Malaysia/Turkey: Homeward Bound
Kuala Lumpur felt different this time around. Six weeks previously, we had flown in from Dublin and now we were returning to spend a few more days there before getting a flight back to Ireland via Istanbul…..unless the drones and bombing raids in the Middle East cancelled our Turkish Airlines flight.
The huge city felt a little intimidating – we had just spent almost a week on a small island with no cars (Perhentian Islands) and a few days in a little village, (on the edge of a 130 million year old rainforest, Tman Negara), a place with virtually no food options because it was Ramadan and with no alcohol at all because it was an alcohol-free zone.
When we stepped off the minibus on a street corner in Kuala Lumpur, our nerves were twitching from the volume of traffic – whizzing cars, squealing buses, motorbikes and overhead train lines. As we walked in the clammy heat under the shadows of giant skyscrapers, there was the smell of spices, turmeric and garlic, the aroma of barbecuing meat from satay restaurants and the smell of pineapples and mangoes from juice bars. There were street stalls cooking up rotis and nasi lemak, pastry shops displaying flaky croissants and custard tarts, neon signs advertising Tiger and Heineken beers.
We stayed at the Axon Residences building in the Bukit Bintang area, which was close to transport options, shopping malls, night food markets and lots of restaurants. The hotel was incredible, consisting of two tall buildings, linked on the 37th floor by a bridge of glass and concrete called the Sky bridge. Craning our necks to peer up at the bridge from the street, the structure seemed to float, an impressive feat of engineering. Walking through it gave jaw dropping views of the surrounding skyscrapers including the iconic 88-story Petronas Twin Towers, the symbol of Malaysia. The infinity pool on the roof merged into the surrounding buildings in a way that made us gasp when we first saw it. There were fitness rooms, a high-rise garden and even a running track on the 10th floor…..although only the very dedicated person would run in the sticky heat. The downside of staying in a tall, busy building was the waiting for the lifts, which were quite slow, usually jam-packed and nearly always seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
Our apartment on the 23rd floor also had fantastic cityscape views. These were stunning at any time but at 4,30 pm on both afternoons, ominous clouds rolled overhead, the skies darkened before cracking open with an impressive display of lightening and claps of thunder. We felt humbled at nature’s powerful display as we watched humanity far below, scurrying around like colonies of ants. During the evenings, there were flashing billboards and many firework displays but none of these meagre efforts matched the power and impact of the late-afternoon thunderstorms.
We met many people whose travel plans were interrupted by the aerial bombardment over the Middle East. Two middle-aged Austrians had set up a ‘makeshift’ remote office in their apartment and were happy enough ‘to wait it out’ when their flight was cancelled. There were far worse places than Malaysia, to be stranded in. It was a safe country, accommodation was reasonable and plentiful (our apartment with a full kitchen, sitting room and bedroom in the Axon Residences was about €35 a night) and food was also cheap and delicious.
We are not generally fans of large cities and we didn’t expect to like Kuala Lumpur with its skyscrapers but unexpectedly we found a beauty in KL (as the locals called it), an architectural splendor of glass, steel and concrete that charmed us. Public Transport was easy to negotiate and the city was clean (especially by Asian standards) and full of shopping malls and eating options.
A Grab taxi, which is the SE Asian equivalent of Uber, brought us to the airport for our Turkish Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Istanbul. We had checked in and no delays were expected. At the Turkish Airlines desk, a man with a desperate look in his eyes asked if there was any possibility of getting a seat on the plane to Istanbul. The airline official was sympathetic but the flight was completely full, even the cancellation waiting list was full. We thanked our lucky stars that we had booked through Turkish Airlines in January. We chose Turkish Airlines because they were reasonably priced (€520 return from Dublin to KL) but also because the airline offers a couple of nights free accommodation in Istanbul when a long-haul flight was booked through their website. It was just a lucky chance decision. If we had stopovers in Dubai, Doha or Abu Dabi, we would be staying in Malaysia or scrambling to find an expensive alternative.
The flight from Kuala Lumpur was long….about twelve hours.. but we were well fed with lunch and dinner and anesthetized by constant movie-watching. We arrived in Istanbul at about 5.30pm local time with temperatures of about 10C. Passport control was slow but finally we were shivering as we walked through the airport doors.
