Putrajaya

On Thursday I traveled backed to Kuala Lumpur and made a brief stop at my hotel before going to Putrajaya. In an earlier post from the day I met with the Ministries of Health and Agriculture, I included a couple of pictures of some of the beautiful buildings in Putrajaya. I was invited to go back to Putrajaya by Tan Sri Samsudin Osman the President of Putrajaya Corporation and a 1997 Eisenhower Fellow. Although he is not elected, he serves in the same capacity that a mayor would in the U.S. We met at the Agricultural Heritage Park. Putrajaya has many beautiful parks and this one is dedicating to preserving Malaysia’s agricultural heritage and educating urban residents about agriculture. One section of the park is still occupied by the rubber trees that used to cover all of the area that is Putrajaya today. I was shown how rubber trees are tapped and how small holders of rubber processed their rubber for market. The first picture below is of the tapping process. I grew up in an area where we produced maple syrup and was familiar with tapping those kind of trees however this is a bit different. When we tap Maple trees we just drill a hole into the tree, with rubber you strip a narrow band of bark from around the outside of the tree in a sloping direction and the rubber runs along the slope into a small cup. After enough rubber is collected it is put in some water with a little acid to coagulate. Then the rubber is flattened by hand and then run through a rolling machine that is much like a pasta machine until it is very thin. Next it is run through another rolling machine that scores the sheet of rubber. After it dries some more it is put in a smoke house that is fired by rubber wood. The smoked rubber is worth much more that non-smoked. I learned a lot and I think I will be seeing some more rubber in Thailand. The second picture below shows one of the rolling machines. The third picture is of a Jack Fruit tree. As I had said in a previous post I really like Jack Fruit. This is a huge fruit and I am told that they can get much larger than this. The Agricultural Heritage Park also features an orchard that has many different species of tropical fruits and spices.

Next we traveled around the city of Putrajaya looking at the beautiful architecture and well planned layout of the city. We had a wonderful dinner at the boating club dining room. And after dinner I enjoyed a sunset cruise around the lake with a lady who is now with the Public Relations department but she was the head of the environmental department when the lakes and parks were being built and was able to tell me about that process. The picture below is of one of the bridges taken from the boat. All of the bridges are unique in their design; this one is quite traditional while others are modern. A lot of thought and planning has gone into the development of Putrajaya.

I realized that I haven’t posted a picture of the Petronas towers yet. This is the fourth room I have been in at this hotel and I am finally on the side facing the towers, so here is the view from my window.