Kuala Lumpur

Well, I know that I just finished the China blog, but I better write a little about our trip to Malaysia. Otherwise it could be after Christmas before I get around to it!

Sometime last summer I was hunting around on the internet. I ended up on the Answers in Genesis website. I ordered a few books and then I saw an ad for the “All-Asia Creation Conference” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Well!”, I thought, “We could go up for that and see a little of Malaysia while we’re there. Could be fun.” So I signed us all up and Erin took the week off from work.

The conference started on Tuesday afternoon and ended Thursday at lunch. We decided to go up on Monday in order to have a little more time to tour around. So Monday lunchtime we got in the car and headed for the boarder. (No, unfortunately, there are no longer any Taco Bells in Singapore. Sigh.) We got through the Singapore checkpoint without any trouble. We drove across the bridge into Malaysia and arrived at the Malaysian checkpoint. This was our first encounter with the fact that Malaysia has FAR fewer signs in English than Singapore. We missed the fact that we were supposed to stop at this little bitty hut on the side of the road and pick up some immigration forms. Oops. Then we realized that we’d pulled into the lane for “Malaysian passports only”. Oops again! Boy were we starting to look like first-timers! (Lots and LOTS of people live in Malaysia and work in Singapore, so many many people cross this boarder daily.) But the young man at the window was very nice. (Also, we were almost the only car coming through there at lunchtime on Monday. We went through the less crowded checkpoint, not the ‘normal’ one.) He told us we could park alongside there and Erin walked back to the little hut and got the forms. So it took a little longer, and caused some chuckles from the staff, but we did get into Malaysia.
We stayed on the highway for several hours. Frankly, I’d heard so many things about Malaysia that I wasn’t expecting the road to be very good. But it was as smooth or smoother than any interstate (Mississippi and Louisiana not withstanding). So I was impressed.
I have to say, that if there is one thing that Americans are truly experts at, it has to be the family road trip. We can DO this! Before we left Singapore, I went down to Subway and bought us all a sandwich. We figured that Malaysia was like Singapore and hadn’t exactly caught on to the drive-through. I was right. They did have very nice rest areas with gas stations and restaurants and vending machines and prayer rooms (it’s a Muslim country – I think they’re government mandated). We’d been warned that Malaysia is much more high crime than Singapore. (A lady had recently been killed when a guy tried to snatch her purse but it didn’t come off over her head/shoulder and she was dragged under a car. We were told this was not uncommon and we shouldn’t even wear a bag out in pubic since tourists were such a target. Same person told us that when they were in a grocery store, the clerk was attacked by a machete-wielding thief.) So we were cautious about stopping at the smaller rest areas. Anyway, the rest area where we stopped was pretty nice except for the flies. Whoo! When we opened the car door several dozen flies came pouring in. It took us a long time to get all those flies out as we drove down the highway.
Well, before long we came to a toll plaza. We couldn’t read any of the signs, but we recognized the ‘car’ picture, so we took that lane. Turns out you have to have a “Touch and Go” card to proceed further. So we paid 5rm (Malaysian Ringgit) which is about $1.75 for the card and loaded it with 30 ringgit ($10) for the tolls ahead. That was fine for a while. We stopped for a 1.8 ringgit toll, and maybe another one. The Touch and Go system was fast and easy. But as we got close to Kuala Lumpur, we hit a toll plaza that had choices for the Touch and Go lanes. We never did figure out the difference. But that toll was 80 rm! ($25) oops. The lady had to come over and take some cash from us. Fortunately, we’d hit the atm at the rest area. We immediately pulled in to a gas station and topped up our TnG card. We had no idea if there were more $25 tolls ahead. Turns out you pay that when you come into the city, and again when you leave. The tolls inside the city were much cheaper- $.60 usually. So now we know, and now we have our little card, so we’re ready to go back. We even know about the little unmarked hut – so we’re pro’s. :-D

The gps took us right to our hotel. We were staying in the hotel that was hosting the conference. We lucked out and got adjoining rooms! Woo-hoo! That’s twice that has happened to us in Asia.

http://www.summithotelusj.com/index.php

The hotel is connected to a shopping mall. We decided that it was so close to suppertime that we didn’t want to go touring around in rush hour traffic. (It was bad.) So we checked in and then went over to the mall for supper. We looked around at the supper choices. Everything was so cheap!! The prices LOOKED like American prices – but they were in Ringgit. So a double cheeseburger meal at McDonald’s was 8Rm, but think about it – that’s $2.50! What?!? Light bulbs coming on about all our friends doing their shopping in Malaysia! So yes, we ended up eating at McDonald’s. I tried to talk them into eating at a local food place right next door to the McD’s but no. After supper we walked around the mall. We tried to find A. some dress pants because he’s growing out of his and we haven’t found any for normal price in Singapore. (I could go to a dept. store and pay $100 – yeah. Right.) No luck on that. H. and I did find some really nice skirts and dresses. It was wonderful to shop in a Muslim country because most of the clothing was modest! Woo-Hoo. We each bought like 6 or 7 skirts and I got 2 dresses. The skirts we bought were in the $10 price range and the dresses were $20. Wow. O. found a shirt he liked – it was a Germany polo shirt. He really likes that shirt.
Anyway, we shopped ‘till the boys were ready to drop. Then we went back to the hotel.

