Last Days in Malaysia

On our return trip to KL from Melaka, we drove a bit north of the city to visit Batu Cave. Batu Cave is caverns inside a limestone mountain that was little known up until 100 years ago. Today, Batu Cave is the site of a Tamil Hindu temple. An enormous golden statue of Lord Murugan greets visitors. To enter, you must climb the 272 steps to the cave entrance. Once inside, you can see that the cave has two distinctive caverns, both with tall sides opened to the sky.

We missed the Thaipusam festival by a few weeks. During this festival, over a million devotees of Lord Murugan congregate at Batu Cave and engage in an incomprehensible piercing of the flesh to honor Lord Murugan. It is all very hard to understand. Statues of Hindu gods decorate the interior.

In preparation for this year’s festival, workmen were busily repainting the numbers on the steps. We climbed up and down all 272 steps under a blazing sun.

We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel, which was walking distance to the Petronas Towers. Despite what we thought was an early start the next morning, by the time we arrived at the tower to pick up two of the 800 daily free tickets to the Skywalk, there were over 100 people in line ahead of us. After standing in line for over an hour, the time slots we needed to make our tour and still catch our flight to Singapore that afternoon were gone.

The Petronas Towers are not the only tall game in town. We headed to the Menara Kuala Lumpur (Kuala Lumpur Tower). Opened in 1995, the Menara KL is the 4^th highest communication tower in the world. From its perch on Bukit Namas (Pineapple Hill) we got an unobstructed 360 degree panoramic view of KL. The Petronas Towers along with the aggressive urbanization of KL were visible everywhere.

After some more walking about the wide and mostly tree-shaded avenues for KL, we packed our bags, took the train to the airport and bid adieu to KL.

We were absolutely impressed with the prosperity of the country. The cities were clean and well maintained. We always felt safe and welcome.

To the Malaysian people we say, “Terima Kasih!” (Thank You!)

Melaka – The City That Time May Forget

Melaka, once known as Malacca, located on the Straits of Melaka has a romantic history, but its modern Disney-like makeover makes it a comfortable, but possibly a forgettable tour site. There is much to see in Melaka, but if one is searching for a rustic view of Asian culture and history, another venue may be needed.

Streets bustle with private cars and are lined with fully stocked shops, first class hotels and well groomed tourist attractions. Melaka has reinvented itself from its legendary founding by the Sumatran prince Parameswara in 1390. Legend recounts that while taking rest beneath a tree, one of Parameswara’s hunting dogs cornered a small mouse-deer. The spindly legged mouse-deer met the challenge and attacked the dog. Admiring the courage of the small mouse-deer, Parameswara founded Melaka on that spot.

By the mid 1400’s, Melaka was a booming trading post for Javanese, Indian, Arab, Persian and Chinese merchants. Melaka’s trading success attracted the attention of the Portuguese. In 1511, they succeeded in capturing the city. They built A Famosa, or Porta De Santiago, to protect their possession. The defensive strategy worked for 130 years, until the Dutch displaced the Portuguese. Control passed back and forth between the Dutch and the British. With independence in 1957, control once again returned to local citizens.

With such a past the people of Melaka emerged with a distinctive Peranakan culture. Peranakan in Malay means “descendants” and the Chinese descendents from original traders fashioned their own traditions, dress and foods. Male descendants are call Babas; females Nyonyas or Nonyas. We visited the privately operated Baba-Nonya Heritage Museum for a delightful guided tour of a once very prosperous Baba-Nonya home. Rich Chinese embroidered artwork hung from the walls and Italian tile graced the floor. English dishware and flatware were displayed with a 100+ year unopened bottle of brandy.

From there we walked the short distance to the river quay to tour a replica of the Portuguese merchant ship, Flora de la Mar. Freed of internal decking, we were amazed at the ship’s enormous cargo capacity. The museum-ship’s air-conditioned interior held displays in English and Malaysian on the history of the Melakan trade and the duties levied that made this river quay such a prosperous enterprise for those who possessed it.

We then headed inland to visit the hilltop ruins of St. Paul’s Church. Built in 1521 by the Portuguese, the Dutch reclaimed it and buried their dead beneath carved flooring slabs. The church is but a shell today. A few tombstones rest against the interior walls providing a backdrop to merchants and musicians. The location of the temporary burial site of St. Francis Xavier is not officially marked, but the metal caging over an open pit in the church appears to “protect” this sacred ground.

We visited the fragmentary remains of the Portuguese A Famosa and then idled some time in a nearby Mega Shopping Mall and the Bamboo Hut Restaurant, awaiting nightfall to watch the nearby Sound & Light Show. From the restaurant we watched the parade of highly decorated pedicabs, some with blaring sound systems, transporting tourists along the neat brick esplanade. Alas, we discovered the Sound & Light show was cancelled for this evening. We strolled back to the Mekala Renaissance, enjoying the cool night air, then prepared for our return trip to KL the next day.

