Kuala Lumpur

Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (not my picture)

We took a long Grab ride into Kuala Lumpur, or KL as the locals call it. This is the capital city of Malaysia with about 1.8 million people. We treated ourselves to a luxury hotel stay at The Hotel Majestic. Good location, good food, good service all for less than a usd$100 a day for the room. We played tourist for two days, hitting the National Museum, Central Market, Hindu shrine and the Bird Park.

The Batu Caves are 272 steps adorned with a statute and some caves. It was a brutally hot walk up the steps and since I was looking at my feet the whole way up the steps were clearly the focus of my visit.

The big, shiny, gold guy to the right of the multicolored steps is Lord Murugan. He watches over the city at a height of 140ft. This statute of he Lord is apparently the tallest of all Lord Murugan statues. Notice the tourist in the foreground with a face mask carefully protecting his chin from the coronavirus.

Once you get to the top of the external steps you get to negotiate a few more flights of stairs and you are inside the well lit caves with their temple.

It wouldn't be a Hindu temple without monkeys. We saw this guy hightail over to a tourist who was holding a small, blue plastic bag. He leaped up her leg and tore the bag away from her. Once 20 feet away he carefully ripped the bag open and took off with this, nice juicy apple.

We wandered around the Central Market till Chris found her prey -- the handmade Batik cloth store. This very helpful and energetic lady was full of knowledge about Malaysian batiks. Chris is holding one of the wooden printing blocks.We now have some more Batik cloth onboard for later artistic endeavors.

The Kuala Lumpur Bird Park is one of the largest free-flight bird parks in the world. It's home to 3,000 birds on 21 acres.

A crested something.

The owl exhibit was really good. A sleepy Buffy Fish-owl.

They let a few, wee, monkeys into the Bird Park too. 

There are a lot if these evil peacocks in the park. Birds that feel the need to endless scream Help, Help! all night can't be considered cute.

We took another Grab back to Port Dickson, paid our marina bill and took off the next day for two hops to Pangkor. The anchorage above is in the Sembilan Islands near Pangkor. This is the first nice looking islands we've anchored off of since we've been in Malaysia.

Next day had us heading into Pangkor along with this typical Malaysian fishing boat.

We decided to stay in Pangkor Marina to get a few more boat projects done. We took off the mainsail and had the sail-maker pick it up. He took me over to the sail-loft and we laid out the sail on his large loft platform. A few minor repairs and some extra stitching on the batten pockets and she'll be ready to cross another ocean.

Also had Marus come down and spend 2.5 days with his worker polishing the hull and deck, and the stainless. They did a great job-- Georgia's a very pretty girl now.

We also took apart some cabinetry so we could torque the chain plate bolts, making sure they are a good and secure for holding up the mast.

In a day or so we will start heading further north in Malaysia, with plans to stop in Penang and Langkawi.

Paul