KL hotspots

Blue mosque

Sultan-Salahuddin-Abdul-Aziz-Shah-Mosque, also called Blue Mosque owing to its blue dome, located in Shah Alam, is Malaysia’s largest and Southeast Asia’s second largest mosque. It has the distinction of having the largest religious dome in the world, it measures 51.2 m in diameter and reaches 106.7 m above ground level. The four minarets, each reaching 142.3 m above ground level are the 2nd tallest in the world, after being supplanted by the 210m minaret at the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca in 1993.

In our opinion it is a must have on your visit list for a Malaysia trip. Our taxi driver dropped us at a side entrance of the building, so we could get in without being recognized by the security. It was prayer time and maybe we looked like some muslims, so we just walked in, leaving our shoes at the bottom of the stairs, apparently following the voice reading out of the Koran. So we had the possibility to explore the mosque by our own, taking some pictures inside the dome, which is strictly forbidden, even entering the dome for non-muslims. But the spectacular view and atmosphere was worth taking the risk, death penalty we think…

 




 

Chinatown

Right in the middle of KL, between MRT Sultan Sulaiman and Bus station Puduraya, the famous Petaling Street can be found. It is the main street of Chinatown, a very lively, colourful and busy part of KL. Sleepy at morning hours, the Petaling Street awakens in the afternoon hours with a mixture of crumbling shophouses, uncountable market stands on both sides and the middle of the street, selling all kind of stuff definitely not produced by the brand shown on the labels and it becomes the center of frenetic trading and haggling. The streets are transformed into an open-air market and food stalls are selling Chinese, Indian and Malay delicacies next to copy watches, leather bags and all kind of shirts and jerseys. By entering some of the small side streets of China Town you have the possibility to get an insight into the life beside tourism, with some curiosities in food and flavours, not every European nose used to e.g. slaughtered cats and giant frogs.

There are a lot of prominent Chinese temples in the Chinatown area. The elaborate Chan See Shu Yuen Temple, at the southernmost end of Petaling Street, was built in 1906 and has the typical paintings, woodcarvings and ceramic sculptures decorating the façade. It serves both as a place of worship and as a community centre.

Twin towers

Placed between several modern skyscrapers, the Petronas Twin Towers are the maybe best known symbols of Malaysia. At north of a park with little lakes, groups of trees and nice small pagodas where you have a great chance to enjoy the absolutely amazing view on the Towers, they can be seen from almost every location of the city. Two glancing and light blue to silver shining scepters rising out of KL. Really great experience especially at night.

Exploring KL

 

First of all we have to say that there are several ways to explore KL. There are two main railroads (KTM) leading through KL, one beginning at port Klang and ending at the Batu caves, the other connecting the two airports of Kuala Lumpur, KLIA(Kuala Lumpur International Airport) and Abdul Shah Aziz airport, located in Subang Jaya. A Monorail (MRT) connects S-shaped almost all hotspots in KL-city and bus stations are to be found at nearly every road in town. For all other places you want to visit or simply need to go there faster than with public transportation, there are uncountable taxis (teksi) spreaded all over the city with which it’s possible to reach even far distanced locations for a, compared to european standarts, moderate fare, provided that they drive with taxometer.

KTM

The railroad is a cheap alternative to driving by taxi for long distances. The fares for getting from Shah Alam (where our University UiTM is located) to Subang Jaya (where we live) is about 2 Ringgit per person, what is about 0,50€. The same distance (20km) by taxi normally costs about 25 Ringgit, even more during nighttime or when there’s a lot of traffic jam, which normally happens when we have to get to university.

The trains are usually heavy crowded, not as bad as it’s shown in some documentaries of indian trains (nobody is sitting on the roof), but sometimes there are real fights between passengers to get into the train. This may be increased by the extra coaches only for ladies, wich sometimes are very empty, but no man will ever dare going inside a ladies coach here. Purses and other important and valuable things should be stored in a trouser pocket in the front secured by putting the hands in it.

 

MRT

KL’s monorail is a nice way to travel, on one hand it’s also very cheap (RM1,10 for 3 stations), on the other hand you have a great view over KL’s hotspots like the twin towers or Chinatown out of it because the monorail was built up about 7-10 meters above the streets.

Bus

Travelling by bus is the cheapest way in whole Malaysia, not only in KL. There is a huge variety of busses offered and luxury goes from wooden benches up to single massage seats with flatscreens.

If you have enough time we will definitely recommend travelling by bus. In KL it is about RM1 to travel around and it seems more to be a contribution towards expenses than a fare.

