I am starting to develop a faible for strange shots, and here again I present my favorite one from this past weekend. Kuala Lumpur was a nice experience, totally different than Singapore. It didn't surprise me though, after I was told that Singapore is "not" typical for South-East-Asia. So we arrived around early evening on Friday. Countless motorcycles and even more cars and busses aired way too much exhaust fumes. A first walk through Chinatown that same evening brought proof to the disbelieving souls that we had finally ended up in Asia! First of all, street hawkers were selling all kinds of food from portable kitchens that were mounted to rusty motorcycles. "All kinds" of food refers to lots of identifiable and unidentifiable things being sold as food. It seemed to me, as if almost everything one can cut off an animal to then fry or cook it, was suitable. Another interesting observation is the night market, at which the delighted bargainer may strike a deal on original fake brand watches, clothes, lether goods, software, music, and you name it. Unfortunately I will not be able to provide you with pictures from these scenes this time, because I wanted to take some during my second visit when only there was none, because I got sick and had to skip the last evening out. The two days we had at our discretion in KL were mostly consumed by the usual tourist sightseeing stuff which I won't bother you with. Worthwile mentioning are the Batu Caves outside KL, another tourist attraction and important holy place in hinduism. Too bad that all the trash and crushed coconuts from the Thaipusam rituals last weekend had not been cleaned away yet. Else, nothing spectacular happened. On our way to the Petronas Towers we did manage to get ripped by a taxi-driver though. We thought we made a good deal when we bargained him down to 15 Ringgit, only to find out later that we probably paid 200% of the regular rate. I should add though, that 15 Ringgit are not that much anyways. We're talking roughly about 4 Euros for a ride across the city. The Petronas Towes are amazing! They stand 451m tall, which is more than the once famous WTC Twin Towers in NYC. The outside is completely covered with some kind of metal coating, which makes these buildings so shiny and bright that you wanna have sunglasses when you look from the wrong direction! What I found really interesting was that the towers were built by two different companies. As they stand and move seperately in the wind quite a bit, the skybridge which connects the towers at a hight of 170m is also not fixed totally. It can move more than 2m in or out the towers, as well as a bit sidewise. Pretty cool, hu? Concerning my sickness I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that I managed to sleep almost 15 hours to recover, before I could take the bumpy 6 hour bus-ride back to Singapore. All in all, it was still a great weekend. I guess that's why people call me an optimist ;-)

Kuala Lumpur (19) Jan 24-27 2003