Big city life

For my second stay in KL I found myself a nice little Boutique Hotel in the middle of the Shopping & Entertainment area calles Bukit Bintang.
And right after I arrived back from the jungle I walked over to the biggest and busiest of all shopping malls, sat down in an Italian restaurant and enjoyed a nice (very un-asian) salad and 2 glasses of Sauvignon Blanc... my first alcohol for weeks. And of course I watched all these people walking past. I'd say about 95% were Asian, only occasional an European/American tourist or business man. And then the mall itself, a crazy, mega-dimensioned palace full of the usual brands and designers, the same you would find everywhere else in the world. But I realized that there is 2 things or better, places, that the Asians are crazy about: everything worth buying, be it clothes, watches, sweets, decorations etc. has to come from either London or Switzerland. Every second shop has London in its name, they are crazy for English designs, no matter what, especially Union Jacks of course. And watches, holidays and chocolate have to come from Switzerland, which is their no. 1 holiday destination once they made money. And then the lavish Christmas decoration, everything is illuminated, Christmas articles are sold everywhere, the mall is decorated in artificial snow and everybody poses for smartphone pictures with these curiosities. I mean, they are not even Christians, this hype purely comes from their admiration for Europe. And for me, it doesn't even feel like Christmas at 30+ degrees outside temperature (well okay, it's much colder inside the mall, but far away from winter feeling). So I watch them get crazy over loud, poppy Christmas songs and escape to the basement of the mall where the food court is. Now, all these fancy shops on the upper floors are rather empty, because not many people can really afford to shop there. Most people just hang out there, watching the window decoration, dreaming of a rich future and having their meal in the basement at the food court just like me, the only place that is affordable for normal people. And food court in Asia always means a huuuuge selection of different dishes from different corners of the continent. Here I could try out many things just like in street kitchens but with better hygienic standards.

 On the next day I made a trip on the local train to a Hindu temple in the northern outskirts of the city called the "Batu Caves". I realized I was missing some Buddha in my life and here he was, the tallest standing Buddha-statue in... well, in Southest Asia maybe, or was it even the biggest at all? Anyway, it was very impressive. I went on a friday to avoid the big family weekend crowd and it was only moderately busy. So I climbed the 272 steps up to the entrance of the caves and was shocked to see these bloody monkeys again. Do they have to spoil everything? It might not be a secret anymore that I truly hate monkeys. And here again they proved their nastiness by attacking an Indian 2years-old girl who was screaming her lungs out. Luckily she only lost the plastic bag she was carrying, but what a drama! I hurried away from the scenes (enough adult family members were giving her sympathy), happy about the monkeys being distracted from me. Even though I didn't carry any food, I knew by now that monkeys steel first and check afterwards if it is edible.
The caves itself were huge and several temples and shrines were built in it and pigeons lives everywhere. They were actually not caves in that sense but giant rock arches.

 

Afterwards I treated myself to a fresh coconut (oh how much I will miss it) and made my way back to the city.

I got off one stop earlier and walked around Chinatown, had some Pad Thai for lunch and finally found the party zone of KL, a street full of western looking bars, restaurants and nightclubs.
The next day I went to the TV tower, called Menara KL to enjoy the views on an open air observation deck.

After that I was a bit running out of ideas what to do. Lots of things would be so much more fun with a travel companion and I was a bit sick of walking around by myself, eating by myself and not drinking, because that's no fun alone.
To cure my loneliness I walked into a Spa and had an exhausting massage and a relaxing pedicure. And even though I can't get enough of diving into the masses and their shopping craziness I felt that it was slowly time to move on to the next place... and come back another day with someone to enjoy big city life even more. Because that's what I found out about myself: I love big cities! I love roaming around shopping malls and restaurants, walk around skyscrapers, riding the monorail, sipping tea somewhere outside, mingling with business people on their lunch break or tourists enjoying the sights, everything is so modern and chic...  I so much can't wait to move to a big city :-)

In the Malaysian Jungle

After 3 days in KL which I spent mostly in bed due to some food poisoning, I escaped the big city on a trip to the biggest and oldest National park in Malaysia: Taman Negara.

