Kuala Lumpur, or How to Get a Bottle of Wine & Goodies from the Hotel Manager...

March 3, 2025 

Kuala Lumpur…rhymes with Thumper!

 I always used to pronounce it “Lum-poor,” thinking it sounded more exotic and elegant. But our Malaysian guide, Diana (Again, not her real name. She chose to go by Diana to make things easier for the tourists!) pronounces the city’s name as it’s written. According to our onboard lecturer, the name means “city built on mud,” I guess exotic or elegant was not what they were going for. 

Actually, it was what was in the mud that built the city. Tin! Early European traders never met an indigenous resource they couldn’t help the locals exploit more efficiently. When hand labor proved too slow, the British brought in large mechanical sluices to wash the metal out of the muddy confluence of a couple of major rivers. Whatever you think about colonization, the Brits did bring in a stream of income, new technologies and they rebuilt the wooden grass-roofed hut-filled town when it burned down and replaced them with new brick shop houses with slate roofs. 

Malaysia has three official languages--Malay, English & Tamil

The Sky was docked at Port Kelang about an hour’s distance from KL (the way locals refer to Kuala Lumpur) so we had a chance to see some of the countryside. My first impression was that the highways were modern, in excellent condition and the traffic was orderly. Even the scooters and motorcycles pretty much kept to the special lanes reserved for them. It was a really nice change from our experience in other Southeast Asian cities.

Early Malay monoliths

But because there was such heavy traffic, they were slow moving and our hour trip took two. At first our guide talked about cutting our time at the National Museum, but evidently there was enough pushback, she rearranged things. The Museum traces the history of humans on the penninsula back for millenia, starting with the neolithic peoples who left carved stelae and buried their dead in elaborately embellished ossuaries, tracing the development of metal works and the rise of sultanates (Malaysia started with 14), through the English colonial period and the Malaysians joining the fight against the Japanese invasion (on bicycles, no less) during WW2, to its establishment as an independent nation of 14 sultanates (Now 13 since Singapore withdrew from the federation in the 60's.) It was a lovely museum and as usual, I felt I could have spent the whole day there. 

The art of handbeaded slippers is disappearing as many young women don't care to learn this ancient craft. Diana explained that when mothers used to look for wives for their sons, they expected the young woman to be able to cook, to sew, and have wide hips so she could bear many children!

But we pressed on to make several photo stops of KL landmarks--the British district with the old Post Office and police station, a cricket pitch that now serves as a gathering place for public holidays, and of course, the iconic twin towers that put the KL skyline on the world stage. The monumental building was actually constructed by two different contracting companies from different countries, each trying to finish before the other. 

I've been seeing these Dali-esque blossoms since Bali. Diana told me they're called Spider Lilies and they must NOT be kept indoors. The orange pollen on the long stamen is poisonous.

Our last photo stop was a WWII memorial. The sculptor was an American and to me, the figures look more like cowboys than Asian warriors. Then we began our trip back to the ship. Because we weren't bucking rushhour traffic, our journey was closer to the hour estimate. However...

If that flag looks suspiciously American, it is. In the sincerest form of flattery, the Malaysians modeled their flag after our Stars & Stripes, though they have 14 stripes for their sultanates, instead of our 13 for the original colonies. 

It had to happen eventually. After all the insane traffic we've been through in Southeast Asia, our tour bus was finally involved in an incident. The DH and I were seated in the front seats, so we had a clear view out the windshield. Our excellent driver had changed lanes to prepare to make a left-hand exit from the expressway--they drive on the left in Malaysia, thanks to the Brits!--when a motorcycle with a passenger on the back came wobbling alongside us on the right. They sped up and started trying to cut in front of us. Our driver gave him a "courtesy toot" and slowed down, but he kept coming, weaving back and forth as though trying to jack up his courage to zip in front of us. Our driver edged over as far as he could and continued to bleed off speed. The biker pulled slightly ahead and looked back at us, and then, he swerved into our bus, hitting the right front fender. The bike disappeared from our view.

"Oh, no, dear Jesus!" I was afraid we'd just seen someone killed, but when our driver stopped the bus completely, the biker and his passenger were standing up by the remains of the bike. 

Diana, our guide and the driver called their tour office to report the accident and walked back to talk to them. When she came back, she said they were Afghanis who were in the country as guest workers. She also said they reeked of alcohol. They tried to extort money from our driver, saying they wouldn't report the accident if he paid them. 

It was a SCAM!   

Diana went all "momma grizzly" on them and threatened to report THEM! No money changed hands. And no police were called to the scene. Then we calmly went on back to the port. 

Our driver apologized profusely to everyone as we exited the bus. Since we had a full view of events, we gave Diana our email in case they needed our testimony. We really didn't want our driver penalized because he did everything right. (Fortunately, we got an email from Diana a couple of days later letting us know that the company had not fired our driver. He didn't face any adverse consequences.)

When we got back on the Sky, I told our new Hotel Manager what had happened and reitterated that the tour company had kept us from harm and our driver was not in any way at fault. He must have thought I was rattled by the event because he had a bottle of wine and an assortment of petit fours delivered to our stateroom. 

Thanks, Marcel!