Kuala Lumpur – Tower Envy

Our stay at the JW Marriott in KL was a brief one night. After our driving tour from Kuala Selangor it was a pleasant way to end the day by being escorted to our spacious club level 17^th floor room. Benefiting from Jay’s Marriott’s point and Gold status we found ourselves treated to royal Asian service.

When we opened the curtains in our sitting room, we were treated by the glowing images of the twin Petronas Towers. The Petronas Towers opened in 1998 and is occupied primarily by the government-run energy Petronas company. Built of glass, steel and concrete, the tapering towers reflect the Islamic influence on Malaysian architecture in the polygonal plan. Despite its conservative Islamic nature, the towers became Hollywood “stars” in the 1999 action thriller "Entrapment" providing stars Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones a breathtaking, gravity-defying backdrop.

Only the double decked sky bridge on the 41^st and 42^nd floors is open to the public. You must arrive well before the 8:00am ticket window opening to a get one of the 800 free daily tickets.

Topping out at 1483 ft, the Petronas Towers laid claimed title to the “world’s tallest building” until 2003. With the opening of 1671 ft. Taipei 101 (Financial Tower), the Petronas Towers slipped to 2^nd place. The boasting rights to the world’s tallest building will change again in 2008, when the Burj Dubai tower opens. That tower will reach an incredible 2313 ft. into the heavens.

To put things in perceptive, The Eiffel tower is 986 ft tall and the Empire State Building stretches 1250 ft. above the ground. The World Trade Towers in New York City (left) reached a height of 1614 feet before their terrible destruction in 2001. The proposed Freedom Tower (right) that will stand on the old footings of the World Trade Towers is engineered to reach a more American iconic height of 1776 feet.

Back to KL. The next morning we had breakfast in the club lounge, took a few more snaps of the Petronas Towers and prepared to drive to Melaka.

Kuala Selangor

On Wednesday, we caught a mid morning flight from the sparkling Penang Airport to the sparkling Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). Before picking up our rental car at KLIA, we took advantage of the free WiFi access at the airport. Internet access to our US based e-mail providers was so slow it was useless. We later learned that the 7.1 magnitude earthquake on Sunday off Taiwan’s southern coast had significantly damaged the undersea telecommunication cables. The event reminded us just how much we depend on the invisible technology of the Internet.

With rental car keys in hand, Helen slid bravely into the driver’s seat of our Hyundai Elantra. She quickly mastered the right hand side steering wheel. The first thing that immediately struck us was the fabulous Malaysian roads. We have become accustomed to the rutted, pothole-filled roads of India. Malaysia has moved in its 50 years of independency from opening new highways to improving and widening existing roads.

From the airport we headed northwest to Kuala Selangor, an unremarkable city off the tourist track. Our intent this day was to tour Bukit Malawati and the nature park of Taman Alam and enjoy an evening at the Firefly Park in nearby Bukit Belimbing.

Bukit Malawati is a well maintained park and home of Kota Malawati. This old and now barely recognizable military enclave was built by Sultan Ibrahim in the late 1700s. The main entertainment of the park is looking at the fabulous views from this hilltop and watching the monkeys. The monkeys have acquired such a familiarity with people that they easily mingle with throngs of kids milling about them, accepting or snatching food offerings.

Taman Alam is a well-maintained nature walking park. We toured the forest trails, bird watched (as least tried) from the observation tower, saw two otters swimming in a stream and generally enjoyed the serenity of a landscape free of planes, trains and automobiles.

Rainy weather that afternoon meant our intended tour of the Firefly Park would need to be postponed to another day. As darkness fell, we headed back to KL.

Finding the JW Marriott in the center of KL in the dark without a sufficiently detailed map was difficult. Getting directions from gas station mini mart attendants with limited English was a challenge. Luck prevailed and we found ourselves in the city flowing with one way traffic down Jalan Bukit Bintang seeking our hotel. Balancing the distractions of glowing city lights and the pillars of the downtown monorail, Helen drove slightly past the hotel entrance. With no vehicles behind her, she put the car into reverse, nudged a few No Parking signs and gratefully accepted the offer of valet parking from the hotel doorman. Our adventures that day had come to an end.

Pulau Pinang – Day 2 Gardens and Temples

We started our second day of touring with the assistance of Nathan, a taxi driver we had met the previous day. A native born citizen, Nathan added color commentary to our trip.

