Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

We arrived this morning (Tuesday, March 27th) in Port Klang, the access to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital and largest city.

Malaysia, which occupies much of the Malay Peninsula as well as a portion of the island of Borneo, has a population of 32 million.  Kuala Lumpur itself has a population of 2 million.  Sixty percent of the country's population is muslim, 21 percent is Chinese, 8 percent is Indian and the rest is everything else.  Each of these ethnic groups has its own language and customs but about 90 percent of the people speak English.  There are four million foreign workers here.  Eighty to ninety percent of all inhabitants are here legally and accounted for, but approximately 10 percent have "come in through the back door," as our guide said, and are unknown or hard to track.

In terms of its history, the Malays were ruled by a sultan for a long period of time, then by the Dutch, followed by the Portuguese and then Great Britain.  The Japanese overran the country in 1942 but the British came back in at the end of WWII.  Britain granted Malaysia independance in 1957 without a drop of blood being shed.  Singapore was originally part of the new Malaysia but it broke away in 1965.  Malaysia's principal exports are palm oil, rubber and oil and gas.  Although Malaysia is officially a muslim country, sharia law is not practiced here.  Instead,  the legal system is based on the British model of secular civil and criminal law.  Our guide today made the point of telling us that Malaysia is the only majority muslim country in the world that has casinos.

This part of Malaysia is a tropical rain forest which means, according to our guide, that it rains every day, usually in the late afternoon and into the night, but sometimes in the morning and throughout most of the day.  Well, today was one of those days where it rained from the time we left the ship to go into Kuala Lumpur until we returned.  The name Kuala Lumpur means "confluence" (Kuala) and "mud" (Lumpur) and derives from the fact that two rivers converge here.  The city was originally a jungle that was cleared by Chinese tin prospectors in the mid-1800s to create a mining town.  In its current mature state its buildings reflect a mix of colonial, Moorish, Tudor, neo-Gothic and Grecian-Spanish architecture.

We had signed up for a 5.5 hour tour called "A Glimpse of Kuala Lumpur."  So at 9 this morning we set off by bus, in the rain, from the port on a 1.5 hour drive into the city.  The ride in was uneventful except in the respect that we encountered lots of traffic, even on the 4-lane-each-way turnpike we were on most of the time.  They don't have EZ-Pass but something like it.  (Several photos in this blog were taken through the window of the bus because of the rain.)

  

Hi-rise buildings on the outskirts of the city were ok but architecturally nondescript.

  

Low-rise residential buildings typically looked like these, although necessarily I was photographing housing stock located along the turnpike.

  

Once we arrived in the city proper we observed more substantial residential hi-rises.

When we got there our first stop was the National Museum where we were allowed only a half hour because of the amount of traffic we encountered on our drive in and the extra time it took to get there.  This is a very fine museum that requires several hours to do it justice.  We were disappointed that we just got a taste of what it offers.

                                                         

Our next visit was to Malaysia's National Monument which, along with Indepence Square, seems to be a mandatory stop on all Kuala Lumpur excursions.  This monument was built to honor those who gave their lives during the communist insurgency of the 1950s.

                                                                                        

 On our way to Independence Square I noticed these examples of Moorish style architecture.

  

We also passed the Islamic Arts Museum which looks like something we might have enjoyed visiting had it been on the schedule.

 

The centerpiece of Independence Square is an incredibly big and tall flagpole which I could not look up at and photograph because of the rain.  Here, though, are some views from that platform.

                 
                                         

Our final stop was at the Petronas Towers for a brief 10 minutes for photos.  When built these twin towers were the tallest buildings in the world.  That honor now goes to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.  According to our guide, however, the Petronas Towers remain the tallest twin towers in the world.  Note the bridge that connects the two buildings.  It is designed to move up and down like a shock absorber when one or the other of the towers moves because of wind or some other force.

      

It took us another 1.5 hours to get back to the ship.  Our take on the day's visit to Kuala Lumpur is that we didn't get to see much at all, especially in light of all the drive time required to get there and back.  The rain, of course, didn't help.  Apparently there are many attractions in the area, some of which were the focus of other offered excursions, but our thinking was that with only one day in this area and a 5 p.m. sailaway we should see whatever of Kuala Lumpur itself we could on this kind of survey tour.

We're now at sea on our way to George Town, which is Malaysia's second largest city.  This will be our final stop in Malaysia.  We are scheduled to arrive at 8 in the morning and sailaway at 5 in the afternoon.  More on that visit next.