Malaysia is truly Asia. It is a gleaming metropolis as I take a stroll along the Bintang Walk, the main street of KL where you can see sidewalk cafes, restaurants and shopping malls. But if shopping is what you want, have a check at KL's largest shopping mall, the KLCC, inside the Petronas Towers. For cheaper items, I couldn't resist visiting the night market at Jalan Petaling.
Another interesting site to see is the Sultan Abdul Samad building built in 1894 and now houses the Malaysian High Court. The clock tower here has been affectionately dubbed Big Ben. Its stunning Moorish design has made it one of KL's principal landmarks. Istana Negara on the other hand is the King's Palace. Strolls along the Butterfly Park, the largest open-air butterfly park in Southeast Asia and the Bird Park are also worth doing. The Batu Caves, on the other hand, 13 km north of KL are in a towering limestone formation where a small Hindu shrine was built in the major cave and can be reached by a straight flight of 272 steps with monkeys hovering on the steps :)
On Sunday i went to hear mass at the St. John's Cathedral run by Jesuit fathers (but the church was named after St. John Baptist De La Salle). Surprise, surprise, the mass that I actually attended was a Filipino mass :) I didn't realize that there are so many Filipino migrant workers in KL that there is even a mass done in Tagalog in one of KL's major cathedrals. Most of our kababayans there work as domestic helpers - patiently bearing the distance from their loved ones. With Christmas just around the corner, the mass was quite touching. When the recessional was sung, a Filipino Christmas song, I could see a lot of teary-eyed Pinoys singing the song. How lonely Christmas must be if you are away from home - living in a foreign land and would not have the means to go back to your family during the holidays. I realized what our migrant domestic helpers have to sacrifice just to give their families the taste of a better life. And so i went to KL to see the tallest buildings in the world but instead i saw something taller than these buildings, the dreams of our Filipino migrant domestic helpers. And if i could take a shot at Petronas, i'm sure that they could also take a shot at their dreams.
