Malaysia trip 1

The content of this blog has always been mostly about Siberia. But I have always wanted to include other travels and interesting events. It has been hard to stay on top of the blog when readers have been less than enthusiastic. Nevertheless I still enjoy making a record.

I had wanted to blog more extensively on my trip back to Malaysia in November, and then on subsequent events in life, back here in Siberia. I guess I would have posted a lot more if I did it much closer to the time of the event. As it is now, I will include some photo highlights and thoughts about the trip.  (February 18th, 2013.)

I arrived late into KL on Friday night after 24 hours of travel from Krasnoyarsk via Beijing. I had big hopes of doing lots of sightseeing on Saturday. But I woke very tired, with little desire to do much that day. I ventured out in the morning to find a local 3G sim card for my phone. 

Malaysia is a Muslim country, but I quickly noticed how their form of Islam is not very strict. When I swam in the hotel swimming pool I struck up a conversation with a man. I deliberately addressed him only, but found that his wife wanted to join in the conversation and addressed me directly. This surprised me. Later, I noticed police women wearing Muslim head dress. One thing that certainly shocked me was the frequent presence of prostitution. It certainly painted Malaysia as a hypocritical society.

A view of a downtown KL street with monorail overhead.

One of the many mopeds in KL.

After my swim I went exploring and had some lunch.

The food may have been a bit dodgy. I noticed that the rice had been sitting in a bucket for a while. Thankfully, I did not get sick.

There are monorails, light rail, heavy rail and buses in KL. There was a monorail station not too far from my hotel.

Saturday afternoon monorail traffic is quite heavy.

I did not have the energy to make it out of the city to the rainforest, so I decided to go down to the twin Petronas Towers. Petronas is the largest oil company in Malaysia. Malaysia's economy is centred on petroleum oil and palm tree oil.

This photo is the best I could do with the camera I had on hand.

Underneath the towers was a shopping centre. I found some Australian treats there that I can not find in Russia.

Milo is everywhere in Malaysia. There is cold milo on the streets for sale, which I made use of feeling very hot in tropical weather. There are also a variety of other milo products including milo mc flurries at Mc Donald's.

I found shapes, weet-bix, Australian milo, Australian milk all in the supermarket.

Later in the evening after dinner, I ventured out again and found a karaoke place. Without any friends I went and sang three U2 songs and a Bon Jovi song. Hey, I enjoyed myself!