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Kuala LumpurAfter several weeks in the country and islands, I decided to head for the big smoke. Its a fair distance from the Perhentians to KL (as its almost universally known!). You can take the bus, the train or the plane. After investigating the flight prices I opted for the luxury option - I flew business class to KL for about 25GBP!! The flight was only an hour long but I did enjoy my first experience of flying in comfort! The seats were huge and the service was pretty good. No champagne or caviar, unfortunately.KL has a brand spanking new airport which is about 90km away from the city. Seems a bit odd to have the main international airport for such an important city so far away, but it as it turned out that wasn't going to prove to be a problem for me. My flight was actually going to what must be KL's other airport. I was briefly confused when we landed and there were only about 4 other aircraft on the ground - hardly a bustling centre of trade and commerce! However, it did mean that I could get into the city quite easily, just a short bus journey away. I elected to stay in Chinatown as that seemed to be the place to be. A hostel had been recommended to me by someone in the Cameron Highlands so I decided to stay there. My arrival in KL was the cue for a huge thunderstorm and it proceeded to pour down for over an hour - and this wasn't the pathetic half-attempt at rainstorms that we're used to in Scotland, this was real rain. It was also pretty warm rain which was nice. Once the rain stopped I went out to have a look around. There are lots of markets in the chinatown area, but the best one has to be the night market which takes over the entire road. Stall after stall of not-so-genuine watches, T-shirts and electronic goods jam packed into one street. The sounds of bartering drown out everything else, and you can't help but feel you should join in. I decided to partake of a couple of T-shirts (nothing too fancy - I was a haggling virgin, after all!) and was very surprised at how easily I saved myself about 30 Ringgits (about five quid!). It was all very exciting and, much to my surprise, my Mercedes-McLaren F1 T shirt has actually been through the washing machine more times than I thought it would! The other thing to do in KL is to ascend the KL tower. When I say 'ascend', I actually mean 'get in the lift'! Its a spectacular view from the top, and there's a fascinating video about how it was made. It was some feat of engineering by the looks of it. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't that great when we were there as it had just been raining (this was a daily occurrence when I was in KL, although I still maintain that I'm not to blame!). 
The Petronas Twin Towers (right) are also quite impressive, although the general public are
only allowed into the shopping mall at the bottom. Apparently, they are the
biggest twin towers in the world. Sounds like the Malaysians were looking for
a record to break and chose one that no-one else had thought of!I found the Malaysian people extremely friendly, and communication was a whole lot easier than in Thailand because English is taught in most schools. I met one couple on my way to the Perhentians who lived in KL and told me to look them up when I got there. This I did, and was treated to a day trip into the country to see a safari park that was under construction and the Genting Highlands. It was a very hot day, but thankfully there seemed to be an unlimited supply of cold drinks in the boot of the car, as well as a picnic that I think was actually meant for feeding the five thousand. This was a great opportunity to see some things that I would otherwise not have seen and to spend some time with people who were not from Europe, the US or Canada. The Genting Highlands are Malaysia's answer to Las Vegas. Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps!) the casino had a dress code which didn't involve shorts and sandals so I didn't get the chance to hone my poker skills! The cable car ride up to the highlands was very spectacular. My only bad experience of KL was getting my credit card stolen. To this day I still don't know when or how it happened, but it obviously resulted from me being careless. To make matters worse I didn't discover that I'd lost it until I got to Australia over a week later. Whoever took it had a field day and bought themselves all sorts of nice electronic goods with it - they even used it in a coffee shop! For my last few days in Asia I headed for Singapore. |