United Buddy Bears in KL
Shortly before Christmas we were walking past Pavilion, one of the upscale malls here, and were surprised to find lots of bears.
United Buddy Bears
These are particularly well traveled bears; they’ve been on the road since 2002 covering five continents, and Malaysia is the 23rd stop on their world tour.
Malaysia's Buddy Bear
There are about 140 bears, one for each country recognized by the United Nations. Each is two meters tall (yes, I’m working on getting used to the metric system again), and they stand in a circle with their arms upraised, “hand in hand” to promote tolerance and living in peace and harmony. These begin with identical fiberglass casts, and each country has chosen artists to decorate the bear in a manner to represent that country. The US went with a pretty iconic choice:
Lady Liberty
But my favorites are usually the lesser known countries, like Moldova.
The helpful Moldovan Buddy Bear
They are visiting here until February 15th, and it’s quite a sight to see!
The Moldovan bear reminds me of a classic Grinnell College t-shirt that says “Where the hell is Grinnell?” I can’t think of a similarly catchy rhyme for Moldova.
Grant will eat anything. Love the pictures. Happy Chinese New Year
I’m pretty sure Mom meant for her comment to be in response to another post, but as it stands I am tickled by the juxtaposition of the UN Buddy Bears post and the statement “Grant will eat anything.”
🙂
Little luis is enamored with the wonderful colors each bear is displaying. He obviously feels as though the only way to play with requires a bit of wrestling.
I tried to convince Grant to wrestle the bears, but he said that might be viewed as contrary to the whole “peace and harmony” idea. They’ll be there for a while, we’ll see if I can talk him into it!