Kuala Lumpur - Day 1 & 2

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For Eid al Adha, I decided to join my friend Jamie while she was traveling southeast Asia for work. Originally, she was going to be in Jakarta and i would join her there, but there was more fun in Kuala Lumpur, where she would be working the following week anyway, so Malaysia it is!

I left on Friday morning, hoping that the craziness for the Eid holiday break would be minimal. Parking was easy, and I had already checked in and had only carryon luggage, but the customs line was the longest i'd seen in the new airport. So, I pulled out my handy dandy Fast Track pass, given to me by a coworker and proceeded immediately through. Yes! I sat and the flight was delayed about 20 minutes, but over all the flight was pretty good. Eight hours from Doha, which I basically spent watching movies. I was interested in a huge thunderstorm we passed just before landing - it was cool! Then we flew over KL and I saw the Petronas towers from above - amazing! Then we just kept flying and flying... Turns out the airport is well outside of the city. I met Jamie in the arrivals hall and we got a taxi (not an easy process actually) to the city, over an hour away where we were able to catch up after more than two months.

Our hotel was the Dorsett Regency Hotel, which was very near the center of town. The hotel was pretty nice, with karaoke playing in the downstairs lounge, of course. We were starving so ordered a margherita pizza to split for room service. Nice frozen pizza - ha! We slept pretty sound and got up around 9:30 the next morning to meet our driver at 11. Our driver never showed. Bummer - we were so looking forward to the gay driver for our weekend excursions. Instead, we got a regular taxi driver who was at turns nice and mean (this seemed pretty standard of Malaysian taxi drivers...).

He took us to the park in KL, Taman Botani Negara Shal Alam, which is a beautiful park on the outskirts of the city - we were amazed at how much there was to do, thinking you could do something different each weekend for a year. There is mountain biking with multiple trails, a lake, a swimming area, paths, etc. And Skytrex! The climbing we did in Al Ain was child's play compared to this. They only had openings on the Extreme routes, so of course we took them. They gave us a harness and a brief induction before setting us off on our own. We did very well! We were just behind a big group and kept getting held up on the course. But there were so many different fun things to do - rope climbing, ladders, zip lines, rope swings, platforms, etc. So much fun! The workers were also very nice and helpful. I cannot praise this place enough! The park was beautiful and SkyTrex was the best part of the whole trip - if you go to KL, DO THIS! I was so happy to keep up. While Jamie definitely has me pegged in the fitness category, my balance was on display and is one of my best abilities. Glad I haven't lost it! The only part that worried me was climbing up the third ladder. Apparently, everyone else knew to bring gloves; we didn't. My hands were so sweaty and by that point I was a bit shaky, so getting towards the top of the ladder was the only real challenge I had. Jamie also had it; I went up first and when she got near the top of the ladder, her hand got caught between one of the rungs and a piece of rebar. Ouch! I also got a huge blister on the part where we were supposed to skim across a cable.

After this we took a quick trip around this beautiful huge mosque we had seen on the way to the park. It was HUGE. We wanted to go in, but prayer was going on at the moment so that was out. Regardless, the mosque was quite lovely and just incredible.

We then asked the driver to drop us off at the mall near to our hotel so we could get some food. The mall is quite deceiving from the outside - Times Square - where you see a nice tall facade that covers about two stories. We went inside and looked up restaurants and then we noticed the escalators. There were escalators near to where the information booth was located, going up another two stories... but in the distance there were many more going even higher! Turns out this mall is like thirteen stories, with an indoor theme park and cinema, hotel and restaurants - huge! So, we got food in a quaint little eatery far inside where I had soba noodles (yum!) and Jamie had a salad with some kind of hot pocket type thing. This was actually the best food we had the whole time.

After that, we saw signs for "The Escape Room" which Jamie had been telling me about earlier. They have a couple in Dubai, so we figured let's give it a go. There were eight different options with varying difficulties. We took the 4/5 star difficult - the Vampire Chronicles. It was hard! But oh so much fun! Turns out, you really needed to have three people and I so wanted to finish it but the guy took us to the final room and showed us the solution. Losers!

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Photos

We have to climb up that?
Of course we opted for the Extreme Course

Skytrex
Just hanging around...

Soba noodles
my favorite meal of the trip

Extreme Course - no problem!
Our first ladder

Zip
Jamie bounced back from the end of the zip line, but was able to pull herself back

Comments

[Sojourner1208]

obstacle course
Looks like you would do just fine on the Marine Corps obstacle course.....I'd have taken the chicken exit : )

[lexispence10]

Chicken Exit
It was there a few times throughout the course, but the only time it was really tempting was when we were waiting in a long queue.