4. Navigating the city and the luxury bus!

The last couple of days have brought some excellent adventures - and a fair amount of walking around, the majority of which I was mostly lost and just trying to find the twin towers…twice!

After leaving myself plenty of time to walk to the Petronas Towers this morning, I was slightly dismayed to get most of the way there and then find that there was a giant building in between where I wanted to go and where I was, which despite google’s insistence, I could not walk through. Fortunately, the towers are tall and distinctive so I ended up wandering about trying to spot them and make my way there, a bit like the ancient seafarers who used the stars. Although I managed to navigate there with success, I was running out of time and worried I’d miss my time so having to walk faster and faster. The reason the locals here dawdle is because it is SO BLOODY HOT so walking any quicker than a slow meander will almost certainly lead to heatstroke. I was obviously thrilled then on arrival to find that they wanted to organise me into a photo with the towers superimposed onto the background - since it's not like the real things were anywhere near by - and me looking like a bright red, hot and sweaty little urchin in the foreground following my stress jog. Needless to say, I didn’t buy my souvenir photo!

The towers are an interesting visit. Themselves, I love how they look as they’re all silver and sparkly and well lit at night (just silver and white lights and none of that hideous pink). The sky ridge thing is not really that high (relative to the towers and observation deck at the top!) so seems to be more of a gimmick than a view point. They proudly told us it weighs many many tonnes and hangs some 170m in the air then walked us onto it! The observation deck at the top is good with views all round. I enjoyed looking round and taking the obligatory photos of the various views. The other people about seemed mostly to just stare at their phones, often with their backs to the view. The kids were fully engrossed in the interactive screens - and didn’t go near the windows once while their parents sat staring at their phones. One of the older kids looked at everything through her phone screen - including an interesting attempt to take a photo through a telescope rather than put her actual eye to it to look through. I then took photos of them doing that so really just compounded the absurdity!

I have also navigated and had a go on the monorail (is it just me that can’t say that without singing it in my head courtesy of the Simpsons 🎶monorail, monorail, monoraaaail 🎶). It was fun - and cost me about 30p to get home from the station whose name is pronounced - when I need it - ‘bucket nanas’. Even more thrillingly, I realise that more things here are designed for shorties like me …. A problem I have often have on the tube in London is that if I’m not near a side to hold a bar, I can’t really reach the bars on the ceiling to keep steady so I tend to end up with my face buried in some stranger’s armpit. In Malaysia, it seems the general population are a bit shorter … so they’ve adapted to take account of that. Excellent!

Following another mega storm in the afternoon yesterday, I attempted a similar route back to the towers and included a stop for a street food dinner - where I had a variation of chicken again - and not the frog that was also on the menu. At dinner I met some other travellers and we ate together and shared various recommendations and tales. Some of theirs included hostels and bedbugs. I was a bit vague about where I'm staying! I then proceeded to get accidentally lost once again and wandered around backstreets as I headed back to the towers to see the fountains dance. As dancing fountains go, they were pretty good …. They were no Vegas fountains though. Those Vegas phenomenons have ruined all future fountains for me but these were definitely top 3 (behind, I’m devastated to admit, the ones in front of the Burg Khalifa in Dubai, which are a decent 2nd!). One of my traveler dinner friends told me that Singapore do some good ones so I shall have to do a trip there at some time in the future! I'm quite the dancing fountain connoisseur.

It’s been interesting to walk more round the city. They like to encourage people to cycle I think - in as much as there are a number of cycle lanes around. But then there are also fairly hazardously placed bollards at the beginning of all of the lanes. Unsurprisingly perhaps, I saw very few cyclists. I did consider though that as pedestrians we may all be safer in high vis and helmets ourselves. As is usual in Asia, there is no safe way to cross a road. Zebra crossings are entirely redundant but there are what appear to be marked crossings at some junctions ..there is a red man that means you wait … then there is a green man and count down to show you how long you have to cross. The green man doesn’t mean that the cars will stop though. And it doesn't mean that it's in anyway safe to cross. I think the green man is more of a ‘go on, be brave, give it a go’ type suggestion that you have to just walk confidently into the road and hope the cars will, if not actually stop, at least go round you. The little green man is an animated one too … at the beginning when he appears, he does a relaxed walk, which very quickly increases to a decent pace run. By the end of the countdown, he’s on a full on sprint. I supposed they should be congratulated for the honestly in signalling the relative safety of the crossing!

