DJ-RTW's Travel Blog

Hot and Humid Indonesia - jakarta, Indonesia

 This place was Average visited Feb 26, 2008

Jakarta is a lot like cities in India with a lot of people, traffic, crowded streets and shops. The humidity has been at about 94% the whole time that we've been here with the temperatures in the mid- to high 30s C/90 to 100 F. While the heavy rains limit what we can do, it is providing a well-needed cleansing to the streets, plants, buildings, etc. Everything is lush and green and fresh smelling. I don’t think we would want to be here during the hot and dry season as you get the feeling it would be pretty dirty and smelly. On our second day here, we decided to go for a stroll in the old part of town. The bus took us most of the way there but then we started walking with just a Lonely Planet guide and a tourist map. We should have stopped when we crossed under the overpass and started seeing a few huts made of scavenged wood and corrugated metal for the roofs….but we went on in our merry way. Guess what? We were the only tourists! We ended up walking for an hour and a half with a lot of people staring at these two white tourists who were obviously out of place. We were just sweating buckets (remember 35 degree heat and 96% humidity), through shanty towns where no water was available, the streets were just mud paths and any electricity had been hot-wired from the poles. People smiled and said hello in English, how are you? etc. and one even addressed us in Spanish . We saw a lot of interesting things – like about 20 shops making awnings our of huge tarps – but couldn’t take any photos as we didn’t want to offend or anger anyone. When a small van-bus tooted us and we hopped on to return to the more developed part of the city…and just in time, too, as the street ahead was completely flooded for at least one block long.

posted Feb 27, 2008 | Comments (0)

City Monkeys in Kuala Lumpur - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

 This place was Great visited Feb 24, 2008

When ran into a troop of macaque monkeys after the gardens and couldn’t resist taking their pictures. There were at least a dozen of them with many babies. When we walked through the area an hour or so later they were all gone deep into the trees and there was no evidence they had been around.

posted Feb 27, 2008 | Comments (0)

Flowers & Butterflies in the City - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

 This place was Average visited Feb 24, 2008

On day three in Kuala Lumpur, we visited a butterfly sanctuary and an orchid/hibiscus garden in the center of the city. While the preserve and the gardens were beautiful, we found the staff to be very surly. I decided that they hated tourists, or Westerners, or Western tourists and were just in the worst jobs possible for people who hate Western tourists! Like many places in the world, we had to pay extra to take our camera in. For one dollar per camera, we could take photos of the butterflies. About ten minutes after we entered the butterfly sanctuary – a large, netted garden – they started watering the plants using irrigation sprinklers above our heads. While they only watered part of the garden at one time, we found ourselves scrambling from one section to another to avoid getting the camera wet. I couldn’t believe that someone couldn’t figure out to water the garden before opening so that visitors don’t get wet and so that the butterflies stay out as they will hide when it rains/waters. The hibiscus and orchid gardens were beautiful with quite a lot of variety in plants, colors and methods of growing. There were bees the size of my thumb but they weren’t interested in us at all…just the nectar from the plants. We were going to visit the “World’s Largest (Covered) Bird Sanctuary” but they wanted $17 US per person – which is several days wages in this country – and seeing the featured birds on their posters (flamingo, owl, parrot, toucan) we decided to skip it as we’d seen most of these birds elsewhere, usually in the wild.

posted Feb 27, 2008 | Comments (0)

Kuala Lumpur in Three Days - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

 This place was Average visited Feb 23, 2008

We didn't have a lot of time left but we did want to see Malaysia, Indonesia and Bali before leaving for our sixth and last continent: Australia. We spent three days in Kuala Lumpur and felt that this was enough time for the city although it would have been nice to spend some time in the country. We took a half-day tour to get someone else to drive us around the city and decided it was one of the lamest tours yet. We drove by the twin Petronas towers (see photo), stopped at the King’s Palace, except he doesn’t live there anymore (see photos), the National Museum (ho hum), and a bunch of national war monuments, mosques, etc. Jacob and I visited the old market which has been completed renovated into a modern market with tourist prices. We also walked through Chinatown and Little India to see the amazing mix of people living in Kuala Lumpur.

posted Feb 26, 2008 | Comments (0)

Citadel of the Women: Banteay Srei - Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia

 This place was Great visited Feb 20, 2008

On our third and last day of touring the archeological sites around Angkor Wat, we visited Bantai Srei – otherwise known as the ‘citadel of the women’. This Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva was built in 967 A.D. and is one of the best preserved monuments in the area. The Indian influence is apparent in every decoration as these depict epics from the sub-continent, especially the Ramayana. After visiting the temple, we did the usual very fast tour of a local market and refused to buy Diet Cokes for twice what they are worth. Then we stopped and visited a streetside vendor who made her own sugar out of palm juice -- didn't know such a thing existed. We bought sugar candies as well as some crafts from her. On the way home we took many photos of what, even for us, is becoming ordinary: people making waffles on the side of the road, selling gasoline in liquor bottles, vendors mobbing tourists, and selling snails to eat. And now, we are all templed out and don’t expect to visit another one anytime soon. We fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Friday and it will have to be an amazingly spectacular – stupendous even – temple to get us to visit another one there!

posted Feb 26, 2008 | Comments (0)