Tourist Sites

One of the more interesting sites that we visited while in Kuala Lumpur was the Hindu shrine of Batu Caves. This temple has a series of smaller shrines that are built inside a giant cave. While it is definitely set up as a tourist attraction, with all of the hawkers and beggars that you would expect, it is one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage sites outside of India and attracts over 1.5 million pilgrims a year!

The entrance of the site is guarded by a 140 ft golden statue of Murugan and a whole bunch of monkeys. The monkeys are relatively tame and really just sit around and wait for tourists to give them something to eat (or drink).

To get into the caves, we had to climb up 272 steps to the main entrance. The cave itself was quite impressive and roomy. There we several holes near the top that let down beams of light that really gave the whole place a ethereal feel.

All of the individual shrines were scattered in different nooks of the cave. In typical Hindu style they were all brightly colored and had intricate carvings, sometimes directly into the stone face.

It was definitely a cool site and I can only imagine what it is like during the Thaipusam festival when all the pilgrims come to worship.

Since we didn't have to meet Jen's Dad until after Christmas, we decided to spend about a week hanging out over Christmas in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

With our numerous HiltonHonors points and our Diamond VIP status, we were able to score a phatty room on the executive floor of the KL Hilton. It was a beautiful room, with a great view of the city, a huge bathtub for Jen, a 42" flatscreen tv, and one of the most comfortable beds I have ever slept in. But the best part about it all was that we got free breakfast AND free drinks and snacks in the executive lounge everyday. So while we had planned to spend a good portion of our time in KL exploring the city, we actually spent most of it sucking down free booze and lazing around our room.

Jen particularly enjoyed the free wine, often taking a glass back down to the room for her bath.

When we did get out of the room, however, we were able to take in some of the tourist sites around KL and had a grand old time. The Petronas Towers, now the 2nd tallest building in the world (but tallest twin towers), were pretty impressive for a couple of geeky engineers.

We also went up the KL Tower which had panoramic views of the entire city as well as some wacky tourist exhibits encircling the bottom. The most surreal of which was the "Winter Park", which was essentially a whole bunch of plastic polar bears and penguins surrounded by fake cotton snow and Christmas decorations. We took an obligatory picture just to document the absurdity of it all.

I'm a little embarrassed to say, however, that we spent a good portion of our time 'exploring the city' inside the numerous malls. Partially because they were air conditioned, partially because that is where a lot of the restaurants are (see the previous entry), but mostly to be blown away by the sheer unabashed commercialism. I've never been in a mall with so many designer stores, nor one that sells $150,000 watches, nor one that has a BENTLEY dealership inside the mall. Ridiculous. Someone must be making a ton of money in Malaysia....

All in all, we had a great time in KL and it was the right balance of relaxation, luxury, and exploration to get us primed for our travels ahead.

Our first "real" day of vacation was pretty much perfect. We slept in, ate a great breakfast, and just wandered around Singapore for the day. The highlight was a visit to the Chinese Gardens. They had some beautifully manicured gardens, an incredible bonzai house, and some really cool historical statues. Best of all, it was a very cool day and we basically had the park to ourselves. Very mellow and relaxing...exactly what we needed after the chaos of closing out our project in Sri Lanka.

After the gardens, we headed back to Orchard Road which is the ultimate shopping street. Mall after mall, shop after shop. Jen had her first real experience of culture shock. After being in Sri Lanka, where shopping can be a challenge at best, it was a little overwhelming to walk into a huge mall that was more extravagant than anything we have in Portland. Definitely took a little bit of an adjustment. What threw me, though, was how Christmasy everything is. For a country with not a whole lot of Christians they have sure embraced Christmas wholeheartedly. Or at least the consumerism aspects of it. Nevertheless, they did a great job with lights and decorations in the streets. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it was pretty incredible, even for a grinch like me.

We decided to have a late lunch/early dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the mall and were amazed at how good the food was for a mall. We had garlic fried prawns, chicken in a sweet and spicy sauce, and some really good dry sauted string beans. It was a little more expensive than we had expected, but was worth every penny..or so we thought. We had budgeted to spend $50/day and had thus far been able to see Singapore on a shoestring (thanks to our free stay at the hilton), but after paying for the lunch tab we realized that we were fifty cents short for our subway ride to the airport the next day. So we wandered around for another hour, eyes to the ground, trying to find spare change on the street. Unfortunately, Singapore is so damn clean that we were only able to find another 5 cents, so Jen had to sweet talk the front desk in the Hilton to change one dollar so we could make it to the airport. I guess learning to live on a budget is just part of the adventure.

We're off to Malaysia now for another week long stay in the Hilton Malaysia...