Kuala Lumpur

            Today we went around Kuala Lumpur. It is famous for its Petronas Twin Towers, which had been the tallest towers in the world a while ago, until we had built our Twin Towers. They are very tall and have this really cool bridge between them, which slides back and forth since the towers sway. We wanted to go up to the bridge, but it’s hard to do because you have to sign up for a very specific time months ahead of time. Then, if you miss your slot, too bad. So, we just got to take pictures outside it. Then, we went to a museum to see some of the history of Malaysia. The coolest part were the shadow puppets, mostly because the drama class had made their own shadow puppet performance on the ship at pre-port. We didn’t have much time to spend there, so we left quickly. We headed to the second cave, which was this Hindu temple built into the cave. There was a 100ft statue of Shiva outside of this cave, next to a steep staircase composed of 260 steps. We only had 40 minutes to explore the whole thing, so we’re all trying to rush up these steps while avoiding the monkeys and other people visiting the temple. Amazingly, there are dedicated Hindus who climb that on a regular basis. At the top, the cave opened up to a large cavern with an open ceiling letting light and some water come in. Farther in, there was another part of the cave elevated where the shrine for Shiva was located. Overall, it was quite cool to see how this temple incorporated the natural environment of the cave for its purposes, especially since I’ve been learning about these things in my architecture class. When I was leaving, these monkeys were fighting and one ran behind me to avoid getting killed by the other two monkeys. I was flipping out because I didn’t want to get bitten by a monkey. Fortunately, they ran off somewhere else. Apparently, monkeys had attacked quite a few other people on the stairs that day while we were there but I didn’t see any of that.

            After the temple, we went to this very expensive shop where they make patterns on cloth with design presses or a few were handmade. That place was much too expensive, especially for the quality of the products, so we left. Then we headed to China Town for lunch. It was pretty good, we had coconut rice and other dishes. Then we walked around a bit to do some last minute shopping while it started raining again. Then, we left for George Town, where our port is. When we got there, we had to ride one of the lifeboats to the ship because the port is so busy, we couldn’t stay docked like we have at all of the other ports. It was pretty fun because I’d never been in the lifeboat before – it’s quite large.