Musuem Day

Wednesday February 27th

The weather was a lot warmer today, and anyway I'd planned to go to 3 museums (nice cool places). But the plan suffered a blow when I went to the first, the National History Museum. A truck was blocking the entrance, I couldn't see a way in, and there were building materials all over the place. I figured some sort of renovations were going on. So I went onto the second museum, the Islamic Arts Museum.

This turned out to be quite interesting in some ways. The best bit is right at the beginning where they have scale models of all the main mosques in the world, Mecca, Medina, Cairo, Istanbul etc. And the Taj Mahal. The models were interesting, although the ones they had to represent Malay mosque design weren't actually that great. There was no model of the national mosque for example, although you only had to look out the window to see it so why bother.

The rest of the museum turned out to be pretty standard, coins, metalwork, woodwork, fabrics and of course a couple of dozens of copies of the Qur'an. Not many Danish cartoons or pictures of Allah or Muhammad though. Actually it was quite strange, there was an explanation of why they believe that no art work should depict any human, and then you turn the corner to see a picture of some ancient Indian Muslim leader. A bit inconsistent.

The other strange thing is that although they were at pains to note the differences between how Islam evolved in say India and China, and the effect on the artwork, there was no mention of differences say between Sunni and Shi'a artwork. Maybe there is none, but the impression you get leaving is of a single unified religion not what it is. Mind you they have an overblown sense of their own importance in a few places. For example one exhibit said the most important thing about the Monsoon winds was that it allowed the spread of Islam to the Malay Peninsula. And I'm thinking, no, it allowed rain so people could live there. Without people living there, who would you have spread it to.

After about an hour and a half of that it was onto the National Museum. I'm not sure how it differed from the first one. Anyway this was a bit disappointing. About 40% of it was undergoing renovations and all the ancient stuff was not available. So history only started in 1641. There was some interesting stuff, and it did take a while to go around. There was some terrible pro government propaganda about how the national plans going forward were so great etc. This with an upcoming election.

I do get this overall impression from Malaysia that they are still suffering a bit from some sort of need to remind everyone that lives there that they are a first world country, for example the Malaysia astronaut is pictured everywhere to show how advanced they are. I don't think they really need to be so blatant about it. There is still poverty, but its not much worse than in some parts of the US. This is definitely a first world country.

After the second museum I was a bit museumed out. I'm not sure if I could have managed a third like I planned so I headed back to the hotel, and this time went to the Central Market. This was less like a market and more like a shopping centre than some of the shopping centres. I couldn't figure out why its supposed to be such a big deal, but the food court was good value, and at least I could see my meal was cooked to order.