Dangerous Dave's Dlog

The whole southern half of Malaysia is dominated by Palm Oil plantations. These are the ones that greenies don't like because they destroy huge amounts of rain forest to plant them. Of course, as usual, the greenies don't know the solution only the problem.

We stopped at a rest stop on the side of the road and got our first taste of real Malaysia. Flies were crawling everywhere, thick as carpet, and the restrooms consisted of a hole in the ground and a hose. Something we have seen a lot of since then.

I had my first taste of driving in Malaysia. On the toll roads, it is no different to driving on the motorway in Auckland or Wellington. Except for the people honking at you, flashing your lights, and driving with their hazards on behind you because they want you to move over. "The speed limit is 110, why you only doing 120, fool?". Off the toll roads, that's when I let someone local take over. No one indicates, they just swerve. No one leaves space, everyone tailgates, even when traveling at 140km/j (With j standing for jam, the Malay word for hour). As a result, the road toll is unimaginably high (over 2 times the NZ or US road toll). On a trip of any decent length, you are pretty much guaranteed to see a car or two in pieces.

While in Kuala Lumpur, we headed out to see a couple of temples. The first was a Hindu temple, called the Batu Caves. This involved climbing a huge pile of steps up the side of a cliff, and walking into a massive limestone cave. As is common in Malaysia, wild monkeys were hanging around everywhere. There were also bats hanging from the ceiling, and touristy stalls everywhere.
After that, we traveled out into the mountains, towards a place called Genting Highlands. Way up in the mountains was a Buddhist temple including a 9 story pagoda, and a journey of enlightenment. I was certainly enlightened. When I get the photos uploaded you will understand why.

One of the star attractions of Kuala Lumpur are the Petronas Twin Towers. Once the tallest buildings in the world, currently the tallest twin tower complex in the world. They take guests to the skybridge for free, 40 guests at a times every 15 minutes. They use an interesting booking system. Each morning the day is booked by having potential guests line up. It's first in first serve for when you want to go. So if you want to go up at night, you must arrive early in the morning and book your place by getting to the front of the line before all the night time places have been taken. We arrived about an hour before the ticket office opened, amusing ourselves by talking to an Australian couple (Aussies stick out like sore thumbs). By the time we got to the front of the line, the only places left were for the night. Unfortunately, our plans involved us being nowhere near KL by that night, so we didn't get to go up.

While there, we also had a look around KLCC (which my selective dyslexia caused me to read wrong), and the shopping center Suria KLCC, one of the largest malls in Malaysia.

On our way back to Johor Bahru, we planned to stop in at Water World, located on the A' Famosa Resort. Unfortunately we were there at the wrong time of year, as it was closed for upgrading. We had lunch at the resort and headed back down the country.

I'll get around to the next post when I have time. Next up, markets, and some local stuff. Most likely a shorter post.

-Dave