Singapore - F1

Air-conditioning, one meter of legroom, extra soft and wide arm rests and head restraint for relaxed sitting and a massage function in the back. No, this is not a First-class-flight with Lufthansa, this is travelling by bus in Malaysia. It took us nearly 5 hours to get to Singapore, but in a very relaxed way without waiting at airports and at least for 15€ each roundtrip-ticket.

Travelling by bus is a great way to get an overview of the landscape and the beautiful and various flora of a country. But maybe we had bad luck with that on this journey, only driving on highways being straight as a die. The only thing we could see to our left and right was palm-oil plantations, palm-oil plantations and wait, yes, palm-oil plantations. As a total contrast to this agricultural scenery, Singapore was awaiting us with skyscrapers, port facilities and construction sites all over the place.

We found ourselves in front of our hostel, right in the middle between legal and illegal redlight district. You can differentiate between these two forms of prostitution by looking at the sidewalks. The illegal ones are all standing in front of their buildings on the sidewalk, the legal ones you can hardly catch sight of, you only see their pimp trying to arrest your attention.  But this only mentioned as a notice in the margin, because we were in Singapore, indeed, for other purposes.

After checked in our hostel, we didn’t get our booked rooms, instead we were put in some random rooms. I’d like to say that we didn’t expect European standard, but I rather think this wasn’t any standard. Non-cleaned bed linen, full of foreign hair, the air-con badly smelling of spoiling and mold all over the ceiling. So there’s no need to talk about the sanitary facility in detail, only one thing worth to mention, the shower was to be found over the very undersized toilet.

But our plans in Singapore weren’t to stay all day long in our hostel, so this happening even motivated us to spend our time in town.  Nevertheless we were in a good mood, expecting an amazing weekend.  And like a bright star once upon a time, we could immediately hear the werewolves howling through the high walls of glass and concrete, leading us downtown and reminding us of the real adventure we were expecting in Singapore. But this mentioned ‚howling‘ was just a harmless whisper through Singapore‘s warm and smoggy night instead of the screaming F1-engines trying to burst our eardrums at Marina bay the following days.

Singapore at all is a very busy and impersonal city. Even as Europeans you don’t get any special attention on these days. Almost 20% of the people walking around weren’t looking of asian origin, especially in front of the big hotels, in which areas the common bars and clubs can be found. After our first original german beer since weeks (see photo below), which maybe was little bit overprized (14 S$), but tasty, we finally found some clubbing place to survive the night with really fair prices.

 

Singapore at night is an amazing experience of itself, but attending a formula 1 race during night hours and within this stunning ambience is an unforgettable memory, branded in our minds. As expected, Sebastian Vettel won the race, only one point missing to celebrate his second world championship. After a great race, a two hours lasting Linkin Park concert for free and a long night in the streets of Singapore, we overwhelmed sank in the armchairs of our bus, fell in a deep and satisfied sleep to arrive KL and UiTM for our classes just in time.

 

Batu Caves

Today we made our first trip to one of Kuala Lumpur's main attractions: the Batu Caves. After having taken the Komuter train that leaves KL Sentral every 20 minutes, it was just a 5 minute walk till we reached the entrance of the caves, that are situated about 10 mi north of KL.

The first impression was compelling. Standing just next to the worlds tallest (42,7m) golden Lord Muruga statue, we became aware that this is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India. 

 

Walking up the 272 steps to the entrance of Temple Cave was a great experience as well because you had to watch out for the Macaques monkeys. They were funny at first sighting, but they love tourists, especially their food and scrap like Coca Cola cans. They came up very close to us and bared their teeth. Because of this some women became very frightened and cried out in panic.

Having entered Cathedral Cave, which is rising almost 100m above the ground, we had to discover the other side of the coin. Based on the quantity of tourists, there are lots of souvenir shops and cafes in the caves, just next to the Hindu fanes and the cave's base was covered with concrete. A vast amount of trash was lying around.

Nevertheless it was impressive to visit this 400 million year old place that was recorded by American naturalist William Hornaday in 1878.

First day at UiTM

Our first university day was a welcome event ot the International Office.

As we knew the importance of punctuality in Malaysia, we were almost an hour too early. In perfect weather we had to decide to stay outside at 35 ° C or in the air-conditioned room at felt 15°C.
We made the decision to stay outside for 10 minutes followed by a cooling down period on the fly.
At the beginning each of us got a little breakfast containing a croissant, some orange juice and an apple.
Having started, we found out that apart from us four, nine other students were present from Germany. Two guys from our college, three girls and four other guys from southern Germany. So we were the largest group of foreign students.
 