Istanbul is a big beautiful city, particularly the old town area of Sultanahmet, a place where east meets west. The current name of Istanbul is relatively new and only came into being in 1930. The former names of Byzantium ( until 330AD) and Constantinople (until 1453) conjure up history, antiquity and mystery. Our ‘complimentary’ stay was in a lovely comfortable hotel with spa and swimming pool, helpful staff and probably the best buffet breakfasts we had ever eaten with a vast array of fruit, nuts, salads and cheeses as well as the usual cooked options. Several guests had large white bandages on the back of their heads and it took us a while to realize that they were hair-transplant clients. The hotel, Uranus Topeki, was close to several clinics and a hospital but it was quite a way from the touristy attractions in the historic heart of Sultanahmet.
Istanbul has good public transport but the wide variety of choices was bewildering to us with metro, trams, buses, long metro-buses, trains and of course ferries that sailed across the Bosphorus, the river that divides the city, connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forming one of the continental boundaries between Asia and Europe. We used most forms of transport, getting the Metro from the airport to the city centre on the Asian side, after buying a 10 pass card which we thought could be used on all transport but discovered that this was only valid on the Airport metro line. We needed a different red card for all types of transport. A nice man helped us to buy them from the vending machines and load them with twenty euro.
Istanbul is famous for many things – rich history, the splendour of its buildings, the beauty of its location on the Bosphorus, hilly streets, cats and of course, scams. We discovered that the nice man who helped us buy our travel cards wasn’t so nice after all when we tried to use the cards the next day and they wouldn’t work. A common scam is to swap the cards which have money on them for empty cards while ‘helping’ tourists. Yes, we were scammed.
Istanbul was not a cheap destination. According to our walking tour guide, Haktan, inflation was running at more than 30% annually for several consecutive years and the costs of visiting the main tourists sights have risen dramatically last year and again in January this year. Although the Hagia Sofia is propped up with scaffolding for ongoing maintenance, a visit will set you back €50 per person, the Topkapi Palace is even more expensive to visit. Try to avoid Fridays when visiting the Hagia Sophia as it is closed to visitors from midday to 2,30pm during prayer-time and is extremely busy all day. The museum of the Hagia is well worth a visit, giving a multisensory tour of the seventeen centuries of the building’s history.
There were many tourist cruises on the Bosphorus but it was just as enjoyable to take a local ferry and view the city from the water. Seagulls twirled overhead, arguing over the food scraps that passengers threw to them. Swarms of small translucent jellyfish floated on the water surface while on the river banks rows of fishermen, almost elbow to elbow, cast their rods into the blue waters.
After the green, lush tropical vegetation of Malaysia and Thailand, the bare branches of the trees in the many parks looked strange and almost skeletal. The days were sunny and cool with a hint of Spring after a hard winter. Istanbul is on a mission to regain a reputation for tulips, which actually originated in Asia (not the Netherlands) and were extensively cultivated in the Ottoman Empire. It was too early to see any of them in flower but there’s a Tulip Festival in mid-April.
Our guide, Haktan, also told us the Turkish recipe for happiness. It is based on the availability of three things, tea (cay) which is drunk black and sweet, while sitting on soft, coloured cushions, tobacco which is one of the few things that has not increased in price, according to Haktan and finally the presence of cats because Turks are animal lovers. Cats were everywhere in Istanbul and I mean everywhere –on the restaurant tables, the gift shops and even the toilets – and have been associated with the city since antiquity. Turks were not big drinkers so alcohol was expensive and not widely available so we drank tea instead. But it was a fantastic place to indulge a sweet tooth – trays of all types of baklava, dripping in honey, chocolate bombs with chopped pistachio and mounds of fragrant Turkish Delight, dusted with sugar. No wonder Turkey has a reputation for dentistry.
If you ever visit Istanbul, make sure that you wander around the Old City in the evening when it takes on a special kind of magic with the shimmering minarets of the many mosques, the highlighted silhouettes of Ottoman palaces, the stout city walls and the sparkling fountains. We were coming to grips with Istanbul and would have loved another night but it was time to leave.
Our final leg of our six and a half week trip brought us to Dublin and on to Waterford by bus where the daffodils are putting on a magnificent display. We loved Malaysia with its islands and forests, gorgeous food and skyscrapers but the undoubted highlight was spending almost a week with our children and their chosen ones on a tropical island in Thailand, already a treasured memory
Thanks for reading and coming on the journey with us
Til next time.
