Malaysia: Melaka and Kuala Lumpur

This time last week I think I would have been on the plane to Melbourne from Kuala Lumpur already, wearing my maxi dress and fuzzy socks that I now always bring with me on planes, watching 90s movies and zoning out but not falling asleep. I’ve been back home almost a week now and thought and talked about the trip a lot: what I did, what I ate, who I saw, what I thought about while I was away. Still, though, I’ve jumped right back into the Wellington thing, Malaysia seems very far away at the moment. Maybe if I show some pictures it will seem a little more like a place I actually went, something I actually did, rather than just a pleasant and interesting dream I had.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Even though I had like six hours’ layover in the Melbourne airport on the way over, I stupidly didn’t think to charge my camera batteries or anything—because let’s just come right out with it, I am not that into taking pictures and mostly do it just to sort of record things; the first night in Melaka at Ed’s parents’ I was writing in my journal all blearily and jet-laggedly: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BLOG?” re: my complete lack of pictures the first day. Anyway, what happened on the first day was that Ed and his auntie came to pick me up at KL and they took me to their family’s kampung (village) to a house they have there. I was super tired and super wanting to be a good guest so I basically walked around in a daze and tried to make conversation with various family members and gave Ed’s grandma some gifts (and learned to say, “Good morning, Grandma: “Selamat pagi, Ne-Ne,”) and watched Ed’s auntie make lunch. I didn’t have an adapter to charge the camera anyway, so I mostly tried to stay awake and to take in the fact that hey, I was in Asia now. I was a little stunned, as I was in Tonga, about how much Malaysia reminded me, foliage-wise, of home, but then I remembered it’s because we don’t have much native Florida stuff in Florida, anymore, and all the things I think of as beign very Miami—bougainvillea, palms, orchids—are all from Asia and the Pacific anyway.

Anyway we drove from the kampung to Ed’s hometown of and spent the night at his parents’, and then walked around the city for a morning before driving back to KL where he works and from where I would be leaving for Borneo in a couple of days.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Me and Ed’s mom. His entire family was SUPER super nice to me, making me huge portions of delicious food (and I plan to write a whole separate post on that by the end of this week) and teaching me bahasa Malaysia words (“makan!” = “eat!”) and generally treating me like a family member instead of some random American from New Zealand. Terima kasih, Ed’s family! You are the best.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Ed is an architect so we spent a lot of time discussing design and art and other lofty things like that (when we weren’t gossiping about Wellington people in the car, of course). I think he would call this an example of the local architectural vernacular, and I know he had a lot to say about the tilework on the stairs here (Dutch influence, perhaps?) He is a very good friend and was an excellent tour guide because he really knows his history; I felt so privileged to be there in his hometown with him to show me around. I know him from Wellington of course so even hearing him speak his first language was really cool for me; I attempted to reciprocate by helpfully reading signs in Malay to him, which I’m not so sure he appreciated as much.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Here I am showing off my inability to pose nicely for a photo, in front of a Buddhist temple. Malaysia has three major ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese, and Indian, and is famous for its cultural and religious diversity. Right after this photo was shot we visited a Hindu temple, a Catholic church, and a mosque, all within about two blocks of one another, co-existing, as far as I could tell, very calmly and peacefully.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Here is the fountain at a famous mosque; we didn’t want to taking pictures of people praying so we just stayed outside and peeked in briefly.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Continuing the architectural theme, here Ed and I are at his old university (where, fascinatingly, the languages of instruction are not bahasa Malaysia but Arabic and English) to break up our ride back to KL and also to see this prize-winning gazebo that he designed when he was a student and is still standing on campus. Ed would want me to mention, I think, that his aesthetic preferences learn more towards the modern and less towards the traditional, but I still think this is a great gazebo and I was really excited to see it. I am also happy to have at least one photo of us in the same frame.

