Foodie Nation - Malaysia

In some countries they don't get too excited about food. In Nepal, for instance, I noticed that a lot of them were happy with their rice and dal twice a day. Filling the stomach was all there was to it.

I was brought up to  think of French cuisine as the ultimate in foodie nation sophistication. Then I found that the Chinese were a bit like that about their food too, and later I discovered Thai food, Mexican food, Indian food, Vietnamese, Japanese......  So it wasn't that simple.

 
But wait till you've met a few Malaysians! Every single one of them is a fanatical foodie. And they've got it all there. Largely because of the ethnic mix: Malay, Chinese, Indian, and no doubt a few other other influences.



Some say that the best thing to do with your time in Malaysia is to eat. I think that's not the whole story, but the food's definitely good, and definitely varied. We visited Chinatown, and Little India (or one of them - there seemed to be two, and I was in a different one from the one I thought I was in). We also dined in shopping mall food courts and an unprepossessing canteen-like place across from our hotel, to say nothing of the hotel's own fine dining room.












And it was all delicious!

Batu Caves

If you're in Kuala Lumpur and wanting a nice easy day trip out of the city, you can't do much better than Batu Caves. They're a short, easy train ride away, a few kilometres to the north.

Plenty of eating places and side attractions, a Hindu temple or two, and then there are the caves. (And quite a few steps up to the main one.)

Lots of cheeky monkeys run riot. In the words of Lonely Planet, many visitors are more interested in the monkeys than the other attractions.

KL's Bird Park

 

An unexpected highlight of our Kuala Lumpur visit was the KL Bird Park. It turns out to be the world's largest walk-in aviary. It covers about 8 hectares of  'verdant valley terrain', and much of this area is netted, allowing the residents to fly around with varying degrees of freedom.

There are about 3000 birds, of 200 species. It's in the Lake Gardens area, and it's a good place to spend several hours. Especially of you're a bit of a bird spotter.

I liked the Scarlet ibis. And all the other ibises. And the eagles, parrots, flamingos and everything else.

Felt rather sorry for the ones stuck in cages though. Like the poor galah pictured above. We usually see galahs wandering the streets of our suburb, free as  .........  a bird.

A multitude of mosques, an art museum, and a photography lesson

Malaysia's National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur is something they're rightly very proud of. It's a beautiful building. It's cool, and it's very welcoming. Tourist me was invited in and greeted by a volunteer guide, who told me all about the place, the prayer schedule, and the special situation during Ramadan, which was in full swing at the time.

I've been invited into lots of mosques in Malaysia, and Indonesia too, and it's always like this. Friendly places, full of wonderful people. 

Right next door was a rather fine specialist museum, the Museum of Islamic Art. They exhibit all kinds of wonderful stuff, but perhaps the most eye-catching room was the one which housed scale models of many of the world's best known mosques (and other notable buildings of the Islamic world - the Taj Mahal for example).

There are lots of highly decorative copies of the Koran, of course.

And many and varied, beautifully arranged, bits and pieces.

I noticed an exhibition of excellent photography - the finalists in a recent competition involving Islamic subjects. As well as the fine works on show, my attention was taken by an informative exhibit which neatly encapsulated most of the composition lessons I tried to teach in the beginners' 'Taking Better Pictures' course I used to teach.

Once were tallest

It's a competitive business, this World's Tallest Building thing. Kuala Lumpur's poor old Petronas Towers officially held the title from 1998 to 2004. They were soon overtaken by upstart Taipei 101, which in turn was dwarfed in 2010 by Dubai's Burj Khalifa.

You might just be fooled though, by a quick glance at the display panel they show you. They've drawn their towers to a different height scale than the others, and they look to be still the highest!

I went up anyway. I can't say no to a World's Tallest Building, or third or fourth tallest, or whatever it is today.

(Addendum: I just checked, and they're already down to number 7 - how quickly they fall!)