On Chinese New Year we moved to a different apartment in KL, but other than that just rested. Maybe we’re getting too old or the heat is too draining, but we were both pretty tired, and a lot of stuff was closed anyway for the holiday. We’d considered going to Penang (island about 4 hours drive north of KL) for a few days, since it is supposed to have some of the best food in Malaysia, but we decided we don’t have the energy this time.
The next day we had a bit more energy. I woke up early and go a picture of dawn over Kuala Lumpur.
We took the MRT to Batu Caves.
You can see the steps which lead up and into the caves in the mountain. I decided not to go up. It is a Buddhist temple and there were signs saying “no shoes”, but the majority of tourists were ignoring them, which disgusted me. I didn’t want to go up the steps barefoot so I just didn’t go. Yanmei said she’d seen a hundred temples so she wasn’t interested either.
Nearby there was another cave that I went into. The cave was real, but I assume all the decorations were made for tourists rather than being a historical site. It was interesting enough anyway.
After that we headed to the Central Market.
I guess this would be considered a dry market since it was full of small shops selling all kinds of durable products, rather than meat and produce.
This shop was interesting to me, if you zoo. In on the sign to the right, not only do they accept bitcoin, they also accept ethereum. This is the first time I’ve ever seen somewhere that accepts ethereum. Ethereum is another crypto currency that competes with bitcoin.
I forgot the old weather warning, “red sky in the morning, sailors take warning” and there was a torrential downpour as we left the Central Market. Fortunately our new apartment is very close to the MRT station so we avoided most of the soaking.
Before coming to Kuala Lumpur I imagined it would be one of the most exotic cities to visit. It is interesting, no doubt, but not very exotic feeling. Most of the shop signs and billboards are in English, they have a modern transit system, I feel I could drive here since people follow the rules of the road at least to the same extent as they do in the US, and you don’t have to go far between seeing Starbucks, McDonalds or 7-Elevens.
David