Chinatown night market

Today I did most of the tourist stuff. You can't go to the top of the Petronas Towers, so I went up the KL Tower instead, which is the world's fourth tallest communication tower. It cost RM15, but the views were good and there was a free audio tour included. It was neat to see the Petronas Towers from up here, because you could see the minaret-like tops are shiny and silver. You also get the sense that KL is very spread out, with no central downtown, but clusters of skyscrapers everywhere. There's also lots of half-finished building being built, and what look like half-demolished buildings that have been abandoned.

Then I took a taxi to the brand new Islamic Arts Museum, which the driver had never heard of. It was really good, and actually had artfacts on display. Lots of ancient Quorans beautifully decorated, manuscripts, including 800-year-old treatises on geometry and astronomy, weapons, jewelry, and clothing. The most interesting was a display on the architecture of mosques, with beautiful scale models of famous ones, including the Big Two, the ones in Mecca and Medan, which are massive to accommodate one million pilgrims.

Then I was close to the National Museum, which I wasn't too excited about, but LP says they have something called an "amok catcher," used to capture people running amok, so I just had to see what the heck that was all about. The museum was old and moldy, and had lots of mannequins wearing costumes. I finally found the amok catcher in a deserted display on weapons, and it turned out to be a pole with barbs on the end that you put around someone's neck. Pretty anti-climactic.

Room with a view

Before I had left I had more street food, a cury lasi, another bowl of soup with chunks of chicken, bone and all. Maybe I can't stomach that stuff early in the day, because I got my first case of diarrhea. Nothing major, but enough to be annoying.

I found that my two tee shirts aren't enough here, since they get sweaty and stinky fast, especially the polyester one, which is great for wicking away sweat, but gets super stinky. So I went back to the night market and haggled myself another one for RM15, about US$3.50. I paid way too much.

I've been thinking about the point of travel. If you're on a two week holiday sightseeing is fine, but traveling for months and only spending a couple of days in each place to see sights gets old fast, and is pretty tiring to boot. And for the most part a museum's a museum, and a temple's a temple. I think for me it's more fun just to be in a place and observe the people rather than to run around all the time to check all the sights off your list.