After lectures by Professor Kartini, Madame Azah and Mrs Nordin, there was a brief round of introductions. After two hours we were all so thoroughly frozen that we have a short warm-up interval. Men in suits and women in traditional Muslim clothing were clearly at an advantage here.

After the official welcome, there was a small lunch. As it turned out it was a traditional wedding meal: rice and chicken (what else) in a delicious spicy sauce with carrots. At the conclusion there was made a group photo.

The next day we were invited to a football game.
International Office Team vs. UiTM team collage
Jonas and Torben joined the international team. Unfortunately we lost 1:4 even though 90 minute miracle Torben played outstanding. The strikers could not used his precise passes and ran continuously in the offside trap. Jonas played on the right side of defense. By a rude foul he got respect. But which unfortunately also had a penalty results in which the enemy used successfully to 1:3.

 

Afterwards there was a big dinner for all with many Malaysian dishes.
Chicken and beef in several variations. For dessert we had chocolate cake.
Everything was very tasty.
Because we had another appointment, we left early. Nevertheless it was a very nice evening.



Bastian

Finding a place to live

Full of enthusiasm, we plunged into the adventure of finding an appartement.

Driven by the hotel fees we started to search all kinds of appartments in the Internet. Because of the cheap taxi fares, we decided also to search for appartements outside of Shah Alam. After a short time of research, only iproperty.com turned out to be a meaningful help. We were excited what kind of flats and houses you could get in our price range. Pool, sauna and gym were suddenly on our basic equipment. We started to excerpt lots of different broker’s numbers and called them. Already first problem appeared. For short termed contracts the rental price per month increases. Nevertheless, we had two appointments.

So let’s get out. Both appartments were located in Subang Jaya. 

 

The first appartement was in a building called Impian Meridian. All of us were excited about the entire building complex, but the price was too high. The second unit was not worth considering, especially not after what has been previously provided to us. So we went back to the Impian Meridian, this time without a broker, to gaze on the lookout for other proposals. Actually we could find an opportunity. We called the owner and agreed to a meeting two days later. The following day, we had a look at the hall of residence on the UiTM campus, which is called Chrystal College. Because of our previous impressions we decided not to stay at the college. For better understanding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ads98twetY

The other tour date was a success and two days later we moved.

A week later we recognized that it was not such a good idea to drive by taxi because of the traffic jams and the high costs because of the criminal taxi drivers. That means they drive only with a fixed price which is usually doubled up the normal fare.

A journey into the unknown - First impressions

Once arrived at international airport in Kuala Lumpur, you realize immediately that this would no longer be just a holiday trip to the Balearic Islands or any other typical destination in Europe. This will become an unforgettable experience and a journey into the unknown. 

Although the air conditioning was countinuously running, you could smell the opressive heat and smog, you can expect in the whole city, through a far distanced but not visible door. In a long queue of people with uncountable different styles in clothing in front of you, waiting for the passport control, you can only start to imagine what melting pot of cultures you’ve been landing in. This caught glimpse got boosted by the coulors of the different passports, people were holding in their hands, which seemed to  cover the whole spectrum of a rainbow. 

A skeptical glance, then, after some hesitation and a short, proofing look at his boss, an unbelieving smile at the document he was holding in his hand. The customs officers interest seemed to be aroused by the university admission and he asked: ‘You are really here to study in Malaysia?‘ But the pensive mood caused by this question turned rapidly into a feeling of happiness when we realized that all of us passed through the passport control and our luggage survived the trip without getting lost.

We had no idea how to get to our hotel by bus or train, so we decided to ask at the taxi office straight in the airport entrance. As we had only one hour remaining for check-in at the hotel, we had to accept a completely over-expensive ticket priced with 59$. This should not be the last time taxi drivers tried to cheat us, but more of that later. After an hour of trying to get used to driving on the left, we realized that the taxi driver had no idea where our hotel could be. After a never-ending search for the hotel, our expectations were exceeded, the hotel was next to a little lake, the staff still awake and very friendly, the midnight check-in no problem and the rooms really clean. Welcome to ‚Hotel De Art‘. By the way, we occupied the Elvis Presley rock’n’roll temple, the New York City cabin and later on the Marylin Monroe lounge.

Elvis Presley is waiting for you

If Marilyn Monroe lived like this??? ehm...