It was school holidays while I was there but there were some students milling around, and of course all the women were wearing different kinds of head coverings. Ed told me I didn’t need to cover my own head but I happened to have a scarf in my bag so I just threw it on, just because. I don’t think anyone would have cared, but you know how you get when you’re a tourist sometimes, you want to show that you’re at least making an effort. “They’ll just think you’re Syrian,” Ed said, laughing at me, and we had a very nice walk around campus.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Back in KL, we did something very Malaysian indeed: went to the mall! I was a little overwhelmed; it’s not that there aren’t malls in New Zealand, because of course there are, just not on this scale. This place had its own train station and was huge, with what seemed like four thousand stories and eighty million stores. I couldn’t help poking my head into the Gap there, just to see if it’s like every other Gap in the world (verdict: yup!) but mostly I enjoyed sitting outside by the fountain in the warm evening, chatting with Ed and watching everyone else sit by the fountain and chat with their own friends.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

Plus we got what I like to call our prom picture.

Photo by Zaed Aznam.

I had one day in Kuala Lumpur by myself, before I went to Kota Kinabalu for the dive trip, and at Ed’s suggestion I went to Masjid Negara, the national mosque of Malaysia. Ed likes it because it’s a more modern style, but since I didn’t really have anything to compare it to other than the mosque we’d stuck our heads into the day before in Melaka, I was more interested in the opportunity to walk around a little and see what it was like. I’d never been to a mosque before.

I was absurdly proud of my ability to take the train to the mosque station (what with all its clearly laid-out signs in English and all); the hardest part was getting from the station across a big busy road to the mosque itself. Luckily I was there in time for non-Muslim tourist hours.

All the foreign women who come to visit are given these purple robe things, and you see big flocks of tourists wandering around the marble arcade, barefoot in their flowing purple gowns. Non-Muslims weren’t allowed into the main prayer hall but a very nice lady was volunteering there and told me all about the various design influences: the traditional Malay woodwork and the Moorish tiling and the German crystal chandelier and so forth. She’s been volunteering at various mosques her whole life and was able to tell me how this one compared to others in Malaysia and all over the world, and was obviousl awesome.

Directions to the bathrooms and the ablution rooms.

Across the street from the mosque is the Islamic Arts Museum, at which I spent about four hours and loved completely. I mean this gorgeous tilework is what you see just on your way in from the street:

That second one is now, you’ll be happy to know, the wallpaper on my crappy phone.

This inverted dome is the main architectural feature of the museum, and you see it right when you come in. It’s sort of mesmerizing, like you look up and it and you’re like, okay, cool, it’s a dome, but it’s upside down, and then you keep looking and figure out that the scrollwork is actually Arabic letters and if you sort of squint your eyes a little it looks like it recedes back into the ceiling but then it pops back out again. I mean for a design feature it is pretty great, is what I’m saying.

The outdoor fountain by which I sat for quite some time, just listening to the water and enjoying not being frozen to death by the rather intense air conditioning (which reminded me of Florida as well).

I don’t exactly understand how, like, a camera flash works, so I was unable to get good photos of most of these, but here’s a picture of my absolute favourite exhibit: tiny little scale models of mosques, from all over the world! Although now that I look at this again, I don’t think it’s a model of a mosque, I think it’s a model of a castle or a palace or something. But whatever: all these doll’s house-size mosques, all in their different styles, all incredibly detailed. I think I liked this museum so much because actually I am not that into art on the wall, you know? I mean I have Etsy prints on my wall at home and all that, but when I go to a museum I am usually not that into paintings. When my friend Marah and I went to the Uffizi, way back in the 90s, we sort of peered at that famous Botticelli, you know, with Venus arising from the depths on the shell and everything, and my initial, honest reaction was: yep, I’ve seen that poster on a lot of dorm room walls! In terms of design I am usually more into things like costumes and jewelery and decorative arts, if that makes sense. Since Islamic art can’t depict living things it’s all about architecture and patterns and decoration, and so I was very happy wandering around and oohing and aahing, looking at a lot of new things and thinking a lot of new thoughts about what I was seeing.