Category: photography

From Kuala Lumpur we caught an evening flight to Chennai (also known as Madras, before the name was officially changed a few years ago) and stayed with Vig’s Uncle K for the week, aside from a mini road trip that’ll be the next post! After three weeks of go-go-go, we were so tired and ready for a break. Being in a home and just hanging out was nice! We took it really easy, ate at home all the time, and just took short excursions out.

There are definitely cows everywhere – it was pretty sad to see them trying to eat garbage. There isn’t much grass going on in the city! Along with the cows there were also TONS of stray dogs that would bark and fight at all hours of the night, cats, and chickens.

We visited the neighbourhood night vegetable market, to buy veggies for Mamy (Uncle K’s cooking lady) to prepare. Basically she comes over once a day (twice while we were there) to prepare whatever food for the day. It was rather nice not having to really think about where to get food!

We also went and did a little shopping – I’d packed maybe a little *too* light, and really needed some tops and a lighter skirt. I actually ended up buying a wrap skirt from a little shop near the vegetable market, according to them it was 3/4 length but it was certainly full length on me (and I’m not super short)! The skirts are looooong.

We checked out a few shops in Pondy Bazaar, a shopping street with bazaar-y stalls and little sellers along with larger established shops and things. I did manage to find a good top, so I bought two in different colours – I’m a bit picky, so it took a little doing to find tops I would actually wear (and that would fit).

On the same shopping day we went to Kumeran Silks, a HUGE, multi level store that mainly sells silk saris along with some other styles of clothes, accessories…and silk material!

Prices were excellent and I ended up buying quite a lot of different colours and types for presents – and myself, obviously! We also checked out some different price ranges on saris, from $25 to over $1000!

Crazy tidbit about India – oh, the bureaucracy. Buying things in stores takes so many people! There was one guy who cut the fabric, one guy who wrote the amounts down and took it to a counter, the next guy printed up the receipt on the computer, the next guy checked the receipt again, then you pay the next guy, who gives it back to one of the previous guys to stamp, and then finally you give the stamped receipt to the guy who bagged your purchase and you can get your bag and leave! Takes at least 10 minutes to buy anything.

(Lots of the crazy politicians hire people to paint self-aggrandizing portraits and things on walls and fences all over the place…it was interesting to see!)

Man we took a lot of autorickshaws during out time in India – it really is the best way to get around! They can weave in and out of traffic more easily than a car (too easily maybe) and are really cheap. One that we hired for about six hours took us around whereever, waited while we were in stores and things, for a total of 400 INR or about ten dollars. And although riding around in them was somewhat hair-raising (no safety measures of any sort), at least the breeze was nice!

Although it was actually cooler in Chennai than it was in Kuala Lumpur, we got much more tired of the heat. The houses are concrete and relatively cool, with lots of fans and such, but the bedroom was upstairs and was way too hot to be comfortable at night. On top of that we had to have the window open, but that meant that it was really LOUD in the mornings! People want to get out and do stuff before it gets too hot, but that’s like 6am. Even earplugs didn’t really cut it, and since our sleep was disturbed it was even more tiring.

Later in the week we headed out with a hired driver and Uncle K for a 2-day road trip a little ways down the coast!

Kuala Lumpur (KL for short!) was a last-minute addition to our trip itinerary – we were going to go from Beijing to Singapore, then Singapore to India, but couldn’t get a flight we were happy with. So Kuala Lumpur it was! Just a short stop of a couple days, but we did end up seeing a lot.

It was darn hot – flying from Beijing to KL was a bit of a temperature shock! It was around freezing in Beijing and 30-35 C in KL, so a bit of a drastic wardrobe change was required. I wasn’t super into staying at the YMCA, but the location was extremely convenient (right by the KL Sentral station, where the airport train and all the intracity public transportation goes). Walking around was tough, because there were very few sidewalks – you’d be walking along and then it suddenly ends and becomes a crazy traffic-y highway! The monorail was decent for getting around.

There were lots and lots of various eating establishments – the normal restaurants and food courts, but also street food stalls and even restaurants that were pretty much just on one side of the road! We did the touristy thing one day and went to the KL Bird Park, which was actually pretty entertaining. There was a show with performing parrots and such (and a decently cool enough place to sit!).

From there we walked to the Islamic Arts Museum – it was actually a really short walk, but the lack of good signage and the heat made it feel a lot longer. We had a great lunch at the museum, then walked by the Nation Mosque. Unfortunately when we arrived it had just closed to tourists for a couple of hours.

The next day, already sick of the heat, we took refuge in a couple of the huge malls. KL has one (or more, possibly) of the biggest malls in southeast Asia. The malls are around 8 floors, usually with a couple of food courts and just tons and tons of stores. Of course, they’re pretty popular to hang out in because of the air conditioning! We spent pretty much the entire day going from mall to mall – not the sort of thing I’m usually into, but the heat was really too much. Some of the malls are more flash than others – the Pavilion mall is really super upscale with pretty much all designer stores.

Our flight was in the evening on the 7th, so we stowed away our luggage at the YMCA and ventured out a little further. We met up with a friend of a friend just outside KL, in a suburb that was pretty easily reached via the Rapid Transit system – as an aside, KL has a really random public transportation system that consists of three different private systems that don’t intersect. It’s very strange.

Anyway, Regina was really awesome and took us to lunch at yet another huge mall, the Curve. We had Hakka food for lunch, then went for Malaysian dessert. I think it was shaved ice with condensed milk or something, and then variations of fruit and flavours. Kind of weird.

Aside from just the heat, the traffic was pretty nuts and the pollution was quite bad. The vegetation was awesome to look at (super lush!) and it was super easy to find vegetarian food. Mostly it’s the abundance of Indian food that makes it quite simple to find stuff that’s vegetarian! We did eat a couple other Malaysian foods as well – pulled roti, which is sort of like a really stretchy crepe, and pulled tea.

It’s black tea with condensed milk – tasty, but it’s a rather deadly combo of sugar and caffeine!

One last iconic image of KL is the Petronas Twin Towers, which used to be the tallest buildings in the world. You can get a free ticket to go up, but we couldn’t be bothered to get up early and queue for one! Instead we just took photos from the outside and visited the obligatory mall at the bottom.

Of course, KL was just the start of the hot-weather portion of the trip…and I still hadn’t really done much knitting, either. Up next, my first ever visit to India!