Day 134
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2006
1
118
169
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Putrajaya, Malaysia
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Putrajaya is a brand new city - and you don't see too many of those! It is about 30kms South of KL and it was founded in 1995 to become a centre of Malaysian Government administration. It has really been done well and won't be properly finished until 2012. It's a mix of supreme buildings and building sites. At its centre is a man made lake which I had a very pleasurable 45 minute cruise around this afternoon! It made for some good photos.
The whole city is strangely quiet - it's under-populated at present. Only 50,000 living there compared to a target population around 300,000. I feel like it's been a bit of a privilege to have this sneak preview before it becomes as well known around the world as maybe The Hague or Canberra - The Hague being the Seat of Government for the Netherlands while Canberra is a proper capital but it is a planned city just like Putrajaya.
On the way back I went an extra stop along the local railway system to the Masjid Jamek. That was a pleasant mosque with hordes of Muslims seemingly lying around on the marble floor. I thought they were in prayer but one guy was lying on his back reading a newspaper held up with his arms and another guy was typing in a text message on his mobile phone!
After that I ran in to a couple of people I hadn't expected to. Readers of yesterday's entry might have thought I was just being a cynical for rejecting the approaches of random "friendly" local people yesterday. Well I walked through Little India in KL and saw a guy who had approached me yesterday. He was sat in a cafe/restaurant and we had eye-contact simultaneously. "We meet again!" he cheered. I thought "Yes... and yesterday I told you to go find someone else to con". Anyway, guess who was sat at a nearby table in the same restaurant?? A woman who had also tried this approach separately with me yesterday! Seeing those two together in the same place totally confirmed what I had suspected all along so I told the guy "I know what you're doing OK" and walked off.
I'm going to leave KL tomorrow - think I'll go see the caves at Batu and then head to Melacca on the coast.
