30-03-2009

Singapore is an island, but it is very close to the mainland of Asia, close enough that the difference is spanned by a bridge. The bridge is over untroubled waters and it is over said bridge that my companions and I traversed into Malaysia. We left NTU at 9 pm, and a took a bus across the border. At 12:30 we got on a bus headed towards the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur (KL).

A silly thing happened that I will describe. We got to the bus interchange in Johor Bahru at about 11:30 and bought four tickets to leave at 12:30. There were three of us but our friend Pavan was going to meet us there before we left. Pavan tends to be a little late so we didn't start to worry until about 12:20 when he still hadn't shown up. There are a dozen or so different bus companies from which one can choose, and we had no way of letting Pavan know which bus we had chosen. The bus was running a little late but at 12:40 we got on to be on our way. The bus started, and then stopped abruptly and the lights went on. Pavan got on the bus, asking us for money to pay his taxi driver. He had not known that we would be on the bus, and would have otherwise had no way to pay for the taxi. However we were on the bus and loaned him some money for the taxi and so we were on our way.

We arrived in KL at 4:30am. KL has two main attractions which a tourist is supposed to visit: the Patronus towers and the Batu caves. On Saturday we went to the Patronus towers. For a few years during the nineties they were the tallest in the world, and are still the tallest twin towers in the world. There is a skybridge (the tallest in the world) at the forty first floor which we waited two hours to see. It was WORTH IT because I SLEPT and THERE WAS A GOOD VIEW.


The steel monolith itself:

The second day we went to the Batu caves. The caves and the towers are very pleasant to visit and there is not much else to do in Kuala Lumpur so that is why we did these things. The caves were used as a foundation for a Hindu temple complex. There were many monkeys all over everywhere. Much more numerous than squirrels but less numerous than pigeons. The cave was fairly big and impressive. Here you see the stairs leading up to the cave temple:


Here you see a monkey giving me the stink-eye:


This essentially concluded our Malaysian excursion; we returned to Singapore Sunday night.