Category: General

During our walking tour on Sunday, we visited Masjid Jamek, a large and beautiful Mosque here in KL.  This was my (JM) first visit to a Mosque so it was rather interesting.  There is a big list at the door of "proper attire", which includes long pants or skirts, and long sleeves and a covered head for women.  There was a kiosk as you entered where they had what looked like choir robes for tourists in shorts to put on over their clothes, and they also had a bunch of scarves, one of which I borrowed.  I have to admit, I have often wondered how Muslim women in this part of the world that chose to cover themselves completely don’t just melt from the heat.  They usually wear a long, close-fitting skirt with pleats in it so they can walk, topped with a long-sleeved, high-necked top which goes down to their knees, and then a head scarf.  And while they often wear beautiful patterns and colors, the material tends to be polyester which does not breath.  Let’s just say that after five minutes of walking around with a scarf tied over my head and around my neck I was a bit hot.  (We have some pictures that we’ll post when we get internet up and running.)

I was struck with the difference between visiting this Mosque and visiting old churches in Europe, which I am sure many of you have done.  I never feel like I am intruding when visiting a church, but here I did.  Because of the nature of the religion, people come to the Mosque throughout the day for prayers (during which times it is closed to the public), and although the afternoon prayer had just finished when we were there, there were still a lot of people around.  Also, everything is separated by gender, and I kept worrying that I was going to end up in the men’s area by accident! There were signs everywhere in five languages (Malay, Arabic, English, Chinese, Tamil) but it was still really confusing, so we didn’t try anything fancy.  We just took a peaceful stoll around the main path, around a gorgeous open pavillion covered with guys lounging around and sleeping.  Of course, they were doing this right next to a bunch of signs which said "No lounging around and sleeping here" which was pretty funny.  All in all, a neat experience. 

This weekend we acted like good little tourists and did a couple of recommended touristy things around KL.  On Saturday we visited the Muzium Negara (National Museum), where Malaysian Tourism Board and Ministery for Tourism, Culture, and Antiquities officials have constructed a clean, simple, and air-conditioned summary of Malaysian culture and traditions.  We kid, we kid.  It was actually pretty cool to see all of the different cultural materials from the different ethnic groups that have combined to make multicultural Malaysia.  We did get to see that the traditional description of Malaysian culture as divided between Malay, Chinese, and Indian is really far too simplistic and inaccurate.  Someday soon we’ll take the time to break down all of the major cultural groups that we can think of, which certainly number to at least six, and probably should include more.

The museum also had some pretty cool examples of Malaysian natural history and wildlife.  Malaysia, to put it simply, has some pretty crazy tropical beasts, just like Indonesia did.  We saw a mounted bat known as a "Flying Fox" in Malay that has a wing-span of 1.9 meters, which is noticeably wider than we are tall.  Luckily, it does not have a taste for blood–it likes fruit.  We also saw a walking-stick insect that was 12 inches long, not including the legs.  That’s a big bug.

The final museum bit was the Museum of Malay Civilizations, which links the Malay racial-type  throughout most the Malaysian-Indonesian archipelago to other related peoples from South Africa and Madagascar in the west, south to Western Australia, north to Taiwan, and to Easter Island in the east.  Some other time we’ll discuss the very fascinating politics of Malay culture and "race," both comparatively between Malaysia and Indonesia and in the world writ large.

Yesterday we followed the advice of our Lonely Planet Tourbook and did what they called a Chinatown Walk, walking through the areas of KL traditionally inhabited by Chinese Malaysians and their descendants.  It was very neat to see.  Of course, within Chinatown, you can also find one of the biggest mosques in Malaysia, the biggest Hindu temple in Malaysia, and other good Chinese things.  We got some great pictures that we will post as soon as we get our internet situation settled!