The Sky Bridge.
Spent a day looking round the beautiful island of Langkawi during our brief stay in Malaysia. Headed for the Skywalk bridge, atop a mountain near the coast. The bridge is reached by what claims to be the steepest cable car ride in the World, which takes you up the mountain above the canopy of the jungle. The starting point for the cablecar ride was in a sort of shopping village, which looked not unlike Mauschwitz Disneyland. To give the queuing crowd something to do, we were led into a small E-max cinema, where we were treated to a virtual roller-coaster ride.The crowd made the event with lots of squeals and shrieks, even the woman in black burquas joined in. According to the blurb at the ticket office, you pass over hornbills, monkeys and all manner of fauna hurtling about in the trees, but in fact all we saw was treetops. At the summit is a structure which is about 150 metres long and which spans the mountain top, a modern pedestrian bridge with an impressive drop below it.
Giant virtual roller coaster through Mordor.
The cable car.
Most of the people there, whether in baseball hats of Hijabs, didn't seem particularly interested in the fantastic surroundings, they just took selfie after selfie, always posing in exactly the same way. Call me a grumpy old bastard, but this narcissistic and moronic behaviour really rubs me up the wrong way. To anyone wishing to bore me with a a photo of themselves: I'M NOT INTERESTED. I know what you look like and if I've never met you, I don't want to. I'm perfectly capable of being bored on my own without your assistance, thank you.
Not that I have anything against a good portrait. Einstein poking his tongue out, Churchill giving his bulldog-chewing-a-nettle look to Karsh of Ottawa or, my personal favourite, the Snowden portrait of Margaret Thatcher showing her true colours through caked on makeup. All great iconic images. Sorry, but I've seen two rabbity fingers behind someone's head enough times now, ie more than once, that I feel queasy just thinking about it.
Good. Got that off my chest. Feeling better already.
The charming fake bridge.
Some of Langkawi's famed 99 islands.
Back to Earth, I decided I needed a snack, so went for the traditional Malay dish of Bratwurst, (mit senf, obviously), at the mind bogglingly cosmopolitan restaurant area built around an impressive fake Asian bridge.
We returned to the hotel to find that they had caved into the barrage of complaints which we'd launched at them. A letter was pushed under our door informing us that we would only be charged for one night. That took some pressure off our drawings at the ATM: Automatic Temple of Mammon, according to Millie.
Next day, we took a flight to Kuala Lumpur, a city we visited 19 years ago. It had changed a lot. The first time we went to KL, we took the bus in from the airport. I asked someone what the tall buildings on the skyline were. They turned out to be the Petronus Twin Towers, which were still being fitted out, and at the time were the tallest building in the World. Nowadays, although down to 7th, they really are magnificent. We managed to get tickets which took us firstly to the bridge between the towers, then to the 86th floor.
The lobby. If ya got it, flaunt it.
From the bridge.
Back at ground level, we were able to admire it some more, as our hotel was just next door. We only went to KL to get a connecting flight, but found it a very agreeable place indeed: a real high energy, modern city.
And so it was that we arrived in my favourite SE Asian country: Cambodia. But more of that later.
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Just can't seem to get those monkeys to put their dogends in the receptacles provided.
ReplyDeleteShamed but not named (the hotel, not the monkeys)?