Small Town. Big City.

---

Tina Writes

It was time to move on. We had only planned on quick stops in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur but decided to see a wee bit more of Malaysia as we went. We headed to Malacca, a wee town in between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur for one night to break up the journey. We booked a bus online for £15 each and headed out of Singapore. We had to go through border control and without a hitch we had another stamp in our passports.

We arrived in Malacca and walked for a few minutes to our hotel. I believe Rob has illustrated my dislike of being too hot. A few minutes walking with my pack on is not my idea of fun so I was relieved to get to the hotel. I had forgotten I had booked the cheapest room they had, a ‘no window ‘room. Rob was not amused. It did feel a wee bit like a prison cell but I reckoned it would be cooler, I wouldn’t be woken by the light and less chance of beasties. I do a bed check in rooms now. I’m looking for bed bugs. As I picked up the first pillow a wee spider jumped out! Then I seen a lot of pubic hair and staining so I had to get it changed. Rob hates when I do this. He is annoyed because he doesn’t want anyone in the room as he thinks they will rob us of all our possessions. I keep telling him that they can get in anytime they like, they don’t need me to ask them to change the bed to rob us.

Having not got our sleep patterns together and with the heat, it took us much longer than it should have to get out and about. Leaving the sanctuary of an air conditioned room and wifi is quite hard. We only had 1 day here so off we went. Melacca is quite a big town, in fact, more like a city but we were staying in what I can only imagine to be the tourist area. It’s centred around a lovely canal and has quaint houses lining it. With it being Chinese New Year everything is shut. A trend that would follow us to Kuala Lumpur. We took a walk down Jonker Street which I had read was THE place to be. It was full of tourist souvenir shops selling tat and that’s all I saw. I was expecting a big food area but I couldn’t find it. We needed an ATM, as it turns out there are only like 2 in the area so we had to walk quite a bit to get one. It turned out to be at the bottom of the observation tower. The observation deck could travel down to the ground, pick everyone up, go to the top and then revolve so you could see over all of Malacca. Rob was starving and you don’t want to be around Rob when he is hungry because like a big baby, he will let it known! The suggestion of going up the tower before he had eaten did not go down well but it would mean going all the way back to town and then all the way back to the tower in the heat. I told him it would be fast and then we could eat, so we bought the tickets (£3.25 each) and were given free Malaysian cakes and a bottle of water, bargain! Thank God we got this as we then sat in the tower waiting for about 15 minutes before it actually went up. Inside the observation deck were seats all the way round and a set of binoculars for each seat. Up we went, at quite a speed and once at the top we started revolving, again at quite a speed so it was difficult to actually see anything through the binoculars as we were moving too fast to focus on anything. It was good fun though. I had hoped it would go down like a Drop Zone ride but it didn’t. We headed back to town for lunch and the lure of Hard Rock cafe was too much as the cocktails and air con called to me. So far I have made most of my decisions on where I think the best air con will be.

With me slightly drunk, we trudged back to the hotel and booked our bus and hotel for Kuala Lumpur the next day. As soon as we got back the heavens opened and thunder and lightning began. Fully intending on going back out after this for dinner and more sightseeing, I found myself sneaking to sleep at 6pm as Rob sat in front of me booking stuff. I thought he would wake me up as my pattern was all over the place and really needed sorting out but he let me and we both ended up waking up the next morning at 7am.

This hotel did not do breakfast, so Rob went out to get something for us to eat before our bus at 9.30am. He came back with Roti, this is kinda like nan bread. It can be made with all sorts, in this case egg, so the nan like bread has egg throughout it. You also get a curry dip with it. It’s very nice and very cheap at 4 Ringgit (60p) for two. Rob likes to name the currency all sorts of names as he can never remember the proper name. We’ve had ‘ring-pieces’ ‘ringer’ ‘rupees’, ‘reil’ but he stuck with ‘ringos’ for the most part.

We got a taxi to the station and stocked up on some snacks for the ride. Rob likes to buy things that sound funny, so with his packet of Rotas crisps (it’s a car thing), Nips sweets and a bottle of Kickapoo we were set. This bus was not as nice as the previous bus and we had some weird seats at the back. The driver seemed to use the back of the bus as his wardrobe as his shirt was hanging up behind me and there was a pair of flipflops next to my seat. It wasn’t long before I realised there was a guy behind me. What I thought was the very back of the bus, turned out there was space behind a curtain and I could hear him snoring and moving around. I assume he was the next driver or something. It was a bit weird.

The three hour bus journey passed quickly and we arrived in Kuala Lumpur. We had to find our way from the bus station which is on the outskirts of the city, into the centre using the rail system. It seemed fairly straight forward but we got on the wrong LRT. I could see Rob freaking out in his wee head. He seems to think that that’s it, we are lost forever and we will die! We quickly realised, although it was not the intended train, it stopped at a station near our hotel, so we got off there and found the hotel without too much trouble. The Maps.me app is very handy for these situations.

