Articles in Malaysia
Walking Along a Bike Path in Kuala Lumpur
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This was my final day in Kuala Lumpur before catching the ferry to Sumatra. I was pretty much ready to go, but I had one or two things to do at the local shopping mall. I would normally have taken the subway there, but since I’m testing out my Olympus OM-D E-M5 as a video vlogging camera, I decided to walk.
Shop Till You Drop at the Megamall – Window Shopping at the Gardens Mall
Shopping and shopping malls have become a big part of Chinese New Year celebrations. The malls organize sophisticated artistic and cultural displays, put on exciting lion dances, and install lavish decorations to attract customers during the biggest holiday of the year.
And it works! Malaysians flock to the malls to enjoy the festive atmosphere (and air conditioning), and I joined them for a stroll through Kuala …
Goodbye, Dog! Hello, Pig! Chinese New Year Traditions at Thean Hou Temple
Chinese New Year is the biggest and most lavish holiday event in the Chinese calendar. Families gather at home, at shopping malls, and at temples to celebrate. As a backpacker slash tourist, I chose to visit the inspiring Thean Hou Temple in Kuala Lumpur to begin my exploration of the traditions of this important festival.
The six-tiered Thean Hou Temple is dedicated to the goddess Matzu …
Revisiting My Childhood at the KL Butterfly Park (Part 1)
I go full-on tourist once again as I visit the Butterfly Park in Kuala Lumpur. It’s kinda like the Bird Park but with 5,000-6,000 fluttery butterflies instead of a couple thousand feathery birds. I collected insects as a boy in Canada (butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies, ants, bees, wasps, etc), and I’ve been fascinated by them ever since. So when a Butterfly Park is located just …
Revisiting my Childhood at the KL Butterfly Park (Part 2)
In Part 2, I dive back in to the heat of the Butterfly Park armed with a telephoto macros lens. My mission was to capture some close-up video of some of the dozens of species of butterfly fluttering around. In this, I was only partially successful. I blame it on the camera as it falls apart and refuses to either autofocus or even manual focus. …
Turtle-Warp Speed on the KL Monorail – EXPERIENCE KUALA LUMPUR FROM ABOVE!
I’ve ridden on the Kuala Lumpur LRT and the MRT at Warp Speed. Now it’s time for a ride on the KL Monorail – perhaps at Turtle Speed. Stretching 8.6 kilometers over 11 stations, the KL Monorail takes passengers through the heart of commercial, downtown Kuala Lumpur from KL Sentral through tourist-heavy Bukit Bintang and Chow Kit all the way to the terminal station of …
Hunting for LIONS in Malaysia! [The Chinese New Year Acrobatic Lion Dance]
Colorful, exciting, dramatic, funny, suspenseful. What could this be? The newest Pixar film? No, it’s the traditional Lion Dance for Chinese New Year. I really, really wanted to witness an acrobatic lion dance in Malaysia in which the performers leap from high pole to high pole. But, with my talent for missing things, I kept missing lion dances.
Other travelers and tourists told me about the …
CNY Lion Dance #3!! Catching Lucky Oranges at Petronas – Tallest Twin Towers in the World
The Chinese New Year holidays were winding down. It was late afternoon on Chap Goh Mei – the fifteenth and final day of the Spring Festival. A lion dance was scheduled for 5:30 at the Suria KLCC mall, and I decided to go there and combine my 3rd full lion dance with a view of the famous Petronas Twin Towers.
The tallest buildings in the world …