ideas: from the world

TRIP: Crazy KL and gentle Albert

KUALA LUMPUR DAY 7-9: Albert is 47 years old. A frumpy, lumbering sort of guy, his skin is wrinkled and leathery and sparsely patched with hair. Yet he’s still pretty spritely for a heavyweight, weighing in at close to 1 tonne and consuming my bodyweight (which shall not be revealed) in food each day. I fed him some watermelon wedges, which he greedily gulped down with one bite, before I rode him around the pen for a while. Then we went for a dip in the river, playfully splashing water on each other. I think it’s the start of a beautiful relationship.

Albert is kept in captivity but is helping liberate other Asian elephants around Malaysia. The National Elephant Conservation Centre at Kuala Gandah, about an hour and a half north-east of Kuala Lumpur, is a government-backed society dedicated to relocating these plus-sized beauties from their jungle homes, with fast-encroaching rubber and palm oil plantations, to protected national parks. The team hunts the tight-knit herds, tranquilizers them and ships them, with great difficulty and skill, by truck and barge to their new homes. Albert will often go along for the ride to calm the wild elephants during the move. Watching a video of the transport task at the tourist centre it is a cruel process, and some don’t survive the trip from the stress. But those that do can live without the threat of starvation, or death at the hands of frustrated farmers whose livelihood they eat away.

These are canny animals. Those in captivity know their place, and they seem – if this is even possible – to relish the attention of a swarming pack of snap-happy tourists patting and pulling and climbing and riding. They move with a grace that belies their heft, balancing with their rhythmic swaying trunks. To be this close to them is really special. And the education of their plight, particularly among locals, hopefully goes some way to protecting them.

The bus tour stops at an aboriginal settlement, descendants of indigenous Malays living traditional jungle ways. The Government brought electricity and built free houses for them, but large families still live in huts crafted from palm trees and hunt dinner by blowing poisoned darts from pipes. They are happy, seemingly, living this quiet life; the bag of rice we deliver (as some sort of ‘thanks for letting us trample your homes’ offering) is greeted with many broken English thankyous.

It is such a long way from Kuala Lumpur, if not geographically then in the maddening, incessant hustle and bustle of the capital. I’ve been to bigger cities, more globally important cities, but none that seem to move this fast. Or, in the case of traffic, not at all. It is a motor vehicle city. Its citizens demand the freedom of transport yet each night they sit in their old cars stationary, honking incessantly with nowhere to go. Scooters – and they almost outnumber cars – dive between lanes and mount already crowded and decaying footpaths to get ahead. I jumped out of the way of one, only to step on another, parked on the sidewalk, and burnt my leg on the steaming hot exhaust pipe. I have the red, blistered skin to prove it. I like to wander cities gazing at the skyscrapers and the cityscape around. Not here. You have to have your wits about you. I’m not sure what feels more dangerous – braving the footpaths or the insane taxi drivers blind to lane markings and road curbs. From the air – I conquered the 200something metres of the KL Tower for a 360-degree view – it’s clear that despite having a modern subway system and monorail line, Kuala Lumpur is stalled in traffic and choking on exhaust fumes. A problem facing many other cities, clearly…

But it’s a shame because this city has a lot to offer. Giving up on trying to navigate my way around – Jalan Raja Laut sounds too much like Jalan Tun Razak – I hopped on the hop-on, hop-off bus for a whistlestop tour of the city sights. There was the Palace of Culture and its Opera House-like design; the National Palace, home of one of many Malay monarchs (as the bus commentary put it, Malaysia will never run short of blue blood), and the very British changing of the guard; the National Monument and National Mosque (prayer was in session so I couldn’t get inside, but listening to the chanting echo out was an experience in itself), the Dataran Merdeka, or Independence Square, where they celebrate their sovereignty, and the beautiful colonial buildings around; and the landmark, postcard-ready Petronas Twin Towers. These are grandiose monuments to modern architecture and a modern city; all steel and glass reaching to the clouds and glinting in the sun. They were built, shamelessly, as a sign to the world that this city, and this country, had come of age. Yet in so many ways that seems premature.

The story so far:

• SINGAPORE DAY 5-6: Snake-wear is hot in the City
• SINGAPORE DAY 3-4: To shake, or not to shake
• DARWIN DAY 1-2: If you never, never go…

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