Advertisement
Published: January 11th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Classic Old Chestnut Shot
But This Really Was The View From Our 29th Floor Traders Hotel Suite. - Sweet!! Arriving at KLs Low Cost Carrier Terminal at 2:30 in the morning after a 14 hour flight preceeded by two nights detention at a snowy Stansted is an assault on all the senses. The heat & humidity on leaving the basic terminal was welcome after the long haul chill of farts & bad breath from a large number of folk in a pressurised tube being recirculated through a dry ice air-conditioning unit. Half a dozen fags were smoked outside the door in fifteen minutes to make up for lost time before jumping in a cab & heading to our luxury pad Traders Hotel, a cricket balls throw from the famous Petronas Towers. 45 minutes later we were having our bags carried in. The Eagles Had Landed! Initially we had booked & paid for three nights here as a treat & a Bit Of Posh before making our way up through Malaysia overland to our island retreats in Thailand. Unfortunately the first two nights had been lost due to circumstances beyond our control so in effect we'd paid out £600 for a night and a bit. Best make the most of it we thought.
Room service sent some grub
up as we drank in the stupendous view from our 29th floor Twin Tower View Executive Suite. Stunning, truely stunning! & despite the fact it had taken us three mostly sleepless nights to get there it was still hard to nod off in the enormous bed that could have comfortably slept a family of eight. Total fatigue kicked in around half five in the morning however but we woke pretty sharpish before nine & headed down for a magnificent breakfast. The choice of scoff was world class. Apart from the usual bacon egg & sausage stuff they had local nasi lemak, curries & dahl, an array of fruit and veggie options - even sushi, my favourite brekkie munch!! Back up to the 29th floor afterwards to make the most of the expansive bathroom facilities before getting set for a day out exploring the vibrant city that encompassed us.
First out for a walk through the park which linked our hotel and the Twin Towers complex and a peruse of the shopping centre below. The park was cool, the shops not so, full of designer stuff that you could buy at home for about the same price.
Elec Tree City
Christmas Time Is Always Rather Odd In An Unfamiliar Land. Quite busy person wise but very few were actually buying anything or walking around with shopping bags. A bit like the Trafford Centre in the sunshine but without the Man U shirts. Its possible to get tickets up to the Skybridge which links the towers above on the 42nd floor, but that involves getting in the queue at silly o'clock, watching a 15 minute promotional video on what a great job Petronas are doing to make the world a better place then going up in a lift to get a view of our hotel. We thought briefly of selling tickets for people to come and check the panorama from our hotel suite as from where we were staying I think we got the better view.
We took a ride back to Traders across the park in a golf cart then took a stroll around the local streets stopping for a bite to eat at a rather cool "beach bar" in the city centre complete with an old speedboat outside & a proper live shark swimming back & forth in a tank above the bar. The streetscene outside had been spruced up with seasonally approriate lights around
the trees. Sauntered around for a while in 35 degrees of sunshine quietly smirking at the fact that it was -10 back home before grabbing a cab to Times Square, one of the Must See places we'd read about on Travelblog. Hands up - It Is another large shopping centre but this is one with a difference. Think Meadowhall meets Alton Towers & you get an idea. Its more like a giant 13 storey indoor market with the outlets inside being more Primark than Armarni but with the pièce de résistance being a full sized Theme Park within. Proper 7 storey high loop the loop roller coaster, those things that swing you 360 degrees like giant hammers, violently spinning spiders, bumper cars - the lot! Its really busy, loads of stuff to do & all for a one off £8 entrance fee. I went on the roller coaster twice, it was mental!! Kind of impressed with the coolness of KL. Its vibrant but not too loud, organised but not too pedestrian. The populace come across as being polite and courteous, it has a really good vibe much more than was expected. It felt Just Right.
Took the
KL Tower
BT Tower On Steroids monorail skytrain back towards Traders. It seems to be a pretty convenient way to get round town, quicker & cheaper than the bus and serving most of the major places worth visiting. Getting off near to the magnificent KL Tower, akin to Londons BT Tower on steroids, for the short walk back to our luxury boudoir. The mission in hand being to hit Traders famous Sky Bar on the 32nd floor for complimentary cocktails at seven pm - dress code essential. I was supposed to sit this one out as they hadn't packed my suit but I sneaked in through the fire escape & no-one seemed to notice. Sky Bar is well worth a visit even for quick pint, especially at sunset time, it's both partially covered and partially open air with a large swimming pool in its centre & probably boasts the best view of the city. The indoor/outdoor design is very clever as we discovered later in the evening following a magnificent sheet lightning display, it started raining big raindrops but it only rained in the pool. Those of us sitting around the edges remained out of the downpour but got to watch the raindance display on the
surface of the sub-lit water. Quite magical.
Not long after eleven, the old Sleep Bank was calling in its prolonged overdraft that had accrued over the preceeding days & we regrettably had to leave the serenity of the SkyBar & head down a couple of floors to the land of nod. Big day tomorrow for a 24 hour overland trip north towards our island retreat in Thailand.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.07s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 14; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0322s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
shamash
non-member comment
funny!
Hilarious. Wow, u r a great writer. nice one buddy. Shamash