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Other entries in Malaysia

It's Christmas in the jungle!

Sorry for the delay in getting this out, but Christmas has been rather hectic...We’d only been in Kuala Lumpur for a week, but so much had happened!... Apart from the 12 hour flight, get in, dress rehearsal and opening nite...The Star newspaper, our promoter, took everyone over to the Petronas Towers for some traditional Malaysian food and a walk across the sky bridge at night! It was quite cool, but I have to say looking at the towers is far more impressive than looking out from them! The local food is amazingly varied, as the population is made up of Malay locals, Chinese & Indian immigrants! So at every buffet, including breakfast in our hotel there is usually a Chinese/Japanese section with steamed dumplings and miso soup! An Indian section with curry and chapatis, usually next to the Malay section which has its traditional Nasi Lemak; chicken curry, coconut rice, peanut sauce and anchovies! Curry for breakfast, brilliant! We also tried their traditional dessert, shaved ice....which is crushed/shaved ice which you mix with tasteless coloured balls of stuff, condensed milk and coloured sweet liquids which I think have something to do with fruit! It’s nice in a slightly sweet but tasteless way!

After our 1^st cover dress run and 3 matinee days in a row, I very nearly spent the whole of our day off in bed! But our 2 wiggies, Rachel and Lisa hired a car, so I went on a little jaunt with them! After an early breakfast, we visited the Batu Caves, a natural limestone eroded hill, filled with Hindu shrines, a temple, the tallest (standing) deity I’ve ever seen and a horde of monkeys!! There was also a huge green monkey man statue and a very nice Hindu vegetarian restaurant; a ‘banana leaf’ cafe where the curry is served on a banana leaf!...the local Indian’s would eat with their hands, but the Malays were happy to offer us a fork and spoon!...don’t think I saw a regular knife in a restaurant at all, which makes eating chicken curry on the bone rather interesting!

We headed north along a road which wasn’t exactly on our map!...but as we were trying to avoid the boring toll highway, it did just fine! The roads were much quieter outside of the city, with fewer daredevil scooters!...and as an ex-colony, they drive on the left, making things easier! We were going to Frasier’s Hill, 1500m up in the jungle, dubbed as ‘little England’!! This isn’t why we were going, it’s a popular holiday resort for residents of KL to get away from the heat of the city, but it used to be a colonial outpost, hence the English architecture and history. Upon arrival, after waiting an hour for the one-way road to open uphill, it appeared to be more of a Malaysian Butlins! To be fair, by the time we’d gotten up the hill, the sun had set and the mists had rolled in over the hills, giving the whole place a slightly deserted feel...more due to everyone already being inside, checked in and eating dinner! We on the other hand, still had to find somewhere to sleep and see if their restaurant was still open!!

Being the week before Christmas, we just managed to get in, as most of the holiday guests weren’t arriving ‘til the end of the week. After a very confusing conversation about the costs of 3 of us sleeping in a 6 bedded apartment (3 bedrooms with twins in each), we left our bags, grabbed all the layers of clothes I had, and headed out to dinner. Fortunately we found the ‘Old Smokehouse’ which had a roaring fire, as being so high in the mountains we were freezing!! (in our linens and vest tops!) A roast dinner and a nice bottle of wine later, we ended up sitting in the communal reception area to our apartment watching the end of Batman, while the mists crept in with a can of beer each and a packet of biscuits, we know how to live the good life!!

The pictures show the slightly bizarre reception, which reminds me of the Metropolitan cathedral in Liverpool which looks like a 60’s conical spaceship!! But as we had to be at work later that day, we headed off to the local waterfall....freezing but great! It would have been perfect, if we’d waited for the sun to rise higher, but time was marching on and we wanted to see a little more of the countryside. We ended up following a different route home, via the museum of tribal villages...hence the rather large carved statue! It was interesting to see that different cultural tribes had quite obviously descended from either Indian or Chinese immigrants or the Malay locals. Their masks and other handicrafts were also interesting, particularly their sliced bamboo ‘wild boar catching’ pit!

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