Friday, April 24, 2009

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Vacation, Whoop!

So, I finished my one year contract on February 21st and took off on a two week vacation to Malaysia and Indonesia with Lauren, the friend from college I started this whole Korean adventure with.

Our first stop was Kuala Lumpur to break up the travel, save some money on airfare and see another country. I loved the city. After a year of Korea it was nice to see diversity in all things, people and culture especially. It was my first experience in a islamic nation. Seeing the other, more common, side of Islam than the stories portrayed in the US news was encouraging. The city possesed many grand mosques it was hard to keep their names right or have pictures of all of them, but the most notably one was..


This is the National Mosque. It is one of the few open to foreigners. The prayer room was huge and everything was so pretty and well taken care of. I have heard from a few friends that the tour guides are quite pushy. Maybe everyone had a day off when we were there, because we were just given robes and then the freedom to roam...


The HUGE prayer room

Me in my temple garb

As you can see my skin is probably the whitest its ever been. Its hard to get sun in Korea. Koreans think of being tan as something only a dirty laborer or a person to that affect would have, so there aren't many opportunities to sit out in the sun without getting weird looks. When I handed the woman my purple robe she and the woman at the gift store started laughing. She then grabbed my arm and said that my skin was soooooo white. I can't tell you how happy I was to be leaving for the beach the next day.

Next we went to the Butterfly Sanctuary. It was beautiful and green. Taking a picture of a butterfly is quite the challenge, but I got a few good ones!


The best shot I got of a butterfly!

Pretty huge Koi fish, there were tons of them!


Beautiful Malaysian flowers

Next, we stopped at the Petronas Towers. They are pretty amazing and the headquarters of the The Petronas Corporations, a petroleum company. I guess most of the world knows this because they seem to work in countries and waters all over the world, but they don't do business in the U.S. So, before I sat through their 15 minute PR video I had no idea they were an oil company.


Islamic inspired architecture


A later night shot of the towers, A little blurry, but still cool!

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