20231111 AAAA Trip - Port Klang and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 56/105 - Port Klang - the gateway to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

We were greeted with a lovely double rainbow at breakfast - a great way to start a day. 

Perhaps this ship was hauling gold?

Port Klang, where we docked this morning, is much more picturesque than the other ports we've been into.  Oh, it still isn't anything to look at, but at least it isn't a container port.  We'll take our wins however we can.

Today's tour, the included tour, A Glimpse of Kuala Lumpur, was a 5.5-hour bus tour into Kuala Lumpur (or KL for short).  KL is roughly an hour away so half our tour was just getting there and back.  The tour included a stop at a museum, a memorial, a mosque, a train station, and Petronas Towers.

Malaysia makes country #57 for us

Our tour bus was interesting.  It is now operated by the son of the original owner.  He had a big bushy mustache that he was well-known for, so he used that as the logo for his bus.  His son kept the logo and has a photo of his late father on the bus dashboard.

The interior was right out of a Spencer Gifts store with fluorescent colors and disco lights on the ceiling

National Museum of Malaysia - Muzium Negara

This is a museum of Malaysian culture & history from prehistoric times to the present day.  It spans two floors with many artifacts on display.

We could see the Merdeka 118 from the parking lot - it has 118 floors and is the second tallest building in the world after the Burj al Kalifa (which we will see next month!), standing 678.9m or 2,227 feet tall - nearly 1/2 mile high!

A mosque minaret

Some of the toilets were a little rustic by Western standards

It is the start of Diwali - the Hindu festival celebrating the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance - Muslims celebrate it as well to honor the 250 years of friendship with the Hindu religion

I never knew rubber harvesting was so complex

One of the benefits of position - cool hats

Housework would be so much easier

On the way out, they had a few traditional kid's games set up, including stilts.  A young Asian couple was trying unsuccessfully to walk on them.  This 62-year-old American gave them lessons.

Tun Abdul Razak Memorial

This is the memorial house museum in the home of former Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak.  It is...a home.  There are bedrooms, a living room, bathrooms...you get the idea.  It was wholly unremarkable and we felt that the 45 minutes we spent could have been better spent doing anything else.  There was a walk-in aviary right across the street and it was huge.  That would have been time better spent.

The most interesting things here were the flowers outside and the views of the city's architecture from the parking lot.

National Mosque of Malaysia

We made a very brief photo stop here.

The minaret where the muezzin makes the call to prayer

The mosque - Malaysia is about 80% Muslim

The Islamic Arts Museum was across the street - the domes were beautiful.

Train station

First completed in 1917, this railway station has a grand facade with Asian & European architecture. This was another brief photo stop.

The railway administration building was right across the street

Another view of the Merdeka 118

We saw this building from the bus as we were driving

Independence (Merdeka) Square

We spent a few minutes walking around in this area.  There is so much fun architecture here, it is easy to just keep looking around.

This massive flag pole is 95 meters (311.7 feet) tall

It looks like a toilet float in the water, probably to turn off the pump if the water gets too low

These decorations were on many of the streetlights

We caught our first view of Petronas Towers

We saw this as we drove from the square

Petronas Twin Towers

A central attraction in KL, the Petronas Twin Towers are the tallest twin towers in the world at 88 stories and 451.9 meters (1482.6 feet). They have been featured in the movie Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Like the other stops, there is something interesting to see everywhere you look.

The towers are stunning in person

This was the last stop on the tour. We made the 50-minute ride back, learning some interesting facts.  Kuala Lumpur literally translates to the muddy meeting of two rivers.  Malaysia is a country of about 33 million people with land about the size of Florida.  There are two main areas, the peninsula that they share with Thailand and Myanmar and an island that they share with Indonesia and Brunei. 11 of the 13 states are on the peninsula and the other two are on the island.  Singapore was the 14th state of Malaysia before it became an independent nation.

The national language, Malay, is one of the easier languages to learn.  It is 100% phonetic – all words sound exactly like you think they would when reading them.  There are no plurals or tenses. 

I will use English words for the Malay version to make the examples understandable.

In English, I go, I went, I will go for present, past, and future tense.  The equivalent in Malay would be I go, I go, I go.  Tense has no meaning.  As for plurals, you just double-say the word.  I want a cookie or I want cookies in English would be I want a cookie or I want cookie cookie in Malay. 

It was an interesting day and a nice introduction to Malaysia.

There was a convenience store in the terminal, so of course we checked for odd snacks.

Squid-flavored fish ships

Satay jellyfish

Crispy fish chips

Arlona decided she didn’t have enough steps and went for a walk on deck 2 as I started this blog.  After that, we hit the Explorers’ Bar to sail out and listen to guitarist, Indra.  After dinner at the World Café, we returned to the room to catch the port talk recording and do a quick load of laundry.  The show tonight is the Get to Know Us show where the resident singers perform and then answer questions.  The show is fine and the singers are talented, but this is the fourth time this show has been presented on this voyage. Last night was the fourth show from Cruise Director, Graham.  It is a fun show – just not four times in a cruise. This is our complaint that this isn’t really treated as a long voyage for those of us who booked it as such.  Each cruise starts everything over again.

Finally, we got a call from Guest Services.  The Thailand port agent has connected with the man with Arlona’s cell phone.  They have a plan to pick it up and we may get it as soon as one of the Indonesian ports.  Woo!  I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

We are sailing south through the Malacca Strait toward Singapore, where we’ll dock around 8 a.m. tomorrow morning.