Catching up in Kuala Lumpur
Julie and I rarely need an excuse to go somewhere new and we also don’t have to be asked twice to celebrate someone’s personal milestone. So when both of these opportunities came up – a trip to Kuala Lumpur to see an old friend and celebrate a milestone birthday – we jumped on the plane and headed to KL.
Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, doesn’t quite have the glamour of Bangkok, the culture of Hong Kong or the history of Singapore. But what I’ve always admired about Malaysia in general, and KL in particular, is the incredible melting pot of religions, cultures, languages and traditions all living happily together in a modern society.
But our real reason for going to KL was to see our old friend Len and his long term partner Saan as part of their travels through Asia. During our early years in Sydney Len and I worked for the same company and had the same interests in American sports, family weekend camping trips and cold beers. Our young kids spent many formidable years playing together and life was good. But things change, different paths are followed and men aren’t good at staying in touch when the miles between them grow. A reunion in KL was a great excuse to get together again, swap stories on our respective kids, lives and careers while analyzing the fortunes of the 49ers and Dolphins on another continent.
But it wasn’t all idle chitchat about the past. We did manage to take in a couple of the sights of Kuala Lumpur from our base near the Petronas Towers. These landmark towers, the tallest building in the world from 1998 to 2004, represent a proud symbol of modern Malaysia. We enjoyed stunning views from our hotel window and Len and Saan reported even better views when they had gone to the top a day earlier.
The KL Bird Park, which is part of the beautiful Lake Gardens complex, has what they bill as ‘The World’s Largest Free-flight Walk-in Aviary’. So going from the world’s tallest building to the world’s largest free-flight walk-in aviary seemed like a natural thing to do. And as we walked into this aviary we were overwhelmed by the number of birds everywhere, many with exotic colours, features and noises. Many sections of the aviary had huge suspended nets to allow the birds a modicum of freedom while other areas were open and presumably depended on the birds wanting to stay there (well, there was plenty of food, water and shade).
The stars of the show in our mind were the hornbills which we first got to know during a trip to Borneo a couple of years ago. These hornbills, of which there are dozens of species, are known for their very large, colourful and unusually shaped beak – usually with a large appendage called a casque which sticks out from the top of the beak. The park had a number of different species and it was fun to see all the variations of their size, shape and colours.
We also visited the Batu Caves, a place I hadn’t been to for 20 years. The Batu Caves are on the northern edge of town and include one of the most popular Hindu temples outside of India. We dodged the monkeys to climb the 270 steps (Len counted them!) to explore the huge open limestone cave and the Hindu temple in the back cave. We could have been anywhere in India such was the elaborately decorated temple and solemn worshipers all around us. But we were in Malaysia, another example of their strong multi-cultural heritage.
We enjoyed a delicious vegetarian lunch at a local south Indian restaurant and still had time for a few beers around the hotel pool before giving hugs all around and saying goodbye to Len and Saan. Julie and I left thinking that Kuala Lumpur deserves more time and attention for our travelling curiosity; who knows, maybe there’ll be a return trip soon. And hopefully the time will be less and the road shorter before this group of good friends catch up again.