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Published: December 27th 2006
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our hotel
the Crowne Plaza! When we left Duri it was a 3 hour bus ride to the port where we were taking a ferry over to Malysia. It was all going to be fairly complicated but my uncle had given me a lot of instructions and it made it a lot easier! We got off the bus in Dumi and had to get a key-jang, not directly to the ferry terminal eventhough we already had our ferry tickets, we had to first stop at the office of the ferry company for our harbor passes, go figure. So we did that, the office was a crowded smoky room with lots of girls typing on typwriters, like no where I've ever been, and then proceeded to the harbor which was also like no where I've ever been. We were the only foreigners amongst a sea of Indonesians and Malysians and everyone wanted to make sure they knew where we were going. About 10 people asked us! We quickly realized that we'd been given the wrong boarding passes, for a different port in Malysia, but when we finally squeezed onto the boat it didn't seem to be a problem. A lot of people talked to us and wanted
the look of KL
their cool telecommunications tower in the background! to know where we were from, one guy said "Caifornia?! Arnold Swartzeneger, he is my favorite actor!" haha! The ferry was cramped and couldn't have been more full, and we were happy to make it to the Malysian side alive. It took about 4 hours total on the boat and we immideatly walked onto a train going to Kuala Lumpur outside the ferry terminal. It worked perfectly, and we were only on the train for about an hour. After our taxi ride to the hotel we'd been on 6 different legs of transport over 12 hours and were exhausted. Luckily we splurged and were staying at one of the cheapest 5 star hotels in the world, Crowne Plaza Kuala Lumpur. That night we just ordered room service and watched some television, it was great!
The next day we went out to explore the city and did some shopping. They have massive malls there filled with American brand stores like guess, and big department stores selling everything you can imagine, and the best part is the air-con! KL was seriously hot and muggy, 5 minutes of walking and you'd need a shower. We wandered through the city and checked out
the towers
downtown KL their towers, where they have another great mall, and their telecommunications tower, which gave us great views of the city. After our exploring we had to get back to the hotel to make it to our massage appointments. Our hotel had a great spa and we were taking full advantage, ahhhhh. That night we had dinner at the nice restaurant at the hotel and listened to their jazz band play in the bar. When it got to be late enough we went out to a bar I'd spotted earlier that day, it had a real cool look, all open air with a tropical feel and fog. The music there was interesting to say the least, the DJ was on first and sang along like karaoke to a lot of it and then a good cover ban came on, but they ended up playing real mellow tunes so we decided to take off.
We had to check out the next day and start our trip up to Thailand by train, but it didn't leave until 8pm. In the morning we had an incredibly easy time at the American embassy getting more passport pages added into our almost full passports, it took less than an hour and was free! We took advantage of our room and chilled out until almost the last moment before check out, and then went to explore some more. We took a train a couple kilometeres out of the city center and went to a "wet" market, meaning they sell meats and produce. It was wet in every sense of the word, I was glad to be wearing close toed shoes! Although the market was in the process of closing for the day, we still got to see some crazy stuff. We saw a bucket of live eels! and crates of live toads! and all kinds of stinky sea food, raw meats, and live chickens in cages. The ground was the grossest part, one area was full of quarter sized fish scales, another full of small clam shells, and all the other parts had different parts of animals strewn across the walkway. I shudder just remembering it! I think we might have even seen a pig penius for sale!
That night we got completely ripped off by our taxi from the hotel to the central train station. The driver started out by going in a long circle through dense traffic around our hotel and then proceeded to go in the complete wrong direction from the station. Aaron was yelling at him and pointing to the map and the old guy just kept saying "yes central, I know where it is" at one point I thought we were being kidnapped he went so far out of the way. Aaron almost punched him when we got out and it cost more than twice the price than when we arrived and took twice as long. We couldn't even complain to the taxi center either cause we had to run to get our train.
We then boarded what was supposed to be a 14 hour train ride, we had a 2nd class sleeper, top bunk. Poor Aaron really didn't fit in his, and not only because we had to have our luggage up there with us too! It wasn't as bad as it sounds though, our car was filled with mostly muslim families with kids running up and down the asile, but by 10pm everyone was asleep. With my heavy duty earplugs I slept alright, the rocking wakes you up at times though. In the morning we didn't think it so bad until we got to the Thailand border an hour after we were supposed to be at our final destination which was still some miles away into Thailand. Luckily we met some other white people and we stuck together while going through immigration and by the time we reached Hat Yai,Thailand, only about 4 hours late to make it an 18 hour train ride, we all arranged a bus up to Krabi together.
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orion
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love of the game
i resent the comment that cricket is more borig than baseball....