Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia…

Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening….this is Don taking over for a blog entry to give Chloe a wee rest. I’ve been quite lazy up to now so here comes a different perspective on things. Thanks to all who have been following us on our journey from Sydney to home. I am pleased to report we have arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For the purposes of future description, Kuala Lumpur will be noted as KL as this is the locals more affectionate name for their countries capital. Now I should give you all a heads up on our plans so you have a little taste of what to expect over the next couple of months. We plan on staying around Malaysia for 10 days or thereabouts, then moving onto Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos all in the space of 2months. Visit temples, ancient relics, sites from the war, generally see things I expect many people will never be fortunate enough to see or experience. All by train or bus or if worse comes to worse a bit of a hike! Get your map out people, it’s a long journey we have ahead of us. Lets hope we have enough cash to make it home. So back to the present, lets pick up where Chloe left off.

So we set off from the Gold Coast, East coast of Aus for KL airport. Scottish Dave has caught up with us after staying on in Cairns working to get some extra cash for the adventure ahead. Having stayed with Ecto’s uncle for a couple of nites we headed off. We all were surprisingly upbeat for the flight considering we were leaving a country we have all come to love and call home. I still refer to Aus as home now. However there were no tears, though Chloe has since had a wee sad moment as it dawned on her that she had moved on to a new adventure. Now, the flight was uneventful, although watching Dave squirm was fun as he hates flying. It makes us wonder why he went out 3 weeks ago and bought an encyclopaedia of every airline, listing all their crashes and safety records to date! But that’s the Scottish folk for you. So, having landed on KL we were greeted with some good old fashioned rain. 25degrees and a little rain make for muggy conditions. But we were in Malaysia so happy days. Turns out monsoon season just may be sneaking in early this year, though officially it should start in November. We got fed with a good old McDonalds and made our way by coach into KL city, an hour long journey.

Having wandered about the Chinatown part of the city for 30 minutes, we eventually succumbed to the 20kilo backpacks on our backs and followed a local to a hostel. Now we hit a bit of a roadblock as far as our plans went. I like to meticulously plan everything well in advance to cover all eventualities, but hey we cant cover everything. So, none of us could pick up signal on our phones in Malaysia, and we were meant to text Wilsy, the fifth and final member of our travel party flying in from the west coast of Aus on a later flight. All we could do was send an e mail to him and hope he checked it for where we were staying when he arrived at the airport (if indeed the airport even had internet) and hope he was with us by morning. Next morning, we found he had checked into our hostel so all was well. Hugs, handshakes, greeting of all sorts and a relieved sigh later and we were all off to adventure around Chinatown, the market stall, fake brand name, shopping capital of KL.

Street after street of market stalls selling fake Gucci, Ray Ban, D&G, football jerseys. “My friend, I do you good price, for you my friend”…”Brother, you like watch”….:”beautiful woman, extra special discount, come come”…..AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!! Every stall we passed had someone running after us, it was chaos. Even when we wanted to look at the items we got so harassed to buy it we had to leave. It certainly was an experience and one I am all too familiar with from my previous holiday to Thailand, so I expect we will have 2months of the same to deal with before we get home. All part of the experience I guess. However to make matters worse every street had an unbearable stench, whether it was sewerage, long forgotten piles of rubbish in alleyways, or the unsightly open drains with their spurious brown water flowing through, something smelt a little bit funky about the area. We wanted out! Next stop ‘The Golden Triangle’ (Bukit Bintang).

This is more like it, closer to the business centre of the city, and a lot cleaner. We walked around for an hour and came across a reasonably priced guesthouse (60 RM per double room / 10 quid), that had a pool table, internet and a relaxing feel about it. And of course a very friendly Malay lady who was happy to help. So we wandered back to Chinatown hostel to collect our bags, grabbed a taxi and made our way around to the new place. It was a 5 minute journey, about 6RM but the driver tried charging me and Chloe 15RM. Now I don’t respect or appreciate people ripping me off so I started telling him he was breaking the law and we had asked to use the taxi meter, pointing out the little sticker on his window showing the actual charges we should pay. “15RM sir, Busy time for me, I charge you 15RM”. I handed him 10RM, tore into him a bit more telling him it was still too much and wishing bad things upon his clapped out taxi, I got out. Considering following me, my backup arrived. 2 Scottish skinheads, and 1 with a Mohawk, he swiftly moved along. Backpacker beware, if you can be ripped off, you will be. Anyway moving on as I am getting cross now thinking about it. Into the nice hostel and unpacked, we relaxed for a bit. But then it started, like that crucial moment in a horror movie when all the happiness turns to a bloody mess. SPLAT!! Got one….SPLAT!! I just found another one….bedbugs, crawling around the wall awaiting night time to fall so they could migrate to our bed for a feast. Me and Chloe got switched to a different room, then the Scottish Clan found quite a few crawling around and had to lie on the couches in the communal area. We stayed an extra night as we were already paid in so the Scots got a new room. Me and Chloe had no problems with our new room thankfully, but the boys were attacked again so again slept on the couches.

For our second day in KL, I had planned a bit of a tour for us. We were contemplating getting a tour bus that took us around the city, but at near 40RM each we decided walking was the best option. And we walked….and walked…and walked. It was excellent, well I thought so. Dodging traffic, watching hundreds of little motorbikes fight for space on the road, witnessing multiple near misses on the road.. This city is out of control. Traffic cruises on through red lights as if they are green, no consideration for the pedestrians when the wee man turns green at a crossing, you take you life into your own hands around KL. And its quite funny and typifies the situation, when the wee man does turn green his legs move really fast prompting you to run across the road as opposed to in Oz where he just glides by nice and slow. We walked for quite a few hours taking in the sites. Walking through each section of the city from the rundown ragged buildings and stalls in Chinatown, through the city centre with towering new buildings glistening in the sun and showing spectacular reflections of buildings all around, and finally arriving at the cultural quarter. Mosques, and a couple of Hindu temples could be admired as we passed through, with the option of going within the grounds to get a close up. However, as we were all in shorts and T- shirts, we felt it would be disrespectful as you should enter these places covered up . And besides, if we did have the option to enter, we probably wouldn’t have as we all were too afraid of doing something that may offend another religion. So we just admired from afar content that we were still standing after the long walk we had done.

The highlight of our day was the Petronas Towers. The twin towers stand tall as having been one of the tallest of it sort in the world and are home to the Petronas oil and gas company as well as many other businesses on its 90 levels. The main tourist attraction is the skywalk that leads from one tower the other, situated on the 48th floor. We went up on the lift and admired the view for 10 minutes, although it had started raining so our photos were unfortunately not as good as what we were hoping for. However, it was nice to have done it and it was free so all was well, until we tried to get a taxi home. All 5 of us piled into a taxi as it was raining and we asked him to use meter, again he said no and said the fare would be 25RM….too much. Like a scene from a circus show, we all piled out the other end of the taxi as quick as we got into it, laughing all the way and walked home safe in the knowledge that we had saved 25RM for beers and a few games of pool.

So our 2 full days in KL had come to an end. Up for 11am in the morning and off to our next stop, The Cameron Highlands. A Mountainous region North of KL to the town of Tanha Rata, some 2000metres above sea level to experience folk picking tea and other such hilltop antics. Thanks for reading, see you all soon for our next post.

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