Holy Monkeys and Other Stories

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur bretheren. Today has been a real crash course of the city, courtesy of Jason, mighty king of tour guides and all-round great guy, who my friends Tim and Alice had kindly arranged to take me around.

I will now share of the plenty, which I have been given!

First, let's take a temple. High on a mountain (climb around 270 steps, must ask Jason the exact amount again) there is a hindu temple dedicated to a god whose name is something like Murghaba (This is either his name, or the Indian dish I had for lunch today. You know me and names - they just don't stick in my head. But anyway he's the more boring brother of the god Ganesh of elephant-head fame. Must check with Jason on this). The temple area at the top of the steps is rather a smashing cave/grotto and a little natural clearing behind it. Murghaba's temples are always high on mountains, because apparently he spent most of his life sulking on a mountain top after he felt his mummy and daddy had been unfair and shown favouritism towards Ganesh. Let this be a warning to all parents on the dangers of favouritism.

Once a year his followers stick hooks in their backs and arrows through their cheeks (they're in a trance, it doesn't hurt) and walk in a 12-hour procession through the night to arrive at this temple. Then follows a week of utter madness, which includes breaking of many coconuts and shaving of many heads and colouring the scalps with henna or curry or something yellow anyway. A few days after that, Kati the Finn comes with Jason and makes him walk up the 270 steps. But we are not alone. The main madness may be over, but devotees are still turning up in droves to have their hair shorn and chuck coconuts and pray. Some of them, as seen below, are carrying babies in cloth-bundles hanging from sugar canes to ensure the health of the child. Others had just settled for wrapping live snakes around their shoulders. Hmmm...

Others are feeding the holy monkeys and holy pidgeons yet more coconuts and cookies. The many chickens running around are apparently not holy chickens, but have just turned up to partake of the plenty. The preferred snack of the monkeys apparently is cameras and sunglasses, but Jason didn't know where they fence their stolen goods (hah, so even he doesn't know everything!).

Apart from the temples, I got a look at a colourful spectrum of Kuala Lumpur sights and places of interest such as the palace of the king (They have a rotating system, whereby a different one of the nine sultans becomes the king every five years. The real power is with the prime minister, but the king certainly has some political clout. The current king has used his prime position of power for the good of his citizens by improving the status of long distance horse racing in the country. A crucial issue indeed!).

We also drifted through Little India, past the Lake Park - the green belt of the city, past the cricket field (under which a shopping mall was built. However about ten years ago the rivers flooded and so did the underground shopping mall, which has been empty ever since), into Chinatown which, surprisingly enough, has a hindu temple in the middle of it (a great story to this, but it'll have to keep for a rainy day), the rich hotel and posh shopping mall areas (which I was happy to just let slip past in Jason's air conditioned car, since they kind of depress me, as they're so predictably alike everywhere in the world) - and so finally I set off on my own to just commune with mother Kuala Lumpur for some hours.

My wanderings ended up, as they so often do, by the Petronas Twin Towers, which even after Shanghai are still totally wow-some. They look like planes of glass stacked up on top of eachother to incredible hights.

Tomorrow I'm off to Melaka with Tim, Alica and their sons. So with a final image of the PTT, I dib thee adieu for now.