From KL it was a 3 hours bus ride, followed by a 30minutes minibus ride and a 3 hours boat ride upstream the Tembeling River. I had packed a smaller backpack for the 3 days and enjoyed the trip without too much lugging around. At the end of the day me and a small group of Dutch, Spanish and Finnish tourists arrived in Kuala Tahan, the gateway to the National park. This village consists mainly of guesthouses (from backpacker to resort-style) and some restaurants built on swimming pontoons on the river.
After dinner I joined a night walking tour to observe insects... might not sound very appealing, but it was very exciting indeed!
In the pitch-black jungle we followed our guide Pisan along a convenient boardwalk, each of us had a torch, but Pisan knew best where to find the creatures. In the Southeast Asian jungle all insects are much bigger than what I'm used to in Europe which makes it scary and fascinating at the same time. See here my best of:

We have seen spiders much bigger than this but they were too high up the tree to take a pic. This one is also impressive, isn't it?

 Pisan grabbed almost every insect to show us it's features up close. This one is a stick insect (also called walking stick), which normally looks like a stem of some plant, but he showed us that they do have wings, very surprising:

 A six-legged spider... apparently they feed their legs to their babies... not sure how that works when they have more than 8 babies in a time...

 No, this is not a man with tiny hands, this is a HUGE cricket:

Want more jungle fun? This is what I found the next day:

The second day I explored the jungle during daylight.
At first our guide led us to the canopy walkway, apparently the highest (biggest? longest?) in the world. It was quite wobbly trying to get from tree to tree and the views were mainly dense, green jungle. Once in the middle in between two trees, being really concentrated on where to put my feet, suddenly a huge tree fell down right next to me. My heart skipped a beat and I almost jumped. Apparently they were doing some woodcutting in the forest. Now a falling tree without advance notice is definitely nothing you want to see while being on a rope bridge more than 30meters above the ground!

The rest of the hike was luckily a lot more unexciting, we followed a boardwalk all the way up a hill of 344meters and enjoyed the views. Unfortunately on top of the hill I had to witness how a German woman explained the German taxation system to a Malaysian tour guide and I was very embarrassed.

For the way back I chose a more challenging way and was by myself and I could spot many more insects minding their business and also some squirrels and woodpeckers. I tried to stomp my feet as hard as possible to chase off potential snakes, so my only worry were the annoying monkeys, but luckily I didn't see any.
The reason why I like watching insects is the fact that they are mostly not disturbed by human presence, I mean given the fact that you don't interfere or disturb them. I watched ants carrying impressive loads, big bee-like flying insects and some smaller spiders...

As I had booked a package, the afternoon activity was predefined by something called rapid shooting (not to confuse with rabbit shooting, as my Finnish companion stated). We were packed in one of the narrow boats and the guide would drive in a absolutely crazy and senseless way so we would get soaking wet. I mean, I don't mind getting wet on a rafting activity. But I hated sitting in a motor driven boat and the only reason we got wet is because the guide went too fast in the turns... I was quite annoyed when we arrived at a village on the river inhabited by a tribe of the Orang Asli (which means "original people of Malaysia") who live without electricity, school, doctors totally remote from civilized world. They looked almost African with dark skin and curly hair. Even though we learnt quite a bit about their way of life, there was almost no interaction partly because of the language (not even the Malaysians knew their language properly), partly because they were so used to the standard procedure every tourist group gets there. The kids weren't even particularly curious. So, after we tried to make fire like they do and tested our skills with the blowpipe (targeting a panda soft toy), we had to get back in the boat and get wet again... huge fun for the guide!

It would have been nice to do more hiking in the national park itself, but as I had booked the package I had to go back the next day and guess what, I was already looking forward to explore the city after all this nature :-)

Pakistan map

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Pakistan epilogue

So, yes, I made it back to Kuala Lumpur safe and sound, I was at no point in danger and I have seen the most incredible landscape and experience authentic family life during my stay in Pakistan and I would already now judge it as the best experience of my whole travels!
However, as you can imagine, not everything is a piece of cake in Pakistan. The constant awareness of crime in the cities is a real nuisance when you are not used to it. But that's the advantage of having a local as a friend, who would tell you not to get out of the car in front of the gate (only inside), always to lock your doors, and never to drive alone somewhere, never use your smartphone in public... this is pretty much applicable to all big, third-world-cities.
But I also want to mention that there was a lot of planning involved on Maryam's side to make this experience as comfortable as possible for me. She had plan B options for every single step that was planned. Unpredictability is a major spoilsport in this country.
And also we were lucky in many regards.
The Karakorum Highway, the only road-connection between Gilgit and Hunza, was closed due to rock-slide shortly after we left. Just imagine we would have been stuck in Hunza or not even be able to arrive there because of a blocked highway... not so funny!
When we arrived back in Islamabad lots of mourning processions were going on and luckily, by the time we needed the bus to Lahore everything was open. But as we learnt afterwards, shortly after we left the city the major traffic arteries were closed again so we wouldn't have reached Lahore if leaving just an hour later. Being stuck in Islamabad... not so funny.
The same in Lahore, the whole city was blocked for processions and somewhere in the city some shia muslims were killed by sunni muslims (or vice versa?), so nothing was moving the whole day, especially no busses from outside. Being stuck in a bus on the dark highway? Not so funny.
And last but not least, a few days after I left Karachi a bomb attack was happening next to a mosque which killed several people...

