Big City

This post continues with the thematic rather than sequential layout. As much as I appreciate a quiet beach (and spent a couple days there), it was nice to be in a big, developed, organized city. I spent a few days in Kuala Lumpur and a few days in Singapore, so here are some shots from each.
This first one is the parliament building and government offices of Kuala Lumpur:
And the national monument of Malaysia:
And the portion of the skyline of Kuala Lumpur--the larger tower in the foreground is the KL Tower and you can see one of the twin Petronas towers in the background.
Here's a shot of the crazy amusement park INSIDE the mall...it was my first day in the Big City and a pretty amazing sight to my third world eyes....
The following are all of Singapore on an evening walk through town courtesy of my grad school colleague, Cheng-Han. Singapore was interesting and I'm glad I saw it--it's insanely clean and organized--even the money was clean and unwrinkled. So many rules and everyone follows them! As nice as all that seems, it was really just one giant unending shopping mall that was quite expensive. There were some interesting aspects of the city--my friend Kath and I walked around a great Little India neighborhood that smelled and looked like India, but was clean and organized! There was lots of great chinese culture and food as well.
This first shot is the "most famous" landmark of Singapore, the Merlion. Here it is with the skyline in the background: And with me in the foreground:
Another shot of more skyline down by the water: Here's one of me in front of the "Durian fruit building" which is actually a very swanky opera house....These last three are of a crazy new building that's a big resort/hotel and casino with giant pool on the roof (the three towers with the ship-shaped thing on top). It apparently costs 100 Singapore dollars ($77US) for Singaporeans to enter, but it's free for foreigners to go to the casino. I don't gamble, but we were curious so we did walk in the bottom portion and it was just a giant mall (no surprise) so we didn't venture much farther. Great bathrooms, though!
A bit closer and darker shot with a strange piece of architecture next to it. Not sure what the satellite-thing is exactly, but it's kind of interesting....
And here's the same hotel/casino from a side angle with the DNA double helix bridge in the foreground. This was a beautiful, artistic pedestrian bridge (you can see it in the photo above very small in the lower left corner) that was complete with A/T and C/G markers on the walkway to represent the DNA pairs.
I don't usually get impressed with geometric public art, but this was functional, pretty AND science nerdy! Yay!
In summary, if you have a LOT of money to spend and love nonstop shopping, Singapore's a great place! There is also AMAZING food and an GREAT botanical garden (I'll write more about that later)
Kuala Lumpur was more my speed - lots of great salsa dancing, interesting culture, also had lots of malls, but easier to avoid.