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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Petronas· Jan 21, 10:22 PM
Greetings from the Petronas towers!
I’m in the mall on the ground floor of the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur. I remember when the towers were built a few years back (the highest in the world at that time) and I knew I wanted to see them in person. So, here I am – cool! I go up to the bridge (see pics) in an hour to take in the view of the city.
My trip from Koh Tao was pretty interesting – probably the most inefficient display of human transportation that I’ve ever witnessed. But I’m here…and it’s sunny…and the Malay people are very nice.
I had some very interesting discussions in the last 24 hours as well. First, I talked with (mostly listened) to a Muslim scholar who I happened to be sitting next to on one of the busses…for about two hours…about the core principles of the Islamic faith and also some harder issues surrounding why Islamic extremists go about their work with explosives more than anything else. Very interesting. Without going in to detail, I will say that I need to understand more…but early impressions are that the Muslim communitiy has some serious internal issues to deal with.
Interesting talk number two was with a Shia Iraqi who I met here in KL. He asked me where I was from and when I told him, he grabbed me by the arm and said “what a great country” and proceeded to elaborate about the situation in Iraq. Basically, he feels that the Americans were very necessary at the beginning (to oust Sadam), but now their reputation has gone bad because they haven’t been effective in stopping crime (kidnappings for ransom was the big issue in this guy’s mind). This guy was an merchant who imported things from Malaysia and other countries into Iraq…and just that fact was encouraging to see…that economic growth is taking hold in spite of the turmoil. So…there you have it!
I’ll leave you with a few pics from KL so far.
Take care,
Nate
P.S. I think I found and fixed the problem with the Google Earth file for those who were having difficulty opening it.
Click on article title for more pictures…