21st March 2010
Directly opposite the old railway building in KL, which is a beautiful building in its own right, and only a short walk from our hotel stands the National Mosque.
The National Mosque is Malaysia’s principal mosque and one of the most prominent buildings in the city. Reputed as one of the more beautiful mosques in South-east Asia, this uniquely designed mosque embodies a contemporary expression of traditional Islamic art, calligraphy and ornamentation.
The most striking feature of it is the multi-fold umbrella-like roof which symbolises the aspirations of an independent nation. It has 18 points, one for each of the country’s 13 states as well as the five tenets of Islam.
After removing our shoes we headed into the Mosque, which is open for tourists outside prayer time, I was given a headscarf to wear. Other people who were wearing shorts and t-shirts were given full length purple gowns with hoods which rather gave the effect of a scene out of Star Wars.
The Mosque itself is a strikingly simple building, open on all sides with marble tiles helping to keep it cool. The circular prayer room in the middle of the building was the only carpeted room and had beautiful stained glass around the top.
There were Imans around the entrance to the prayer room answering questions from tourists and telling them about Islam. There were also a series of about 14 leaflets each with a pertinant question such as ‘who is Allah?’, and even ‘what is Jihad?’ with some quick information on the inside answering the question. These leaflets were quick to read and very educational and it genuinely seemed like the National Mosque wanted to educate people about its religion.
Next we visited the mausoleum. This is situated at the rear of the mosque, stands in a circular reflecting pool and is connected to the main building by a covered foot-bridge. Next to it is a cemetery.
Pleased with our visit to the Mosque, we walked along the edge of the Lake Gardens (it was much too hot to remain outside for long) and over to the palatial structure of the National Museum.
The museum features four galleries, tracing the history of Malaysia from the stone Age all the way through to present day. We found the part about the invasion of first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the British most interesting. Especially because all this took place in Melaka, where we had visited before arriving in KL. It’s only a shame we didn’t know about all this before we had visited.
There were lots of artifacts on display from ancient times, including armour and replicas of the Sultan’s seat of power. This figurehead shaped like a dragon’s head is made of wood from a jackfruit tree and was used as an adornment for a boat belonging to Malay royalty.
From the museum we headed back to Merdeka Square to see if there was anything going on with the equipment we had seen them setting up earlier in the week. Unfortunately all was quiet and on getting in a taxi we learned that the big event had been last night :(.
So it was onto the Pavilion Mall for something to eat before heading back to the hotel to get ready for our travels onto Vietnam.