Via Ferrata

So I got all geared up for a via ferrata trip, which is where you traverse a cliff clipped in to a permanently fixed steel cable. So far, so easy, but throw in zip lines across an 80m canyon, added to my paralysing fear of hanging over a void (which is why I hate climbing overhangs) and I had to bail.


Which is a pity considering the 5 hour trip out, the one hour wait while one of the guys who was late to the Oman border caught in a queue of 6 busloads of holiday makers (it was the Eid weekend), and another half hour wait while the same guy realised at the last minute he'd forgotten his pulley and had to go back down the hill to get it.


The problem for me was really the zip line thing. Ben bailed first, freaked by the cliffs, but I got to the zip line. And my god, what a sight.

It was really hairy. I checked a couple of times after bailing that I'd made the right decision, and then I checked the photos later as well, and I made the right decision. It was too much for me at this point. Perhaps if I'd done zip lines before, perhaps over the sea and not so high, but for your first experience to be so scary one of the organisers bails, well, that's pretty scary.

But the scenery was beautiful, so it was worth a trip out. Unfortunately, the photo-uploader isn't working too well, so you'll have to imagine it, or check out Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=784253645

Kuala Lumpur

I followed up my trip to India with another flying visit to Singapore (leave Thursday night, arrive Friday morning, leave Saturday afternoon) to hand over the biggest cheque I've ever written. As a result, I now own 1/3 of a very expensive flat in the heart of Singapore. (A 5 minute walk to Robertson Quay, for those who know Sing, and that's only another 5 minute walk to Clarke Quay, one of the hippest parts of town.)

The following weekend I was back, but this time carried on to Kuala Lumpur to see my parents who were stopping off there rather than Dubai on their way home from Europe. (The Dubai stopover was prohibitively expensive, so fair call.) KL has come along a bit since I was last there in 2002 (see previous posts) with grand new malls, cleaner streets, and the removal of the smell of raw sewage that I remember so fondly from last time.


We were staying at the Westin Hotel, a comfortable but ultimately colour-by-numbers affair that was centrally located and overlooked the Petronas Towers.

The great thing about this trip, other than seeing my folks for the first time in nine months, was that I got to do some touristy things I missed out on last time. Like go to the telecoms tower, see batik getting made in a traditional tourist trap, and see the elephant sanctuary.

Malaysia still has elephants, but these are large creatures that like to eat so often encroach on farm land. This is not ideal (if you're a farmer), so the poor creatures are captured and relocated and at some point seem to pass through a sanctuary in the Genting Highlands.

Now all that's very cool, the sanctuary is nice and the elephants are well treated. But then come the tourists. In this case, a school trip from Australia, and these little bastards smelt around 100 times worse than the elephants. My god, those little f*ckers smelt as bad as Indian labourers in Dubai. Seriously. It made me ashamed to be Australian.

Anyway, our full day guided tour also involved a trip to the Batu caves and, once again, I was too embarrassed to buy the souvenir I wanted to get last time: a T-shirt of the caves with my face superimposed in the middle.

The Batu caves are pretty cool and involve over 200 steps to get to them. These steps were clearly built before the invention of codes, as they have a rise of about 500mm in places and are possibly the most strenuous I've encountered. Mum sensibly passed up the opportunity to haul herself to the top, cover herself in perspiration and then get subjected to some infuriatingly bad Bollywood music on a continual loop at the top of the stairs. Once you get to the top, you go into the cave and it opens out to a sky cave... with a smooth concrete floor.

Getting back to KL, Mum and I went to the markets to buy genuine copies of various goods, from ties to belts to DVDs. (I couldn't pass up every Jet Li film condensed to 5 discs for MR55. I was assured they had subtitles, only to discover they are Chinese subtitles. Then again, who needs dialogue in a Jet Li film?) Then we went for a foot massage...

The previous week I'd had a massage at Changi airport: it was a clean and subdued place, with a nice young Thai lady who rubbed my legs. The parlour in KL looked as bad as you're thinking, and the nice young Thai lady was in fact an old Malaysian crone who seemed intent on going above the knee. As a result, it was somewhat hard to relax, especially with Mum on the neighbouring table laughing every time I expressed surprise: such as when the crone got me in a headlock then cracked my neck. What part of "foot massage" didn't she get?

After that, it was back to Singapore to wait for a day for a connecting flight, bought some souvenirs in Chinatown (another touristy thing I had never done before) and then home to Dubai. And my sixth flight in three weeks where I got to load up on movies... (see my other blog, link on top right of page.)