The trip to Malaysia was part of a bigger trip to SE Asia (mainly Thailand) to climb. The main page can be seen here:
Asia 2010 Travels page
We were both pretty run down from sport climbing hard in Thailand, so we decided to go to Malaysia to Kuala Lumpur to climb at Batu Caves. This involved a long overnight bus ride during Chinese New Years (a mistake, as the travel volume was high). We were on mini busses until Georgetown, then in the very back of a big bus. We actually caught air going over a bump, which was a pretty rude awakening at 1 in the morning or whenever it was. We got dropped off by the bus way too early in the morning (before sunrise), so we shuffled over to a coffee shop for some breakfast, and then on to an internet cafe to prepare for housing searches. This was made a bit more difficult by the fact that I had too much stuff to make walking around comfortable. After some wandering around w/o much luck (the downside to being stingy and Chinese New Year) we eventually found a place. Unfortunately the room was pretty tiny and had no windows and shared bath (but it had AC). Luckily we were able to move into a larger room with a window the next day, but we still had to walk down the hall (or the stairs if it was occupied) to use the bathroom. This place was sort of centrally located between China Town and Little India and a few blocks from major bus stops and the light rail system, so that was handy. One night we were woken after midnight by flashes of light and explosions outside the window. It turned out they were shooting off heaps of fireworks from the street in front of the guest house (more Chinese new year celebrations).
The food in KL was excellent (actually we started eating tasty things in Georgetown during our wait there), and it was interesting to see the convergence of ethnicity and culture in Malaysia (Malay, Indian, and Chinese), especially during Chinese new Year. In fact, it would probably be safe to say that the food was one of the high points of this trip. I think we both gained some weight, and enjoyed all of the options. No longer were we limited to flaming hot rice based dishes, but could have wheat in the form of noodles, naan, and roti. yummmm. It seemed like the exchange rate was a bit better in Malaysia too, so food was a bit cheaper, which was good, as cooking our own wasn't such an easy option here. At one of the food stalls in an industrial park (while we were scouting climbing at Batu Caves) the locals eating lunch said something on the order of "they'll never eat this" to the proprietor, but we did and enjoyed it, which amused them a lot. One garish treat was "ais kacang" - a concoction of shaved ice and often garishly colored flavored syrup that also may have contained various combinations of jelly lumps, beans, ice cream, condensed milk, fruit... It was nice and refreshing on a hot day. The food was probably the highlight of our trip to Malaysia.
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It wasn't only the food cultures that were mixed. The cultural mixing was especially evident in what women wore. There were women in western garb, Indian Sari, Muslim head scarves, and even the full burka. Although Islam is the official state religion, it seemed like there was a lot of tolerance for non muslims. Hopefully this will continue, although there were some troubling signs.
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Another thing we did in Malaysia was to go up to the sky bridge on the Petronas Twin Towers. At one point these were the tallest buildings in the world (1998-2004), but now they hold the distinction of being the tallest stainless steel clad twin towers with a skybridge or something rather qualified like that. It partly depends on if you count the spires as part of the building (they do) and not the antenna masts on other buildings (they don't). In any case, they have 88 stories and are 452 M (1486 ft) tall. We heard all about it and how wonderful Petronas (the Malaysian oil company) and Malaysia and the towers are in a little 3d movie (that gave Julie a headache) they made us watch before we went up. I also had to get up pretty early to go there to pick up tickets. It is a good thing I did because by the time I got through the long line they had put up a sign saying no more tickets available. The skybridge is only on the 41st and 42nd floors, but the view was still pretty nice. I took a lot of pictures of course. Architecturally the towers are pretty cool and they make a striking landmark from all over the city.
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Other activities in KL included an excursion to the zoo where we saw some interesting local animals as well as the usual zoo critters. We also went to the Museum of Islamic Art which has some excellent pieces, some odd models of various famous mosques, and an even odder anti-Israel display. As usual, walking around the markets and grocery stores in a foreign country was interesting even if I wasn't buying much.
The main climbing area in KL was at Batu Caves, a large limestone lump on the outskirts of town. One area has been extensively developed as a Hindu shrine. It is a shame that they got there first, as the climbing potential there looked very good. It features a huge statue of Murugan and many steps up to a large cave with a giant open sinkhole skylight at one end. There were a number of monkeys lurking about as well as pigeons and chickens. It was pretty crowded when we went there both with people visiting it as a tourist site and as a religious site. A few weeks earlier was the festival of Thaipusan, in which over a million people visit the shrine, some walking there from downtown pierced in various ways. Although it would have been an interesting freak show to see and probably a good photographic spectacle, it is probably just as well that it wasn't going on while we were there.
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It was about an hour bus ride out to Batu Caves from where we were staying so not so easy logistically. The first time we went out there we checked out the Hindu shrine and walked to some other areas to scout them out. This way we didn't have to carry our climbing gear. Finding the bus to the shrine part of Batu Caves wasn't too hard because it is a well known tourist attraction, but taking the bus to the other side for some of the climbing was a little more off the beaten track. Getting back was sometimes even more interesting.
We climbed at the Damai wall, which is a great beginner wall with many fairly easy and short climbs, often with more difficult extensions. I wasn't so impressed with some of the anchors which had pretty flimsy looking chains and screw links - fine for rapping and lowering, but maybe pushing things for top roping and not so good for our rope. There was a rubber walkway along the base of the wall, and the approach involved walking down a paved path past a playground and up a few steps (if you drove there, if you took the bus you had to walk through a neighborhood first). After we had done a few climbs, some guy came out and asked us to please stop climbing for a while - turns out it was recess time, so we collected our stuff and watched the kids play (and watched our stuff - the Singapore climbers warned us that this was necessary). Then we went back to climbing after recess was over. We climbed up to 6C there, which felt about like a 7a on Railay, but I might have been a bit off route. This cliff also featured a nice looking cave that I would have liked to explore.
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The other area we climbed at was called the Nyamuk wall. Nyamuk means mosquito, and they aren't kidding. To get to this crag you walked down a little alley, then behind a back yard and up a little path to the cliff. There was some jungly vegetation along the path harboring an amazing quantity of little voracious mosquitos. Once we were situated at the cliff and had about 8 mosquito coils going it wasn't so bad. The climbing here was excellent, although there weren't a whole lot of routes. I only managed to get a few in before a monsoon rain started. We hunkered down under the slight overhang which blocked most of the rain (although in hindsight if we had moved a little down the cliff we could have had a lot more shelter). Once the rain eased off a bit we made a break for it past the mosquito clouds and back to the bus stop.
Although the climbing was good, it wasn't that extensive and it was logistically difficult and the weather wasn't so great (afternoon monsoon rains), so we bailed on our our plans to stay there for most of the rest of our Asia trip and our KL-BKK airplane tickets and returned to Tonsai for more climbing. This involved another late night bus trip and mini-bus trip. We also had to walk out of the travel agency in Hat Yai when they tried to charge us 3 times what we paid elsewhere for the mini-bus trip (and they quoted the lower price as we walked out the door but it was too late for them by then).
The spot tracks I link to below aren't always that great, but you can switch to aerial photos and zoom in or out to get a better idea of where we were and where we went.
Spot tracker page - on to Malaysia
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