We spent much of our week in Malaysia either cramming our brains at conference workshops or gorging ourselves on complimentary (read: already paid for) food and booze, but we did have a few chances to get out and about in Kuala Lumpur and its surroundings, and this is what we found.
1. Petronas Twin Towers
(Yes, that's a tiny Nana in the bottom of the frame.)
Until recently, the Petronas Twin Towers (shown above) were officially the tallest buildings in the world (though if you know anything about the criteria used by CBTUH, the organization that ranks the 100 tallest buildings, then you know that this is kind of a fuzzy designation)--that distinction now belongs to Tapei 101 in Taiwan, and some argue it should belong to either the Sears Tower in Chicago or the CN Tower in Toronto, though the Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, to open on 2009, will soon put them all to shame. Still, the Petronas Towers are an amazing structure, and the engineering feats that went into building the Skybridge are very impressive. (Koreans will be quick to remind you that it was the Korean contractor working on the towers, and not the Japanese contractor, that designed and installed the Skybridge.) The Petronas Towers are more than just a skyscraper, though: financed as they were by the government-owned Malaysian oil giant Petronas, they were also designed as a kind of national monument, and incorporate many local (particularly Muslim) design elements, most clearly evident in their unique scalloped facades.
Anyway, at the base of the towers is a sprawling city park, where Nana and I passed a morning strolling in the sun and the unfathomable heat. The beautiful morning was only marred twice: once, when a police officer informed us that adults were not allowed to use the swingsets (note: pretty much everyone in Malaysia seems to speak English--they were a British colony for a long time, after all); and then when a giant mutant water bottle attacked the Towers, only to be thwarted when Nana, hopped up Popeye-style on Kickapoo Joy Juice, saved the day.
2. KL Tower
Aside from the Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur is home to another of the tallest (or at least taller) structures in the world, the Kuala Lumpur (KL) Tower. Set atop a high hill right behind our hotel (the Shangri-La, which you can see below), the KL Tower offers great views of the city, though the afternoon haze/rain was blowing in when we were up there, and the view of the Petronas Towers is in profile, which is less than ideal. Still, a cool place to go to get a look at the Hard Rock Cafe.
USA! USA!
Also: A building with a camel on the side, for some reason, presumably tempting us to smoke.
Anyway, all this towering led to some friendly competition among our intrepid band. Here's Nana giving her very own CN Tower a hug. Paul, whose native Calgary Tower didn't make the World's Tallest Towers cut, claimed Seoul's NSeoul Tower as his own.
And apparently, the KL Tower also has its own resident brace of rabbits. Yes, rabbits. The Tower Rabbits, to be precise.
At the base of the KL Towers, then, is a nature trail down to the subway stop, the entrance of which was adorneded with this forbidding sign warning us about "dangerous species."
Though we didn't find any dangerous species on our brief walk, we did meet an Australian, which was pretty cool.
Here's a view of some city buildings through a gap in the foliage. Notice the gathering rain.
3. Central Market
(Note: I am so done with all these photos. Not only am I sick of importing them into Blogger, which takes forever, I was also apparently sick of taking photos that afternoon--I don't have much worth showing after the KL Tower.)
After visiting the KL Tower, Nana and I (with the intrepid Paul in tow) spent some time at Kuala Lumpur's Central Market, the place to go for local(ish) arts, crafts, and souvenirs. In this large indoor (and air-conditioned!) market, more than anywhere else, was the multiculturalism of Kuala Lumpur evident: rows of jade merchants gave way to rows of batik fabric shops, to authentic cashmere (as in from Kashmir) peddlers, to, of course, stalls selling cheap T-shirts and kitschy souvenirs. Nana ended up buying a red batik skirt, which you will see featured prominent in tomorrow's post on the Batu Caves. (Which, I promise, will include monkeys--or, to be more specific, macaques.)
4. Islamic Arts Center
After our stop at the Central Market, Nana and I pressed on to the nearby Islamic Arts Museum, part of a large complex surrounding Malaysia's National Mosque. Not only is the Islamic Arts Museum a beautiful building in its own right, with a huge glass-walled portico from which we got to watch an impressive afternoon storm, the collection manages to be thorough without being overwhelming, covering Islamic arts and crafts from all of Islam's major ethnic groups (Arab, Turkish, African, Indian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian). The exhibit texts also feature the kind of moderate, humanistic Islam that's so often underrepresented in the West. For me, the highlight was the architecture hall, home to dozens of scale models of mosques from around the world. I had never before realized that most mosques, aside from the universal basics (worship space, minaret, water, etc.), are really heavily influenced by regional architecture. What most Westerners think of when thinking of a mosque (the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, am I right?) is actually Byzantine, which is basically Roman. But mosques in China, say, are pretty much indistinguishable from Buddhist temples there, and traditional Malaysian mosques look a lot like traditional Malaysian houses. Very cool stuff.
Well, that's all I've got for today. Stay tuned for the last installment of our Malaysian adventures. I promise: monkeys galore!