I'm not saying I'm happy to be alive but just imagine all these disturbances and chaos and we would have been stuck in there... So in this regard, traveling Pakistan is a lucky game and I had won the first prize of an unique, undisturbed, unforgettable experience.

Last days in Karachi

As Maryam had to go back to the office monday morning I spent my last days sightseeing with her sister Amna and Insha, a friend of their's.
Karachi itself is not really a touristic highlight, being the commercial capital of the country it mainly hosts big companies' headquarters, a busy port and various industries.
One of the few sights is an ancient graveyard outside the city called Chaukhandi tombs. At first it was hard to find the site as no sign whatsoever was put at the main road, not to mention anything in English! By asking local people we eventually found it and even a guide who would show us around. According to Insha who had been here quite a few times with visitors it'd been the same guy for the last 15 years... The remarkable thing about this graveyards from the 15th-18th century are it's impressive tombs with lots and lots of ornamental sandstone carvings. We could admire impressive tombs of whole families with various wealth situations. Especially astonishing was the way these tombs were built without using any cement or other sticky material, the sandstone plates were just arranged on top of each other.
It was baking hot in the sun and no protection was in sight so after about half an hour we happily escaped into the nice coolness of the air-conditioned car and went back to the city.

After a big lunch from all you can eat buffet with numerous Pakistani dishes while overlooking the beach we went to the Mohatta palace, a Hindu businessman's summer home built in 1927 in typical Rajasthan tradition. This businessman couldn't enjoy his summer home for long as he fled to India after the partition. Nowadays it hosts a gallery with various exhibitions and currently some Pakistani's crazy modern art.

And that was it about the sights of Karachi!
More importantly we tried lots of different food, went some more souvenir shopping and after work Maryam joined in.

And finally on my last day I sent my Indian/Pakistani clothes back home as I won't need them in the countries I'll travel to next, which meant a huge relive for my luggage weight ;-)

The beautiful Wazir Khan Mosque

Take your shoes off, cover your head and step into the beautiful piece of islamic architecture:

 

 

At the Indian-Pakistani-border

Every day at sunset there is a grand spectacle at the only road border crossing between India and Pakistan.
It is the "lowering the flags"-ceremony.

Both sides are packed with people, strictly separated by men and women of course. Well the Indian side was considerably more crowded. There were tribunes like in a sport stadium to capture the crowd and make everybody get a glimpse or their "team". On each side of the border one of the guards was heating up the masses with their national slogans, in our case "Pakistan Zindabad". People would raise their fist and roar and it gave me the creeps standing in the middle of this passionately patriotic crowd. Then the flag was lowered, folded and carried away, the border guard did their high kicks and within 15 minutes everything was over. But this atmosphere, this tension in the air, all this national pride made me become a bit more Pakistani as well at that moment ;-)

Family weekend in Lahore

Flying out of the tiny airport of Gilgit under a clear blue sky we could easily spot popular sights such as Nangar Parbat and the Horseshoe Lake.

We landed in Islamabad ahead of time, caught the taxi to the bus station and waited there patiently for our departure. The shia muslims of this city were still mourning (see Muhurram) and hence many processions had forced the traffic to stop, so all previous buses had been canceled.
The 4 hours ride to Lahore were overly pleasant, sitting in the front row with max leg space and admiring the plains of Punjab region. I was especially surprised of the well maintained and empty highway that connected the 2 cities: 4 lanes and no potholes!

We arrived in Lahore on time but also here the shia muslims were active so our pick-up delegation couldn't get through the blocked roads. And of course no 2 unaccompagnied ladies would catch a taxi after dark in this country!

Eventually we made it, arriving at Maryam's cousin's house and being welcomed by 7 more family members and a deliciously tender mutton for dinner.

The weekend turned out to be the usual shopping-sightseeing-entertainment-dining-out-action, but everything in the frame of a Muslim country with it's strict rules and idiosyncrasies and with a very warm-hearted family as my guide. So let me summarize for you, what I learned this weekend.