Today I left the city to go onto a trip to see the Batu Caves - which are natural caves in the limestone rock. I booked a tour, which my dinner friends from last night also came along for. We had a ‘luxury coach’ - I was expecting the usual over-full, sweaty & grubby Asian bus but actually, it was excellent luxury - as buses go. Arm chair seating with feet up and recline if you so desired! At the caves, the Indian community who originally settled nearby have added some beautiful decoration and statues and created a Hindu temple. Raj was our tour guide; he talked a lot on the bus there and clearly felt that each and every fact he shared was of the utmost important as he repeated each one 3 times, the final time with each word a sentence in itself. 'The caves are formed from limestone, formed - from - limestone, Formed. From. Limestone'. I did learn, according to Raj, that Kuala Lumpur actually translates as ‘dirty river’ from ancient Malay. I'm not sure that’s something that it’s wise to share with tourist necessarily. He also told us that Malaysia’s top two exports are palm oil and petroleum. It’s an environmentalist’s nightmare! I'm yet to fact check anything we were told today. But if it was important enough to repeat 3x, it must be true! On arrival at the caves though, the bus pulled up amongst the many others, all identical, and Raj announced ‘You’ve got an hour - be back here by 11’ and there the tour ended! It ended with us all locating the bus park and spending several happy minutes talking to a pletherer of bus drivers and tour guides - most of whom, it turns out, are called Raj - until we found out bus. The holiday company clearly do cracking business - and it seems are named after my niece!

You have to wear clothes which mean your shoulders and knees are covered to visit the temple. Anyone not meeting these requirements was stopped and ‘voluntarily’ sold a scarf to wrap round whatever part of their body that the deities must not have sight of. When I say ‘anyone’ I just mean women - because men were fine in shorts. Seems their knees are not offensive to the gods, which is weird because the way they often tend to barge past women, snort and spit and talk over them seems reasonably offensive in itself to me. Many of the depictions of the Hindi deities are women - I can't believe they wouldn't prefer the men to stop behaving like that - and cover up their knees while they're at it. I realise how lucky I am to come from a culture where it at least isn't encouraged to treat the sexes so differently.

The temple and caves were really beautiful and stunning to see - both the natural formation and the immense building and decoration that have been added. I particularly liked the multi-coloured steps - if I had a staircase, that’s what I would do with it I think. Possibly just as well I don’t have a staircase then really! There were many animals who called the temples home; pigeons, a number of roosters, oddly, and much to my abject horror, monkeys. There were monkeys everywhere. Monkeys - everywhere. Monkeys. Everywhere. They lined the route, owned the stairs, guraded the fences threateningly, had meetings to plan their attacks and caused me great amount of stress. I could mostly avoid them although brainless humans keep bloody feeding them, which means they’ve learnt to hang around and also that humans mean food. There were times when I had to do little squeals and run past them - which in addition to the 272 steps up to the temple - will form my exercise for today! At one point, the monkeys formed a troop and blocked the staircase. I obviously could not pass. Fortunately, a small girl continued on past me, unconcerned by the certain death she was facing down, so I trotted down behind her, with every intention of using her as a human shield if the need arose! Also some more excellently ornate street lighting in evidence - along with some irritatingly placed massive ugly flood flights that get in the way of a nice photo quite often!

After the temples, we were ‘treated’ to a visit to a local batik factory, where a lady indiscriminately sprayed colour and water at some silk while talking about how they produce the patterns. A combination of her thick face mask, super speed speaking and heavy accent meant I didn’t understand a word she said, although it was clear that I was very welcome to buy something in the shop that was conveniently next door. I did not. Next stop was a pewter factory, which by then I was somewhat dubious about and expected another trip to be welcome to buy stuff. However, we had a tour round the factory and got to watch the ladies (always ladies because apparently they have softer, smaller hands - and inequality is not an issue is Asia) pouring the molten pewter, shaping it and seeing it solidify in seconds then be polished, hammered and any scraps lobbed back into the big vat which instantly re-melted them. It was really cool. And then in the convenient shop, filled with pretties, I bought a little pewter fish. I am easily marketed!

For the remainder of today, I plan to sit by the pool, read my book, take shelter inside when the daily storm arrives, pack up my belongings - while holding on to the surely quite likely hope - that both bags will weigh at least 10kg less and get an early night ready for tomorrow’s flight to Borneo!