Kuala Lumpur

The bus ride from Singapore to Malaysia was beautiful. There are occasional farms and plantations, but most of the trip went through hilly countryside with incredibly tall trees. Everything is verdant and green throughout Southeast Asia, but these were the first tall trees I've seen anywhere here. Rubber trees (which grow up to about a hundred feet) are among the tallest I've seen in this part of the world, but Malaysia is home to many Yellow Meranti trees which grow as tall as redwoods. In fact, the second tallest tree in the world is a 100-meter Yellow Meranti. (The tallest is a redwood.)

Malaysia and Indonesia both have a median age of about 30, but Indonesia has double the GDP of Malaysia, so I figured Kuala Lumpur would be a much poorer capital than Jakarta. I was absolutely wrong. Kuala Lumpur is the second most impressively modern capital I've seen in Southeast Asia after Singapore. There's an abundance of interesting skyscrapers and a very modern transit system. The streets are relatively uncongested, but they don't do a very good job of keeping people separated from cars.

The city is built in an area of such dense nature that they're constantly battling it to maintain infrastructure. The idea of deliberately planting landscape must be absurd to Malaysian architects. I stopped to take a photo of this ongoing war between a sidewalk and and a tree.

There's so much going on here. You've got the tree's own roots, the roots of a parasite hitching a ride, fungus, moss, and new growth. Life wants to happen here.

I stayed near Masjid Jamek, which is one of the stops along the River of Life walking trail that's popular with tourists.

There's a Chinatown neighborhood to the south where I toured the Guan Di Temple.

And the much less Chinese Sri Maha Mariamman Temple is right down the street.

To the north of my hostel, there's an Indian neighborhood (although not an officially recognized historical district) near the Masjid India.

I had seen Kuala Lumpur's answer to the Space Needle all over the city, and a friend had told me to go check out this tower, so I went to go take a look.

It's called the Menara Tower, but "menara" means "tower" in Malay. Tower tower. I collect phrases like this. My favorite is the La Brea Tar Pits. In Southern California. "La brea" means "the tar." The the tar tar pits.

I've gotten so accustomed to living on the cheap that the fourteen dollar admission felt absolutely extortionate and I decided not to go up to the top. I sort of regret not going, but I don't regret regretting it. One of the major things I've learned from this trip is that I can't see everything, but I've also learned to splurge a little on the memorable things while being thrifty about the things that merely offer convenience or comfort. The memory of being annoyed with a fourteen dollar tourist trap and walking away with a petty feeling of superiority is a richer self-deprecating reflection than the view from the tower could have offered.

The view from the ground level was pretty, too. It was up on a hill that was high enough for me to marvel at the tall trees.

Later, I took the train to the Batu Caves. Kuala Lumpur's trains seem to have been built by different groups for different purposes, then haphazardly unified at KL Sentral station. Each line is an entirely different system, but luckily they have standardized their Touch N Go payment cards across all trains and buses in the city.

A good train system requires more than just tracks that go where people want to go. A good train system makes it clear which direction trains are headed on any given platform. A good train system has posted schedules or at least a functioning website. A good train system has signage to inform passengers when a train is running differently from its normal route.

My journey was a mess. The platforms at my first stop were on opposite sides of the train and had no signage indicating the direction they served. I had a 50/50 shot of getting it right, so I picked one and waited for a train to arrive. The station indicator on the train displayed the current stop, which was not useful at all for determining its final destination, but I was able to work out from the direction it was heading that I should probably be on the other platform. I just missed the next train as I walked up and down the stairs to the other platform, but a woman arrived just after me and I asked her if this direction went to KL Sentral. She said "No."

I debated whether what I should do with this response. "No" seems to be a remarkably common answer from Chinese Singaporeans and Malaysians. When I bought some food in a crowded shopping center in Singapore, I asked the cashier if there was anywhere nearby where I could buy a bottle of water. "No." Really? Not even a moment's hesitation to think about the nearest place where you would buy a bottle of water? I asked a food vendor in another part of town if there was a place nearby where I could sit down and eat it. "No." How interesting. Not a single area in proximity that a person could sit? "No" seems to be the default response to any question that requires thinking beyond immediate retrieval of information. "No" might have meant that she wasn't going to KL Sentral herself or that she simply didn't know where the train went. I asked her if the other platform went to KL Sentral. "No."

I rolled the dice and got on the train that seemed to be going in the direction I wanted. There was a station indicator that showed that it was indeed heading to the direction that I wanted, so I zoned out and played with my phone for the next few stops. When I looked up again, the train appeared to be heading back to the station I had gotten in on. I questioned my sanity for a moment, but I got off on the train and caught the glance of an equally bewildered local who stopped to talk to a transit employee. The local was generous enough to stop and ask where I was heading before he went on his own way. It turned out we were heading to the same station.

The local explained that something was broken and the train pattern had changed. We were meant to get off in two stations, cross to the other side of the platform, then get on another train heading to KL Sentral. I wondered how often they had to put up with changes like this. Maybe there was no signage because it was consistently a crapshoot.

The transfer from KL Sentral was a bit like going from MTA to LIRR at Grand Central Station in NYC. Every line in Kuala Lumpur is on a different system. Despite the confusing navigation and the less frequent trains on the line to Batu Caves, it was still a pleasant enough experience without too many stops.

The Batu Caves are home to the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, which is named almost identically to the other Hindu temple I visited near Chinatown. It must have been named by the great-grandfather of whoever was responsible for signage in the train stations.

Various shrines in the area were built in the 19th century, and by the 20th century the steps were constructed. There's a lot of controversy around the 2018 decision to paint the steps in bright colors, but the paint job absolutely makes the place. There's no way it was this Instagramable before it had 272 brightly colored steps.

Next stop: Penang. I've already gone and left. I needed a break from moving around so much, so I didn't take a lot of photos or document my experience there very well. I'm not sure whether I'll post about Penang.