. These days have been quite active for my standards, and as a result I did not manage to sum up the courage to settle on my computer and write. So now I am days behind the blog’s exorbitant schedule, which is bad.
So, back to KL: well, to summarize: very nice! I experienced a lot of highway driving, but apart from that I have to admit I really liked Malaysia as a whole, KL included.
A flight attendant I had met on the Air Asia shuttle bus had told me that KL was a bit like Hong Kong but in a smaller scale, which is kind of true. The city is clearly booming, sky scrapers are indeed scraping the sky, night clubs are packed with young trendy Malaysians drinking bottles of Black Label and Belvedere vodka…
And yet the central areas – Chinatown, Little India, up to KL Central – are all quite small with many low rise buildings, some of which still have remnants of a colonial architecture, which is quite charming. But the looming presence of the Twin Towers is always present, with their sister the KL tower.
But again what is most appealing is definitely its cultural diversity. One day I was observing wild animal life in some spiritual Hindu Batu Caves, another day I was eating fried noodles in Chinatown; and another day again I was siting in a restaurant, digesting tranquillo, when I realized that the place had become suddenly packed. But the weirdest was that everyone had food in front of them and yet no one was eating… Aaah, it’s Ramadan, how could I forget… At 19h30 the prayer was heard indeed and at once everyone digged in with a voracious appetite. Voracious.
Yesterday my friend Faye – whom I had met in New Zealand 3 years ago – took me on a day trip to Melaka, the birth place of Malay civilization. The saying goes: “the one who has seen Melaka has seen Malaysia”, and that is almost true.
Melaka became in the 15th century the capital of the Muslim Malay Sultanate, although its founder was originally Buddhist (prince Paramesvara had fled the falling Srivijaya empire based in Sumatra in the end of the 14th century). Soon Melaka became an important trading port and many Chinese sailors ended up finding a Malay wife and settling there.
The result is Melaka: a Chinatown with its pastel colors and colonial architecture (some English and Portugese had also settled there for a while) that makes one feels like in Merida (Yucatan, Mexico) and yet it is Chinese speaking, an indian looking mosque (the minaret is built like a stupa), european styled street planning (no sense at all, not like the squared American cities)… The list goes on.
But the best of all is that the city gives the feeling of having a soul, a history, as the buildings look old and aren’t necessarily restored, which is an amazing thing in Asia (I found the Forbidden City in Beijing absolutely boring); although this is maybe the point of view of the spoiled European that I am, as 2000 years old Roman buildings are everywhere in my home town, Arles.
After the monkey fight (see post bellow) we went for the night food market that takes place in times of Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims. Around 5p.m every days people gather at these markets to buy food to bring home and finally get to eat after a long day fasting. But as a result the food market is bustling, there is food every where, all kind of food, all kind of people (Chinese and all non-Muslim Malay enjoy this food party just as much as the worshippers). And Malay food is just awesome: a mix of the best from Chinese, Indian, Kebab, Indonesian food styles that make something absolutely great.
After Beijing, Dunhuang, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Almaty, Bangkok… I am now in Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia. Like in many other places I’ve ended up going to on this trip I would have never thought I would go there until a couple of weeks ago, until unplanned events occurred bringing twists and twicks and shmicks to my original itinerary: until my friend Faye told me to come by.
Master Monkey v.s Vicious Snake
So yesterday Faye, her brother Jeremy, his friend Alex and I went sightseeing at the Batu Caves, and there we witness some interesting wild life: tones of monkeys, snakes and roosters. But it became really interesting when a big snake decided to have for lunch a baby monkey left unattended.
The snake jumped incredibly fast on the baby and entangled it the way boas typically do (we all witnessed this right?). At that point I thought that there was no hope for the baby monkey.
But then all the monkeys started whistling and yelling at the snake and the dominant male decided to fight the snake!
After playing around for a couple of minutes the Master Monkey (MM) launched a decisive attack which destabilized the snake, which in turn fell down from a cliff. But while the snake was falling, MM continued to try to grasp the baby from the malicious snake and finally succeeded. Then MM bit the snake, forcing it to back up, away from the baby monkey.
And it worked!
Finally, two guys came and fought the snake and managed to take it away in a box. Indian snake masters…
These days have been quite active for my standards, and as a result I did not manage to sum up the courage to settle on my computer and write. So now I am days behind the blog’s exorbitant schedule, which is bad.
So yesterday Faye, her brother Jeremy, his friend Alex and I went sightseeing at the 