The next morning we got up and decided to go visit the Batu Caves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batu_Caves

We turned on the gps and didn’t really anticipate much trouble finding this major tourist destination. Well, I didn’t anticipate trouble. Erin had been told that K-L and gps don’t mix. It wasn’t easy. First of all, the map, the gps, and the actual road signs almost NEVER agreed on the name of the road. Granted, we don’t read Malay, but the names weren’t even close! The gps thought we were on E5, the map said halaysemsia or something, and the road sign said Jalan Malalalalalal (Yeah, I’m making that up.) We eventually just went by the picture on the gps. That mostly worked, but it was still frustrating because the gps would say to keep right, but there was no road in the real world that corresponded to the picture on the gps. But we got close enough that we could see signs pointing to Batu Caves, and then I saw this HUGE cliff and just drove towards it.
The base of the area was covered in tourist shops. Then there’s a long path with (pigeon poo covered) handrails that leads to the bottom of the stairs. I guess the path is for the festival days when the place is very crowded. It wasn’t that crowded when we were there, so we just walked right through. One nice thing is that the caves are free. But you have to climb the 272 steps to get to the top. It really wasn’t too bad. There were lots of monkeys around to distract you from the climb. At the top, you enter the first cave, which is huge. It’s more like stadium-size than cave-size. Inside there are more tourist shops and some stairs leading down. You go down and cross 50 yards or so and then up another set of stairs to get to the back of the cave. In the back there is a Hindu temple. But if you can block out the Hindu stuff and the tourist junk and just focus on the cave itself, it’s really cool. I’ve never seen anything like it.
On the way back down, we saw a sign for the “Dark Cave”. Ooh, that could be fun. So we decided to check it out. We just barely had time to take the 45 min. tour and make it back to the hotel in time for the start of the Creation Conference. The tour guide issued us all a mini flashlight and we proceeded into the cave. You could smell the bats from the entrance. She said that’s how the cave was discovered – an American guy (no less!) found the caves in the 1800’s. (K-L didn’t really exist until the 1800’s when tin was found there and mining began.) So we stayed on the guano-free path through the cave. (It was covered in places to keep you from being uh… rained on.) One room had a lot of roaches. I was wearing sandals. Hmmmm. Not my favorite part, but I kept my light on the path and managed not to get crawled on. Yea. We didn’t actually get to see a trap-door spider. I was disappointed about that, but we didn’t have time to do the scientific tour of the back part of the cave (you have to reserve in advance and it involves crawling for like a half a mile). We did see some cool formations and centipedes that you can only see in the Batu Caves. Their scientific name includes ‘batuense’ – so they are ONLY there. Cool.
Well, we had to rush out after the tour. We didn’t even have time to shop!! But with the road signs and gps, we barely got back to the hotel before the conference started.
I won’t go into too much detail on the Conference – but it was very good. Ken Ham is the guy who made the Creation Museum and basically started the Answers in Genesis group. Some of his main points are that while evolutionists accuse us of having a pre-determined ‘starting point’ (which we do and shouldn’t deny – it’s the Word of God), evolutionists also have a pre-determined starting point – millions of years. Most evolutionists are not willing to give up this pre-determined thinking no matter what evidence is shown. (“Billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth.” That’s our favorite quote, and Mr. Ham can say it really really fast.) We saw several presentations with proof for creation from biology. The speakers were very good. We ended up buying several books, including a pre-packaged box. The prices were much cheaper than even in the U.S. and no shipping! Woot! One night there was a very interesting guy:

http://www.worldrecordsacademy.org/travel/fastest_time_to_visit_245_countries_Benny_Prasad_set_world_record_112047.html

http://bennyprasad.com/artist/pressrelease/index.html

We didn’t sit in on all the sessions of the conference – particularly the “creation ministry in Korea” and a couple of others. We knew the kids just couldn’t handle that much sitting. So we tried to swim in the hotel pool, but it was storming. We ended up going back over to the mall and doing some book shopping. The prices were comparable to US prices for books, but that made them a bargain for Singaporeans – and no shipping! So we bought the latest installments for the 39Clues, Brisinger, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and a lot more. It’s a good thing there’s no such thing as ‘book smuggling’ or we’d be in jail forever – We took back so many books from K-L!!

The food at the hotel was so-so. I’ve had much better Malay food here in Singapore. So we ended up eating at the KFC one meal, and at the mall restaurant for another meal.
Thursday morning, we went to the first session of the conference and then drove over to the Petronas Towers. This was the main tourist attraction in K-L for Erin and me, and probably the kids too. For six years they were the tallest buildings in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronas_Towers

We had almost as much trouble with the gps that day as we had on Tuesday. But the good news was, the towers are visible from very very far away, so we knew when we were headed in the right direction. We eventually made it. BUT, the towers were temporarily closed to tourists. WAH!!!! Bummer!!! Now we have to go back. ☺
The towers sit on top of a large mall. Inside the mall is a Petronas (btw Petronas is an oil company) Science Center. H.’s friends had told her not to miss it, so we got some lunch at Pizza Hut (yes, they have Papa John’s in K-L, but we just weren’t up for THAT adventure again!!). After a small lunch (we all split a medium pizza – so no one got full), we decided to do a ‘dessert tour’ to sort of reward the kids for their excellent behavior during the conference. We each had a donut and some gelato. Later the kids and Erin topped it all off with an Auntie Anne’s pretzel. Then we went up to the museum. The kids are still going on and on about how we have to go back and spend more time in that museum. I didn’t think it was much better than the Singapore Science Center, but apparently they did. It was very hands on. Part of my problem was that evidently about 5 hours earlier I’d gotten hold of some local water. So I got the grand tour of the museum’s bathrooms. Not very fun. As we were coming out of the museum we could see the skies turning black. We grabbed some sandwiches for the trip home and ran for the car. Sure enough, a monsoon sat in and we drove the first two hours home (It takes about 5 hours total.) in pouring rain. We re-negotiated the $25 toll and re-entered Singapore around 9 p.m. We were all worn-out, but we had a fun trip and learned some new stuff in the process.