We stayed at Sky Hotel and after a room change due to very bad air con, it turned out to be quite a good hotel. We were on floor 3A. They don’t have a floor 4 because this number is bad luck in China, therefore no Chinese people will stay on that floor, so it doesn’t exist. We went for a wander and came across the malls. So many malls with designer outlets everywhere, Gucci, Prada, the lot. Who is shopping in these stores? I quickly zero’d Krispy Kreme and checked out their doughnut collection. I did not eat one but I did buy a T-shirt. You can’t get KK t-shirts back home. We seen a sign in the mall saying the indoor amusement park was on level 5 so we had to check that out. They had an actual indoor roller coaster and not some lame-o one either. Of course it was closed for 1 hour for maintenance so we didn’t try it out sadly. We decided to go to Chinatown. I had read the food was amazeballs. Rob guiding us, using his amazing map reading skillz, I eventually asked someone. When we got there, all I could see were stalls upon stalls of fake designer bags. Normally, I would love this and buy loads but obviously I can’t do that on this trip so it was just annoying. We couldn’t find the vast food stalls I had read about and ended up in a wee food court. I got a fancy chicken noodle soup and Rob got chicken and noodles with two fresh pineapple juices to wash it down for about 20 Ringos (£3.20). On the way back to the hotel the heat was intense and so we decided on getting a taxi but just at that moment I spotted one of the cities free buses, so we hopped on that. As we crossed the road to our hotel, I realised I recognised the street in front of me, it was the street I had asked someone how to get to Chinatown on, after walking endlessly and getting nowhere. So Rob had taken us in a huge circle in the wrong direction when the way was literally round the corner from the hotel. He found this hilarious! I did not.

After a few hours respite we got ready to go for dinner at the top of the KL tower. This was a very expensive buffet meal in a revolving restaurant. Having been to a similar buffet at the top of the Sky Tower in Auckland, we had high hopes it would be similar especially as it was a similar price. We also justified this by the fact that we were not going to pay £20 each to go the top of the Petronas Twin Towers. We caught a cab to the towers as we had heard there is no way to get to it without a very long climb up a massive winding hill. The restaurant looked cool. The floor of the seating part is what revolved , so you got further away or closer to the buffet as it went. In order to have a seat by the window we had to pay an extra £8. I was not happy about this, especially as there was no mention of it when I booked. It was already a very expensive meal costing £27 each, which in Malaysia is expensive. The worst part was, the restaurant was less than half full! There were dozens of empty window seats and they still put the people that didn’t pay the extra in the middle. Not that any of this mattered, as when we finally revolved round to the view of the twin towers it very suddenly clouded over and stayed there until we had revolved past them. No matter though as the food would make up for it, NOT! Absolutely awful food. Ah well, you win some.....

Next day we decided on going to the Batu caves. First we looked for a laundrette. We were fast running out of clean clothes. We were directed by the hotel to a place across the road but they were too busy so we thought we would try and find a self service place. We walked around the corner, to the street we should have gone the first time we were trying to get the Chinatown, and as we turned the corner we heard a screech and smash behind us. It was obvious a car had crashed into something behind us. I was on the pavement but Rob had gone onto the road to get past a pillar, so when I turned to see the car, I realised he was right in front of it as it careered towards us. I let out a very high pitched ‘ROB’. I was sure he had been knocked down as I couldnt’ see him from the pillar but he had somehow managed to reverse back on himself in some kind of Matrix style manoeuvre and simply stepped out the way before it hit him. We were pretty shaken up. Some guys came running and took us into their shop, sat us down and gave Rob some water. After a few minutes we thanked them and were on our way, we walked past the stupid bitch that was driving the car as she just stood on her phone, probably calling her insurance or something. She didn’t say and word nor even look at us. Like everyone here, she was driving too fast and hit the crash barrier, smashing her front quarter to oblivion . You have no idea how close Rob was to being in serious trouble! We never found a laundrette either! So we dropped the washing back at the hotel and headed to the caves.

We researched how to get there using public transport (£1.50 each via monorail and train) which was very easy. The caves have a religious thing going on. There’s a giant golden statue of Murugan, a Hindu God and 272 stairs to climb to the top. Remember now, its 30 odd degrees and to top it all off my knees are offensive to the God, so I had to buy a sarong type thing and cover them. Rob was not amused at the amount of times I had to stop and catch my breath. Near the top was one of the caves that had been taken over by Malaysia conservation. You could pay £6 to do a tour with them. So we did. We went with a group of about 12 people and trekked through the giant caves wearing hard hats and had a torch each.

We saw lots of big giant beasties, such as spiders and centipedes. The caves were full of bats all squeaking the whole time but you couldn’t see them as it was so dark and you were not allowed to shine your light up to them as part of the conservation. We headed back down and before we got the train back we spotted some wild monkeys near the station. We watched them for a while and were really close. They hung about the tourists for food. A monk came over and dropped a bunch of scraps and bananas for them. Someone dropped there ice-lolly and one of them grabbed it and sat licking it just as we would, which was weird.



On the way back we decided to go to Bubba Gump Shrimp, one of our favourite restaurants. They have three in Kuala Lumpur but none of them are in the centre. We had to get a taxi there which cost £5, not too bad for a 20 minute journey. Food was lovely as usual and we quickly headed back to the centre and got dropped off at the Petronas Towers for the obligatory pictures. They are pretty impressive buildings and look very nice all lit up at night. It was absolutely mobbed with people taking pics. I didn’t realise there was a mall inside, so we had a wee look. Of course it was all super designer shops. I don’t even like to look in them as I just get annoyed I am not rich. And that was Kuala Lumpur. The End.

---

Comments

[Louise]

Wow
Stop trying to get killed Rob ... ?