Kuala Lumpar and Penang

Thaipusam at Waterfall Temple in Penang. He's carrying a gift up to the temple.

Good Hindus can tolerate a lot of pain. Each bell is attached to a metal hook which goes into the chest and back of the worshiper. Sometimes these hooks are pulled by a string from a friend that follows behind...Most of these people have long metal piercings through the cheeks and tongue as well.

An ais kacang at Gurney Drive. It's got shaved ice, rosewater, corn, jelly, kidney beans...

Fried oysters with a chilli dipping sauce, and sugar cane juice, also at Gurney Drive.

Temple in Penang.

9 hr train ride from Kuala Lumpar (KL) to Penang (Butterworth, actually). Malaysia's got many beautiful mountains.

typical street scene. this one's in KL, Little India. The motorbikes are always beautifully parked.

View of KL from Petronas Tower near the sky bridge.

Little India, KL. Malaysia is a very diverse country, with the three primary races being Malays, Chinese, and Indian.

It's been less than a week in Malaysia but I have experienced so many sights and sounds that it feels longer. I flew to Kuala Lumpar, or KL, as it's called by locals and travellers alike, from Perth on Tuesday. I really liked this capital city which has great food and a diverse population with the main groups being malays, chinese, indians, in that order. It was a treat to be in a superclean and friendly hostel (something of a rarity in Asia, as I'm discovering), a retreat to look forward to every evening after a full day out, saturated by the heat and dust and noise. One thing I've learned on this trip is that you can't have a good day unless you know your body's going to hit a clean bed at night. Tonight's not going to be so good, but that's okay. I will survive, and I will appreciate the next superclean place a little more. This weekend is a big Hindu festival called Thaipusan (more on it later), so there are many many visitors in town and accommodations are hard to find.

I guess I should backtrack and say that I am Georgetown, the historic district of Penang, a large island off the northwest coast of Malaysia. Georgetown is a World Heritage Site, a designation jointly held with Malacca, for its "living heritage", a juxtaposition of the old architecture and the modern way of life. Here people are living in old buildings that moved to any other place would be a sight-seeing piece in its own right. But most of these buildings have not been properly maintained and many are dilapidated, with trees growing out of roofs and walls, for instance. It's kind of sad to see these formerly majestic buildings fallen to ruins, but that's the hand of time, I suppose, and it works on everything, if not constantly maintained by tremendous effort.

On another philosophical note, I came to the staggering conclusion the other day (...it may already be obvious to everybody else) that money may be thought of as a form of potential energy. Our efforts are converted to this form for storage, like a hybrid engine storing power in its battery...

Today I walked with thousands of people up to Waterfall Temple in Penang for Thaipusan, a big hindu festival for the god Shiva's youngest son Murugan when he was given a spear by his mom, the goddess Parvati, to fight off an evil demon (thanks, wikipedia). I was part of a throbbing mass moving at times systematically and at times chaotically and joltingly (or was that crawlingly?) up to the temple. It took about two hours to walk up a quarter mile. I have an idea of what travelling in India may be like now. I don't know how many arms I brushed (or more yukily, gallons of sweat - others and my own). I wasn't sure what was going to happen at the temple; I just wanted to see. What I made of it was that people were giving their offerings and being blessed at the top. I wanted to escape from this throbbing mass pretty much the whole time, but my curiosity won out. Now I'm going to need some quiet time to rejuvenate. There were devotees with pierced tongues and cheeks, and metal hooks all over their upper bodies, and often carrying large ornamental pieces on their heads as well. Hard to describe, but I will add some pictures when i get a chance. Basically this festival is an annual pilgrimage for devotees to renew their faith. Maybe that's just the definition of a festival.