AngeLog

Walking in Kuala Lumpur

The Lonely Planet said KL isn’t a pedestrian-friendly city but we’d spent enough time in Asia to understand what that means – no gutters, slippery surfaces and uneven pathways with motorbikes parked over them – so we felt pretty confident about whizzing through a walking tour in the morning. We did want to get a feel for the city beyond its shopping centres after all.

We probably walked 2kms without seeing anything of note (except the tourist info booth which we found once and then had to backtrack to find again because it had moved). We could’ve handled pedestrian-unfriendly streets, but these streets were more like freeways of the most pedestrian-unfriendly variety. We’d be walking along a road from the station following the map to our next destination when suddently we’d find ourselves needing to cross a freeway exit. Sure, that’s not so hard, but after crossing the exit we realised the footpath was no more – we were standing on the edge of a few flyovers with our destination glimmering at us in the distance. We could cross one freeway without too much hassle, but multiple flyovers would take a real MacGyver and some mountain-climbing gear. So we backtracked again. And again and again.

We were getting so frustrated that upon finding a station we thought we’d just catch a train to the next point in the walking tour. Luckily enough some locals took pity on us and gave us an introduction to being a pedestrian in KL. Turns out we just needed to go through tunnels, up stairs, over freeways and occasionally underground in unmarked pedestrian tunnels. It’s all about tunnels, but it’d help if there were some friendly signs.

The highlight of the walking tour was definitely the National Mosque where we dressed in full robes and headscarfs and spoke about Islam to a very friendly and helpful woman. The building’s architecture is amazing and beautiful.

The low point of the walking tour would be where the two rivers meet. OK, maybe our hope of grand rushing rivers powerfully converging in the middle of a busy city was never going to be accurate, but this looked nothing more than two sewerage ducts meeting without fanfare or even a riverside cafe.

Orang Utans

Orang Utans are way cute.

And somewhat vicious according to the people at Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. When an Orang Utan with a baby came out from hiding we were warned to stay out of her way because she has attacked people before, including people who have worked there. So we admired from a distance and watched her climbing a tree, picking fruit and feeding it to the baby and generally causing havoc.

After watching this pair for a while word spread that there were another pair in the trees further down the path so it was nice to see some tumbling through the trees. And no, none of them were called Clyde. Funnily enough, the baby tumbling through the trees was named Sadam because he was born on the day Sadam was captured in Iraq.

We’d split a cab to Semengoh with a Dutch guy from the lodge. We may have been falling asleep on the trip there, but the trip back went in a flash as we talked excitedly about the Orang Utans to the driver. It was just like being 8 again.

Sarawak Cultural Village

This place should really be called “Sarawak Cultural Theme Park”. Silly of us to expect a village. We knew it’d be touristy, but just thought it’d be a shop that had a little performance and some examples of Sarawakian houses to look at. Maybe if we’d actually looked at their website we would’ve known what we were getting ourselves in for – all 14 acres of it.

Anyway, it was hot and sooo painfully touristy that it was almost amusing. I won’t go into detail but most of it made us cringe despite their best intentions. We stayed for the ‘cultural show’ at the end which is how we discovered most of the ‘traditional people’ we met in the houses were actually performing artists who then danced the dance of whatever culture was required.

To end a fine afternoon at the cultural village there’s nothing like a bit of audience participation. Here we were enjoying the air-conditioning and a comfortable seat and Mr ‘I-have-feathers-and-a-silly-costume’ thought I should join him on stage. What do you say to a man wearing that attire and is also able to puncture balloons with spears from a great distance? I did my thing and speared a dangerous balloon before it attacked me. Holly laughed a lot (and too probably too many photos but at least no video) and then we got to leave via the ‘cultural staircase’. More on that later in the web gallery.

Damai beach

We deserved this place after the hard night at Bako. We wished we had stayed here for two nights instead of at Bako, but then we wouldn’t have had the contrast to appreciate this place.

Damai has two Holiday Inn resorts so we were expecting the area to be a bit touristy and possibly over the top. We stayed at a beautiful place called the Permai Rainforest Resort in a tree-top house in the rainforest overlooking the beach. And yes, it was as good as it sounds. We thought there would have to be something wrong with the place and that could be the food (there was no town we could get to so we were forced to eat at the resort), but no, the food was great too. Fresh juice, whole coconuts, exciting Asian soup and all from a cafe in the rainforest overlooking the beach.

