That walk is a gauntlet of hawkers all
anxious to give you cold drinks at a modest price. (Beer? Jeez, it's
ten in the morning and they're trying to sell me beer!)
Binayak thought there was some sort of trolley to the top and went
to ask about it. Nope, not there any more. There is no royal road to
Batu.
There are 272 stairs, so it is like climbing to the top of a
twelve-story building. Except, of course, you rarely find monkeys
begging on your way up in a twelve-story building. Evelyn still had two
bags of peanuts, each with about fifteen peanuts--they weren't big bags.
She gave one to Barbara with a warning not to let the monkeys grab the
bag. Well, to make a short story even shorter, it wasn't long before a
monkey climbed her leg to beg. 'How cute!' thought Barbara. A moment
later the monkey was gone and so was the whole bag of peanuts. At least
I was able to get some pictures of Evelyn feeding the monkeys. Well, at
least she was warned!
At the top of the huge stairway is a huger grotto. I estimated it
was roughly 250 feet high. This cave is sacred to the Hindus, who have
shrines in the cave. At the back of the cave there is a natural room
maybe one hundred feet high (or more) with an open ceiling that lets
some daylight in. The strange limestone formations look almost
biological. Everything looks like the inside of somebody's ear or
pancreas or something.
The main cave is free but there are side caves with an admission,
but it is worth it for amusement's sake if nothing else. This place is
sort of a Hindu answer to Tiger Balm Gardens. You walk on a bridge over
fetid waters. The water looks like pea soup but it is a slightly
brighter green. Occasionally in the muck you can make out fish or the
head of a turtle. There are plaster animals such as tigers and goats
pretending to drink the green soup. One cave has just a shrine in it,
but the other has plaster dioramas from Hindu mythology and folklore.
There are dancing snake goddesses and elephant-headed Ganeshas. There
are women with four faces or four arms. And they are all lined up so
you don't do all the climbing you do at Tiger Balm Gardens.
After some confusion we caught the bus back to town. It's about a
45-minute ride back to the heart of the city. I smiled and made some
pleasantries with some Muslims. In the United States you get the
feeling that all Muslims are pretty militant. In Egypt we may have felt
much the same way, but Egypt is right there next to Israel so there may
be stronger political feeling there. Here people seem a little more
laid back and friendly, less distrustful and maybe a bit more courteous
about strangers.
We got off the bus near the Central Market where some of our
numbers wanted to shop. I think Binayak wanted to get Kampung Boy, a
cartoon autobiography of a popular Malay cartoonist. We were given time
to wander around. A bookseller had a tremendous pile of romance novels
from America. I had been told that romance novels were against the
Muslim religion. Apparently that is not the case, or at least romance
novels can be sold here. (There was a book drive for the soldiers in
the Persian Gulf, but they did not want romance novels because
supposedly the Saudi government objected on religious grounds.) I
snapped a picture of the piles of romance novels and the store owner
asked me if this was for an article. I set his mind at ease. No
article. (I don't think he'd count this log as an article.) We got
together again for lunch and after some looking around and disagreement
we settled on the White Castle next door. My resistance must be really
wearing down. After we ordered they told us to sit upstairs and they
would bring the unfilled part of the order, including my two burgers, up
to us. It took almost fifteen minutes and pretty much everyone else was
finished.
When I was growing up, my mother used to make meatloaf. I hated
meatloaf; so did my brother. My father ate it and from this I concluded
that as you grow up either your tastes change or your discretion becomes
stronger than your revulsion. Anyway, if my mother made meatloaf, I
tried to avoid that side of my plate as if I'd seen ants crawling on it.
My parents had an answer, though. They'd tell me to put the meatloaf on
white bread and then it would taste like a hamburger. It was like
saying if you put A-1 Sauce on earthworms, they'd taste like sirloin. I
wasn't fooled. There is a big difference between what a hamburger
tastes like and what a meatloaf sandwich tastes like. That's what I
thought until I ate a White Castle hamburger. It wasn't quite the same
but a White Castle tastes a lot like meatloaf on bread.
After lunch once more Binayak and Barbara split off. Steve,
Evelyn, and I went off to see the National Mosque.
At the Mosque they insisted on giving Evelyn a blue coat that
looked sort of like a lab coat. They also gave her a shawl to put over
her head. This was to counteract the immodest ways Evelyn was sporting
about. The Mosque has a circular dome and beside it a minaret. The
minaret is 245 feet high and can be seen at quite a distance. As we
entered we faced the narrow edge of a long walkway. At the far end was
a mausoleum with marble coffins for dignitaries. There were some
flowers but not much other decoration. Turning around on the walkway,
on our left was a grand prayer hall. There was grillwork around it, but
it generally was open-air. Though a sign said that it was off-limits
for non-believers, we did see some tourists enter to look around. I
stayed out but did use my pocket field glasses to look around from a
distance. No pictures were allowed anywhere in the mosque, of course.
Across the walkway from the great prayer hall were what looked like
schoolrooms which appeared to be being renovated. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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