Malaysian Countryside
This is the Malaysian countryside as I traveled in a bus from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. What I noticed was that the countryside, from the window of a bus, looks a whole lot like the countryside in many other parts of the world. However, when the bus moved on down the road to a more cultivated space of land, the scenery in the picture changed. Here, palm trees were the primary landscape. These palm trees had economic advantages over the wild jungle canopy.
Malaysian Lunch
This was my lunch at the Kuala Lumpur Central Market Food Court. I ate there reguarly. There were ten or so restaurants that offered all kinds of wonderful non-western dishes. No pizza, fried chicken or burgers. No beer. Just good old noodles and veggies and strange looking concoctions that smelled funny and tasted yummy, yummy, yummy. This was white rice and chicken curry, sans the chicken. It cost me 1 ringot, about 30 cents. Was it good? It was yummy, yummy, yummy. I almost wanted to give the guy 2 ringots for it, it was so good.
Malaysian Hi-Rise
Ever want to live in a high rise? Your big chance has arrived. Move to a very large city in SE Asia and you, too can live in one of the many high-rises scattered throughout the area. How great would that be? Plus you’ll probably pay a whole lot less for the privilege of living in one than you would if you lived in one in the States.
Malaysian Air-Card
This is a Malaysian air-card that the owner of the hostel where I stayed let me use when the wi-fi was down. It worked just like my U.S. air-card back home. It had about the same speed and worked just like the one at home did. The only difference was that he only paid about one-third what I paid back home.
Wild Scooter Boy
Okay, it’s me and maybe I’m not a wild scooter boy, but it’s nice to pretend every once in a while. This was taken during a ride out in the country on the island of Borneo outside of the town of Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. We were looking for large mosques in the countryside around the city. We found several.
Me – KL Bird Park
I got my picture taken with a few friends at the bird park. It cost me about $2.50 for them to use my camera. It was easy. Walk in. Sit down. People put birds on you. Snap, snap, snap. Pay. Leave. I think they had a little cash cow at the photo stall. I could have gotten a really nice high-quality glossy for an additional $10.
KL Bird Park
It’s the world’s largest walk-in aviary. It cost me about $14 to go, a very pricey ticket for KL. Then again, it is the world’s largest. It was a good time. While it’s not a definite must-see, most things in KL are so cheap that it’s easy t have a few extra dollars for the world’s largest anything.
Monkeys – Batu Caves
These are some of the monkeys that reside in, on or near the Batu Caves, and, believe me, there were more than a handful of them. They were all over the place. I worried about stepping on one and having the little critter bite me as a consequence. Needless to say, I’m not a big fan of loose monkeys running around all over the place. However, I have to concede that they were probably here first and I wonder why people built such a serious temple on a monkey habitat. They are, also, seriously overfed. One had a little sign on his lapel that said "I only eat f-r-e-s-h bananas."
Murugan – Batu Caves
This a statue of Murugan. Murugan is a Hindu deity among some followers of the religion. One of the great things about the Hindu religion is that it seems to have a wide degree of flexibility about what/whom is worshipped. The statue is over 120 feet tall and is quite impressive. Murugan is, supposedly guarding the entrance to the caves. It is said that during the yearly Hindu festival of Thaipusam over a million people come to the cave and many of the devotees do some seriously strange masochistic rites in the name of spiritual cleansing. Me? I have trouble with Lent, let alone inflicting some serious pain on myself in the name of becoming a little less unholy.
Petronis Towers Sky Bridge
This is a picture of the sky bridge between the two towers. It’s basically a walkway that connects the two towers.
