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Published: September 30th 2007
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I start my trip in Kuala Lumpur on the back of a dirt cheap Jetstar flight. With the excitement of my leaving drinks and other associated festivities - there'd been no time to even open the guidebook. I arrive in town with a picture of the Petronas twin towers in my head and expectations of a deliciously quaint and seedy Chinatown. It's late evening when I drag my pack onto a couple of trains, then sweat my way across Chinatown to one of the cheapest hostels in the book - $4 a night. Gold.
Making out the hostel desk across a haze of smoke, I collect my key and head for my cell/room - which has no natural light. The roof appears stuck together with masking tape. Comfortable enough - especially with only 3 hours sleep under my belt from the night before owing to the great Itunes debacle (I now have my 19 year old sister's Itunes on my Ipod for my indefinite listening pleasure!). After dinner with my amusing German roomies Gunter & Mikhail, I sleep for over 12 hours. When I wake I have white flecks all over me. The masking tape is not holding things together!!
My return to the backpacker world is short-lived. My good mates Donna and Scott are flying in from Singapore and have booked us into a hotel for the weekend. Their treat. Who am I to argue? The ritzy Hotel Nikko is in the business district, not far from the Petronas towers. A strip of banks, hotels and few western guests. The attentive hotel staff fail to disguise their disgust and horror at the sweaty backpacker in fisherman's pants and headband hualing an enormous backpack through the glass doors of their chandeliered lobby! I've got hours to kill before Donna and Scott arrive, so I don a bathrobe and make good use of the brilliant swimming pool and cabana (no - not the sausage!). This is the life! The place is great - but perhaps a little too removed from the grit and character of the 'real' KL. The great arena buffet brekkie rort makes up for this though and the three of us sneak into the 'Arena Cafe' past unsuspecting hotel staff and gorge ourselves on free buffet brekkie each morning.
It's hard to have a confidence problem when shopping in KL's China Town. If you're not 'boot-e-fullll'
or 'pritty', there must be something wrong with you! I loved the chaos and atmosphere of China Town. Look up to see lanterns and lights strung across the busy street, looking down a hessian bag runs past my feet! It's got a live chicken in it. The meat market overflows with live and freshly hacked animals. The smells are a full scale assault on the senses - rotten vegies, fish, spices, incense, garbage and chilli tickles the nostrils and brings on a fit of sneezes! Then there's the night market where enterprising Malays peddle jewellery, watches, fake sunnies, handbags, DVDs and all the brand names. Music plays loudly - sometimes buskers, other times popular music - apparently Aqua's 'barbie girl' is still huge here!
In contrast, KL is also bursting at the seams with flash, upmarket shopping complexes. These places scream glitz, opulence and have a decidedly international flavour. From Tiffanys to a ridiculously overpriced Topshop - they have it all in their icy air-conditioned ambience. Then for the bargain hunters, there's the cheap clearance outlets. Low roofed, claustraphobic and jammed with hundreds of locals tripping over each other to get a bargain. Everything is available in these places
- from anti-bacterial keyboards to skin whitening products. Everything with the exception of good service and sunlight. I couldn't get out fast enough.
The famed Petronas twin towers are everywhere you look - a little like the Eiffel in Paris. Grey and unfriendly by day, but spectacular by night, these babies were the tallest building in the world at completion. Now they're the tallest twin towers, but only the second and third tallest towers in the world. Every day they dish out free tickets to visitors wanting to visit the towers and cross the skybridge. We queue at 8.30am on my last day and by the time we reach the front of the line, tickets were only available for the 12.45pm tour. I'm leaving for the station at 1.30pm so miss out. Instead we visit the KL tower, the 4th tallest telecom tower in the world, for a 360 degree view of KL. Funny how the Malays have this obsession with tall when they're all so short. I'm a giant here!
For a dose of the spiritual and sacred, we head out of town to the Batu Caves. These caves and Hindu temples are home to hundreds of
monkeys, bats and tacky statues. The place is teaming with tour buses and fervant Hindu's paying their respects with flower offerings which they take to the temple at the top of the 273 steps. The centrepiece is the enormous 43 metre tall gold statue of Lord Murugan - god of war and son of Shiva and Parvati. Every year, the Batu Caves are visited on a type of pilgrammage by millions of Hindus for the annual Thaipusam Festival.
Time to check out the KL nightlife. It really is a case of where to look when we hit heaving nightclub "Beach". 'He-shes' are dressed to the nines, arm in arm with western sexpats. We breeze into the balconyed VIP area and I proceed to help myself to the beer fountain abandonded by a big, white, fat ugly guy busy tuning an asian beauty he'd have to pay for later anyway. The dancefloor is packed and locals and tourists alike go mad for Timberlake and fight for a spot on the podium. I happily drink the tiger and dance to JT, but can't help thinking this is KL at its worst.
The Malaysian locals are friendly and enthusiastic. A mix
of Chinese, Indian and Malay gives new definition to multicultural and certainly adds great variety to mealtime and prayertime. Late one night a Hindu cab driver gave us a free and impromptu tour of some of the significant Hindu temples after I asked after his dashboard Ganesha. 'Stay in KL and I will be your teacher', he offered ... Thanks mate, but Langkawi was calling .....
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KERRIE & JOHN
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Love the blog
You are such a great writer Ellen. Life is certainly not dull. Love reading about your travels. Stay safe Love Kerrie and John