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MALAYSIA
My uncharacteristic lack of forward planning ensured that I knew very little about the county before I arrived there, but I should have known what I was letting myself in for when at the Air Asia check-in desk (which I have since come to discover is always a colourful experience) someone was checking in an over sized bag od spuds.....
KULA LUMPUR
My first stop in Malaysia was the country's gleaming capital, KL. It's a gorgeous city with it's mix of traditional, colonial and ultra-modern architecture, but as ever in these parts they had to go and spoil it by chopping it all up with ridiculous freewyas that made walking anywhere an extreme sport. Furthermore, they didn't help matters by building the central train station nowhere near the centre so that any public transport journey became a proper mission. I mention this only so that you can appreciate how narcked off I was after being up all night and flying cattle class on an empty stomach and then trying to traverse lanes of fast flowing traffic with half my body weight either dangling from or entwined around a combination of multiple andf various limbs. Had this not been the case and had I not been contributing rivers of sweat to the already rancid gutters I don't think I would have stayed in Wanderer's Guest House which was the first one I came to but frankly given the circumstances I didn;t care. Plus, it had a much needed loo.
The entrance resembled a cross between a bombed out shell of a building in Beirut and the entrance to Church Street NCP car park, but upstairs they had gone all out with some jazzy paint and a fish tank to cheer the place up a bit. There was also another visual 'delight' in store behind the reception desk - a rather sour faced transexual that resembled one time Israeli Eurovision Song Contest winner Dana International. At first I though she just hated me, but after a few days I realised she was actually quite friendly and perhaps it was just the botox which prevented her from smiling.
The bedroom and the bathroom were rough to say the least, and I don't want to think about how many bed bugs were in theat bed, but shall we just say that really did make 73 Whitby Road look like Fallowfield Palace & Gardens.
I actually did quite a lot in KL over th 5 days that I was there; I wen tup the KL Menara - the 4th largest telecommunications tower in the word, went jogging in the city centre jungle reserve and came face to face with some very scary reptillian creature, explored the shopping district and the bars & restaurants, and had a day out to the botanic gardens and all of the colonial and touristy bits. However, the one thing that really stands out is the moment I unwittingly walked out of the monorail station and glimpsed the Petronas Towers for the first time. They were HUGE and I fell in love with them straight away because they were immensely shiny and glowed in the dark! They're arguably the prettiest skyscarpers I have ever seen and I had a bit of a Japanese tourist moment taking about a million pictures from all angles. Even better about them was their proximity to the Malaysian Tourism Centre which I discoverd had free internet and gave out free water and nibbles - winner!
I really wanted to go up the twin towers to the Sky Bridge but they only let so many people up each day and unfortunately I left it until the last day and when I got there at 9.30am the sodding Japanese had already taken up all of the ticket allocation so I settled for sitting in Starbucks at the bottom with a coffee and the paper instead. Five days in KL was admittedly too long and I was desperate to get out of the city, but also I wanted to visit Melacka and logistics and economy meant I had to go there before I went over to Borneo if I was going to go al all, so the bus to Melacka it was to be.
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