Kuala Lumpur and The Petronas Towers

My first impression of Kuala Lumpur was “Under Construction”. As our bus sped into the city, we passed dozens of condo skyrises going up. The trend continued as we got closer to downtown. The city seems to be growing just as quickly as Dubai.

KL is relentlessly modern. I hardly saw anything in the city older than I am, and most of the glittering, towering skyline is less than 10 years old since it postdates the Petronas Twin Towers, which were completed in 1998.

After checking in to our hotel on Petaling Street in Chinatown, seemingly the epicenter of the world’s knock-off market from Louis Vuitton sneakers to Tiffany cufflinks to DVD collections, I grabbed my camera bag and hopped on the clean and efficient metro line to check out the Petronas Towers, formerly the tallest buildings in the world.

They are stunning. The design subtly incorporates traditional Islamic symbolism with the towers’ eight-sided star floorplan, while being completely unique and futuristic with shining glass and steel. They are 1,483 feet and 88 stories tall. It is difficult to grasp their immensity, and the statistics are stunning: more than 34 square miles of glass and tons of steel went into their construction.

The next day was my only full day in KL, and I set off early with some of my travel companions to line up for tickets to the Petronas Towers Skybridge, which links the towers on the 41st floor. Tickets are free, but they are timed and limited in quantity, and it is necessary to get in line before the towers open in order to get one. We were lucky enough to get early tickets, so it didn’t take long before we had seen Petronas’s incredibly cheesy 3D propaganda video (Petronas is Malaysia’s state oil company) and were on our way up to the Skybridge. The view was interesting, but the sky was so hazy that visibility was really limited. Later I asked a local why this was, because I’d seen so many clear photos of the KL skyline. I was told that for a couple of months a year, farmers slash and burn the Sumatran rainforest, and the resulting smoky haze drifts across the Straits of Malacca and settles over KL. Occasionally people even die from smoke inhalation. Indonesia’s government says that it’s Malaysia’s problem. Wonderful.

After the Skybridge, I headed over to the colonial center of town, Merdeka Square. The square is surrounded by buildings with a charming mix of English colonial and Islamic architecture, which reminded me of Malaysia’s approach to language. The country’s official language is Bahasa Melayu, or Malay, but many English words have been absorbed into it. The funny thing is that Malay makes the words its own by respelling them phonetically in Malay, making written Malay look like a funny pseudo Esperanto. Here are some of my favorites. See if you can guess what the word is before you look at the answer!

Della’s Malay-Engrish Phrasebook

Restoran ………………………. restaurant
Kompleks ………………………. complex
Motosikal ………………………. motorcycle
Farmasi ………………………. pharmacy
Tekstil ………………………. textile
Fakulti ………………………. faculty
Stesen bas ………………………. bus station
Ekpres bas ………………………. express bus
Polis ………………………. police
Poskod ………………………. postcode
Sains ………………………. science (my personal favorite)
Teknologi Akademi ………………………. Academy of Technology
Muzium ………………………. museum
Inggeris ………………………. English

If the language seems diverse, it doesn’t compare to the diversity of the Malaysian people. While Islam is the official religion, in KL I also saw Buddhist and Hindu temples as well as churches of many denominations, and the people of Malaysia are a melting pot of Malay, Indian, Chinese, and African heritage. One of my most cross-cultural experiences in Kuala Lumpur happened at a McDonald’s (I know, I know… but sometimes you just really need a big Diet Coke and fries), when I was surrounded by teenage Malay girls in glittery headscarves, an elderly Indian couple with their grandkids, and two Buddhist monks in their orange robes, going to town on their Big Macs.

Sorry, back to sightseeing. In the afternoon I visited the Central Market and went up in the Menara KL, an observation deck with incredible views over the city. At least, it would have been incredible if I could have seen anything. The hazy sky was really disappointing for photography. It was gray and gross all day and I didn't think there was any possibility of a sunset, but I decided to have a drink at the swank, Petronas Towers-facing Traders Hotel Sky Bar anyway, just to enjoy the view. I was so surprised when the sky lit up in vibrant pink! I scrambled to get a shot before it faded. This one is my favorite.

A couple more scenes from the evening as the color changed.

Southern Thailand: Khao Sok National Park & Krabi

After a couple of days in Bangkok, I headed south on the overnight train to Khao Sok National Park in the south of Thailand. The park contains some of the oldest rainforest in the world, and is situated in an area with beautiful limestone karst formations, like those in Halong Bay, Vietnam or Guilin, China.

Like Sukhothai, the park, and the area around it, seemed completely deserted. The guidebooks say that this time of year is monsoon season on the west side of the Isthmus of Kra, but in reality, it rains everywhere in Thailand nearly every day, so the best way to tell what “season” it is is to count the number of tourists around. The morning after we arrived, I hiked one of the most popular trails and only saw a handful of people, although that was better than the amount of wildlife I saw. Although I heard rare gibbons calling to each other in the distance, my best sighting of the day was probably a millipede. I’m just glad that I didn’t see the leech whose bite I found later when I took off my shoes and socks.

