Braving the Batu Cave
I’ve mentioned already that Mike booked this entire trip for the six of us. He is literally answering his phone as “Brower Travel Services” at this point. Well, for Kuala Lumpur, which was a fill-in stop between our adjustment days in Singapore and hitting one of our main event stops in Bangkok, he just booked us to see the Petronas Towers, which are literally steps away from our Mandarin Oriental Hotel where we are staying. In fact we can all see the Petronas Towers from our room windows. At 88 stories, the Petronas Tower observation deck and bridge tour is kind of like going up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, it is less about the height per se and more about the history and specialness of the place. The Towers have been featured in a number of action movies, the big one being Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and one even with Tom Cruise scaling its sides with abandon in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. What makes Petronas Towers so special besides its twin aspect is that this ultra-modern building, designed by starchitect Cesar Pelli, is designed around the Arabic Rub el Hizb pattern of overlapping squares and circles that can be seen in Muslim obelisks and the ancient temple towers at Angkor Wat. As such, it genuinely captures and conjoins the ancient Malaysian history with the modernity that is new Asia.
Malaysia is a Muslim country with 63% of the population claiming Islam as their religion. Islam came to this country somewhat from 12th Century Arab traders, but it is also said that the real spread of Islam came about through invasion wherein the conquerors demanded a bounty from anyone who wanted to practice any religion other than Islam. That proved to be a very clever approach that eluded the Portuguese traders that came to the area and were too busy making a market for the local spices that were so unique to and in demand by Europeans. Spreading Christianity was an afterthought to those . Meanwhile the more pragmatic and perhaps more ruthless Muslim invaders secured hearts and minds through their commercial tariff system that may have originated the concept of putting your money where your praying mouth was. It is interesting to me that dogma was not so much the driver of religious dominance as pragmatism. That is probably why Islam succeeded in coming from behind to overtake Christianity as the leading religion of the masses. In no time at all, Islam became the state religion of Malaysia. I must admit, it was unusual to hear the call to prayer here in Kuala Lumpur with the familiar “allahu akbar…” singing out five times a day from some hidden minaret that has been buried by the array of modern skyscrapers here in the center of town.
Once we had arrived at our Mandarin Oriental Hotel destination and gotten ourselves settled, we chose to meet for dinner at the pool deck, where they were making pizza and other non-local specialties. Just like in Singapore, the city sights were a combination of modern skyscrapers with every ultra-modern feature and a whole host of lush vegetation in the foreground. One interesting thing I don’t recall seeing in the Middle East was the Muslim women who swam in the pool with their children. They seemed to have black burkas designed as swimwear to give them the exact same look that one sees on them in the street, shrouded in the mystery that Muslim men seem to want for their Muslim wives. Let’s just say that bikinis are far less in evidence here from what I can tell, but hot and humid demands a refreshing pool did, so the locals have adapted as they must.
Kim, Melisa and Yasuko were desperate to find some shopping since their shopping Jones had not had much fulfillment in Singapore. There does seem to be a good Central Market, which Kim had sussed out, but this being a Muslim country, it closed at 6:30. The nearby mall in Petronas Towers was your basic Gucci/Armani luxury spread that LVMH and other global luxury brand invasion overtaking local arts and crafts. That just means that the Ringgit is burning a hole in their pockets and they will undoubtedly make time to shop the Central Market for local trinkets later today.
The other key must-do for a tourist to Kuala Lumpur, other than the Petronas Tower tour, which we will do tonight at sunset, is a visit to the Batu Caves and waterfalls. Batu is the Malay word for rock and this rocky hillside is home to caves where the largest SE Asian Hindu shrine outside of India lives. The influence is Tamil, which is the most prolific part of the regional Indian diaspora in the area. I guess maybe in olden days, that religious tax drove Hindus to take to the highlands and find caves in which to practice their faith with minimal financial extortion. This hillside monument has 272 steps, painted colorfully in Hindu custom and leading to the main temples set into the caves above. So, I am girding my loins to steel myself for the climb. I am determined to slowly but surely make the climb as my pilgrimage to overcoming my age and sedentary ways, using my walking sticks to help. From the look of the online pictures, the womenfolk should have no problem finding the shopping opportunities they so desperately seem to need. I suspect that we will be assaulted by the colorful surroundings that are so popular in Indian culture and that have been transported to nearby regions like Malaysia.
We have now just completed 2 hours of touring the Batu Caves. Yes, I made it up all 272 steps and while the others walked into the inner portion of the limestone cavern, I decided to honor the god Vishnu with a donation. For that I was rewarded with a chalk mark on my forehead, a knotted string on my wrist and a yellow flower to put behind my ear. I got plenty of stares from the faithful, but since they all had similar affectations, I suspect the looks were more from my sweaty bulk than from any religious trappings adorning me. Perhaps they all thought I was the second coming of Siddhartha Gautama (aka Buddha). That may explain why they kept trying to rub my sweaty belly. The gang is now in the Batik store, which is the Malaysian equivalent of the rug shops of the Arab world. It’s the local equivalent of the Hotel California, you can check in but you can’t check out without dropping some meaningful coin on Batik fabric. I don’t look good in Batik, so I will leave that part of the journey to Kim, and just sit calmly in the van, congratulating myself for braving the Batu Caves.