Malaysia day 3

Thanks to blistered feet we changed our plans for today and thought we’d planned to have less walking (we were wrong – but thankfully that wasn’t an issue for my feet overly).  On Philip Theil’s recommendation we went to the Islamic Arts Museum via taxi and strolled around there, enjoying the cool and the beautiful museum that they had put together.  Photos are here in my Malaysian set.

My feet weren’t happy with the standing so much, so I took lots of sitting down breaks. As it was Ramadan the restaurant was closed, so we thought we’d go to the cafe at the Bird Avairy.  We also thought we’d walk – this was not the wisest decision we made.  It took about 30 minutes to walk there, which isn’t all that long really – but 30C+ and 90% humidity proved to me that I really can sweat (I don’t sweat very well in dry heat and tend towards heat stroke really easily – clearly not the same problem in humid climes).  We went to the cafe and ate some great (and cheap) Malaysian food and then wandered off to the avairy – the world’s largest free flight avairy as it turns out – it is HUGE.

Earlier in the day, from the museum, we saw Silver Leaf monkeys walking over the top of the avairy, clearly on their way somewhere.  We also glimpsed a squirrel… SQUIRREL… in the foliage, but not well enough to take photos of.  The birds were pretty, clearly used to humans feeding them (we were stalked by several Cattle Egrets), and desperate for it to rain (which it hasn’t done since Sunday morning).

When the heat got too much, we came back to the hotel, cooled down a little and then wandered out to dinner.  I decided against the Hakka restaurant I had initially thought would be a good idea after seeing that their menu was mostly offal, and we went to another Chinese restaurant instead.  Tomorrow perhaps Hawker food – the lack of eating implements makes Hawker style food difficult unless you can bring your own – and I have a plan.

Other things of note – traffic signals are guides, motor cycles are everywhere, and weave through the traffic in interesting ways, traffic follows rules of which I am unfamiliar (though no one seems to get hurt), and signs expressly forbidding haggling are a suggestion for taxi drivers.

Given the amount of traffic noise whenever I step outside, I am hugely grateful that my hotel is very soundproof.  I can’t even hear the building demolition that is happening next door when I’m in my room.  Kuala Lumpur has an amazing amount of development going on at the moment  Many buildings are in the process of being torn down or built.  There are many beautiful buildings going up, and the city is going through a big change.  It still surprises me how small the city is though, compared to Melbourne.  Melbourne spread outwards, KL has gone up.  So much is within walking distance as a result.

Tomorrow the Petronas Twin Towers, the aquarium that is near there, and then the KL tower.  More photos will be uploaded tomorrow.

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