Day 3
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
KL is an hour or two from Port Klang – depending on the traffic. It’s the capital of Malaysia and a really nice modern city. I’d been a few years earlier and had a general look around the city when I did a similar trip, so decided to do a ships tour to Batu Caves. So off we all headed at the silly hour of 8am. An alarm on the first morning. RUDE!
First stop was at Independence Square, with many of the important old buildings. The marathon was on the next day so setting up was happening.
Petronas Towers – beautiful. Such an amazing structure. Finished in 1996, after 6 years of the site running 24 hours a day, and was still the tallest twin towers in the world for some time. It’s 491 metres to the tip. But it’s beauty is in the amazing finish to the outer shell. Love it!
KL Tower with great views over the city – even in the heat fog and rain! KL Tower is built on a local hill, home to the last remaining rain forest in the city. It’s a communications tower with an observation area. Seventh tallest in the world at 421 metres. Last time I was there I loved the huge mountain buttresses I could see not far fro the city. I called them fake Uluru’s. Turns out there are the main aim for this excursion – Batu Caves.
Batu Caves are a karst limestone hill with a series of caves and cave temples. There is a great Hindu shrine, one of the most popular shrines outside India. There is a massive festival there each year where people do all kinds of weird mutilation things like having a hundred pins put through their back and towing one ton of weight.
The limestone forming Batu Caves is said to be around 400 million years old. Some of the cave entrances were used as shelters by the indigenous Temuan people. It then became a Hindi place of worship.
It’s 100 metres high and has 297 evil, uneven stone steps – straight up! but had to be done.
Hundreds of Hindi people climb each day to make a pilgrimage. The women and children dress in amazing, heavy tradition clothing. Some carry tiny babies up. And it’s really hard.
At the top was a massive cave system. But not small slimy caves. Giant cathedrals. And ….. more stairs.
And so hot! But worth it. I took the mandatory ‘red face photo’ at the top.
30 minutes later – the face was still pretty red!
And great monkey’s.
Selangor Pewter Factory – was great. From really early in life I had known that Selangor pewter was the best.
Malaysia was the biggest producer of Tin, mining over 50% of the world tin. In 1885, a young pewter-smith named Yong Koon arrived in Malaya from the Chinese port of Shantou. He started with nothing but his skill and a few tools. Apparently his mother had to sell his youngest brother to pay for his passage. His other brother was working as a tinsmith in the tin mines and together they started the business. By 1930 they had their own business. The low price of tin allowed them to move from producing Chinese ceremonial items to more European items like cigarette boxes and tea pots.
The process was amazing. And so much of it hand made.
When they say “hand finished” they certainly mean it. You know the beaten, dimply look of the tankards. That is done one hammer tap at a time. Amazing!
There is a great story about the “lucky teapot”. A solider was hiding from the Japanese in a destroyed building in WWII and scrounging for food. He bent over to look in an old teapot. A bullet wizzed over his head, missing him. The tea pot saved his life. It was an original one made by Yong Koon and hall marked. Pretty cool.
World record for the biggest beer tankard!
A great day.
It was then back to the ship, a fun evening and sleep.
Next day was a sea day. Bridge tour and socialising.
Asian cruises are pretty different. Not a lot happens that doesn’t involve spending lots of money or is for kids. No trivia and such. And people who complain about lift etiquette need to come on a cruise here. They will not complain again! But it was a fun trip.
I ate in Chops twice. Haven’t been for some time. And it wasn’t anywhere near as good as normal.
The ice show was great. “Under the Big Top”. The skill level is so high. One guy would pick up a girl and hold her over his head. He would then thread one hand through her thighs and hold her up with one hand. Such strength. She must have had a body core made of steel.
He did this when sliding around on his thin blades, on slippery ice, on a moving ship!
The whole show was great! Flips, spins and all.
The lounges were so peaceful. It was not going to be like this in 24 hours time.
Formal night was on the last night – go figure. Having to dress up o packing night.
Next morning was “get off my ship day”, but I didn’t have to get off. Yay for me.
After breakfast I moved my gear around to my new room. A balcony on 7. Lovely. Lots of space and a view! And for 30 days. I had time to unpacked and move into my room properly. Bonus. For the three night trip I lived out of my suitcase. I was to be in this room for the next 29 nights so it was great to get it all sorted.
I then got off the ship and met JD (Jon from Canberra), who had just got off Ovation from Sydney. With a few hundred others. They all hoped their luggage would make it across the dock and onto Mariner.
Jon and I headed into Singapore and wandered around one of the big malls. Royal put on a free shuttle bus to one of the Malls for all of the consecutive cruisers – so that was lovely.
We wondered around and bought a few things – like a selfie stick. Nothing is cheap in Singapore. We had ice creams, and they were lovely – as they should be at $10 each!
Yes. That’s dollars. Almost the same as Aussie dollars. Guess people don’t eat many chocolates here.
There were only about 100 of us staying on from the last cruise, so boarding was the usually crazy Singapore process. Lucky for the magic “In Transit” card.
That night was great catching up with so many people I knew from previous cruises. But was also tricky. – – 110 Pinnacles, 500 plus Diamond Plus and 400 plus Diamonds. Nowhere near enough lounge space. They ended up opening the Diamond Lounge on deck 14 (the nice one) and took over the whole of that deck including the games room and the card room.
Then there was the ‘dog box’ Concierge Lounge on deck 9. But still nowhere near enough room. On the second night they turned Boleros and Schooner Bars into lounges as well, but of course there was no card checking so I guess most of the ship was drinking in there.
They also loaded four drinks onto everyone’s cards and you could use them at every place that sold drinks including the restaurants.
First night was mental. You queued up at the bar for 15 minutes to get drinks or waited for a waiter – who was never going to come! They were working like fast forward machines. Crazy.
But I got to catch up with many people I knew from other cruises – and people i knew of from on line. Much fun.
Day2 was a Sea Day. Time to meet people, play trivia and generally have fun.
I have always wanted to get one of the famous ‘Chocolate Pianos’ that are sent to Pinnacles on some ships. But today I got an even prettier treat.
A chocolate ball!. Filled with a lovely custard cream and berries. So lovely!
The lounge may have been mad…but the view was great. And the rest of the ship was dead quiet as most of the ship were Diamond and above.
Fun to be back on a ship.
Next stop – Phuket
Click below to go there.