Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia
5/10/05
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur, which just 120 years ago was a city of minors turned into a modern and prosperous capital. Kuala Lumpur means 'Muddy Confluence' but the city has nothing of muddy, it is very modern and clean.
In the morning we went to the Cambodian Embassy to request our visas.
We crossed the area where all the embassies and ambassador houses are. The city is very spread out and not everything is in a walking distance; but in the other hand, everything is well signalized, so it is easy to walk around on your own.
The visa would be ready after 2 days. After that we walked around the modern part of the city, also known as Golden Triangle, dominated by the Petronas Towers, which holds the title of the world's highest.
A weird scene is to see that many of the people working in the offices all come down to the street to have lunch in the numerous food stalls around.
We tried to walk to the National Art Gallery, a nice art museum with free admission. But after a while we realized that it was too far, so we took a cab. By looking on the tourist map of Kuala Lumpur you can't really tell how far it is because the scale is not respected. The Museum was nice and it hosts the weirdest collection one can imagine. Hand fans! There were all kinds of hand fans, from all over the world and time. Who would ever think of making an exposition of such thing?
They had also other more interesting stuff like calligraphy by Venerable Master Hsing Yum. It was an exposition about some of his phrases which are works to convey blessings, happiness and gratitude to others. In other words, a collection of Buddhist thoughts like.
To give others confidence.
To give others joy.
To give others hopes.
To give others convenience.
But it was all in Chinese calligraphy. The exposition is called To Enlighten Sentient Beings and it will head to US, Europe and South America in an effort of promotion of Buddhism.
From the art gallery we went through the Chow Kit market. It is a market that shows the diversity of the population of Malaysia which is composed of Malaysian, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian people.
The malls were not left outside of our itinerary, in one of them Angie tried Nyonya food, a kind of cuisine which consists of the marriage of Chinese and Malaysian cuisine born from the mixed couples.
We spent the end of the day in Jalan Bintang, which is a very animated street where you can find most of the restaurants of the city. We even found a Churrascaria (Brazilian barbecue), German and French restaurant.
5/11/05
This was a slow day. We slept until late in the morning but early enough to find the traditional 'nasi lemak' for breakfast, rice cooked in coconut milk accompanied of tiny crunchy fried fish, a spicy chilly sauce, peanuts and a half boiled egg. This is the first thing Malaysians usually put in their stomachs in the morning, wow!.
We decided to follow an itinerary specified in our Lonely Planet that seemed interesting and we saw what I'm going to call 'The Lonely Planet Effect'. The day before we were kind of on our own in the city and we didn't see other tourists, but here it was different. We came across more than a dozen of couples all carrying the same book, walking exactly in the same streets and stopping on the same corners to check the map and figure out which way to turn.
Our first stop was the National Mosque...
From there we crossed the train terminal ....
... and went to the 'Kompleks' Dayabumi, an interesting modern skyscraper but with a Muslim architecture.
We stopped at the central market for a fresh juice and then checked the streets of Chinatown. There we had some Chinese sweets, dragon fruit and Cendol, a soy drink very popular in Malaysia with red beans and green jelly noodles, coconut milk sweetened with brow sugar syrup.
Malaysia is certainly a mosaic in terms of religion and although the majority is Muslim the practice of religion is free. In Chinatown there are many temples reflecting this. Most of Indians here are Hindu.
The Chinese brought Buddhism and Taoism beliefs.
Christians compose a small fraction of the population and of course there was also a church, located on Merdeka Square which means Independence Square but no pictures...
After the temples we got some fruits, 'rambutan' (the Malaysian word for it means hairy) and litchis ...
... and rested the rest of the day.
At night we went out for dinner at the Old Chinatown Café, a touristy restaurant but with relatively cheap prices and very interesting food.
There we had: Nonya Rendang Chicken
- Chicken pieces cooked in a spicy coconut paste with kaffir lime leaves; Ikan Assan - Slices of Mackerel cooked in tamarind with a sourish and piquant taste.
For dessert: Bubur Cha-Cha - Yam, sweet potato, sago and screwpine leaves cooked in coconut cream and sweetened with palm sugar (Gula Melaca); Pulut Hitam
Black glutinous rice broth cooked in coconut cream.
5/12/05
The last day in Kuala Lumpur we picked up the passports at the Cambodian Embassy and went back to the same restaurant to have lunch because it was so good the night before.
We had duck soup with tangerine peels and tamarind juice, yummy!.
At 2:30 P.M. we took a bus to Cameron Highlands, crossed a coconut plantation on the way. There we found a nice relaxing small city, cool weather and very friendly people.
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur, which just 120 years ago was a city of minors turned into a modern and prosperous capital. Kuala Lumpur means 'Muddy Confluence' but the city has nothing of muddy, it is very modern and clean.
