Kuala Lumpur


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Published: June 14th 2013
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As we were extremely lacking in good quality sleep on the train given that the lights had been on all night and the train had stopped to pick up passengers several times, we checked into PODS Backpackers Hostel near KL Central Train Station and went back to sleep. The Hostel itself was a fairly novel concept where you all sleep in “pods” - raised floors with mattresses and the walls didn't quite meet the ceilings enabling the Hostel to use one AC per floor and giving the whole place quite a hippy vibe. The free breakfast of peanut butter or honey on toast did help make up for some random early morning clattering.

We then had breakfast at our trusted café of Old Town White Coffee where I finally had Ipoh Kueh Teow – the famous chicken and rice noodle soup which was really delicious. We then caught the shiny KL Monorail into town to get a few snaps of the Petronas Twin Towers, wandering round the mall and catching the new Star Trek movie, which although borrowing several ideas from the original, was nowhere near as good as “The Wrath of Khan.”

In the evening we caught a taxi to the newly built Publika Mall to meet up with my old friends from the Bar Course in Bristol. Yuwen had kindly organised that we would all meet up after work, but unfortunately for her as for many of the bunch, work did not conclude until past 9pm. Ashwin who was also from my initial tutor group was the first to arrive and it was great to catch up with what everyone is doing in terms of Associate level work in KL and to catch up generally. I also enjoyed being advised on new Malaysian dishes to try and had a spicy fish and coconut curry with guava juice on the side. Also worth a note is that my friend Kamlesh has recently been voted as the second most eligible bachelor in Malaysia by a magazine, despite his answer to if you had anything you could ask a woman, what would it be being, “what does a period feel like?”

As more of the group arrived we had a great laugh (not only at Kamlesh) who at the end of the evening kindly dropped us back in our hostel in his new BMW. A more ironic situation I cannot imagine.

The next morning we packed up our belongings to leave in the safe room, hiking our valuables with us , and caught the train to Batu Caves. AS we were slightly limited on time we didn't do the tour of the Dark Cave which would probably have been more interesting, and instead wandered into the main temple. This did have the benefit of being free. Wandered into is also a massive understatement. The opening to the cave lies at the top of a very high and steep staircase with narrow steps, swarmed with overly friendly monkeys who run up and down the hand rails. The steps are watched over by a huge golden statue rising to over x metres. The insides of the cave itself was unfortunately not as impressive as the build up. It was also slightly ruined by men selling remote control helicopters and toy machine guns at the entrance. Some of the icons inside were quite delicately painted but I think the most impressive feature of the cave was the entrance rather than the rubbish strewn interior. The whole place could do with some TLC.

After grabbing an ice-cream and wandering about the market stalls where people were unusually unwilling to barter, we collected out belongings from the Hostel and then caught the rather expensive KL International Airport Express Link. This was a bit like the train that takes you into Gatwick but runs through the Malaysian countryside. Check-in was fairly simple, but all the duty free would only allow you to use card if you spent a whopping 20 Ringit, so we decided to be wise and save it for the Nam.


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