The first stop was the beautiful Taman Botani, Botanical Garden. The garden, a short drive from Georgetown, is a peaceful sanctuary for walkers, runners, Tai Chi devotees and playful monkeys. We strolled the restful grounds visiting the Rumah Kaktus (cactus house) and Rumah Orkid (orchid house) as well as the Taman Formal (formal garden).

Soon after departing we diverted to a nearby batik shop. Batik is an ancient Asian art form that uses wax and colored dyes to create beautiful artwork on fabric. Helen was educated in several ways to wear batik prints, with and without ties, and happily made a purchase of both.

Next on our sightseeing list was a “temple tour.” Although Islam is the predominant religion of the native Malays, Penang has a historic mix of Asian and European religions. The Thai temple of Wat Chayamangkalaram was our first stop. The temple was built in 1845 on land donated to the Thai community by Queen Victoria. Greeting us at the temple entrance were two towering green-faced guards reminiscent of the giant statues we saw in the new Bangkok airport. The temple boasts of housing the world’s third largest Reclining Buddha. More research indicated that the 33 meter resting Buddha is actually the 14^th largest. Once inside the temple, Buddha ranking seemed irrelevant.

The reclining Buddha represents Shakyamuni Buddha at his death. Legend recalls that as death approached, the Buddha asked his disciples to prepare a couch for him in a grove. There he lay until he passed into nirvana. Not surprisingly, the temple houses a columbarium of the remains for former devotees who have also passed into nirvana.

Across the street from Wat Chayamangkalaram is the Dharmikarama Burmese Buddhist Temple. Consecrated in 1805, it was first Buddhist temple in Penang. The grounds of the temple which won the Penang State landscaping and beautification competition in 2001 are spacious and serene. The temple complex is filled with golden statuary and buildings.

Next on the temple tour was the Kek Lok Si Temple. The expansive temple is built on the east-facing hillside of Air Itam. Also known as the Temple of Supreme Bliss, the temple has distinctively Chinese architecture, but has ties to both China and Thailand. The temple, constructed between 1893 and 1905, is currently under renovation. The towering ''Pagoda of Ten Thousand Buddhas,'' once the main attraction, now stands in the shadow of the 120 foot bronze statue of Guan Yin Boddisattva. The 200 feet high pavilion roof that will enclose the enormous statue will be supported by 16 dragon pillars. We understand the true purpose of commemorating the Bodhisattva is to follow his spirit of practicing “Great compassion to all beings as one unit. Kindness to all beings without discrimination”. Amen…Shalom…May it be so.

Pulau Pinang – Day 2 Turf and Surf

Our touring day on Penang Island included a ride up the Swiss-modeled funicular railway to the top of Penang Hill. An early attempt in 1906 to provide rail service from the humid lowlands to the cooling breezes of Penang Hill was unsuccessful. Another attempt at rail service to the top of Penang Hill, also known as Bukit Bendara (Flag Hill), was organized by the Straits Settlement government after the First World War. That service opened in October 1923 and was an immediate success. There have been a few hitches over the years, though. Most recently, in April 2005, a load of tourists was trapped on the hill for three hours when a brake malfunctioned. However, great attention is paid to safety and the maintenance of the rail service.

On busy holiday weekends, tickets must be purchased in advance. An attendant in the waiting room at the base of the hill ushers passengers at their appointed time into one of the five compartments of the rail car. The ride to the top of Bukit Bandera takes 30 minutes and requires a change of trains midway. From the 2,750 ft. peak one has a marvelous panoramic view of Georgetown.

Much like the days of British rule when hills stations conjured up images of health, relaxation and fun, today’s Bukit Bendera is home to several hotels, eating areas, attractions, small shops as well as a mosque and Indian temple. Standing at the summit one still gets the feeling sought in the old British days of an escape from the heat and teeming masses of the lowlands.

From Bukit Bendera we headed to the north island beach resort of Batu Ferringhi. Thirty years ago when Jay visited Batu Ferringhi on the recommendation of a Peace Corps worker, he found long stretches of lonely beach. He remembered visiting Lone Pine Hotel and that became our last destination for the day.

The once long stretches of lonely beach are now occupied by sprawling upscale multi-story hotels and resorts. But the Lone Pine Hotel was still there pretty much in its original low two story structured form. We walked the beach as lovers hand-in-hand as the sun slowly set. A young girl road a horse along the beach, led by a handler and we saw someone parasailing. The serenity of the moment, however, was sacrificed to the roar of rented four wheelers by a father son duo peeling up and down the beach.

Our dinner meal at the al fresco restaurant called The Bungalow at the Lone Pine was just okay. The service was below average. The highlight of the evening was Helen, who had changed from her touring garb to one of her new batik wraps.

We sipped drinks in the cool evening shore breeze and gave thanks to the wonderful life we have. More adventure awaited us as we planned to head back to KL the next day, rent a car and drive the Malacca.