In the morning we went to the Cambodian Embassy to request our visas.
We crossed the area where all the embassies and ambassador houses are. The city is very spread out and not everything is in a walking distance; but in the other hand, everything is well signalized, so it is easy to walk around on your own.
The visa would be ready after 2 days. After that we walked around the modern part of the city, also known as Golden Triangle, dominated by the Petronas Towers, which holds the title of the world's highest.
A weird scene is to see that many of the people working in the offices all come down to the street to have lunch in the numerous food stalls around.
We tried to walk to the National Art Gallery, a nice art museum with free admission. But after a while we realized that it was too far, so we took a cab. By looking on the tourist map of Kuala Lumpur you can't really tell how far it is because the scale is not respected. The Museum was nice and it hosts the weirdest collection one can imagine. Hand fans! There were all kinds of hand fans, from all over the world and time. Who would ever think of making an exposition of such thing?
They had also other more interesting stuff like calligraphy by Venerable Master Hsing Yum. It was an exposition about some of his phrases which are works to convey blessings, happiness and gratitude to others. In other words, a collection of Buddhist thoughts like.
To give others confidence.
To give others joy.
To give others hopes.
To give others convenience.
But it was all in Chinese calligraphy. The exposition is called To Enlighten Sentient Beings and it will head to US, Europe and South America in an effort of promotion of Buddhism.
From the art gallery we went through the Chow Kit market. It is a market that shows the diversity of the population of Malaysia which is composed of Malaysian, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian people.
The malls were not left outside of our itinerary, in one of them Angie tried Nyonya food, a kind of cuisine which consists of the marriage of Chinese and Malaysian cuisine born from the mixed couples.
We spent the end of the day in Jalan Bintang, which is a very animated street where you can find most of the restaurants of the city. We even found a Churrascaria (Brazilian barbecue), German and French restaurant.
5/11/05
This was a slow day. We slept until late in the morning but early enough to find the traditional 'nasi lemak' for breakfast, rice cooked in coconut milk accompanied of tiny crunchy fried fish, a spicy chilly sauce, peanuts and a half boiled egg. This is the first thing Malaysians usually put in their stomachs in the morning, wow!.
We decided to follow an itinerary specified in our Lonely Planet that seemed interesting and we saw what I'm going to call 'The Lonely Planet Effect'. The day before we were kind of on our own in the city and we didn't see other tourists, but here it was different. We came across more than a dozen of couples all carrying the same book, walking exactly in the same streets and stopping on the same corners to check the map and figure out which way to turn.
Our first stop was the National Mosque...
From there we crossed the train terminal ....
... and went to the 'Kompleks' Dayabumi, an interesting modern skyscraper but with a Muslim architecture.
We stopped at the central market for a fresh juice and then checked the streets of Chinatown. There we had some Chinese sweets, dragon fruit and Cendol, a soy drink very popular in Malaysia with red beans and green jelly noodles, coconut milk sweetened with brow sugar syrup.
Malaysia is certainly a mosaic in terms of religion and although the majority is Muslim the practice of religion is free. In Chinatown there are many temples reflecting this. Most of Indians here are Hindu.
The Chinese brought Buddhism and Taoism beliefs.
Christians compose a small fraction of the population and of course there was also a church, located on Merdeka Square which means Independence Square but no pictures...
After the temples we got some fruits, 'rambutan' (the Malaysian word for it means hairy) and litchis ...
... and rested the rest of the day.
At night we went out for dinner at the Old Chinatown Café, a touristy restaurant but with relatively cheap prices and very interesting food.
There we had: Nonya Rendang Chicken
- Chicken pieces cooked in a spicy coconut paste with kaffir lime leaves; Ikan Assan - Slices of Mackerel cooked in tamarind with a sourish and piquant taste.
For dessert: Bubur Cha-Cha - Yam, sweet potato, sago and screwpine leaves cooked in coconut cream and sweetened with palm sugar (Gula Melaca); Pulut Hitam
Black glutinous rice broth cooked in coconut cream.
5/12/05
The last day in Kuala Lumpur we picked up the passports at the Cambodian Embassy and went back to the same restaurant to have lunch because it was so good the night before.
We had duck soup with tangerine peels and tamarind juice, yummy!.
At 2:30 P.M. we took a bus to Cameron Highlands, crossed a coconut plantation on the way. There we found a nice relaxing small city, cool weather and very friendly people.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 5:14 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Angie, I must say wow of your pictures and all your texts it must be realy great where your are, I often look your homepage for knew where you are at the moment :-) and I hope that I see you after the the trip, so you can tell us about your around the world trip :)
Take care of you and adriano big kiss
You cousine Lynn from Luxemburg
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