Sunday, May 3, 2009

Kuala Lumpur: Lake Garden District

We decided to spend a full day exploring the Lake Garden District of Kuala Lumpur. Our hotel is on the edge of the Lake Garden District and we decided to head out on foot to get to the park. The Lake Garden District was on the other side of the freeway, which looked like a bowl of spaghetti on our map. Kuala Lumpur, scratch that, most of Malaysia from what we hear is not very pedestrian friendly and after much backtracking, walking along a freeway off-ramp, and under and over major roads
We found ourselves walking through the Malaysia Islamic Centre during an assemblyIt was somewhat intimidating after seeing signs such as this along the road
But we enjoyed the beautiful Islamic architecture and made our way to the park
The Lake Garden District is basically a large botanical garden with a deer park, butterfly park, hibiscus garden, orchid garden, and SE Asia’s largest bird park. We had heard the bird park was a great attraction, but we just wasn’t up for it so we headed to the orchid gardenThe orchid collection and garden itself was somewhat disappointing. We had hoped to see orchids growing like they do in nature, off of fallen trees and on stumps, but they were in pots and strategically placed in the gardenWe only saw one tree where the orchids were living off it like in the wildThe rest of the garden grounds is worth seeing, for the interesting plants mostly, and especially since it’s freeWe decided to walk along the main road and make our way through the park. As we made our way out to the main road from the orchid garden we encounter monkeys!They were just pouring out of the hills where the orchid garden was and slowly making their way towards the souvenir shopWe couldn’t believe these monkeys were just living in this park in the middle of a large metropolitan city

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