22nd November - PD to KL and back (Malaysia)

Friday 22^nd November

If we were impressed with Singapore, we were just as amazed by Kuala Lumpur – KL… We are now In The Know so Kuala Lumpur is KL; Johor Bahru is JB, and Port Dickson, where we are now, is…PD!!!

We left Cheryl in PD yesterday, to go on her next host-boat, Allicat.  We will miss her but will see her again soon in the next port of call.

She is pictured here with me cut out of the picture, for obvious reasons (ie I look slightly ghastly). She is holding a beautiful gift she received a cultural event the previous day…

We had stayed home to deal with domestic matters…

YES there is always something wrong, on a boat, and this time it is our poor darling dinghy, with a thwacking great leak between the seams.  Pete is back on the pontoon right now, trying to McGyver it with some bodged-up two-part glue.  He did so well with the starter motor, with the aid of his super-competent and helpful son-in-law James Darcey, by phone from Tasmania, that he probably thinks he can do anything. 

Today's random jellyfish

Am I being helpful?  No not really… I tried to squash the dried up lumpy glue with the back of a spoon, gave up, and am now in the cool “business centre” happily playing with my computer…

And today's random orchid

Many of the rallyboats have left today.  Some are staying for R & R, just one extra day.  It is so lovely here, the pool so shady and inviting… Others are trying to fix things (boys fixing toys in exotic locations…)  And some of our lovely friends are very ill!  Dear Marian (SV Avanta) is in hospital, totally dehydrated, with a high fever, and I think some others will be following her there very soon.

KL from Batu Cave

On a brighter note…we went to KL yesterday and it was so very impressive we want to go back for a bit longer than just one day.  It is big, bright, clean, modern.

We first went to Batu Cave Temple, on the outskirts of town.  It has the biggest statue of Lord Murugan in the world.  Huge shiny and golden!  (I think Murugan is the brother of my favourite Hindu deity, Ganesh, the elephant god.)

Darling monkeys all the way up the steps to keep us company

We climbed 365 steps up UP into a fabulous soaring limestone cave.  These limestone hills are (apparently, as Leo would say,) the oldest in the world.  So – biggest Murugan, oldest limestone!  A good start!

At the very top there is a lot of Hindu art work, and a peaceful shrine, which is probably quite big although it looks tiny in this enormous cave.  Pete and I were blessed, and had our foreheads painted and our right wrists adorned with bits of string.  For the rest of the day Pete looked as if he had a gunshot wound right between the eyes but never mind, he was BLESSED!!

After that we went to the Royal Selangor pewter factory, which was full of beautiful things and industrious workers beating little patterns into altar stands and goblets and the like.  When we came out our bus driver insisted on taking photos of Pete and me standing slightly foolishly near the giant tankard (World Guinness Book of records…another BIGGEST IN THE WORLD thing.)  (I think there is by now a big collection of photos of Pete and me doing slightly naff touristy things on this blog so I am including it.  Can’t buck the trend.)

Next stop a batik factory/shop where the scarves and sarongs were glorious but heart-stopping expensive, and then on to KLCC, aka Twin Towers (the tallest twin towers, now, IN THE WORLD, aka Petronas Towers.

They deserve a second photo, SO impressive!  The shorter middle round bit is 8 stories of shops.  The towers have 88 stories of offices and the like.  Eighty eight!!!  We had a few hours there, eating in the huge food court, and looking in the shops.  I went into a few to see if any fabulous clothes were there to tempt me but I found, especially in Zara, a daunting array of thick black overcoats and wooly jumpers.  Doesn’t Zara know that in KL There are only three variations on the climate theme???  Hot and wet, hot and dry, sunny or overcast.

More random Lego Land - I think this is a bit of Borobudur....

I did find a wonderful big bookshop where I was able to buy the collected stories of Somerset Maugham – we really need to be reading these, in this part of the world.  Bookshops make me happy; huge shopping malls not so much…

To-scale model of KL in the museum, all lit up

I forgot – we also went to a wonderful museum, all about the history of KL.  Briefly – Kuala Lumpur means muddy confluence.  It isn’t a very old city (not like the limestone hills…)  In the mid-1800s it was just a collection of little huts in the mud.  And now it is a soaring modern city, with beautiful parks and sparklingly clean streets.

Original KL,  built on the muddy estuary