A so-called “monkey temple” in the area offered a better chance for wildlife viewing, if you didn’t mind getting *really* close to a troop of long-tailed macaques. And by close, I mean several of them jumping on your shoulders at once with others tugging at your clothes if they thought you had any food for them. They were really entertaining to watch, and there were several mothers with infants, which of course were my favorite subjects for photos. The babies had such humanlike expressions, even if they did look a little bit like Yoda with their huge, pointed ears!

Long tailed macaques with infants. Click the images to view them larger.

After Khao Sok, it was time to head to the beach. Southern Thailand is famous for its gorgeous islands and beaches, and I was ready for another tanning session since my Vietnamese sunburn had finally faded.

Visiting the Ancient Thai Empire at Sukhothai

Having just experienced the wondrous Angkor Wat and finding myself in Thailand for nearly a week with no set plans, I decided to head to the north of the country one more time to visit Sukhothai, the ruins at the heart of the ancient Siamese empire.

Being a bit off the beaten path for tourists, Sukhothai took some getting to. First I took a 6-hour train ride north from Bangkok to Phitsanulok. I rode in the fan-cooled second class car, which I actually prefer to air conditioned first class because the windows open. It’s a great way to experience the beautiful Thai countryside.

In Phitsanulok I needed to catch a bus for the hour or so ride to Sukhothai, but that proved harder than I thought it would be. I found the city bus stop and asked a man which bus went to Sukhothai, and he replied that buses #1, 2, or 8 would take me there. I found bus #1, boarded, and waited. And waited. And waited. About 45 minutes later, a driver came on board, asked my destination, and off we went. We went around the small university town of Phitsanulok, picking up other passengers. About 30 minutes later, we’d made nearly a complete circle of the small city when we pulled into a slightly larger bus depot. “Sukhothai”, the driver said, pointing out the door at the other buses. It had been an hour and a half, and I’d gone about 4 blocks!

Luckily, the next bus really *did* go to Sukhothai, and I arrived before dark. I found a guesthouse called “Old City Guesthouse” which was simple but charming with its wooden cabin exteriors. I felt like I was at a little lodge in a U.S. National Park.

The next morning, I rented a bike for $1 from the cafe/guest house/internet cafe/bike rental shop next door and set off to explore the ruins.

It was a *hot*, midweek day, and I had the place nearly to myself. Sukhothai’s ruins are famous for their giant buddhas, which sit serenely amongst the brick ruins of former temples and palaces. I spent a day and a half leisurely biking around the ruins (and ‘leisurely’ was the fastest I could possibly go… did I mention it was HOT? I couldn’t even stand still in the shade without sweat pouring off me.) Luckily there were a couple of cute cafes just outside the park entrance, so I could hang out and drink icy watermelon fruit shakes in the shade.

It had been a nice, relaxing, quiet break away from the hustle of Bangkok, but I had to return to the city for the third and final time of my trip, in order to meet up with my last group for the journey south down the Ithsmus of Kra, the Malay Peninsula, and finally on to Indonesia.

Cambodia: The Temples of Angkor

Before this trip started, if someone asked me to name the single place that I was most excited to visit, I said Angkor Wat.

It’s a fascinating, unique, and absolutely beautiful place. According to Wikipedia, the temples of the Angkor area number over one thousand, ranging in scale from nondescript piles of brick rubble scattered through rice fields to the magnificent Angkor Wat, said to be the world's largest single religious monument. Angkor was the largest preindustrialized city on Earth. At its peak in the 13th century, it supported a over a million people, with an urban sprawl of 3000 square kilometers. The closest rival to Angkor, the Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala, was between 100 and 150 square kilometers in total size.

And it is photogenic. I could have spent years in Angkor and not taken the same photo twice. I only had two and a half days, though, and I managed to get to 8 temples in that time: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Phrom, Preah Khan, Banteay Kdei, Preah Rup, Banteay Sri, and Phnom Bakheng. They were all beautiful, some because of their state of preservation and some because of their deterioration. Angkor Thom, the walled city of ancient Angkor, was probably my favorite because of the mysterious carved faces in its main temple, known as the Bayon. No one knows what the dozens of carved stone faces were originally meant to represent, but each one has so much character, and many seem to smile at you, as if they have the answer to some cosmic joke.

The famous and mysterious giant carved faces of Angkor Thom

Another favorite of mine was Ta Phrom, also known as the “Tomb Raider Temple”, which has been left nearly as it was when rediscovered in the 19th century. The forest has reclaimed parts of the temple, and tree roots seem to be eating some of the temples whole.

Of course, Angkor Wat was also stunning because of its sheer size and its beautiful carved bas reliefs.

Young monks at Angkor Wat

Headless buddhas in Angkor Wat. Unfortunately, looting of the temples over the centuries has resulted in a lot of damage .

Angkor Wat, seen from Phnom Bakheng temple just before sunset.

Lastly, a couple of shots of some long tailed macaques that hang out along the road between Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat:

After three days among the temples, my month-long loop around Southeast Asia had come to an end. It was time to go back to Bangkok. Before heading south, though, I planned one more trip north, to check out the ruins of the ancient Siam empire at Sukhothai.