Port Klang, Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur Delights, February 28

I can’t even describe what a jolt it is to go from Malacca and its narrow winding streets to Kuala Lumpur, or KL, as it is called by those in the know.

We arrived in Port Klang, Malaysia, prepared to wing it for a day by planning an on-the-spot strategy for seeing Kuala Lumpur.  It turned out to be a superb visit, though not exactly what we had planned.

Vi and I had planned to join Jackie, David and Donna, and Roy, our friends from the good Ocean Explorer days.  But when we got down to the Port Klang dock to find a mini van as we had a few days before, none were to be found.  So we all agreed to go our own way.  Quickly, Vi and I met up with a taxi driver, who said his name was Harry.  His price for a day of driving to Kuala Lumpur, an hour away from this port city, and taking us wherever we wanted to go, was $60 for the day.  A bargain, we agreed at the end of the day.

So off we went, with Harry, who spoke excellent English guiding us through the Malaysian countryside of palm oil trees plantations, and pointing out all the highway and commercial and other areas as we went. 

Our first stop arriving in Kuala Lumpur was the WWII Memorial and beautiful fountains and gardens.  He was the perfect guide—he got us there before the tour busses arrived and after visiting this very moving Iwo Jima-like memorial and beautiful series of cascading fountains, we moved along to beat the rising morning heat and humidity to the Blue Mosque. 

He insisted on taking us there as a good Muslim, we thought, but after visiting it, we realized what an extraordinary structure it was.  This beautiful domed mosque, the Suiltan Salehuddin Mosque, whose shimmering dome is the second largest in the world, was empty, but for the people checking us in.  We had to take off our shoes, of course, and then were asked to don black robes and put on the full headpiece of the Muslim women,  These were tied around our heads.  Immediately, we were exceedingly hot and drenched in sweat and found out what Muslim women suffer through.  We were able to enter the mosque all the way to the inside edges of the praying area, a somewhat unusual thing, we were later told, and this was quite an  extraordinary experience.  The marble, stained glass, and wall-to-wall rugs of blue in the praying areas were very beautiful and the immense size of the mosque almost took your breath away.

Finally emerging  and peeling off our black robe and headpiece, we found our faithful driver Harry and headed for the Railway Station, cited as an “Arabian Nights” fantasy of a building with its minarets, cupolas, keyhole arches and scalloped eaves.  But for us, it was a treasure of another sort.  It contained an Internet Café!  And since neither Vi nor I had had this experience yet, we were eager to try our hand at sending a message to family.  After a few timid tries, IT WORKED.  And only cost three ringits, the Malaysian equivalent of less than a dollar for half an hour.  Which was far different from the $5 for five minute cost in the internet café on the ship.

Now we were off to the Single Tower, the tallest building in the world? I think---?  Who should we run into coming down the escalator as we were entering this communications monolith but Roy!  And, rather remarkably in this city of over two million people, who had we just run into at the WWI memorial but Dave, Donna and Jackie.  (Don’t tell me I don’t have ESP. To find the only people we knew in Southeast Asia in a city of over 2.5 million takes some kind of magic!

It was lunchtime and we had heard that the Revolving Restaurant on the Single Tower provided an incredible view of the entire city as well as a gastronomical delight of  outstanding Malaysian and Chinese food. That was absolutely accurate.  We sat in the splendid luxury of the revolving tower, dining sumptuously from the buffet on every sort of delicacy of salads, seafood, vegetables, hot dishes too spicy to eat and so mild that they soothed the burning palate

In an hour we were ready to return to land and find Harry to continue our journey exploring Kuala Lumpur.  Our afternoon concentrated on the Chinese influence, as we meandered through Chinatown and ventured toward the Chinese Temple.  This was a visit no one going to Kuala Lumpur should miss.  The temple was a vision of gold and reds with all manner of colors blending into a vision of huge statues reflecting the Chinese calendar, and dragons, and carvings of every sort. It is quite a remarkable place of worship, and we were fortunate to have visited it on a day with a brilliant blue sky against which the gold and green and red of the pagoda roof was indescribably beautiful.

Kuala Lumpur is the capital city of Malaysia, and it is a city of startlingly modern immense skyscrapers and six-lane highways and beautiful gardens and landscaping.  The Kuala Lumpur twin towers, joined by a bridge high up to join the two towers, the KL Tower where we had lunch, and the many other monolithic buildings give the appearance of a city on the move into the 21 century.  But there are still places like the Chinatown, where vestiges of the past can easily be found, remind you that the history of Malaysia, though little know to most outsiders, is a fascinating one.

And, by the way, this dichotomy of the past and future, was personified in Harry, our taxi driver and day’s companion.  Before the day was over, we learned much about him, and he was an impressive man indeed.  He had been a diver and supervising deep sea diver in the Malaysian navy for 33 years, and had worked in Hong Kong on an exchange with the British navy on deep sea diving.  He had a diving certificate as a supervisor and diving instructor and was an expert in ordinance and explosive disposal..  Before he retired, they wanted him to reenlist for seven years.  If he had, he would have gone to the state of---Maryland---would you  believe.  He didn’t know I had come from Maryland, so this is a true story.

True to my promise, I said we’d write him from Maryland when we returned home.
I am gathering up quite a list of friends who drive trishaws and taxis, it seems.