Giveaways
AFTER a four-hour bus ride from Penang, I ended up staying at a place in the Brickfields district of downtown Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, colloquially known as KL. Brickfields is one of a couple of localities known as ‘Little India’: a reflection of the huge diversity of modern Malaysia, a country in which only about half of the population is ethnically Malay.
Although it has a metro-area population of nearly nine million today, KL is not one of the ancient cities of Asia.
Indeed, it was only founded in the mid-nineteenth century, as a settlement for tin miners on the junction of the Gombak and Klang Rivers. Kuala Lumpur is said to mean ‘muddy junction’, and in the early days, life for the miners was fairly basic as well as unhealthy, since the muddy confluence of the two rivers was overrun with disease-bearing mosquitos.
KL has certainly come a long way since those days. Its proudest symbol of modernity is the Petronas Twin Towers, completed in 1996 and for a time the tallest buildings in the world. Petronas is short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad, or in other words, National Petroleum Limited of Malaysia, a state-owned energy giant. Founded in 1974, Patronas celebrated its 50th anniversary this August.
KL is a really good place to stop off and chill between New Zealand and anywhere, really.
Just next to the Petronas Twin Towers, there was a lovely downtown park called the KLCC Park, created at the same time as the towers to provide a balance of greenery. The letters KLCC stands for Kuala Lumpur City Centre, an official development area that was made over in the 1990s and the 2000s to create a new downtown area including the towers, the park, and other facilities.
KLCC park is kept spick and span by a Singapore-style multitude of regulations, including one against bathing in the toilet, which I certainly had no intention of doing anyway. Perhaps the precise nature of that regulation (#13) has lost something in translation.
Also next to KLCC Park is the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, which opened in 2005.
There was a conference on sustainability at the Convention Centre, which they wouldn’t let me into, as I only had sandals on.
I noticed that a pair of towers near KLCC Park had greenery growing right up the outside! These were the towers of an apartment complex called Le Nouvel. A landscaper named Patrick Blanc designed the so-called vertical gardens of Le Nouvel, choosing 238 species of plants to form the gardens.
They are very much into green buildings in Malaysia, both in terms of their energy use and in terms of integration of high rise and greenery. Here is a video about a recent green building called the new PAM Centre, the headquarters of the Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia (PAM), or in English, the Malaysian Institute of Architects.
KLCC Park is not the only park worth going out of your way to see on a visit to KL, of course. The largest and oldest park in KL is the Perdana Botanical Gardens, founded in 1888. There is also a Bird Park (including a vast aviary that you can go inside) and a similar Butterfly Park, for butterflies.
My place was close to the central KL shopping mall. That was an absolute delight, with about 200 food places, or so it seemed.
Some of the food was amazing, like, I had a walnut-raspberry-wholemeal bun and a pilau with lamb shanks. I was really impressed.
I went and saw a movie, and had my hair done in a wash and dry for 60 Ringgit, or about 22 to 23 New Zealand dollars.
I loved the monorail, on which I took a ride. This is the only urban monorail in Malaysia, weaving in and out between the buildings and above the streets.
The monorail is very useful for getting around as a visitor at off-peak times, as much as the boats of Bangkok, though it comes in for criticism as being inadequate for the commuter peak.
A lot of infrastructure is being built by China at present. I also noticed that there seemed to be less tolerance of the blatant conflicts of interest that we put up with in New Zealand, with politicians being arrested all the time. Economic growth at currently running at 4%, powered by industrial development, natural resources and agriculture, including palm oil plantations.
I also visited the national tourism centre, which dates back to 1935, or in other words to the days when Malaya was still a British colony.
The tourism centre had a display on Malaysia’s national principles, which included Courtesy and Morality, things we can always use more of.
The Malay population, at least, is mostly Muslim, a fact reflected in the design of the national flag, which includes a crescent moon and star. I heard the haunting call to prayer, and wandered for a time in a Muslim cemetery on Jalan Ampang, or Ampang Street.
Here is a video I made of Kuala Lumpur scenes, starting with the bus ride from Penang and giving good impressions of the downtown area and the Muslim cemetery.
My next journey would take me to Melaka (Malacca), one and a half hours further to the south by bus, once more.
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