What I learned about Pakistani families:
Assuming that the family I learnt to know is normal, I found myself in the middle of a bunch of 2 generations, men and women casually interacting with each other. Like in every middle-class family over here there were servants who did the cooking, so nobody had to spend their time in the kitchen. In fact, most of the time we spend in someone's bedroom, be it for morning tea or for getting ready to go out at night. While one person was getting ready in the bathroom, the other 8 sat together on the bed or the opposite lounge chair to chat, giggle and play up... just like in every other family anywhere else in the world. There was no reservation between family member, it was a cuddling and teasing. And most remarkably the men (in this setting all below their mid twenties) were nothing but polite, charming, sensitive and pure gentlemen. So I wonder, where does that impression of a macho-regimented Muslim family come from?

What I learned about Pakistani society:
All above described happens behind closed doors, in the sacred community of the family. That's why family plays such an important role in Muslim society, because outside these circle of trust, everyone is considered an enemy. Be it a clerk in the service industry, a shop seller or just a person on the street, the Pakistani approach is to be unfriendly, don't smile, be bold, don't show weakness, get your message across and try to minimize contact. Such a difference to the happy, intimate family life!  
And now I also understand why women cover up as much as possible, to reduce any kind of attention. Any attention from outside means a potential threat. So, show no skin (not even arms), no shape, cover your body in cloths to hide every bum, cover your hair (not mandatory) and always, always have a male family member next to you showing everybody that you are protected!

And even more surprised I was later on, when I learned that there is a red-light district in Lahore called Heera Mandi (which means Diamond Market)! We went out there for dinner at a restaurant displaying artwork of a guy who was born in one of the whorehouses and penciled and painted everyday scenes.
I learned that prostitutes are officially dancers and yes, they still wear the traditional outfit (I mean traditional Pakistani, not traditional prostitute) and men can hire them to dance "with happy end" as I would put it.
Unfortunately they even sticked to the official mourning, so nothing was going on that night. 

What I learned about shopping in Pakistan:
As you can imagine there are not many western tourists in Pakistani and accordingly I raised a lot of attention in the streets of Lahore. Suddenly everybody shouted something in English trying to catch my attention, people were gaping and children couldn-t turn their heads away. I was happy to be heavily guarded by my entourage, so nobody had a chance to come close to me, be it for selling or for stealing something.
I felt like I made someone happy just by looking at their stuff.
But when it got down to business I left the talking to my 8 shopping assistants who told the shopseller how much of a rubbish quality his scarfs are and that one in turn tried to convince them of the opposite. It's probably the same in every bazaar of the world, they show you stuff you are not really interested in instead of asking you what you want. I was forced to sit down and tons of scrafs were opened in front of my eyes, the shopseller was making every effort to show me everything he has in his shop and everybody was talking Urdu to each other which made me just a sidekick... but I enjoyed it :-) At the end of all the insulting, dispraising and bargaining I had a beautiful Pashmina scarf and authentic leather slippers.

The latter turned out to dissolve after 2 hours of wearing them, so we went back to the shop and the insulting started again... (Luckily nobody dared insulting my feet for destroying the shoes)
Can you imagine 3 ladies grumbling in this hard, loud Urdu language and trying for 20 minutes to squeeze out my money from this guy? Unfortunately it didn't work, but the experience was priceless.

In the scarf shop:

 (the knees on the right edge also belong to my entourage ;-)

Inside the shoe shop:

Outside the shoe shop:

Dining out in Pakistan:
Breakfast (to be on the safe side we brought our own crocery)

 Tea

 Dinner at the rooftop of Coco's Den

How it is to be a tourist in Pakistan:
For some reason I thought it is a disadvantage to raise so much attention as a western tourist, but when we came to visit the Lahore fort it turned out to be of good use. The fort was officially closed as it was taken over by lots of army soldiers who needed to be present to watch the mourning processions of the shia muslims and to avoid any clashes with the sunni muslims, which is apparently a historical must.
So, I expected that in such fierce times nobody would want to have a conspicuous tourist around.
But it was the contrary: because I was obviously no muslim they would allow me in the fort as I wouldn't be endangered anyway. And because no woman should go alone, my whole entourage was allowed as well. After a thorough ID check,  a confidential examination of our male companion Faizan who had to tell them on my behalf what I was doing there and some "money for tea", we were allowed in and enjoyed the huge fort almost for ourselves.

Enjoying the views

 

 Looking down

 Looking up

 Looking across

Group pics