We got up early to do a short trail in hope of seeing monkeys. OK, so once again we didn’t see any monkeys but we knew they were there…. big ones. We heard some crashing through the trees so we stayed very still waited for probably half an hour for them to reveal themselves. No such luck but we did see some pretty ferocious looking ants.

The tide at the beach had gone way out so the Asian tourists had even longer to laugh at our swim-wear as we walked out to the shallow water. They mostly liked swimming in jeans and t-shirts so even the most modest swimwear was going to make them roll-around laughing. Catching waves the evening before when the tide was high also made them laugh. What else is one supposed to do when at the beach?

The jungle pool was certainly refreshing after being in the hot water of the ocean. We couldn’t stay at the beach too long so retreated to the jungle pool where cool water collected in a man-made pool at the base of a waterfall.

Bako National Park

What was the first thing we saw after paying our park entrance fees? A snake attacking a frog. It was all very calm; the snake had hold of one of the frog’s legs and the frog was sitting calmly enough plotting his next move. Luckily for the frog, the snake lost concentration when an unsuspecting tourist almost stepped on it.

Getting to Bako was half the fun. We boarded a local bus in the city (running the customary 30 minutes late) and took it to Bako Bazaar where we then had to get on a boat. The boat was like an 8 seater canoe with an outboard motor on it. The river was calm and narrow so we thought it funny that they insisted we wear life-jackets. Halfway into the trip we all frantically secured the lifejackets to our bodies the best we could seeing most of the zippers were broken – suddenly the river had become the ocean and while the driver was most skilled in zig-zagging through the waves, it was still a bumpy ride. A fun ride. We decided that people pay good money for these sorts of adventures on Sydney Harbour. The water was beautifully warm and then the beach came into view. We jumped into the knee deep water with our luggage on our backs and made our way to the shore.

Little monkeys – (long-tailed macaques) – were all around the beach area trying to steal things from tourists. We tried to scare one away from a tourist’s bag that was left unguarded but the monkey came running after us instead. The Sarawak Museum had a stuffed version with very sharp little teeth so, assumming this one did too, we backed away.

There were giant lizards, bearded pigs, birds, squirrels and butterflies, but the proboscis monkey remained elusive. We spent hours in the mangroves in the morning waiting quietly for them to appear but they didn’t. Must’ve been the rain keeping them away.

On the first day (and it felt like a long day) we trekked to the beach along a track called Telok Pandan Kecil. Who would’ve thought that walking to the beach could be so difficult? OK, so it was really hot, really humid so we should’ve known better. The first park of the trek was an almost vertical climb through beautiful jungle and then the top of the mountain cleared and it looked just like an Australian beach landscape….. flat, reddish rocks and bush like scrub (I’m sure Holly, my environmentally aware companion, could give a more accurate description and possibly even botanical names). There were wet sandy trails to negotiate before we got a spectacular view over Pandan Besar. We continued onto Pandan Kecil for a swim and it was the first time we’d be cool in days…. sadly it didn’t last long. We had the entire beach to ourselves and so stayed for as long as we thought we could before the tide would cut off our track back to civilisation.

Civilisation? Hardly. So you’ve made it this far into the entry and I still haven’t mentioned the food or accommodation.

I’ll keep it brief because it’s nothing to write home about. Mouldy accommodation with a semi-manual toilet. Think that’s bad? You should’ve seen the ‘cafe’. The western food consisted of kinda frozen chips, chicken nuggets and hamburger patties (they were in the buffet so I’m really not sure if they were going to get cooked at all… yes, that troubles me too), and there were ‘local’ choices but my travel doctor always told me not to eat chicken that had been sitting at a warmish temperature for possibly days. Oh and if you didn’t eat it at lunch it’d still be there at dinner time… at least that’s what it looked like! The image of those brownish hard-boiled eggs with flies over them will stay with me for some time. Ugh. I’m glad we had some soya crisps with us.

The scariest part of the Bako trip was the last morning when it was pouring with rain for hours. We were scared of having to stay another night in the smelly accommodation and having to ration the few remaining soya crisps. We asked if we could get a boat if it was still raining and were told ‘Some say yes, some say no. I say no. I’ll book you a boat for 12pm!’ What? Luckily it cleared up by 12 and we were soon back at Bako Bazaar stocking up on a kilo of bananas for 30 cents.