Putra Jaya - what a pointless place

Last night was a very jolly night indeed. We went for the usual Chia family saturday night meal, a tradition of theirs, but this was a bit special cos they had some family visitors popping by from Ausralia for the week. We went to a proper nice chinese restaurant called the Imbi Palace, where we ate loads of prawns, crispy duck, pigeon, noodles and all sorts of tasty yummyness. The pigeon was particularly delicious, not as nice as the duck of course, but certainly much tastier than chicken.
After food we went over to the aquarium tanks where the fresh fish is kept, and we watched some adventurous crabs climb over the sides of the tanks and try to escape, which was quite fun indeed. One was really tenacious and kept climbing over the partition between 2 tanks - I get the feeling he thought he was making a dramatic getaway but he failed to notice that whenever he got into a new tank he was escaping over the same wall hed just arrived by. Well, nobody ever said crabs were notorious for their intellect did they.

After dinner Jess (Vans older sister) and her boyfriend Julian suggested a late drive to Putra Jaya to take some night photos with tripods. We got in the car and made the 45 minute drive down the highway to the brand new city, which did not evolve at al, it was merely planed and constructed by the government. In the manner of Milton Keynes. Needless to say it has about the same amount of charm and prescence as Englands car park.

Never go to Putra Jaya, unless you want to experience how Asian town planners can make a real arse of building a new city just as well as we can in the UK. It's the most abundantly soulless place imaginable. Admittedly it looks a bit better than Milton Keynes, but not much.
Putra Jaya is such a pitiful place it really is quite sad. I'm sure i tlooked good when the models were made and put into the parliamentary planning office. I'm certain all those little models of highways and shiny office blocks made the city planners feel all important and sexy.
Why is it that people who are in charge of building cirie are invarioubly the most unsuitable people for building a city?

Do they really think that a city is supposed to be designed around a road system? Really? Do they really love tarmac that much that the need to make it the absolute centerpoint for all human activity? Do they think " I know, what we'll do is build roads, absolutely masses of them, and then people willbe begging to move here".
Utterly insane.

On Putra Jayas list of "things to do" the number one favoured activity is Leave.

I've just been on the PutraJaya tourism website and this i swhat they have to offer - 9 Bridges, the ministry of Finance, a lake, government buildings and a fountain. It also has one of the worlds largest and most preposterous roundabouts as you come in from KL.

All in all it's a total joke.

Oh and don't try and got there after midnight because the whole place is closed. They won't even let you walk across Indepence square at night (and the whole place is wide open and clearly a public thoughroughfare) presumably because couples might wish to enjoy a romantic stroll of an evening, and maybe do something wild and unacceptable like holding hands. We tried to walk accross, but lots of (no doubt very bored) guards started blowing whistles at us.

The only place we found that was open was a 7-11.
I men, I ask you, at midnight on a saturday in a city only 40 minutes from KL.
Why do they bother????

Oh Putrajaya does have awetlands park, for conservation purposes - however when you consider that 10 years ago they slashed and burned 11000 hectares of forest and jungle to make Asias Milton Keynes, getting a few chaffinches to roost in a damp bush is hardly a great step forward now is it.

If any potential tourists are reading this site, take my advice and don't go to Putrajaya.
Even the totalitarian delights in Singapore are more fun than here.