Kuala Lumpur Day 1

Last night I got to Kuala Lumpur after dark. The presence of the sun apparently has no effect on the amount of heat here though :( it was hot and humid. Blech. I suppose that's what you get for being near the equator.

I made my way to my hotel. KL (the locals love to abbreviate things: LCCT, KLIA, KL, KLCC, ERL, Mohd, etc) is kind of like Korea in that there's lots of garbage everywhere. One thing I noticed is the amount of idleness though. People are just everywhere, but they aren't doing anything. In Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, people are still everywhere, but they don't stand still. They're usually on the move. But in KL, people just congregate and stare at you and then speak loud, foreign words about what they think.

At midnight, I was awoken by the sound of firecrackers on the street below. It's not even a holiday...

For my day in KL, I went to Batu Caves, which is a very famous Hindu temple in some caves in the north part of the city. There were lots of other tourists there speaking Swedish, German, Spanish, Russian, and some English.

The caves are pretty interesting and you have to take a million steps to get there. The complex is guarded by a giant, golden, silent statue of Murdugan, a Hindu god or something like that.
Along the steps and inside the caves, evil monkeys scatter about, preying on tourists who think they're "cute" and naively try to feed them or pet them.

After Batu caves, I went to KLCC, which is the complex for the Petronas Towers. Petronas is the oil company that controls derricks off the coast, and has consequently made Malaysis wealthier than its neighbors (not sure if state-run company or not). Anyway, they run a science centre called Petrosains inside the mall at KLCC, so I went to have a look. It was pretty interesting, all about how petroleum is produced and why it exists and what we use it for. They had a large scale mockup of a sea rig, which was pretty neat. I especially enjoyed the dark ride at the beginning and exit of the exhibit.

Finally, I made my way back to the airport to catch my night flight to Langkawi.