Postcard From Kuala Lumpur

Our favorite sacred places...

Postcard From Kuala Lumpur

By Frida

Helloooooo dear readers! It’s so much fun to write to you again. How are you doing? Would you like to hear a stooooooory? I’ve got one for you today...

When we arrived here (I’m only saying “here” because it’s very hard to always write “Kuala Lumpur”... even though it is a lot of fun to say! Wait! Back to the story, Frida, don’t get distracted!)... 

...aaaas I was saying, when we arrived “here,” the first thing I noticed was a lot of extremely tall buildings. In fact (as our taxi driver told us), one of the buildings here is the second tallest in the whole world. And I said, “Wow, we’re really spoiled with tall buildings these days!”

Seriously, they are everywhere. The super tall one here is called the Merdeka 118, probably because it has 118 stories (including 5 underground). It is still the tallest building in Kuala Lumpur, which is the capital city here in Malaysia. (Wait, did I mention we are in Asia? Well, we are.) Here it is, towering high over a street market …

My favorite skyscrapers, which literally look like they made a scraping wound in the sky, are the Petronas Towers. They actually look like Siamese twins, as they are joined by a bridge, connecting them in the middle. Here’s a picture of them, all lit up at night:

I imagined they built them like this: By running from one building to the other and back again, placing one brick at a time, until they got to the very tippy top. 

Then I thought, “Wait, how would they even do that? They’d need to be the best marathon runner in the world and the best rock/brick climber in the world.” 

Then I thought, “I bet they have a whole team of people, working day and night, building it high into the sky.”

What do you think? (Feel free to comment below… and don’t forget to share our Postcards!)

Even more amazing than the modern skyscrapers were the sacred temples. A sacred place is somewhere people go to worship. [Dad’s Note: The word sacred comes from the Latin sacrāre, which means “to devote.”]

We visited some of them this week. 

First, we went to a Muslim temple, which is called a mosque. It was very interesting learning about how the people there prayed, which they do five times every single day. I think it would be too hard for me, going up and down (and repeating!) all day everyday.

Even so, the building was beautiful, with intricate carvings and even semi-precious gemstones in the walls. 

And here’s one of me, inside. As you can see, we had to cover our hair and wear baggy dresses. They were pretty, but veeery hot!

Next, we went to a Chinese temple, where Buddhists pray and make offerings to their gods. The temple had lots of stunning carvings of dragons and tigers and roosters. (Wait, what? Roosters? Yep, even roosters. They were in a special garden out back.)

Inside, where there was actually air-conditioning (aaahhh...aaair-conditioning...), they had these big red containers which held a bunch of long, green sticks. The idea is that you pick up a bundle of sticks and drop them. Then you choose the stick which “sticks out” the highest and read the number. Next, you open the tiny drawer of the same number and pick out a little scroll, which has your fortune on it. 

I got number 4, which was apparently very lucky. Mommy and daddy got two and three. 

On the last day, we went on a nature excursion. We started at Batu Caves, where we had to climb millions and billions and trillions of stairs (ok, not that many, but still a lot!) There were lots of monkeys there, even one with a cute little newborn. 

But they were quite “grabby.” One of them even tried to steal my mom’s purse. Daddy called him a “cheeky monkey.”

At the top of the stairs were more Buddhist temples and statues, but they were all wet from the water in the cave. In fact, we were all bathed in our own sweat. Time to cool down!

After the caves, we drove to a nearby river, where we saw an eagle feeding at sunset. Then, when the sun went down, and after we had dinner, we went on a boat to see the fireflies. It was actually a little scary at first, because it was dark and the boat was rocking back and forth, but I got used to it after a while. 

One of the fireflies even got caught in my shirt, like a flashing little stowaway. Finally, the boat driver gave everyone nets, which we splashed in the water to make the bioluminescent plankton glow.

They kind of looked like bright, blue stars in the murky, black water.

Of all the sacred places we went to in Malaysia, my own favorite was... NATURE! (Also, the monkeys were super cool!)

Ok, that’s a long one for today. Until next week...

Selamat tinggal! (That’s farewell in Malaysian ;-)

Frida

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