Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore ...: throughout Taipei and a bad start in KL

It's been a little while since my last entry here but the reason is not that I didn't do anything or that I'm lazy (although sometimes ...). I was suddenly and unexpectedly occupied with other objections ...

Thursday night I arrived in Kuala Lumpur (KL). I managed to find my way from the airport which is about 50km outside of the city to my hostel with a bright full moon watching over me. I was really looking forward to exploring KL the next day.
Thus, on the next morning (actually I got up late, so it was already around noon) I looked around the city center and in the afternoon I went to a huge shopping mall (MidValley) further south. When I decided to go back to my hostel a few hours later, a large crowd was waiting at the train station.

Finally the train arrived, everybody was pushing inside and a minute later my wallet was gone - stolen right out of the pocket of my trousers.
Within less than 24 hours in Malaysia I had no money, no credit card, no ID (except for my passport) and I realized that I was trapped inside the subway system.

After I quickly went through the stages of shock, disbelief, anger and acceptance I called my father to block my bank account. At the exit gate of the subway I convinced the security guy that I had no ticket and that I was by no means able to buy a new one and went straight to the police.
With no money at all and no way to get some, your options become suddenly very limited.

The police officer was friendly but considered it more or less useless that I told him about the theft of my wallet. I made a report anyways and asked him at the end for a little money so that I could take the subway back to my hostel.

I didn't sleep very well that night but I was lucky to find a Western Union bank the following morning that was open although it was Saturday. My Dad sent me some money and I eased up when the woman at the counter kindly handed me over the bank notes.

Now that I'm relieved of the burden of having to carry my wallet around, I can start (with some delay) to experience the more enjoyable aspects of Kuala Lumpur ...

But before that, I want to add some info about the rest of my time in Taipei:

Throughout Taipei
I was pretty lucky with regards to the weather. Only on one day it started raining heavily. At that time I happened to be a little bit outside of Taipei in the mountain area where I visited some temples and shrines (all very close to each other) dedicated to deities of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

view over rainy Taipei from 'the mountain with the highest spirituality in the world'
(at least that's what the sign post next to me said)

Zhi-nan temple and also 'China Center of Taoism'

Taoist altar at Zhi-nan temple

steep curved steps to the entrance of the Buddhist temple

tiny palm tree in the botanical garden of Taipei

lotus flower (botanical garden)

Core Pacific Living Mall

crossroads on the Roosevelt Bdv. nearby my hostel

Shilin night market

somewhere in Shilin

lion guardian at the entrance to the Palace Museum

I got off the airconditioned bus, walked along this path for about 200m in the blazing sun and when I got to the entrance of the museum I was a sweaty mess.

One morning, I was just eating my breakfast in a small park, I suddenly got company ...

he was as much surprised to see me as I was to him when he came around the corner.

On my last day in Taipei I went to the Museum of Drinking Water. Because the name itself sounded funny and I was curious if I could gain some special insight in how to drink from my water bottle.

But as I discovered to my disappointment, there was no information about drinking, gulping, sipping or slurping water ... just pipes and water pumps. The most exciting thing in the whole area was a red water hydrant on display in the sculpture park outside the museum.
As my boredom grew larger with every single piece of water engineering equipment, some kids playing in a water fountain caught my attention. They seemed to have lots of fun and I would have joind them immediately but I guess the limit for admittance to the 'water party' was somewhere below the age of 8.

pipes with different radii ... breathtaking

it seemed that in order to jolly the tourist along they put some funny signs up at the museum ...

... I watched out and lucky me - there was nobody around to hit me.

One of my favourite places in whole Taipei was the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial area. It was just too nice to spend some evening-hours there ... reading, eating or listening to my mp3-player.