2006-07-30 - 16:46
I missed the Petronas Towers. At one time the highest building in the world, the towers were going to be a group visit, but only to the Skybridge on the 41st story, and I'd already been higher on the KL tower. So instead I wandered. NOt really. There were tourist signs that told me where to go. To the Complex Craf. I guess you could call it the outlet mall of handmade goods, but behind the shop were a row of small studies with different artists. In one you could pay to do batik yourself. In another a woman was carving wood. Lots of painters, and one that i talked to was a batik painter-as in representational art but painted on cloth in the traditional method that sarongs are made. He had amazing paintings of birds of paradise and talked with me a bit about how the money is better there than painintg in a factory where they pay you per piece. But I spent my money on stupid stuff and had non left for art.
So after a long day I run across the Irish pub. Thank god for the IRish. I just couldn't eat rice again, and they had sTrongbow on tap. I sat in the back and had a pint and a sandwich and wrote postcards in the dim light. There was a bar in back as well but no one but me there so along came a fat black rat and sits up on the bar next to the taps and looks at me. This rat was not special; he did not seem particularly exotic as Malaysian. He was polite enough to scurry away when I moved and I scurried away after I chugged the rest of my pint.
